BQT at Comic Con

As I've been crowing the past few days, the Big Quiz Thing's quiz at New York Comic Con last weekend was truly awesome. We had in excess of 50 teams trying their hand at the world's finest comics and movie (and a little video games and manga) trivia, with—surprise, surprise!—BQT regulars the Fantastic Fournicators claiming victory with a perfect score. Scoff if you want, but hey, it was Comic Con. They were like gods at that place. (Hell, I was in the 95th percentile for attractiveness, at least among men.)

Best of all, I didn't make any conspicuous mistakes, as I had feared. The questions covered all the requisite bases (about 45% comics, 45% movies, 10% other junk), and I don't think there were any factual errors. The closest I came was on this question:

"Within $5, what’s the total combined retail value of all 52 No. 1 issues in DC’s reboot (not including tax)?"

One audience member needed clarification: Right now? Apparently, as he informed me, some of those new No. 1's are already being resold for considerably more than cover price, a mere month later. (Good Lord…) Nope, cover price. Stunning.

So I declared success. Photos below, courtesy BQT assistant supreme Liv Swenson. As awesome as the show was, truthfully, it wasn't the ideal venue for us: We were on a great big stage, but in a large noisy room, and the light made the screen look a little washed out. Hoping we can come back next year, maybe after the sun sets.

Preshow. Thank you again to my guest assistants, Heather and Mike Young.

The Hasbro Stage. Had no idea till we got there that it was labeled "Kids," though no kids attended. Still, at the last minute, they asked us to keep it clean; we did our best. I think the worst thing was a video clip of Wolverine saying, "You're a dick."

Damn, that was a big crowd. But attentive. My people!

I was very proud of this question: "Put these Batman movie chest logos in order, earliest to most recent." Give it a shot, why don't you…

The challenges of the Comic Con quiz

Now that I have caught my post–Ladies' Night breath, I prepare to launch back into the quiz maelstrom. The BQT is coming into a busy season here: Boston this Monday, L.A. Thursday, parties for Google and other fine organizations, various top-secret projects, and we're back on the biweekly schedule in NYC. My life. But one particular event stands out: New York Comic Con.


On Saturday, October 15, the Big Quiz Thing is presenting a special one-hour event at Comic Con, at the Javits Center, all about the fun stuff that people go to Comic Con for. Comic books, certainly, but everything else that appeals to overgrown nerds like me (and quite possibly you).

This will be a challenge, despite my supposed expertise in all things geeky. In two respects:

Challenge No. 1: Fact checking, fact checking, fact checking…
You can say a lot of things about the kind of person who goes to Comic Con—a lot of things. But nonetheless, the past ten years have seen an evolution of the comic nerd, and most of the old-guard stereotypes just aren't true. I mean, I'd put serious money on most of the attendees at the Javits Center having known the touch of a woman (or a man). But one conception that ain't a mis is that they are among the nit-pickiest people on the planet.

Mostly false

Fine, okay, this is something I deal with routinely with the BQT, but I think I'm going to need an extra dollop of careful for this shindig. To wit: an incident at Ladies' Night, when we presented this entry in the Suffragette City four-parter.

In case you're completely confused here, that's a famous suffragette's head on the body of a comic-book superheroine, with the suffragette's name rendered as an anagram. Players had to guess both the suffragette and the superheroine. And I received a point-of-order question from the audience:

"Is part of the superheroine's costume not shown?"

I was confused. You mean her hair? Nope, that's not what she (yes, she) meant. It took genius Steve of the Fantastic Fournicators, approaching the stage with two fishnet-wearing superheroines' names written on a piece of paper, for me to realize the source of confusion:

There's a pleasant thought…

A-ha. How, how could I forget about Zatanna's fishnets? So I announced, "There is no hat involved. I did not eliminate a hat from the picture." (BTW, the suffragette was her.) Problem solved, but it was a close one. It's not that it's easier to make mistakes on comic-booky topics than other ones, but you know that if you do, the geeks will call you on it (as well they should, BTW). There's a reason the longest Wikipedia pages are about Star Wars characters and Marvel supervillains. I'm always pretty exacting about getting things right at the BQT, but I'm going to give these Comic Con questions an extra go-through, over, under, sideways and around.

Challenge No. 2: Covering all the bases. But what was most alarming about the Ladies' Night lapse is that this was on my supposed strongest Comic Con–related topic: superheroes. Not just superheroes, but DC superheroes—dude, I can basically give you a blow-by-blow rundown of the Crisis on Infinite Earths (I was never a Marvel Zombie). This should be a topic about which I never make mistakes, even in my sleep.

