CCR 2026 Report

Had a fun time at Comic Con Revolution – Ontario. Held in Southern California’s Inland Empire, about 60 miles from the coast, it offers locals the comic con experience in their own backyard. People were happy to be there, many for the first time.

A big appeal of the show in recent years has been the celebrities who come in for photos and autographs. Among this year’s guests were the casts of the Flash television series that included Grant Gustin, Tom Kavanagh and John Wesley Shipp; Battlestar Galactica with Edward James Olmos, Katee Sackhoff and Grace Park; and Beverly Hills 90210, including Jenny Garth, Ian Ziering and James Austin Green.

In fact, about half the main exhibition hall was designated for celebrity guests, while Artist Alley was in a separate ballroom in the same venue. On Sunday, I made a quick visit to the area and saw Gustin, Cavanagh, Shipp, and Garth; the day before, as I left my table to grab lunch, I passed Ziering on the floor, checking out Artist Alley.

While comic book sales weren't as strong as I would have liked, afterwards, in making my final tally, I happily discovered that I did better than I thought, in large part boosted by sales of prints and original art and sketches! Foot traffic was light on my end of the floor much of the time and a large percentage of people who stopped by, even if they liked my work, weren’t comics readers. (That said, I was happy to see that two comics legends, Chris Claremont and John Romita, Jr., had healthy lines throughout the show!)

Nevertheless, it was fun to meet the usual spectrum of fans, like the two young women who immediately and enthusiastically vibed with the series and got a kick out of the variety of stories. They laughed at the situations I told them Rob often found himself in, at one point saying “We love Rob!” and “Poor Rob never seems to take a break!” (Which gave me the segue to tell them about the story, “Crime Takes a Holiday,” where Rob spends his entire vacation trying to figure out what a longtime foe is up to when he spots him in the same area.) They purchased all my trade paperbacks and a selection of other issues.

There was also the kid who bought the first issue and asked me to sign the cover with a special pen he has for such occasions—then returned later asking me to draw a doodle on the cover because he assured me it would increase its value lol!

And there was the otherwise amiable gentleman who at least three times during our conversation let drop that he’d just gotten out of prison after seven years in stir—but he never said for what, and I wasn’t quite clear what the etiquette was for asking! Anyway, though sales were just a bit disappointing, I had a fun time and enjoyed meeting attendees and fellow creators.

See the full gallery. 

 

UPCOMING: Comic Con Revolution–Ontario

This weekend, May 16–17, I’ll be at Comic Con Revolution–Ontario in Southern California’s Inland Empire, at the Ontario Convention Center!

Visit me at booth F12 in Artist’s Alley at the show. 

The Conchords Take Flight

For Mother’s Day, we got tickets for the comedy singing duo, Flight of the Conchords—or, as they describe themselves, New Zealand's fourth most popular folk-comedy duo, ranked just below a Flight of the Conchords tribute band, Like of the Conchords (who they said were only better because they practice more).

Made up of actors/comedians Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, the team were coaxed by Netflix to reunite for this year’s Netflix is a Joke Fest held all over in L.A. May 4-10. The show was held at the open air Greek Theatre, up in the hills of Griffith Park here in L.A. (Originally billed for one show, a second night was added due to the demand. I posted last week that we saw a small show at the Comedy Store as part of the festival. In addition, at last year’s Fest, we saw Jerry Seinfeld, Jim Gaffigan, and Nat Bargatze at the Hollywood Bowl.)

This is their first appearance together since 2018—though, in preparation, they performed several tune up shows that included a few shows in L.A. locally last week at the small smaller supper club venue, Café Largo. Joking at the start of the show that they had to re-learn the music and lyrics of their old songs, there were occasional false starts and miscues that were part of the fun and charm of the show. (You can see a couple of these miscues in the video clip below lol.) A lot of the show was obviously ad-libbed, particularly in the interactions with the audience.

Like many people, I discovered the duo through their self-titled two-season 2007–09 HBO series—last night’s show included “surprise” appearances of series cast members Arj Barker, who performed his stand up act to open the show, and actors Rhys Darby and Kristen Schall in character as, respectively, their hapless manager, Murray, and sole, obsessed fan, Mel (proudly telling the audience she was their only fan before there was OnlyFans). My wife actually spotted Schall in the venue prior to the show.

