FEAR AND LOATHING AT SDCC…
Chapter 1: A Universe away from something
We were somewhere around the Hasbro Panel on the edge of a horde of nerds when the drugs began to take hold. I saw some toys, some tiny toys, but they seemed to be getting bigger and bigger, like the plastic itself was infected and bloating: gangrene at Christmastime. But it was just me walking to the table. Or not me. Not me at all. But you. And you. All of you. All of us. The toys weren’t just getting smaller…I was getting taller. I had grown.
No…no it was the toys. My mistake. “Is that an Ultron?” I asked the slack jawed man beside me, who glared at me with breath that reeked of caffeine and Lysol. “Why is he so small?” I reached for the tiny toy terror. The mirror world I was right on the edge of funhoused my arm into strange proportions, and I never quite made it to where I was reaching…but that was ok, because I snapped a picture right here. If words were actions and actions were visible you’d see that I’m tapping my temple, which is the porch to where all the important stuff goes on. I keep a rocking chair on my temple so people can sit there and feel comfortable without walking into my house, because nobody ever wipes their feet.
Ultron was so small…but he looked right. Real right. Damn right. He looked left and right before crossing the
street, and on the other side of the street was a Marvel Legends booth, and I wanted to go over there, but first I had to stay here a while. I had to stay here and look, and figure this out. I was going to figure this out.
Everything looked right, but it was small. Maybe the room was bigger. Maybe I was wearing the wrong shoes. Who knows anymore. I just wanted to fondle the toys, because the booth babes carried mace and I was pretty sure the toys didn’t. I was hoping they didn’t. I couldn’t takes no mo.
“YOU!” I screamed at a man with a ponytail. “Bring back my bagel! IS that an Enchantress!!” He nodded solemnly and went on his way. I was still pointing. It took a while for me to lower my hand. I turned back to the toys.
El Diablo
I wish I liked this scale….this stings.
“Who said that,” I whispered to a mime. He was trapped in a box and couldn’t answer though. Sting indeed.
These…people. These toys…so much lust for them…but they weren’t right for some of us. It didn’t feel right. It was like a Beatles cover group. Where the hell was Ringo!! Maybe he ate your baby.
deathbunny32
I hope bad things happen to you Hasbro.
I hope hasbro stubs their toe coming out of the shower! That’ll show ’em!
Sunfire, Ultron, Thor, Luke Cage, Jean Grey…it’s was like a Fwoosh top ten vote but somebody sent the letter to the wrong address. But that’s ok. Yu can still do it…you just have to squint. Squinting makes it all better.
That’s what One-eyed Wally told me back in the war.
I back away…it’s all too much, the lights, the sounds, the smell of plastic and prototype paint. I scratch at my arm to try and get the disease out of me but it’s too far inside. Fine. Fine.
Some dude named Ash Talon keeps talking release schedules. When will he be released? When will we all be released…I can still see my name on the wall, and a picture of Bill Cosby above it, shaking his head. I’ve been here forever it seems. A can of soup on the side of the road. I’ll keep. I’ll keep.
FurryCurry
Hey what’s wrong with you ML fans?
A question that’s been on all our minds, but we’ve just been scared to admit it. I know what it is. I’ve always known. Stop it with the wanting things! Wanting leads to needing. Needing leads to bread in the oven. Wait. No. NO that’s not it.
Chapter 2: It’ll be Legendary
“WHY ARE YOU HERE!”
Toys…do not talk back. They stare at you with blank chloroform expressions when you scream at them. Who are you…why are you here? Why is there a bag over your face? I don’t understand. It’s all too weird. Like a Mexican soap opera dubbed in chinese. It’ll just give me gas and then I’ll be hungry an hour later.
No more wire hangers.
I am unfulfilled. I want more. But I’m starting to wonder what it will take. More. M. O. R. E.
But I know it’s not to be as Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man are dangled in front of me, and I reach for them, but they pull them back and I fall into the gutter. Who left this gutter in the middle of the convention?!? Heads are gonna roll.
Nuke, Fantomex, Terror, White Phoenix….it all seems too arbitrary. So strange. Like a man in a tutu. Why are my toys wearing a tutu. If I look at the small toys again, will they grow larger? Is this all I have left?
I’m staring at a guest list to a party that I didn’t want to go to…but I’m here already. And the guests are ok if that’s all you’re expecting, but you’re expecting so much more. But then you realize the good ones got invited to the party across the street. I want to be at the party across the street too, but the door is too small to walk through.
This must be the custom panel.
No.
It’s not.
We were expecting a deluge, and got a trickle. The Stormclouds didn’t unzip themselves, or if they did, the rain was odd and strange. No Storm. No Storm. Where had I heard that before…
JKL-MD ReFugee
(Cue my whiny fanboy voice) – where’s First Appearance Storm?
Nono, it’s ok….we don’t need her. We got the Amazing Bag-man.
…
You bastards. Somebody’s going to have to pay for this. My captions are going to be black, my writing will be white, and my shirt will cling to my body. But not from sweat. No. Not from sweat.
Not from sweat at all.
