Starman & Ana-Lucia

I suppose the joke could be made about Starman's cosmic rod again. There was a reason, I made that Starman post. Saturday I was at the Comic-Con, which, hopefully, will be the last year it is being run by Wizard Entertainment, which I do believe is a subsidiary of FoxNews. But first, the homina homina news. I got to talk with Michelle Rodriguez--who has been in some sort of fast car movie, but I only know her from Google Imag...um...portraying Ana-Lucia Cortez on LOST. I was in an area where I was standing after finishing signing a few copies of FIENDS and Ms. Rodriguez was ready for someone to vacate a seat so she could go out for a 2PM signing, so it amounted to being on a very slowly moving elevator. We made small talk, and since I had chosen to wear my monster (aka lime) green t-shirt with a cool airbrush of Frankenstein on it, all I kept thinking was, great, I'm talking to Michelle Rodriguez and I'm wearing a freaking LIME-COLORED SHIRT. It might have been worse, I could have been wearing a Green Lantern t-shirt. Blah blah blah on the heat inside the Stephens Center, me surprising her on not knowing her from movies before LOST, but, hey, I never knew who Bai Ling was before LOST, either. Then it was time for her to sign a huge pile of glossies from that fast car film. Leaving me wanting to cry. And pee. Then cry some more.

Well, now that that's out of the way, I hadn't gone to a con here since 2003 and I actually had some money that I PLANNED to spend. The bad thing about Wizard running the cons is that the dealer tables cost so much that the dealers will only stock their mint & highest priced product. Fifteen years ago, I bought BLUE BEETLE#6, from 1940, for $5.00. Reading condition. No such thing now. The cheapest BB I saw cost $125.00, same for the Dick Briefer Frankenstein books from the 50s. The GOOD side of all this is that the people who seel the archives and the masterworks put their overstock out at 50% off. So, whereas I spent $125.00, I easily saves $100, plus I got a crapload of stuff I really did want, not an iffy kind of want.

Starman was created not quite two years after Superman, as so many DC (named after its flagship title, Detective Comics, which would star Batman starting with #27) costumed characters came into being between 1940 and 1941, and most formed the Justice Society of America. Starman is a legacy hero, as there were quite a few over the years, as seen in the Alex Ross painting. But the 1940s stories, with the primary colors and no backgrounds are what I love (each plate has been redone for the archive editions). So I was quite pleased to get the second archive, which had a going price of $60.00, and I couldn't get much of a lower price from Amazon.

I'd go on, but by now everyone is tired of my geek-out. Let's face it, I really was using Starman as a flimsy excuse to mention my run-in with Michelle Rodriguez. Me and my lime green shirt. Holding the Starman Archives, because I had just bought it and hadn't had time to put it in my backpack. An archive that has a &#^&* smiley face sun on the cover. I'll stop. I'm only making it worse.