In the sword and sorcery nightmare, the mages won, Jason is a prisoner, and his love’s life hangs in the gulf between what the magi demand and what Jason can give.
In the sci-fi nightmare, fish aliens and talking cats are drowning the world. Jason Byron and his love are scheming for a way to escape the planet before they are pulled under the waves.
In Our Dreams Awake is the story of both nightmares spinning out of control. What horrible dream is Jason trying to wake up to?
***
In Our Dreams Awake comes from co-creators John McGuire and Egg Embry. The third issue of this 4-issue mini-series features two dreams, the first illustrated by Edgar Salazar with the second by Rolands Kalniņš. With covers by Jose Garcia and Rolands Kalniņš, this is a comic written for fans of love stories, dreampunk, steampunk, and cyberpunk, this series promises an engaging mystery with amazing artwork. This story is about love and loss and asking the big questions:
Who am I?
Where do I belong?
Who do I love?
***
IN THE FANTASY DREAM, Jason and Laura must face the consequences of their defiance of the Magi laws. In the aftermath, Jason reaches out to his one-time friend to perform one more magical ritual for him.
IN THE CYBERPUNK FUTURE DREAM, Jason Byron finds himself in the hospital, as much a prisoner as a patient. But his final plan to escape the planet with his love is still in motion… if one of his enemies doesn’t finish him first.
Who can say what dreams may come? Each Jason Byron works for an unseen love. Their guiding light is making their worlds better for those who hold their hearts. But can these dreampunks make their dreams come true?
***
After two successful Kickstarters, we have been working hard to get this issue ready for public consumption. We hope you’ll join us on another great comic book adventure!
Be sure to check out the current Kickstarter for In Our Dreams Awake #3, LIVE on Kickstarter!
Taken as a whole, a comic book represents the input of multiple people, multiple perspectives, and multiple skill sets before the final product is created. I’ve said many times in the past that one of the reasons I love the format is exactly for that reason. You get to feed off of the creatives who you work with. And what begins as one thing can become something completely different in execution (and making the overall comic that much better).
In Our Dreams Awake #1 – Page 7, Panels 7 & 8 The Team Pencils – Edgar Salazar Inks – Genaro Olavarrieta Letters – Egg Embry Writer – John McGuire
Concept
Panel 7
This pair of panels represent the end of a larger conversation within the issue. So much of this world that Jason Byron lives (dreams?) in is dictated by the mages who control everything. They ensure the chaos technology threatens to bring to the people can never exist again. They are Order.
And to go against that would mean going against everything they stand for… and that way lies madness.
So what do we see? We see that Edgar made a choice to not allow for any other colors within these two panels, but instead presented them as a pair of black and white moments. Two men, representing opposite beliefs about their world, are separated by the small table.
Panel 8
The Script
Page 7 Panel 7 Annoyed by Peter’s accusation, Jason pushes himself away from the table as if to get up. Jason – I know all of this, Peter. Peter – So ask me your question again.
Page 7 Panel 8 Same shot as Panel 7 (Jason is still sitting). Jason pauses. No words are needed.
Breakdown
As you can see from the script, I actually made a slight mistake between the two panels. In Panel 7, Jason is frustrated/annoyed and pushes himself away from the table. Edgar followed that showing him standing up. His body language is very tense. However, when we come to Panel 8, I note that “Jason is still sitting”…
No, John, he is not.
But Edgar went with it, and I think it actually works in this visual context because of the artist’s choice to make these mirror images of each other (in regards to the black and white). Where Jason was angry in the previous moment, he has sat back down. But instead of either of them furthering the conversation, the darkness envelops them instead pointing two the very ideas that they stand for can not exist alongside one another.
It even mocks the prompt from Peter in Panel 7: “So ask me your question again.” Panel 8 answers that prompt with silence. There is no need to push the issue any longer.
There are no shades of gray here in this place.
But perhaps there is another world for Jason to find peace? One he can visit while he dreams?
***
The Dream turns to Nightmare in Issue #3. On Kickstarter NOW!
I’ve been writing about it for the better part of the last month, but we are finally LIVE on Kickstarter.
For those who may be unfamiliar to Kickstarter, it is a platform that allows creators to take their work (in this case a comic book) and effectively get people to back the project by saying they want to buy the product. We do this through a number of different reward levels… some of which will just be the new issue of In Our Dreams Awake #3, others will include both issues, digital options, as well as a chance to get signed novels or signed comics from Egg Embry and my back catalogue.
I hope you will join us for the campaign!
