For most of my life, I haven't been much of a hat-wearer. I tend to get hot pretty quickly, sweat a bit, and got a really nasty case of hat hair, even when the outside temperature was pretty cool. When my hairline receded enough that I started cutting my hair to about nothing, I realized -- after a nasty sunburn on top of my head -- that I needed a good hat. My requirements were that it had a brim all the way around to protect my ears and necks, that it still provided some air flow across the top of my head, that it bear "collapsable" so that I could fold it up and carry it more-or-less flat, and I kind of wanted it to look decent too. I eventually found an Australian company that produced hats that exactly matched those criteria. Visually, it looks exactly like the type of thing you'd wear if you were exploring the outback, but I found that it worked very well in more urban settings as well. Many of the recent pictures of me you might find online show me sporting that hat.

I really like the style and overall look of it, plus it functions really well. I'd more or less adopted it as part of a signature look.

I've recently started addressing the rest of my wardrobe. I've got shirts and pants that are just getting a little too worn out, and need replacing anyway, so I've been looking at making my clothing choices much more deliberately. I've long hated clothes shopping, and most of my wardrobe was chosen almost entirely and exclusively on a "does it fit" mentality. "Does it fit? Yes? Good. Done." But I've now got a closet full of stuff that hasn't held up well, or never looked very good on me in the first place, or wasn't particularly comfortable, or whatever. I suppose, too, having to be more deliberate about choosing clothes for my running (you can wear about anything for a 5k, but you actually need to be more selective if you're running a marathon) prepared me for spending a little more time on what the rest of my closet looks like.

I first thought about running with the visual theme set by the hat I really liked. It had a vaguely Indiana Jones feel, despite not really even being close to a Fedora, and I started looking at shirts that might look passable on the archeologist/adventurer. My first couple looked decent enough, but were still kind of meh. In thinking on it a bit more, I decided that I wasn't going to find what I wanted in your typical department store.

What types of clothes would you really wear if you were out in the jungle? Or in the desert? If you really needed a hat like the one I had, what kind of shirt or pants would you also need? I started a Pinterest board just to keep track of things I was finding, using it more like an idea board for myself. (Frankly, I still don't get why you might use Pinterest in any other way. The social aspect of the site is pretty well lost on me.) But I found some shirts and pants and other clothes that seemed to be more closely to what I was thinking of.

I've gotten a handful of items and found they work exceptionally well. Better than I anticipated. Not only do they provide a style that I find appealing, but they're very functional in ways I hadn't planned on. Extra pockets, zippered pockets, super-breathable material, high SPF ratings, sturdy construction... And even though you kind of get the idea that I might be jumping on a plane to an expedition to find the lost continent any minute, they still present a pretty respectable, professional image in an office setting. (Provided you don't carry a bullwhip and a revolver like Indy does in the picture here!) Plus, I started liking the idea of being something of a comics archeologist, searching forgotten longboxes for rare treasures.

What I've additionally found, however, is that this type of outfit is incredibly functional in a comic convention setting. The zippered pockets help to make my wallet a bit more secure for potential thieves. The extra pockets, in both the shirt and pants, make it very easy and convenient to drop items you're handed in crowded, need-to-get-out-of-the-way-quickly scenarios. The material helps keep me cooler in densely populated aisles where everyone's body heat makes things warmer than usual. Plus, my hat is nearly unique, making it relatively easy for others to pick you out in a crowd.

I'm still early in procuring this new wardrobe (meaning there's no real pictures of me in one of these outfits yet) but I'm fascinated by the combination of utilitarianism and style that's come about from it so far. I wouldn't have expected that emulating the styles from various works of fiction (Indy's not the only one in this line of work, mind you!) would be so functional in everyday comics-related settings.

• The Borneo Post looks a new comic based on the legendary headhunters of Borneo by two Kuala Lumpur residents with Dayak ancestry.
• Although the Justice League: Alien Invasion ride opened in Australia last year, I only just heard about it. I don't have a single link to include here, but I've compiled a series of videos that essentially present the ride in its entirety, including the pre-show video.

• Here's an excellent summary video focusing on the Steve Ditko creation The Question. While Ditko himself is (unsurprisingly) not interviewed, the piece does feature interviews with Dennis O'Neil, Jeffrey Combs, Rick Burchett and Greg Rucka.

• Yesterday, the documentary on Gestalt Comics called Artscape: Comic Book Heroes debuted on ABC1 in Australia. I don't know the how/when/where of watching it online or outside of that country, but here's the trailer for it. Definitely something I'd like to see in its entirety. It airs on ABC1 again the 20th.

• Finally, in our video segment, The Guardian has a great piece on 2000AD which includes a look at their impressive library of films used in the production for each and every issue of the book.

I'm still reading an ebook about the British comics scene in the 1980s and '90s. It started off primarily about retailing, which was fine, but it's devolved into a rambling memoir of sorts. And it's gotten more and more difficult to slog through as it progresses. The grammar and punctuation gets worse. The side ramblings become less and less relevant. He keeps talking about this column he used to write and how it was well-received, and I can't help but think, "Seriously? How lousy must have the rest of the publication been if this crap was the highlight?"