So what about the other topics? Not just other-than-DC comics, but all the multitude of non-comics mediums and genres represented by the ultimately misleadingly named Comic Con? You got science fiction, manga, comedy, gaming, LARPing, etc., etc. (indeed, etc.). I know a fair amount about…some of that, and I can research anything, often do. But what are the bases I have to cover. Do I really having to cover LARPing?.

Not for me. Though I get it.

This has not be so much of a challenge at past subject-specific Big Quiz Things: I know insane amounts about Presidents, Jews, and The Simpsons. And ladies, of course. That shit came easy to me.

Thus, to deal with both of these challenges, I've assembled what I call the Geek Council: eight or ten of my geekiest friends (including BQT videographer William Scurry), to advise me and help me fact-check the whole thing. We're meeting in a couple weeks to hash out ideas and topics, and eat pizza, after which I'll go out there and design the perfect nerd-satisfying game. Then, I will turn to them as an extra layer of fact-checking. I ain't getting nothing wrong here.

But what about you? What topics do you think I should cover? Or not cover? Personally, I haven't even been to a comic convention in 20 years, so any advice is useful. Let me know.

A rant, part II

Two days ago, I complained about The New Yorker's "famous" cartoons, about how most of them drive me insane with disgust. A rant, if you will. Today, part II: Why am I so pissed off?

(1) They're lazy. One of the primary philosophies of my life is that hard work is itself a good thing: Even if the result is disappointing, I like to give an A for effort. This is one of the reasons I loved The 39 Steps; not only was it a good time, those guys worked their asses off. It's also part of the reason I admire Jimmy Carter; the dude was a flat-out lousy President, but dammit, he really tried, and for that I respect him. (That's not to say I hate anything that doesn't involve hard work; let's trade Jerky Boys quotes sometime.)

But too many New Yorker cartoons foist clichéd, tossed-off concepts accompanied by poorly drawn pictures onto readers and call it art. Not a lot of effort here.And what's most galling is that most of the journalism in The New Yorker is excellent, full of outstanding reporters and writers putting in a herculean degree of effort. I mean, really: Does a napkin scribble and a banal observation about waiting in line really deserve to sit side-by-side with a rigorously reported, 3,000-word essay about the modernization of rural China? The answer is no, and I wish The New Yorker's editors realized that.

(2) They're elitist. As you may be aware, for most of my life, I was big comic-book fan. Mainly mainstream, superheroey stuff—I was a DC fanatic, I wrote my thesis about Batman, although I have an appreciation of the tentpoles of the underground and alternative scenes. And the underdog in me always bristled at how, until recently, comics were basically dismissed by the mainstream. (With age, I've learned just how much of the comics canon is utter shit, but isn't that true of all art forms?)

The New Yorker's cartoons never had that problem. They're routinely hailed as paragons of humor and cartoon artistry. I think it's because for decades, the very medium of comics was debased; so standards were lower, and anything with a shred of an adult viewpoint was regarded as an exceptional example of the form (deserving work has benefited from this as well, of course). And the imprimatur of being in The New Yorker granted these cartoons that dignified shred. But the truth is, most of these cartoons are lousy, and a lot of "juvenile" comics are much better. You want to talk about humor? Try Ambush Bug, or even this:

This ties in with the laziness: New Yorker cartoonists seem to think, "Hey, it's just a cartoon! No one's expecting genius, so a poorly thought-out trifle should get the job done." Wrong: Open your eyes, Mr. Cultural Commentator. There is good comics work, even if it's outnumbered by the crap. Besides, comics is a medium, not a specific genre, marketing strategy or philosophy. Scott McCloud has made this point well: A medium can't in itself be good or bad (though the advent of Twitter has me reconsidering that).

Next post: I lay off the vitriol and show you some examples of New Yorker cartoons that I actually like.

Men. Watched.

I saw Watchmen today. Can't give much away (bad form in the journalism biz). But liked it; not crazy, ecstatic love, but definitely intense like. Very faithful to the book (to its detriment at points). There's even one major element that I think improves upon the graphic novel. So I think we can call this a geek victory.

A few things to keep in mind…

—Six hours after leaving the screening and I've already heard/read three joking references to Doctor Manhattan's blue penis (which is quite visible at many points in the movie). This will be the juvenile Watchmen meme in our pop culture of the coming weeks, mark my words.