Cover by Jose Garcia
***
In Our Dreams Awake #3: A Cyberpunk/Fantasy Adventure
John McGuire – Writer/Creator
Egg Embry – Writer/Creator
Edgar Salazar – Artist
Rolands Kalninš – Artist, Colorist, Letterer
Genaro Olavarrieta – Inker
Javier Laparra – Inker
Alexander Lugo – Letterer
Jose Garcia – Fantasy Cover Artist
Rolands Kalninš – Cyberpunk Cover Artist
The Kickstarter campaign ends on Friday, November 7, 2025.
***
The Pitch:
In the sword and sorcery nightmare, the mages won, Jason is a prisoner, and his love’s life hangs in the gulf between what the magi demand and what Jason can give.
In the sci-fi nightmare, fish aliens and talking cats are drowning the world. Jason Byron and his love are scheming for a way to escape the planet before they are pulled under the waves.
In Our Dreams Awake is the story of both nightmares spinning out of control. What horrible dream is Jason trying to wake up to?
The Story:
IN THE FANTASY DREAM, Jason and Laura must face the consequences of their defiance of the Magi laws. In the aftermath, Jason reaches out to his one-time friend to perform one more magical ritual for him.
IN THE CYBERPUNK FUTURE DREAM, Jason Byron finds himself in the hospital, as much a prisoner as a patient. But his final plan to escape the planet with his love is still in motion… if one of his enemies doesn’t finish him first.
Who can say what dreams may come? Jason Byron’s guiding light is making their world better for those who hold their heart. But their actions have turned the dreams to nightmares. Can these dreampunks reclaim the dream?
Cyberpunk Variant – Art by Rolands Kalninš
John’s Thoughts:
In Our Dreams Awake began with an idea of having a man dream two different lives. Egg and I then took that to the comic book pages by having two separate artists work on the two different dreams… the two different versions of one story that we were telling.
Issue 1 started things off with us learning a bit about Jason in both his Dreams. A painter who dreams of the unknown, doing his best to keep his contraband technology a secret. A Gang Boss who dreams of a way off a drowned world, doing his best to keep his forbidden love a secret.
Issue 2 furthers Jason’s war with the fish aliens and introduces a feline prescence to their Parliament. Meanwhile in the fantasy world, an unorthodox request from Peter threatens to be the undoing of both Jason and Laura.
Issue 3 escalates that to the next level. Secrets begin to unwind and the consequences will change both his worlds completely.
The Rewards:
The Kickstarter is for the third issue in what will be a four-issue series. Issue 3 is completely done and issue 4 is nearly complete.
We have the options of either the pdf ($5) or print version ($10) to send to you. We have a variant cover by Rolands Kalninš with its homage to the 6 Million Dollar Man ($15). If you missed the first or second issue, never fear, you can get all the digital comics ($8) or the print versions ($25).
On the higher end, we have an opportunity to get drawn into the Cyberpunk world as a potential member of Jason’s Gang ($250). The last person opted to instead have their cats featured in the comic which inspired Egg to add them as full antagonists (as seen in issues 2 and 3)!
Finally, we have a number of add-ons ranging from Signed Copies of The Gilded Age Graphic novel, to the Dreamr by the Apocalypse RPG Zine ($10-$20 each).
The Verdict:
In my completely and totally unbiased opinion, why are you still here reading this? Go and back this amazing project!
Back this if you like Dreams, Painters, Cats, Blowing Stuff Up, Aliens, a drowned London, magic, spaceships, and probably a dozen other cool things I’m forgetting about (oooh, Crab people!).
***
I’d like to thank you for taking the time to check out our project. A lot of passion went into telling this story, and we hope you will join us on the ride!
Well, I’ve spent the past couple of days cleaning out my inbox. Too many emails sit in there that I’ve marked as Unread because eventually I need to come back to them and glean… whatever it was I was supposed to glean from them. Instead, all it has done is grow the unreads in my box to over 2000 (which may shock some and others may be virtually patting me on the head thinking 2000 is such a small number).
In the process, I’ve fallen down a couple of rabbit holes…
You see, I want to be a writer.
Well, let me expand on that. I am a writer, but I want to be more than I currently am. I’m not looking for Steven King level fame and fortune. I just want to have the ability to do the thing I love doing and have it pay for itself (or maybe a little extra).
But, like many things in life, I’m never as dedicated as I would like to be. I believe I have the necessary talent, but I’m not sure I have all the drive I need to have. When I’m good and dedicated to sitting down at the desk and putting words on the page, I can string the days together and before too long I look up and the story is on its way to being written.
