Hi all, Daniel Kibblesmith here.
Thank you for reading and subscribing — and if you don’t subscribe, you can sign up right now by hitting the button below. The button also automatically kills one stranger and delivers you a million dollars. Or, possibly, delivers a stranger a million dollars and then I forget what happens to you. But it’s probably fine.
I Will Be At New York Comic Con 10.08 - 10.12
Should be fine.
New York Comic Con starts in a couple days and I have done very little packing or planning. Mind you, I don’t have a table, or anything to sell there, so preparing for New York Comic Con, for me, mostly involves packing one suitcase with the correct amount of underwear, and zero Ebola monkeys or explosives (or exploding Ebola monkeys). Then I just have to remember to carry that suitcase onto an airplane at an agreed upon time. None of these events are sure things, but I’m optimistic. Monkeys make a noise that reminds you that they don’t like being in confined spaces with dynamite. It’s a defense mechanism.
New York Comic Con is a little exhausting. It’s a difficult place to inhabit physically. It’s roughly the same attendance as San Diego Comic Con, packed into a much smaller space — The Javits Center, forever cursed as the location of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 non-victory party. After Hillary lost in 2016, she gave a solemn speech, after which it would have been inappropriate to release, what I assume, would have been a prepared balloon drop.
Subsequently, I became and remain obsessed with the idea of a balloon drop that does not drop.
Obviously, you need to prepare a balloon drop in the event that you win — and Hillary Clinton and her team felt very confident that they would win. I think it’s a fair assumption to say that a balloon drop was planned. Some evidence: I don’t feel the need to post pictures of politicians on my own website, but there are some very funny, formerly viral photos of Hillary and Bill Clinton reacting with real or faked astonishment at the balloon drop that closed out the 2016 DNC. They stare upward, mouths in the shape of O’s, seemingly amazed at the very idea that this many balloons could exist in one place, much less fall semi-spontaneously from the heavens above. Or — again — pretending. This seems like a logical moment to try to recreate (or top) on election night, given that it was probably the last moment of the campaign to go viral in a somewhat positive way.
But what happens to the prepared balloons that don’t fall? Are they easier to bring back down when kept in the netting that’s holding them in place? Could they be returned in that same packaging and repurposed for another red, white, and blue themed victory party, like a French team’s indoor soccer game? It’s hard to imagine there could be another appropriate event nearby, and so soon. Maybe a down-ballot candidate who had a smaller budget and a better night.
Or do they do a sort of “controlled balloon drop” after everyone has gone home, like a S.W.A.T. team safely detonating a suspected explosive device? Do the maintenance workers still get to enjoy it for a moment before they start sweeping them up? Extending their arms and letting the balloons tumble down over themselves, like secret midnight Presidents. Or do they just stand there, leaning on brooms, with clock-watching resignation toward another chore to be performed? Sweeping up the hubris of the wealthy and powerful. Systematically popping their dreams one by one so they take up less space in the dumpster.
The Javits center is a haunted house — and every time I’m there, I notice myself reflexively glancing upward to see if there are any balloons still remain impossibly trapped in the rafters. The floating ghosts of 2016, clinging to a ceiling so high that the future can’t reach it, trying not to look down at the reality that awaits them should they one day fall.
So I try to chipperly welcome the plastic lightsabers accidentally smacking me in the face, the fifteen minute lines just to get on escalators, and the Hodor cosplayer, literally blocking hundreds of con-goers with the giant door strapped to his back.* Because I am hyper-conscious that I am not having the worst day that anyone has ever had in that building.
To contact me at New York Comic Con for signing books, crashing panels, or actual business, please send me a message via my website here. I am especially interested in writing the new Spider-Man movie, Spider-Man 2: This Time It’s Spider-Man.
On Sale Now
Rick And Morty Vs. The Universe: LAST MORT STANDING!
Cover by Dave Bardin.
Written by Alex Firer and illustrated by Fred C. Stresing (co-written by me), the longtime Rick & Morty comics team (and current creators of The Doughboys comic) make their triumphant return to the franchise that forced them to ask themselves, “AM I MAN, OR AM I MORT?” In this issue, they finally, bloodily answer that question.