—One actor in the movie gives an especially bad performance, nearly ruining the character. I will not say whom for now, but this person is my new archnemesis (the hated Alex Trebek is laying low at present).

—That crappy actor is not Jackie Earle Haley; dude is awesome. He shares my birthday: He's 14 years older, and 14 is my lucky number (we were born on the 14th). I am cosmically linked to Rorschach. Back to therapy for me!

—I plan to see it again at some point, after the mania has died down a bit. Who wants to organize a BQT fan outing?

—Some trivia (how about that?): The Watchmen characters were based on heroes DC purchased from Charlton Comics in the early '80s; Alan Moore was given them to play around with, then DC changed its mind, deciding the work the heroes into the fabric of their fictional universe. Basically, the Comedian = The Peacemaker (Moore has said that Watchmen started as a murder mystery, "Who killed the Peacemaker?"), Rorschach = The Question, Nite Owl = Blue Beetle (both), Doctor Manhattan = Captain Atom, Silk Spectre = Nightshade, Ozymandias = Thunderbolt, and the Squid Monster = Mr. Muscles (might be wrong about that last one). I'd love to post photos/links of all these characters, but it's late and I'm hungry, and you know how to use the Google.

I wuz robbed by comics geeks!

This weekend is New York Comic Con. I am not attending, never have, though every year I swear next time I will. (It's one of those things.) I used to be a huge comics geek, though I did overdose on comics conventions when I was in high school, and I gave up reading them almost entirely several months ago. But next year, definitely.

I still borrow paperback compilations of comics from friends, and I recently completed the entire run of the critically acclaimed Y: The Last Man, the story of a young man who is the only survivor of a mysterious plague that wipes out every other male human on earth. It was very well done, but my reading of it was tinged with a bit of regret, even annoyance. You see, it was my idea.

Not really. But sort of. Possibly.

About eight years ago, I was somewhat friendly with a fellow named Kevin Maguire, a professional comic book artist. In fact, he was responsible for one of the most iconic comic covers in history. This:Pretty cool, right? I was in an improv class with this guy, and one night, postclass over drinks, I discovered he was this guy whose work I'd drooled over in junior high. Only in New York, kids.

We became somewhat friendly; he was very nice, very mellow. Eventually, we drifted apart, though we recently became Facebook friends, so I'm sure we'll be bestest buds ever of all time before you know it.

But backtrack: During our friendship, one night, we sat idly on my rooftop, having a drink and enjoying the Manhattan skyline. Being a virulently raging comics geek, and fancying myself for a possible career in writing comics stories, I was throwing at him all my various ideas, especially Elseworlds concepts. ("Elseworlds" stories denoted DC Comics mucking around with their characters in "alternate" contexts: Superman in Arthurian England, Batman fights Dracula and permanently becomes a vampire, and so on. Fun.)

I told Kevin what I considered a particularly potent idea: a world in which only women became superheroes. What if, for whatever reason, the gamma rays, the secret formulas, etc., that make ordinary people into supercharacters in the comic book world affected women only? He declared it an interesting idea, our evening ended, and soon after, we lost touch.

Several months later, I found this at a comics store:
A plague kills every man on earth, except Superman (Kryptonian DNA, naturally). The female superheroes try to keep things together, while the world holds its breath that Supes and Lois Lane can produce a child. And guess what? It was drawn by Kevin Maguire! And not written by me!

Was I mad? Not really. I had no real legal claim, and Kevin actually acted on the idea, whereas I just sat around blabbing about it. Besides, the comic kind of sank like a stone. I think I once tried to milk sympathy out of my erstwhile friend by sending him a spec script about Batman fighting a serial killer, but I never heard anything back and moved on. (These days, the idea of writing a comic book has lost almost all appeal. Editing one, however…)

Anyway, several years later, the conceptually similar Y: The Last Man, also published by DC, appeared, and began reaping oodles of popular and critical praise. I was reminded of "my" JLA story. Still, it was written and drawn by completely different people, so there was almost certainly no direct link to JLA: Created Equal (especially considering that the idea of gendercide is not exactly fresh with the morning dew; Mary Shelley tackled it 180 years ago).

But, I stand by my belief that the JLA story was my idea, and like to tease that Y is indirectly my doing. I really should go to Comic Con, with a bullhorn, and loudly declare to the world that I am personally responsible for Y: The Last Man. I'll annoy the geeks to no end, get myself thrown out, win the momentary enmity of DC Comics, a company I idolized in my youth. Next year, definitely.