But there are the other days, too. The days when I come home from work with all the promise and hope in the world. That night is going to be the one where I knock out 10 pages and then work on a short story as well. I’m going to get so ahead on blog posts that I won’t have to think about any of it until the new year.
Then it is 2 in the morning and past time to go to bed and I’m wondering where the time went. No words magically appeared on the screen. Instead, internet rabbit holes or video games were played to unwind or maybe I started watching the new Alien Earth show… the result is the same: nothing got done.
However, in cleaning out my emails I have stumbled across older works, unfinished stories, ideas from over ten years ago. I have not read the words in just as long, so to say that I have the freshest eyes I could possibly have for the writing, that’s where I am.
And it is good. This chapter or two of a story which never went anywhere is written pretty well. Sure, I can see some things I would edit, but there are some nice sequences in there that I’m not 100% I actually wrote it.
I say all that not to try to brag about something that was clearly soooo good that I never bothered showing it to anyone else, but I say it more as a reminder to myself. Yes, there are going to be nights where the words don’t flow as easily. There will be days when I am editing those very same words and think “This guy can’t even write”. There will be days that I beat myself up over not having written.
And all of those are very valid.
But there are also going to be those days where pure magic occurs. When the story is so set in my mind that it becomes a bit of a struggle to keep my fingers ahead of my thoughts. The days when editing will feel like someone who knows what they were doing with the prose will shine through. The days where I accomplished more than I had ever thought I could.
Is there a morale to the story? Is it keep trying because eventually you will get there? Is it, you are going to have difficult days and nights, but you must take each of them in the same flow as your characters and just get through the best you can? Or is it that we’re never as bad as we think we are and sometimes we might be as good as we would hope we are?
I don’t have the email anymore where I first pitched Egg the basic idea behind In Our Dreams Awake. I basically remember that I had hit upon this idea of someone having to live two different lives, one when they slept and one when they were awake. I know that it happened around the Winter of 2004-2005 in one of many of our daily emails back and forth to each other. Those emails served as both catch-up on the day/week and a dumping ground for us to share potential writing ideas.
You see, the goal with Egg and I always was to find a way to write comic books. During college, there were many, many, many weekends the two of us would journey from one comic shop to another looking for back issues. And during those trips, we’d talk about story ideas. They ranged from some take on whatever Marvel or DC or Image might be doing at the time all the way to our own comic ideas featuring our own characters. But this was in the days before something like Kickstarter existed, back in the days when we were going to have to find a way to do things on the “cheap”.
Egg’s always been good about looking at potential story ideas and breaking them down into a format that might be a little different. And that email about In Our Dreams Awake sent his mind going.
I know/remember a few things about this time:
Egg found the title from a quote by Thoreau.
Egg pitched the idea of the two of us writing portions of the story. One of us would take one dream and the other would write the other.
Egg found both the artists to do what would become a 4 issue mini-series: Edgar Salazar (pencils) and Genaro Olavarrieta (inks) for my “fantasy world” dream and an another <redacted> artist for “futuristic world”.
We started on the scripts for issue 1. And then the pages started rolling in… this was working… we were going to have a comic book!
We quickly got scripts going for all 4 of the issues, as Edgar and Genaro were rocketing through their work. I learned how to color on the computer (which is a story for another time). Egg’s artist was turning in good stuff. The tone felt great… all we needed to do was find a home for the comic.
We approached Image at either Chicago Con (I think that was the one), I think we sent it off to a couple of other places, but nothing ever came of it. I was working with the Terminus Media guys at the time and had learned enough to know how to get the book printed, but we realized we probably needed to have a complete book before going down that path.
No matter what, things felt good, we were on our way to having nearly 2 full issues completed. I’d done the colors for issue #1. Egg was lettering issue #1.
This thing was going to work.
And then Egg’s artist fell off the face of the Earth.
He’d done around 20ish pages out of the 48 or so we’d need to finish things up. But when I say he fell off the face of the Earth, I mean it. We couldn’t find him. He didn’t return email. I think Myspace was a bust (remember Myspace?). None of the channels we had to get ahold of him worked.
Months went by, which became a year, which became two years. Edgar and Genaro finished their pages and moved on, but we felt hamstrung by this artist. It was weird that one of the original reasons for doing the comic with two artists was that it would half the load. We thought there was a chance that if an artist disappeared (or ghosted us) that it would be relatively early in the process. We never imagined he would have done enough for nearly 2 issues.
