I Missed You, Comic Con

Its a bittersweet day at eightbitter this sunday. On the one hand Mexico scored five on the U.S to win the Gold Cup (wait, was that Canada?). They hadn't beaten the Americans on U.S soil since 1999, its nice to finally get that out of the way and maybe get the old self esteem up for the coming games and tournaments.

But on the other hand this is the last Sunday in July, the final day of the first Comic Con that I did not attend since 2004. We traditionally go on Sunday because there are fewer people (in theory) and everything is cheaper, this year, as I mentioned in an earlier post, no money means no Comic Con.

Now, I've tried to keep my Comic nerddom separate from the video gamer nerd that writes this blog and I've managed to be successful up until now. I'm about to break that vow so here it goes.

While I've been a Comic Book loser for the better part of my life I stopped reading them for about a six year period from 2001 to roughly 2007. There are many reasons for this, lets not get into it. The comic that brought me back was Runaways which, by the time I got into it, was already on its second volume with a grand total of issues in the neighbourhood of 40+. Not being one to miss out on stuff, and with some money to spare I set out to collect every single back issue and get caught up to the current issues.

Luckily Runaways was in a Joss Whedon phase and that motherfucker took about a year to release a five issue arc (you can really tell who wrote that book cant you?). In that year I managed to get every single issue (from different local comic shops, eBay, Comic Con, you name it) and get caught up. Why didnt I buy the trades you say? well because the hunt was as fun as the stories.

After the Whedon arc two other dudes got the book in what was a promising new volume. While the art was ok at first and the story was not horrible pretty soon it went south and the first 9 or so issues of that volume really are a dark time in Runaways history, starting with book 10, however, a new writing/artist team began work on the title and it has thus far been promising. The problem now is twofold: first my not attending the Con prevented me from buying this kickass print (which I can hopefully later buy online), second the Marvel solicits for October dont show a new Runaways issue which forces one to speculate and fear that the title might have been canceled. There is no official announcement so hopefully it was just an off month.

This obviously has nothing to do with video games, especially not old video games, but I felt like writing it down because the two worlds are vastly intertwined. Superhero games have been around forever and they continue to be made and improved. Though some have been horrible others promise to be outstanding. The very first issue of Runaways, in fact, begins with one of the characters playing a Marvel MMORPG, the series regularly features shout outs to video games, etcetera etcetera.

A Runaways game would also be some kind of nice but that probably wont happen, the series isn't as popular as the standards but there are talks of a movie in the works and that could begin some talk about a game. In the mean time what we are left with are artist interpretations of what could have been had Runaways existed in the glory days.

So, I guess that with some hesitation but a bit of excitement we now inaugurate the Comics tag.

w0ot!