* Today on the Con War front: I’m pretty happy with how my Robot 6 piece on the friendly date-switch deal made by Heroes Con and Supercon came out. There are the usual Wizard/Reed tidbits mixed in there as well.
* I also enjoyed the lengthy round-up by Heidi MacDonald and Tom Spurgeon’s “what does it all mean, and not mean?” piece. Tom makes one really interesting distinction, between “aesthetically gross” stuff done by the various cons and “ethically gross” stuff, which is a different and more pressing issue but which remains difficult to separate from the former category simply because so few people are willing to go on the record about the many, many shady things being whispered about behind the scenes.
* Robot 6 is rebranding itself Robot 666 for this pre-Halloween week. Boo!
* Paranormal Activity beat the tar out of Saw VI at the box office during the latter’s opening weekend. To me this isn’t a story of David and Goliath so much as Goliath in David’s clothing vs. Goliath’s great-great-great-great-grandson, but hey, worth noting.
* It’s a great privilege to be able to claim Jim Hanley’s Universe as my Local Comic Shop. It’s with that in mind that I read and appreciated Jim Hanley’s eulogy for his late buisness partner Rich Hafstead. (Via Dirk Deppey.)
* Old Al Columbia! And new Al Columbia I had no idea existed!
* I dig Frank Santoro’s minimalist APE recap. The Troublemakers is out!
* Real-Life Horror: 15 minutes of sensory deprivation can make you hallucinate. Via Andrew Sullivan, who points out that the United States government has subjected its own citizens to way, way, way more than 15 minutes of sensory deprivation.
* I loved The A-Team as a kid, and while I think the movie version will have a really really tiny needle to thread in terms of finding a tone that’ll make it enjoyable, I am indeed delighted by this picture of the cast. That’s Liam Neeson, believe it or not.
An A-Team movie? Why? I mean, beside the obvious.
As for sensory deprivation, sure, there’s hallucinations, but I don’t recall my hour or so being particularly unpleasant. Of course, I knew I could get out any time it got too freaky, which it never came close to. But remove that safety cushion and things would be a lot more difficult, I imagine.
That IDW book has been delayed for a month or more. Believe it when I sees it!