We brainstormed possible ways to salvage this project. Egg came up with an idea to split his dream in two with the already finished pages and then get a new artist (potentially himself) to do the last 24 pages. We toyed with some other thoughts, but time went on, and like so many things…
In Our Dreams Awake passed into legend…
It nagged at me. Tugged at the back of my mind. Every year I’d look through my files and see the pages and think about what could have been. I wrote the Gilded Age comic and The Dark That Follows novel and still, it was there. Egg moved on to RPGs and writing for so many websites that I can’t even keep up with his output these days.
When we were first working on the comic, Egg found the Thoreau quote, and it fit perfectly. But randomly during that same Christmas, my mom got me post-its with quotes on them. And while they didn’t have the In Our Dreams Awake quote, they did feature one from Poe that seemed made for our comic:
Things had lined up perfectly until they didn’t.
Then March 2020 happened, and the world changed. We had time on our hands. And In Our Dreams popped up in my dreams again. I reached out to Egg. Told him I wanted to make a go of it. That we knew so much more than we had nearly 2 decades earlier. The biggest obstacle was always having product, but in this case, we had 1/2 the story already done. There was only one hurdle to go: we needed to reach out to Egg’s artist and see if we could use those pages or if we were going to start over.
And after many weeks, we decided to go with someone new.
The thing was, I’m a part of a couple of Facebook Groups where artists post their work looking for their next gigs, so I’d been saving posts of anyone who caught my eye. So when we decided to move on, I shared all the potentials with Egg, and very quickly we identified Rolands Kalniņš as the person who could bring the sci-fi/cyberpunk dream to life. And Rolands has done that and more. And all of a sudden, we had issue 1 ready to go.
All of a sudden… after 17 years…
The Kickstarter for issue #3 launches two weeks from now, but we’d love it if you’d sign up for the Notification Page just so that Kickstarter will send you an email when the project goes live. You can find that page here.
I requested that we see The Long Walk this weekend and then had to explain to Courtney exactly what the movie might be about.
“It’s a post-apocalyptic world where there is basically a Long Walk that 50 young men volunteer for… and they walk until there is one person left who wins the prize. Oh, and Mark Hamill is a bad guy in it.”
Talk about pretty much going in blind.
While it is about that. I mean, that’s the plot of the movie… that’s also not what the movie is about. I had some questions of my own mostly centered on how the movie would actually be structured. I thought it could make a ton of use out of Flashbacks for either just the main character or perhaps a handful of the other characters. That would help break up what would likely be monotonous walking. They could show some montage that helped show exactly how America got into the state it currently was. Heck, there could be a lot of build up before they even began the walk.
Nope. We pretty much jump right into things from the beginning. And from there we walk.
The thing is it was never monotonous. It was never boring. There was never a point in the 108-minute movie where I wanted them to get to something more exciting.
It was riveting.
Because it was always about the characters. About the bonds these characters make during the course of this horrendous event they all are participating in. Ray and Pete and Art and Hank… our Four Musketeers… they are all real. Each of them trying to joke a bit at the beginning of the Walk to calm their own nerves. Each of them aware that the odds of any one of them actually winning the damn thing was nearly impossible.
“Want to want with me for a while?”
Each death is brutally shown. You might think that is because it is a horror movie and so they need to show the gore, but it is just another way to draw the viewer into the same moments as the characters. It reinforces the realization that there is only one winner.
Watching the movie, I’m rooting for multiple characters… hoping that someway, somehow that maybe they can pull a Hunger Games and two or more could potentially win the damn Walk. I’m rooting against the “bad guy” walkers while also not really wanting them to get their Ticket punched. I’m in agony over some of the characters we only get to meet once or twice before they die.
In fact, the only character I’m actively rooting against is the Major (Mark Hamill in a glorious scene chewing role).
“Want to walk with me for a while?”
The core of the movie is the friendship that develops between Ray and Pete. Two people who would have never met one another in any other circumstance find themselves competing against one another. Two people that should only look out for themselves. Two people who should hope that others around them make a mistake which get them killed.
They are better people than I would be.
Instead, we are moved by Pete’s speech talking about how they are friends even if they’ve only known each other for a couple of days. It’s a friendship that calls to mind tales of war. They are going through the shit together. And even if they both know that only one of them could ever possibly make it out of this Hell alive, they’re in the process of creating a bond very few people could ever understand.
Coming out of the theater, I was floored by what I’d just witnessed. I thought going into it would be a solid to good movie. What I realized instead that this might very well be one of the best movies I’ve seen in a long time. To have something hit as hard as The Long Walk does while making you feel the characters’ exhaustion. Courtney and I talked about it for the next hour at least, just in amazement at how they pulled it all off.