Though I wondered whether there’d be new material as in their 2018 special, the show consisted primarily of their back catalog, opening with “The Humans Are Dead” (updated to reference AI) and “Frodo, Don’t Wear the Ring.” It closed with “Bowie's in Space” and, as their encore, their rap battle, “Hiphopopotamus vs. Rhymenoceros.” In between, there was plenty of funny chatter. My only disappointment was that they didn’t perform “The Summer of 1353”—one of my favorite lines from that song being, “That haircut’s a little 1351.” It was a rapturous audience and a hilarious, fun evening.

Free Comic Book Day 2026 Wrap Up!

Thanks to the Santa Monica Comics Co. for allowing me and a bunch of other creators to be part of the first Free Comic Book Day at their new store in West Los Angeles! I'm fortunate that the store is pretty much on my side of town since I live less than 5 miles away either by freeway or local streets. (I'm partly re-posting the store's post about the day because I ended up not taking many photos myself, aside from a video I posted yesterday—and I'm in one of the cover photos lol!) I had a lot of fun meeting great, interesting folks. One 11-year old bought a few issues that his dad first carefully leafed through—he wasn't harsh or anything, but he understandably wanted to make sure my comics were age appropriate. In fact, he specifically asked me whether there was any profanity or sex, and I assured him that the issues his son picked up did not have anything gratuitous. As a dad myself, I respected his due diligence lol.

I also met a gentlemen who was in town on business to find investors for his hedge fund who was staying in a hotel in Beverly Hills—but was also a good Catholic who attended my local church whenever he was in town (he asked if I might be there on Sunday, and I said, no, that's why I called him a "good Catholic" lol); a mother who bought my baseball issue because she loves the sport; and a long time comics fan who told me the story of losing what sounded like a prized childhood comics collection to water damage (yes, it was at painful as it sounds!) We had fun talking about the great artists of our youth, like John Buscema, John Romita (and John Romita, Jr.), Paul Smith, John Byrne, and titles like Creepy, Conan the Barbarian, X-Men, Fantastic Four, and more! He really knew his stuff.

A lot of people, of course, were locals—my first college apartment away from home was in this part of L.A., so I still know it fairly well and this occasionally came up in conversation, especially with somewhat famous University High School (or Uni High) nearby. Some of the people I met were either current students or graduates. (Given its location, many of its alumni were celebrities or their children—I know that comics and television writer Mark Evanier also graduated from Uni, and occasionally tells stories about his time there at his blog.)

The NuArt Theatre, an arthouse theater, is just down the street, and was a favorite haunt for friends and me when it was one of many revival houses in L.A. back in the 1980s and ‘90s. Another arthouse theater, the Laemmle, is even closer on the same street—I actually saw actor Leonard Nimoy there in the lobby during a showing of Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Hamlet, and once ate next to Randy Newman at a sushi bar that used to be next door!

Anyway, it was a fun event in a part of town that has many great memories for me. This side of L.A. also is known for its Persian restaurants and businesses, and one of our favorite such restaurants is nearby, Javan. Afterwards, to reward myself after a long day (I pretty much skipped lunch), I stopped there for dinner to go since it was on the way! Next up for me is Comic Con Revolution - Ontario in a few weeks, May 16-17!

Free Comic Book Day 2026 is Saturday, May 2!

From the Vault: Unpublished Art (1)

While going through old art, I came across close to 80(!) pages of unfinished and unpublished art from stories I never completed (one was abandoned 18 pages in!). I can't recall why I stopped work on them—though I usually work from a completed script, I probably just felt I wasn't feeling it or the story was going nowhere. But in retrospect, they seem to hold up okay. Though some have the lettering lightly pencilled, as organized as I generally try to be, I actually don't seem to have the original scripts for many of these!

Anyway, here's a three-page sequence I vaguely recall was to be Rob's first appearance in a story, Rob breaking into a lab or something in Asia for some evidence. These were fully inked, but not yet shaded or lettered.