He also has several anecdotes about dealings with comics professionals, and he seems to be putting forth a good effort to be as balanced as possible. And in reading it, I just get the impression that he's an aimless schlub who squandered several fortuituous breaks. By his own accounts, I'm frankly amazed that he had anything resembling a career in comics.

I'm towards the end of the book now, and he's largely dropped any pretense of trying to write history in favor of preaching what's wrong with the comics industry from his soapbox. To be fair, it's a few years old and hindsight clearly indicates that he was off-base, but I'm pretty sure I could've seen how wildly off-base he was, had I read it when it was first published too. For example, he talks about various articles he wrote detailing the comics industries in other countries, but then goes on to talk about how the comics industry in England has all but fallen apart because Marvel and DC aren't doing enough marketing, and maybe they could throw some money behind Wonder Woman as a way to encourage girls to read comics. I can't understand how someone who claims to have done a lot of research on other countries' comics could ignore those same aspects of the industry in his homeland. If nothing else, haven't we been seeing stories about how many girls flocked to manga for, like, the past decade now?

He's made the same mistake that so many other people have made -- equating "the comics industry" with "what Diamond distributes." It's not a distincition I realistic expect every comic fan to make, but for an alleged expert -- for someone who worked in comics retail and comics news publishing for over two decades -- I find the oversight baffling. He's been pontificating on "here's what's right and wrong" based exclusively, it seems, on his personal experience. Obviously, we're all limited to writing what we're aware of, but his whole book has been around what he himself has witnessed first-hand. There seems to be no real research or attempts at finding out what other people might think.

But while I'm reading his tripe and saying all this to myself, I have to step back and wonder if I do that. Does my writing come across as the woefully under-researched ramblings of a comics fan who posits my own experience as the gospel truth of how comics works? I certainly hope not, but please please please please tell me if it ever does! Please call 'bullshit' on me before I make an ass out of myself the waty this guy is doing in his book!

Part Three of an ersatz series on this year's Wizard World Chicago. Part 1. Part 2.

I can't speak for everyone, obviously, but I tend to really like going to the panel discussions at comic cons. And not the ones where it's one guy reminiscing about stuff he did 20-30 years ago, but something that I have a deep interest in and won't just find the panel just a rehash of things I've heard before. (Seems like a nice guy, but when was the last time Stan Lee had a new story or anecdote to tell?) I was only at the show for a day and a half, but I hit most of the panels I wanted to. Not surprisingly, they were mostly comics-focused.

What I liked about the panels that I attended is that I learned something from each of them. Not just a snippet or brief anecdote, but something fundamentally interesting and, at least at some level, profound. I was particularly surprised at this in the Batman & Psychology panel. Not that I was expecting it to be just an hour of fluff, but there were some very interesting points brought up about the Batman mythos that I hadn't considered before. The "obvious" questions like "is Batman crazy" or "does Batman have multiple personality disorder" were old hat for me, but the notion of applying psychology to Batman and his extended family concept as a whole proved illuminating.

The Roger Ebert panel was very educational, too, though not in quite the way I'd expected. The Ebert/comics connection was more loose than moderator Danny Fingeroth originally anticipated, but there was a deep discussion on Chicago comics fandom. And while it paralleled what I've seen/read in many other places, the specifics of Chicago-area fandom were interesting.

I also attended Brad Guigar's two webcomics panels. I was impressed with his overall approach. He talked about the more technical aspects of webcomics and largely eschewed the basics of comics construction itself. Although he didn't expressly say as much, he basically said that people making or seeking to make webcomics spend so much time on the comic itself that they forget/skip over all the other elements involved like user interfaces, marketing, etc. Despite having the mic to himself for both pieces, too, he made a point of adding that this was how he's found things to work based on errors he's made and, while it may not work for everybody, try to at least think about and understand how/why things might work differently elsewhere. Some of the content may have been a bit advanced for some people, but if nothing else, it prepared them to see some things they might not have expected.

I think my favorite panel, by virtue of it's broad content message, was Michael Foster's "Reinventing Information." I had expected this to be more about user interfaces and the technology of tablets, smart phones, etc. Instead, it was about using contextual appropriated media references as a means of a communication above and beyond the mere appropriation in the first place. Basically, an extension of the idea's classically portrayed in the Star Trek: TNG episode "Darmok." Interestingly, my referencing that episode also emphasizes the point that I'm making.

There were a few more that I attended, but didn't get much out of, and plenty I would've liked to have gone to but couldn't, but those were some of the highlights. Again, this was a show I hadn't put a whole lot of stock into because of its long reputation on focusing on pop culture, but the panels I sat in on were both very focused on comics, and pretty insightful and meaty ones at that!

Following up from what I said yesterday...