Our last game started at 10PM and had 9 players in a set up where we got to determine which Indy game we all wanted to play. There were 7 on the initial sheet, but with 9 players a few of them wouldn’t really work. The game I would have voted for was Little Fears which sounded interesting (and something that I need to keep on my radar down the road), but it was immediately vetoed by someone. Instead the consensus was Geiger Counter.
Geiger Counter is a narrative-based game where you build your characters for a Horror movie. It can be anything within that genre – from slasher at the summer camp to something came from space to in space no one can hear you scream… and so on. While it took a little while to actually get the hang of what we were trying to do, it became apparent that the movie we were making was not a serious one. No, it would likely have more in common with The Room than it would with Event Horizon.
Knowing that meant I could lean into it. The goal was to not only create some cool moments, but try and get the other players to laugh as much as possible.
Oh, what was the plot of our movie? We were space pirates going to assisted living stations, conning them into coming on the ship, and the ripping them off. The problem is that there was something wrong with these old people. They might be vampires. They might be figments of one of our crew members. They might just really like spaghetti. Who really knows.
This Summer OLD is spelled S.P.A.C.E.
After the game ended and I made it home, it was nearly 3 in the morning. After a quick look at the Sunday schedule, we decided that 11:30 was the target time and went to bed.
Day Three
Buffy Cast Panel
I think I’ve only been at one Buffy Panel ever. Normally it seems like it’s one of the ones that fill up and the line is around the building two or three times. Apparently those days are over. This one had Emma Caulfield (Anya) and Marc Blucas (Riley), and my biggest takeaways were:
Emma and Marc were asked about how an Anya and Riley spinoff might look, and in their discussions it came up that Anya would go through some kind of military training just quoting all the various 80s movie lines from Terminator, Rambo, etc. and Riley getting frustrated at her antics but also impressed how hard she was trying.
The actors both were kind of excited by this concept, but Emma “messed it up” by noting that she wasn’t sure about some kind of love connection with Riley… though she thought that Marc Blucas was an attractive person, she just didn’t see him that way. For the rest of the panel, he’d occasionally bring it back up, and I think she legit felt bad about saying it.
Marc was a basketball player for Wake Forrest back in the 90s. Totally did not know that. He was wearing a hat with his high school logo on it (which happened to be a Yellow Jacket) so he had to let people know it wasn’t a Ga. Tech hat.
Emma wasn’t necessarily happy with her character’s death. She noted she had asked for it, but noted that there wasn’t a lot of time in subsequent episodes for mourning. Though that was kind of the show’s M.O., death happened and life kept moving.
All in all a great panel, and it did make me want to look up if she’d said anything else about the end of her time on the show.
Back to the Future Panel
After years of opting not to sit in a line for an hour or two before a panel, Courtney and I opted to “snipe” the panel after the people waiting in line were let into the room. With this one there were about 10 or so rows left at the back, so we slid in about 10 minutes into the panel.
Side comment – I never understand why they don’t start loading the people into the room earlier. There have been so many panels we’ve been in the long line for and because they don’t start loading until 10 minutes beforehand sometimes, we miss part of the panel. As soon as a panel ends, they rush everyone out… I just don’t understand the logic behind it.
I’m assuming they noted that the panel needed to end 30 minutes early in those initial minutes while people were still filing in, but it meant that we only got about 20 minutes with Christopher Lloyd (Doc Brown), James Tolkan (Mr. Strickland), and Claudia Wells (Jennifer). I wish I had more to report on this panel, but it sort of seemed like Christopher Lloyd and James Tolkan had reached their limit on convention questions. Most of the answers weren’t much more than basic answers.
I do appreciate Tolkan leaving us with a “Slackers!” quote.
Agents of Shield Panel
Another pair of Dragon Con newbies, Chloe Bennet (Daisy Johnson) and Jeff Ward (Deke Shaw) were hilarious up there. I walked out saying to Courtney, “I’m not sure if I learned anything about Agents of Shield, but my cheeks hurt from laughing so much”. Listen, I don’t know who needs to hear this, but get these two a podcast or something where they just act silly around each other.
Things I learned:
Chloe and Jeff are Lip Synching professionals. They don’t like it when amateurs try and join into their Reindeer Games.
Chloe has no idea what Jedd’s One Piece character’s “Chop Chop” power might be, but thinks it might have something to do with salads.
Jeff was thrown off by a fan asking if his character on One Piece, Buggy the Clown, was basically who he was in real life (attitude and personality).