Now they—THEY–tell me I have to vote. I have to vote. I have to name names, and then they’ll choose, but it’s not a choice, because my choice is strangled in duct tape and left in the garbage. They said I have a choice, but it’s not a choice if they choose the choice. What madman election is this. Where’s my congressman! I need an official voice.
Now comes the anger. Thick bile forming in the twisted knot of where our collective stomachs used to be before being replaced with charred numbness. We thump our chests and bleat our horns and proclaim our rage to the dying light of a million dead stars, but our unified waling does nothing but shake loose the flop sweat and the tears of an army of ushers with their flashlights guiding us down the cold nickelodeon aisles.
Watch.
Your.
Step.
If you listen very quietly, you can hear the splitting of an atom, and that atom is our thoughts and opinions, and they can coalesce into two single, unique thoughts
canonball
Good lord. I want every single one of those. EVERY. ONE.
Piffy
Wow. How utterly disappointing.
A zeitgeist captured in a butterfly net. Voice of a nation of fwoosh, dichotomy in cybernetic alphanumeric jumble.
The convulsions have begun. I’m seeing the words floating in front of me. Violent. Angry. Tiny fists.
Ash Talon
Just got off the phone with my buddy down at the show. His roomate’s son says he saw a Winter Soldier figure at the Hasbro booth, but it was “in the back.” He’s a relatively new Marvel fan, but he’s rather rabid about the stuff. They stopped by the booth at the end of the show. Take it with a grain of salt, but I think a ML Winter Soldier will be on display tomorrow.
I took three grains of salt and spilled them over my shoulder and then the friend of an uncle who used to know a guy who worked with the son of the president of Hasbro sent me a telegram that had nothing but morse code on it so I had to tap it out for a blind guy and he told me that it said “I heard from a turkey that tomorrow the turkeys shall take their retribution for thanksgivings across the world and we also saw a Winter Soldier at the turkey meeting.”
But it was jive turkey.
Where’s the link to the poll.
Where’s the link to the poll.
Wheres. The link. To the poll!
If you say it enough it infuses itself into your mind, and you start to understand that this is what it’s been about all along. Conditioning. Programming. They’ve got us clicking dots with virtual number two pencils like students taking the least important SAT’s in the world, and soon if they see this works what next? Will they require blood? Where’s the link to the homicide. I’ve become a slave to the find. Another realdoll casualty spread eagle on the town hall floor. Suckysuckyfidorra, Hasbro. I’m yours.
And when they levitate down toward us and speak to us, they say: we hear you.
The earless. The eyeless. The mouthless. We hear you.
We are you.
We’ve gone beyond you all. OUr skin is plastic now. My elbows don’t quite hit 90 degrees, even in the summertime.
Balthus Dire
I will laugh until I die if that’s all the ML news they cover.
And still he laughs.
Chapter 3: Where 6 inches roam free
I shake off the cobwebs and suddenty there’s a gleaming paradise in front of me. A crust breaks free from my brow, and my eyes blink out the light. Away from all that noise and suffering and into another place, another universe. I feel accepted here. Hands reach out to me. I shy away from the human contact, wondering when the disappointment comes. Is that B’wana Beast? Animal Man? Kilowog?
My god…it’s full of stars.
My mouth opens to speak and I have a voice, and somebody understands what I’m saying. I don’t trust it. I paint a line in the air with my finger and dare them to cross it. I wave them away. And they shake a Purple Suit Lex at me and hand me a glass of water. I swallow it down. I can feel him swimming in there.
GrownNerd
Bwanna Beast, he’s got no nipples.
I cover mine so nobody steals them from me. I don’t want to end up that way. Maybe if I hide them. I can’t end up like Mr. Beast, and his funky hat, with no nipples. But then why does his hat have nipples? I see a Robotman looking at me. He has no nipples either. I can see his brain. He can see mine. Come sit on my
porch, Robotman. I’ve got sandwiches.
Tea.
I’ve got life.
Chapter 4: Masters of my domain
GreatcrappingElvisthatTrapJawlooksawesome.
=RickyLee=
Is it too late to start collecting this entire line from the start?
No. It’s never too late, until we pull the blanket of sod over our faces and are dreaming of bones and worms. Even if we find ourselves broken and beaten by life, screaming obscenities into the mouth of a clown, it’s still not over. The slots still have a winner in them.
It’s when I see that they’ve started flocking the toys that I have to get away.
It’s all to flocking much.
Chapter 5: Fifth Chapter
There’s more to see, they won’t let me blink until I see it all, but it’s too much, my nerves are piano wires tuned to tight, and a jackhammer is tapping the keys. All I feel is a C# repeating it’s staccato drone in my mind.
I stagger away from the convention with this slithery feeling that I’ve lost and gained something in these few short hours. That we’ve all lost…something. I wish I could identify it. But in the end, I can’t. And that’s ok, because we’re all carrying around our personal lost and founds. I think I have your gloves. Some of us never reclaim whatever it is we think we’ve lost, some of us find it years too late.
As I grind the fever from behind my eyes and shuffle off out of the humidity and the stink of desperation and desire I only hope that it’ll never be like this again, and that it never changes. Ever.
Ever.
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