This the third and final of our tie-ins to Rick And Morty’s first ever comics event, Rick And Morty Vs. The Universe — A fourt-part (three-tie-in) series about Rick and Morty literally fighting the universe. Alex and Fred’s installment finds Morty on a mysterious island on the margins of reality where he must win a battle royale with ninety-nine other Morty’s in order to escape back to the real world as a real boy. Who will survive and Mort will be left of them?
Collectible alternate covers gallery below, featuring covers by Troy Little, Flops, Tom Fowler, and interior artist Fred C. Stresing
Impossible to believe you’re still unconvinced. But just in case, here are the official details from Oni Press:
A RICK AND MORTY VS. THE UNIVERSE TIE-IN EXTRAVAGANZA!
Rollicking writers Daniel Kibblesmith (Loki) and Alex Firer (The Onion) and artist Fred C. Stresing (Adventure Time) run headlong toward [INSERT TOP-SECRET CLIMAX HERE] as Rick and Morty’s galactically gargantuan summer event pits Morty against Morty against Morty for all the marbles! As Rick tries (and fails) to trigger a reboot of reality . . . where the hell has Morty been? Just fighting for survival in a teenage boy’s dream/nightmare—a real life battle royale for ultimate Morty supremacy against all the non-canonical Morties of this void in an eternal life-and-death game of Capture the Key—the key that will unlock the massive door in the massive wall that imprisons them all here while the Non-Canonical Ricks have their serious adventures. Our Morty is smarter and more competent than these losers. He’s a REAL BOY. And he can be again . . . he just needs to get that key and escape!
—and an extremely positive review from AIPT comics:
Rick and Morty vs. the Universe: Last Mort Standing #1 isn’t just a savage satire of continuity and comic book death, but a deeper look into the self-loathing that drives Morty Smith’s entire life. With Rick and Morty vs The Universe hurtling to its end, it’s still great that we can get character-focused one-shots like this. I hope Oni Press continues to explore the weird, wild world of Rick and Morty by digging deeper into the titular duo and everyone surrounding them.
Read the full review here, and purchase Rick And Morty: Last Mort Standing from a comic shop near you or digitally for the device you’re staring at right now.
Currently Watching
Karate Kid Legends is a movie for very young children who can also handle a lot of violence and are somehow nostalgic for the early 80s [complimentary]. My kid immediately started doing improvised moves on her bed, so, it’s doing its job.
Currently Reading
Not even the first of the X-Men/Star Trek: The Next Generation crossovers, but the first to be written as a novel rather than a comic book. I haven’t read those comics (yet) or any other Star Trek novels, but I can tell you confidently that Planet X is a book by and for the insane. Possibly the book I have owned the longest without finishing, I finally hit the insomnia-to-nostalgia sweet spot that allowed me to pick it up and have my life changed — for the first twenty or so “wtf” pages. Then it becomes an incredibly tedious slog, the kind you could get away with before we all had phones.
One energizing point comes when two security officers, named Ditko and Kirby, survive a phaser barrage that takes out their colleague, a Lt. Wayne — and a callback to Lt. Wayne a few pages later, missed by the editor, refers to him by his original name of Lee. These were the kinds of now extremely distracting and gratutious references you could get away with in what is primarily a Star Trek novel in 1998 (again, no phones). But even at that time, killing off Stan Lee was apparently a bridge too far. Bridge and energizing are not Star Trek puns. They’re just words I needed.
I was pretty sleepy when I powered through the ending, but I’m pretty sure they’re implying that Storm and Picard had sex.
Currently Listening
On repeat. In what I anticipate will be a lifetime of my daughter hijacking the radio, we have accidentally discovered, via a Siri misunderstanding, a sped-up cover of ‘Helpless’ from Hamilton, or as a four-year-old might call it: “The Schuyler Sisters Where The One In The Bluey-Green Dress Is Getting Married With A Flower Crown, But It’s Rock And Roll.”
Okay, I think that’s everything. See you at NYCC.
* This is real, I saw this. You looked cool, but you literally dressed up as the door from the TV show that blocks people’s path? Cosplay jail. I sentence this man to a hundred years of normal clothes.