Chloe is double jointed. Which Jeff delighted in telling the audience that they needed to watch 1996’s The Arrival with Charlie Sheen and see how their legs bend backwards… because that’s what Chloe’s look like as well.
Another excellent panel!
After that Courtney sat in on a Handmaid’s Tale/Apocalypse Panel, but I missed it while retrieving something we’d stored in a friend’s hotel. Once that was done, sadly, so was our 2025 Dragon Con. Overall, we had a ton of fun, and are considering trying to get a room downtown next year to maybe try and hit a couple of the later activities (and save me some driving each day).
There is always the moment of worry about getting our badges when it comes to Dragon Con. Over the 30 years since my very first one, I have spent hours in the line, once having the line take so long that I missed the whole reason I’d come down to Dragon Con in the first place (it was for a Magic the Gathering Grand Prix). Since we don’t go down until Friday morning, all we have to go on for the line ride times is the horror stories from the people who go down on Thursday. I saw everything from 30 minutes to 2 hours of wait time.
I even saw someone who said it was the worst line experience they’d ever had, and they’d been coming to Dragon Con for over 30 years themselves (in fairness, someone immediately said that 2025 wasn’t even the worst year in the past 5, so the original poster might have been exaggerating somewhat).
Still, the line was what it has been for the past few years coming in around 10:30 in the morning – it took us less than 15 minutes to get our badges counting from the time we entered the hotel to the time we left (and it honestly was closer to 10 minutes, I just didn’t track it).
On Friday’s agenda we had planned on going to lunch with some friends, the Arrowverse panel, and the Vendors’ Hall. Lunch went great, got to hear some of what was going on from Rebecca who stays downtown and had been there since Thursday… and then it was onto the Arrowverse Panel.
Arrowverse Panel
After all these years, it is kind of surprising to find out that someone from one of these genre shows had never been to Dragon Con before, especially with so many things being filmed in Georgia nowadays. So it was great that we could sit in on Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak) first Dragon Con. Joining her was Colin Donnell (Tommy Merlyn), David Ramsey (John Diggle), and Brandon Routh (Ray Palmer). I must admit that I didn’t immediately recognize Colin with his full beard, but luckily someone asked a question about Tommy and it all clicked into place.
A couple of interesting little stories from the panel:
Everyone clearly were not the biggest fan of the first Arrowverse crossover due to the logistical problems it brought with scheduling.
When David Ramsey goes to direct an episode of something, he normally talks to the producers about the tone of the show. With Arrow, it is a darker show… with the Flash it is lighter and comedic… with Batwoman, it’s darker… but with Legends of Tomorrow the producer just kind of shrugged and said “Just make it look cool”. As a BIG fan of Legends of Tomorrow for exactly that reason, I felt that in my soul.
David Ramsey mentioned that upon initially meeting Stephen Amell, Stephen “thought David was a serious ‘Actor'”. During one of the scenes, Diggle is supposed to lean in and whisper something in Oliver Queen’s ear “Your car is here sir.” So when they were doing a shot for coverage, David leaned in and instead whispered “I have the biggest balls for you.”
Stephen could not keep a straight face in light of that reveal.
Vendors’ Hall
The OTHER line ride at Dragon Con is always the Vendors’ Hall. This year the line was wrapped 3 quarters of the way around the building. All told it took about 1 hour to get in, so not the worst ever, but it makes me wonder if there was any better way to do it while still obeying building capacity ordinances and the like. It is one of the big attractions, but I also hear people talk about skipping it due to the time associated with even getting in.
The things I noticed this year:
An increase in the number of Food related booths. Lots of chocolate, fudge, snack, etc. booths.
An increase in author booths. They were spread around so it is hard to really have a headcount, but it seemed like there were a few more.
An decrease in comic book related booths. There were still the one booth which had $5 trades, and a couple of others which had $1 and $3 boxes, but most had much smaller selections.
Felt like there were a few additional artists on the 4th floor which is the Pop Art (Comic) floor. Though there apparently were a couple of A.I. artists (I must have glanced past them) that at least one was asked to leave the convention early (good for Dragon Con). It’s hard enough to scrap together a couple of bucks at conventions without having to deal with the A.I.
After dinner at Ted’s Montana Grill where a group of 6 recapped their own days, we briefly debated staying for the Comedy show, but Courtney had officially “hit the wall” (trademark pending), so we called it a successful first day and headed home.
Day Two
After years and years of either fighting through crowds on Saturday or sometimes skipping it entirely (due to family commitments mostly), last year I threw out the suggestion to just roleplay all day. It seemed like all upside as we wouldn’t have to deal with crowds and lines since all the gaming is in one of the America’s Mart buildings, and we’d have the opportunity to do a little bit more of what we do at Gen Con – play games we don’t normally get to play.