One criticism I personally would make is in regards to the layout and resulting flow of traffic. This was the first time the show was split into two floors, and it seemed overly difficult to navigate between them. Which was not helped by a lack of signage or direction between floors. The registration was on the first floor, but there was no signage directing people to where that was if they came across on the skywalk on the second level. In fact, coming from the skywalk dumped people right into the area by the programming rooms, and they had to have a security guard stand there to direct people down the escalator off to the side and around a corner.

Once your ticket was secured, you had to exit that room and make a hard left to get the main ballroom... which was also unlabled as the entrance. Further adding to the confusion, people coming in from the street had to cross through the line of people coming, the line of people going up/down the escalator, and the line of people going into the main ballroom, as well as pass through the Wizard gift shop, before walking directly against the traffic of people who were coming from the registration area in order to get their own tickets. Once you were in one of the two main halls, getting around was pretty simple and straightforward -- in fact, the aisles were generally pretty open despite a lot of people trafficking through. I also heard of some early issues about retailers having issues getting in/out through certain entrances, although the same people said this was corrected by Friday afternoon.

The biggest complaint I heard from retailers and exhibitors was that traffic/sales were not up to their expectations. Some of that came from people who had never done a Thursday show before, and were thinking it was going to be pretty close to a typical Friday. Some felt that their product was perhaps a little too far afield from the average Wizard World crowd. One retailer noted to me, though, that he felt the show was simply getting too large. That the number of retailers had grown substantially more than the number of attendees, so each retailer was getting a smaller portion of the overall money being spent at the show.

I only heard one person expressly say they probably wouldn't do another Wizard show; he was also one who noted that his product probably didn't mesh with that audience particularly well.

The programming rooms were tucked aside a bit. The initial ones weren't hard to find, but some of them seemed really remote relative to the show. Most of the rooms were in a central area, but some of the remaining ones were through another set of exit-looking doors and further down the hall and around another corner. There were some white board signs directing people to various room numbers, but they seemed too few and too temporary for as far apart as some of the rooms were. I couldn't help but notice, too, that the one panel on women in comics was the absolutely furtherst room away from the show.

The rooms all seemed adequately sized -- although I didn't hit any of the really major panels that were generating the most interest. And the most noise. A few panels I attended were actually difficult to concentrate on because of the volume coming from the next room. The occasional bout of thunderous applause is to be expected, I suppose, but listening to what sounded like a concert was a bit much. It did get turned down eventually, I believe, thanks to some Wizard employees, but it still lasted quite a while.

In general, it seemed to me like the new size/configuration wasn't logistically thought out as completely as it might've been. From what I could tell, it did seem like the convention folks were recognizing when/where there were problems and trying to correct for them, but there were some pretty significant issues that simply could not be addressed without some fundamental changes to the broader layout. It'll be interesting to see how they address some of these things next year.

As noted on Thursday, I hit Wizard World Chicago yesterday afternoon/evening and today. I'm not generally very comfortable striking up conversations, but I've gotten to know enough people now that I ran into several folks that I was comfortable talking with, so I was pleased today to get a wider sense of the show that what I've been able to see myself. And what I thought was interesting about Wizard World was echoed by several others without prompting. It's possible I might not get to the show on Sunday like I thought, so I thought I'd throw a few reflections on tonight.

I'll be honest that I haven't been too keen on Wizard World for several years, largely because it struck me as more of a pop culture show than a comic show. Going into this year was no exception. They're promoting lots of actors and wrestlers and folks that aren't really associated with comics in any way. They had comics people, too, but that hasn't been the focus of their advertising.

But after getting to the show, it seemed to me there was actually a greater focus on comics than at rival convention C2E2! I think the Artists' Alley was at least as big, and there seemed to be a greater percentage of comics folks there (as opposed to just artists who do work that happens to appeal to comics-appreciative audiences). There were certainly more retailers selling comics there too. Now, there were certainly people there selling anime DVDs, and cosplayers dressed up like various incarnations of the Doctor, and a video arcade, and some RenFest folks, but I go tthe impression that there was less of that here than at C2E2.

Furthermore, I had a few people say similar things.

Now, that being said, I also talked to some comic folks who weren't doing as well as they had at C2E2. One guy said he probably would just barely break even, and almost certainly won't do the show next year even though he's local. I talked to another guy who figured he was going to end up with less than half the profits he saw at C2E2. Others came off as much more positive, but I can't say if that was just optimism (real or generated for my benefit) or they were genuinely having a better show. There certainly seemed to be enough traffic that everybody was confindent they would at least walk away from the show with some positive cash flow.

But, despite being billed as a pop culture show, and despite having the likes of Dennis Rodman, Ralph Macchio and Andrew McCarthy as guests, there was still a significant and almost impressive comics presence there.

I'll share some more specifics about the show later.

Just a quick note before I collapse into bed...

If you happen to be wandering around Wizard World Chicago this weekend and see me, be sure to say hi. I should be there Friday afternoon, and all day Saturday and Sunday. I'll be the one wandering around in the very cool hat.