I generally try to avoid spoilers in my reviews if I can help it, but discussing Nick Spencer’s Infinite Vacation #1 without revealing it’s high concept would be pointless. In the world of Infinite Vacation, man has figured out that there are infinite alternate universes out there and the company Infinite Vacation offers people the opportunity to travel between them. Basically, People have started vacationing in alternate universes as if they were time shares in Florida. In addition to being able to travel between universes, the company offers the option to interact with alternate versions of yourself from those worlds, which is a cool twist on your typical alternate reality story.

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Those of us who have enjoyed reading comics for most of our life have been blessed with a decade of comic book movies. By the end of next year, with the exception of a few DC headliners,  every major comic book character will have been turned into a major motion picture and licensing opportunity. We’re blessed… Except almost every one of those movies is cringe-inducing. (I’m 99 percent sure PTB doesn’t agree with this assessment, but bear with me.)

I’m not saying there aren’t nice moments in almost all of those films. I’m not saying I don’t line up to see most of them. It’s fantastic to see Superman stop a crashing airplane, but yet another Lex Luthor real estate scam? It’s moving to see the X-Men battle intolerance, but the wacky battle atop the Statue of Liberty to stop Magneto from turning everyone into a mutant? I digress… Comics don’t translate well into films largely because one of the major appeals of comic books is their serial nature. Three X-Men or Spider-Man films in a decade (1.5 watchable ones of each) cannot recreate that serial experience, but it’s been clear to me for years that a television series probably could. The problem is that the only example we’ve had to test this theory during last decade or so is Smallville…

At least until last night’s debut of The Walking Dead.

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This year’s New York Comic Con came and went this weekend (10/8/10-10/10/10), and this is a tough one to write up. In a word, it was overwhelming. I want to say I had a good time, but I don’t know that I came away from it with the experience that I was looking for. Thankfully, that wasn’t true for everyone here at MLD, and I did come back with a lot to write about.

The Show

Saturday was impossibly crowded. Reports indicate that 97,000 people attended the show throughout the weekend and it felt like every one of them was in the same aisle (Evan Dorkin sums it up well here). Attendees reported waiting up to an hour to get into the building and even to get into some of the panels. Both Saturday and Sunday were reported as “sold out,” but I’m not sure that point reflects a reasonable number for that space. Combining the show with the Anime Festival may have just been too much.

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August 28th and 29th brought the 11th Annual Baltimore Comic Con to Charm City and Angie and I made some time to drive down and check it out. We were only able to attend on Saturday, but in the short time we were there it was clear that this is the show for true comics fans.

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