Alien RPG
Free League’s D6 system just works for us. Whether it is Tales from the Loop or the Alien RPG, everything seems to click right into place. Of course, every time we play it makes me want to play a longer campaign of something using that system. On top of that, the Alien setting works exceptionally alongside it with the Stress rolls and potential for Panic building with each encounter.
Eric, our GM, set up this game as a little more powerful than the other time I played, but it made sense as we were mercenaries hired to go through an especially dangerous jungle to retrieve whatever it was the local forces had uncovered. There was lots of opportunities for strategy and planning to try and obtain our goals throughout, with a little bit of roleplaying on the front end.
Marvel Superheroes (TSR)
It has been 30ish years since I’ve played the old TSR Marvel Superheroes game. What I remember at the time was the multicolored chart and the time it took to figuring out whether an action succeeded or failed. While it wasn’t a difficult task, it was a little bit unwieldy (and compared to current RPG designs with plus modifiers, it seems like the chart could be updated and streamlined.
All that said, our GM, Daimen, was a Flash programmer and had a monitor along with a touch screen on his side, so we could immediately see what we rolled versus what we needed to get to achieve. We noted in our discussions afterward that he might have been the most prepared GM we’ve ever played with, as that screen was not only super easy to see, but his adventure also eased us into the adventure perfectly.
We were playing the New Warriors, a 90s super team that were kind of the junior Avengers. I’m a huge fan of that comic book, and would probably put the first 25 issues up against anything in the fun to read category. Now normally, when it comes to picking pregenerated characters in games, I’m mostly content with just going with whatever is left over. Not with the New Warriors, though. I had my eye on Nova, so when there was a slight pause, I jumped at the chance to grab him. With Egg playing Speedball and inventing the catchphrase “You just got Speedballed!”… we were off.
The GM ran us through a training exercise (which fit the feel perfectly, since all the comics were doing that back in the day) before then getting involved in an intergalactic incident with pirates, Dire Wraiths, and the most helpful PA operator in the galaxy. A ton of fun was had, and it not only made me want to play the game again, but I now want to go upstairs and dig out my long box with all my New Warriors comics!
That’s it for this week. Next week we’ll talk a little bit about the greatest horror movie never made and a handful of panels that made me laugh to the point my cheeks hurt
Dragon Con is this weird thing for me because it has always been there. I believe the very first time I went I was 15 or 16 and Chad’s dad dropped us off and then picked us up some time later. It is where I first realized that there were these comic book conventions, and where I got my very first comic autographed (issue 300 of Amazing Spider-Man by Todd McFarlane). We were only there for a few hours, but my mind was blown, and I resolved to come back again the following year.
Of course that promise was blown away the very next year when family commitments meant I couldn’t attend and ended up missing a D&D session run by Tracy Hickman (of Dragonlance fame). For the weeks afterward my friends all made sure to let me know what I missed out on.
A year later the Magic the Gathering frenzy had taken over. You had to wake up early, stand in line for some crazy amount of time, and if you were lucky you would get 1 pack of Legends. Now I know that must sound crazy to think that the current set could not be bought at any random comic store, but it was the world we were living in.
The years went by and most of the time I tried to ensure I’d go at least two of the three days. And then when it became a four-day con, I pretty much stuck to the two days anyway. At the time it felt like they were expanding just to do it… I mean, I could see 90% of what I wanted in 2 days, why bother with 3.
But then a curious thing happened… friends began to move away or maybe they lost interest into going. And soon that group of 10 or so that made it where no matter what panel you wanted to go see or what deal was going on in the Dealer’s room – you’d know about it and have someone to share in the experience. I don’t know about you, but doing things by myself means there is no one to nudge when you see that “cool thing”.
And not long after that, I was the only one going to con… and it became strictly a 1 day thing for me.
I carried the flag for those “dark” years for my group of friends. Sure, I might see a couple of people I knew, but that old core group was nowhere to be found… and it lessened things a bit.
Then came Firefly and Serenity.
For most of this time my wife avoided Dragon Con. It was something I think that amused her from a distance. That “thing” John did around Labor Day. Every year I’d ask and nudge and hint that I thought she’d have a great time if she just did 1 day with me.
And she always put it off. Maybe next year. Maybe next year.
Then came Firefly and Serenity. And a panel at Dragon Con with pretty much the whole damn cast.
And I had her.
And she came to Con, and saw the panel, and then saw that Charlene Harris and TruBlood was there and sat in on another panel. And we spent the evening watching the costume contest with some good friends in their room on closed circuit enjoying room service.
That’s all it took.
And suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. I had my best friend to nudge and point at a cool costume and to experience things with and just enjoy this piece of my own life with her. Soon enough some of the other friends have drifted back (here and there) to the con. And I get to meet up with newer friends as well… guys and gals I may not have seen in months. It’s glorious.
At the end of Dragon Con I’m always hit with a slight melancholy. No matter how much I enjoyed myself or even on those years I was bummed out about being by myself… I would still get it. That idea of all these people who shared some passions with me… all these people who said fuck it, I want to enjoy what I want to enjoy and not worry if I look or act silly during these 4 days. I love that about Dragon Con. I love people watching. I love going to panels and seeing tv and movie stars talk about their projects and getting excited about the next big thing. I love going to writing panels in an effort to glean as much information from people in the “know” as possible.
Mostly, it makes me feel not so alone. Because, for a long time there us nerds were out in the wilderness. It wasn’t cool to say that you played DnD or Magic or read comics or liked Anime or played computer games. And for 4 days Dragon Con offered an oasis for those of us who wanted to feel apart of something bigger than just us.
So yeah, at the end of the day on Sunday (as we use Monday to recover) I’ll get that funny feeling in my stomach that another one of these has ended, and it will be another year before I get the chance to do it again. I’ll be tired, my feet may hurt, and my wallet will likely be lighter, but even with that slight sadness I know that it is only a matter of a little time before we get to do it again.
I’m slightly late to the party as the movie is nearly one month old at the time of this post. Life has been a little hectic, but we finally managed to go and see the new Fantastic Four movie.
A couple of things about the Fantastic Four comic book… I own a metric ton of their comic books. In fact, the second comic book I ever bought was a Fantastic Four comic during one of our Elementary School Book Fairs. As you can see from the cover below, I’m not entirely sure who thought it was a good idea to even have this comic available for kids.
Still, for a long time I would have considered them my favorite superhero team. The Human Torch is one of my top five characters, and even though the focus of this movie was not Dr. Doom, he has remained my favorite villain in all comics.
When they first announced the movie, I had my concerns. While the early 2000s movies were fun in their own way, they never quite hit the right marks showing the team overall (though Ben and Johnny’s relationship was spot on in those). In addition, I know that everyone seems a little more down on, burned out, or just wants the whole Superhero movie genre to go away at this point. Marvel really did a great job in the Infinity Gems saga, but even I can admit there have been some stumbles along the way since End Game.
But… then the first trailer came out, and I saw they were really leaning into that 1960s look for the team. It was something I thought would have been a good choice for any of their movies.
This movie was pretty much pitch perfect. I nailed the look and feel of the group by really leaning into the one true thing which separates them from every other comic book team out there: they’re a family. Yes, they fight supervillains, and they have saved the world multiple times over, but the best stories show how the family interacts with one another. Those connections which exist directly because of those bonds.
I loved that we got to see Reed struggle with the idea that he didn’t always know the answer to the problem. I loved that we got to see Johnny as something more than just the dumbass lady’s man. I loved that Sue was the lynchpin of the movie, with everything revolving around her – our true guiding star. And I loved the portrayal of Ben… too many times the story only focuses on the fact that he is The Thing. In the Marvel Universe, The Thing is well loved by pretty much everyone. Excellent to see that in this film.
Galactus… how many times have I heard the same refrain about so many comic book things (whether it is their costumes or how the powers get shown or a hundred other things) … I’ve heard it so many times that I’ve begun to believe it as well. The decision to show him as a cloud is the only way this would possibly work.
Galactus looked amazing. He looked both amazingly powerful and something which is a force of nature. I’d like to think this is the way Jack and Stan saw him in their minds when they crafted those early stories.
A worthy threat for the Four.
Finally, the Silver Surfer. Another threat, to be sure, but also the sadness of a being who had lost more than anyone else could comprehend to save their people and their world from Galactus. In the comics, that sacrifice often helps illustrate that we’re not seeing someone who doesn’t know the damage or destruction Galactus can wreck upon sentient creatures, but the Surfer has firsthand knowledge of it from both viewpoints.
The one thing I’m a bit sad about is, based on the upcoming movies (Doomsday and Secret War), this may be the only time we get to see this world. Which will honestly be a shame. I feel like in a perfect world we would have gotten at least one more full movie in this 1960s style before bringing the family into the MCU proper.