Web Tweaks 2026

Yesterday, on April 17, I deployed the re-designed and updated the WCG Comics website!

When it comes to my website, I am an inveterate tinkerer. Though not an expert by any means, I enjoy the process of building and coding web pages. In 1998, I started with html, moved to CSS in 2009, and Wordpress in 2022. These updates have included re-designs, moving to different web hosts, and migrating from PayPal to WooCommerce and Square as my payment processor.

While my website has always met my needs functionally—the main goal being the ability to make the purchase process at my webstore as smooth and painless as possible for users—a major goal in my bucket list has been to move to a more modern fluid and responsive full-width website design. Not only was my current website—using a template called MH Themes—somewhat outmoded because it was an older design, I did not have access to some recent Wordpress features.

Above: Recently retired WCG Comics website.

Over the past several months, I intermittently experimented and played with a variety of designs and themes. None seemed to adequately meet my needs—existing templates seemed too rigid and unsuited for what I wanted.

I realized that another daunting aspect of a potential re-design would be the need to re-create and migrate all my existing sales and products, images, and other features I’d incorporated over the years. Indeed, it was enough to make me believe that such a re-design was unfeasible and daunting to rebuild the website again from the ground up.

A major breakthrough was coming across the Staging feature in Wordpress, that allows a user to duplicate an existing website into a walled off sandbox and play with it without risk of breaking the original site. Just as importantly, when it’s ready, staging also allows you to deploy the website by simply writing over and replacing the existing website to make the new site live.

I also came across a theme that I thought might work for me—NewSpare by AF Themes. Though similar to the MH Magazine theme in that it’s a news site at its heart, it had a full-width design with a top banner image that gave me access to more modern features. While I still had to re-build (or rather, re-create) the front page from scratch, and ensure the webstore pages worked properly, the rest of my content otherwise transferred fairly smoothly into the new format. I still need to slightly tweak the containers of the other pages to ensure they do not run to the very edge, but fortunately, these are mostly cosmetic changes since the pages otherwise retained their layout and content, and were already fully functional and readable. Because of all this, what I thought might take me months was completed over a a few nights!

While I’ve learned to never say never when it comes to my website, hopefully this recent leap will be the last major re-design or update to the website I’ll need to make for awhile!

Below: The website from May 2024. 

REVIEWS: Love Story and Project Hail Mary

Love Story

I was initially apprehensive about Love Story, the biopic series from producer Ryan Murphy about the romance of John F. Kennedy, Jr. and Carolyn Bessette. While alive, Kennedy and Bessette became tabloid fodder, only to become idealized in death, so I was wary of the show coming off cheesy or maudlin.

My interest in the show was admittedly partly driven by a measure of admiration for Kennedy. In addition to being close in age to Kennedy, and as a political and news junkie and history buff, I enjoyed and subscribed to Kennedy’s George magazine. (In fact, I still have every issue saved somewhere.)

Fortunately, the show successfully avoids most of the missteps I feared, offering a fairly grounded telling of the couple’s romance, wedding and marriage, focusing on what it was like to be inside the eye of a celebrity storm and, for Bessette, facing the twin challenges of becoming a mega-celebrity and a Kennedy. That said, I don’t doubt that much of the story has been fictionalized and structured for dramatic effect (see my mention of actress Daryl Hannah below), but I nevertheless thought the show approached the subject with intelligence and captured a measure of emotional truth that suited the characters, if not the real life players. I found it to be a surprisingly engaging production that faithfully captured the 1990s with attention to detail and featured some very perceptive writing and great scenes.

Ultimately, what elevates the production are the winning performances of the lead actors who portray John-John and Carolyn (Paul Anthony Kelly and Sarah Pidgeon), as well as some very good writing. They make their counterparts relatable while also capturing their appeal and attractiveness (not an easy accomplishment!)

They’re ably supported by the other players as well, including Naomi Watts as Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Grace Gummer as Caroline Kennedy, Jessica Harper as Ethel Kennedy, and Alessandro Nivola as Calvin Klein. Special recognition needs to go to Dree Hemingway. She is both frighteningly and hilariously convincing as former Kennedy girlfriend Daryl Hannah, who is set up as a bete noire of sorts to Bessette—so much so that poor Hannah was compelled to release a statement that she’d never used cocaine, pressured anyone into marriage, desecrated a family heirloom, or crashed a wake (see the show if you want to know what the fuss is about!)

Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised and greatly enjoyed the series.

Project Hail Mary

Following the successful adaptation of Andy Weir’s book, The Martian, into film (a book I fortunately read well before the film even went into production), comes Project Hail Mary from directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, and writer Drew Goddard, who also wrote adapted The Martian for the screen.

It’s a winning, uplifting space and science fiction film about cooperation and friendship between differing worlds and cultures, a welcome message in today’s fractured world. Anchoring the film is Ryan Gosling, as science teacher and reluctant astronaut Ryland Grace, in a role tailor made for the actor that takes advantage of both his acting and comedic chops.

Grace has been sent on a mission into the far reaches of space to find a way to battle a micro organism dubbed Astrophage that is threatening earth’s sun and, indeed, nearly every star in the known universe. He eventually joins forces with an alien being he meets when he arrives at a distant galaxy who, it turns out, is on a similar mission.

The two soon become a team and eventually develop a genuine bond. The depth of this bond and friendship is tested when circumstances arise when each must decide whether to put their lives and the mission itself on the line to come to the other’s aid. The film is the perfect message for our modern age, serving as a much needed counter to the division and tribalism that’s been sadly too prevalent in our world today.

Always Look on the Bright Side of Life!

Report on the 2026 WonderCon

Even though attendance was reportedly down at this year's show year, I’m happy to say that WonderCon was a solid success for me. Sales were just slightly off from last year, but that was a stellar year—so no complaints! Sales were particularly boosted by more big-ticket purchases of trade paperbacks and other bundled options. 

As I reported in an earlier post, the more relaxed vibe provided an opportunity to have nice, fun chats with people! I even networked a bit—a couple of people I planned to reach out to ended up stopping by my booth, which led to some upcoming scheduled appearances.

On a previous post, I meant to mention that I was sorry to miss the No Kings March on Saturday—I joked with a fellow exhibitor that morning, “I missed the No Kings March for THIS?!” Ah, well, my wife participated and represented the both of us. I wore a Banksy Subway Sandwich Thrower t-shirt that day to show my support.

Another highlight was picking up the Illustrator Card featuring me that fellow comics creator/cartoonist Calvin Nye invited me to participate in! It’s blank on the other side in case fans want to get a sketch and an autograph—collect them all! He was selling them in blind packs of five at the show.

Cosplay was in full force. A highlight for me was Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, as well as someone dressed up as a knight from the film—we had seen the musical, Spamalot, just a couple days before WonderCon, so that was a cheap thrill. (And, yes, Tim the Enchanter and his wife told me they had seen Spamalot just a few weeks earlier too.)

Anyway, thanks to everyone who stopped by! 

Scroll down for additional photos at the show. Or go to the full gallery.

Capsule Reviews: Fremont, Rental Family and EPiC

In this era of big Marvel and DC superhero action films, it was nice to recently come across some films that were much smaller in scale and much quieter, yet nevertheless indelible in ways that only arthouse films can be.

Fremont (Prime)
From 2023, this quiet moving film about a young Afghan woman who has resettled in the Northern California city of Fremont (near San Francisco) after having served as a translator for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Though not many details of her previous life are offered, it’s clear she has suffered some trauma and feels isolated and adrift, as she tries to adjust to her new life. This is in spite the fact she lives in an Afghani community and holds a job at a fortune cookie factory. The one star in it was Jeremy Allen White. It’s in black and white. But there really isn’t much about Fremont itself lol, though that is where she lives. A very quiet film of small moments, but I liked it a lot.

Rental Family (Hulu)

Another quiet moving film about an American expatriate (Brendan Fraser), a struggling actor living in Japan who finds work at a family rental agency. I’m not sure how accurate the film is in terms of the kind of work these workers actually do (though I had vaguely heard about people paid to attend funerals), but it explores the sticky ethics of such work (especially when it involves deception), and whether it’s possible for the workers to keep their work and personal feelings and lives separate. Full of warmth and humor, Brendan Fraser anchors the film, joined by a dominantly Japanese cast.

EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert

When I heard about this film, I opted to see it in a theater to enjoy a full theatrical and sound experience. Part documentary and part concert film, it mostly strips away Elvis’s bigger-than-life image to focus on his music chops and performance, particularly his early in residence Vegas years. (Though you do see a bit of weight fluctuation in some of the footage, there’s little of the later “Fat Elvis” years—in fact, in the earlier footage, The King looks downright terrific and slim. Kind of a mini-version of the Beatles’ Get Back documentary, the film provides a brief bio of his early musical and movie career, then focuses on both studio rehearsals and concert performances. It was a treat to see Elvis in concert, he was truly electric, giving 110% in every performance. And to go back to the Get Back comparison, it was a blast seeing him perform three Beatles tunes: Yesterday, Something, and, live in concert, a terrific mashup of Little Sister with Get Back!

WonderCon 2026

 I'll be at WonderCon in Anaheim, California, March 27–29, 2026!

Rock Me Amadeus!

You Say It's Your Birthday!

In the Home Stretch of Rob Hanes Adventures #27!

2026 Pasadena Comic Con Report

Revisiting Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings

Capsule Reviews

Hamnet
This is a (presumably) fictionalized dramatization of William Shakespeare’s romance, marriage and relationship with his wife, Anne Hathaway, and the loss of their son, Hamnet. The film dramatizes how Shakespeare, in dealing with the family’s grief, may have partly inspired him to write “Hamlet.”

I found the film unengaging—while the film opens with Shakespeare at odds with his father about becoming a playwright, we see none of his journey to success. While this may partly be because the film is primarily focused on Hathaway, it nevertheless creates a hole in the film. Indeed, while it’s clear Shakespeare and Hathaway genuinely love each other, due to his focus on his career, in the film, Shakespeare nevertheless is an absentee father whose live in London we never see.

Marty Supreme

While I thought Marthy Supreme was a tour de force, I’m not sure I thoroughly “liked” it, but it did stay with me. The initial trailers misleadingly made it look like a feel-good underdog story—I’m glad I was disabused of that in advance, based on (non-spoilery) reviews I read in advance and someone reminding me the film was from Josh Safdie, of the Safdie Brothers.

In truth, it’s about a somewhat unlikable but laser-focused Marty Mauser (Timothy Chalomet), who’ll do whatever it takes to achieve his dream of competing in the table tennis British Open championship for personal glory and to bring American attention to the sport. And this often includes crossing moral (and legal) boundaries. The film’s saving grace is Marty occasionally showing some humanity and, at the end, once he’s achieved his goal, seemingly ready to get on with life.

One Battle After Another
I saw this film at its release, at Quentin Tarantino’s Vista Theatre in the L.A. neighborhood of Los Feliz, partly because it was one of two theaters in the country showing it in VistaVision.

While the film seems to have been roundly praised, I frankly didn’t know what to make of it. It seemed tonally all over the place and I was not sure whether it was intended to be taken seriously or not, and whether or not it’s a drama or a Roadrunner and Wylie Coyote cartoon. It made a little more sense after I learned that the film is based on a Thomas Pynchon novel which made the film’s reception even more surprising since I doubt most moviegoers aren’t familiar with the book.

Fackham Hall
Fackham Hall is a parody of British period shows of the Masterpiece Theatre variety, particularly Downton Abbey, in the same way Airplane was of disaster films. It definitely was a “throw everything against the wall and see what sticks” sort of a comedy. That said, while I chuckled a few times, and the name cast was generally game for anything, I thought there were more misses than hits. The best running gag for me was that J.R.R. Tolkien was one of the guests at the manor where a murder occurs (while still in the process of writing The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings), resulting in several amusing references and shout outs to the books.

Nouvelle Vague
Directed by Richard Linklater, Nouvelle Vague is a charming French language dramatization of the making of Jean-Luc Godard’s groundbreaking French new wave film, Breathless. Filmed in black and white, and told in a cinema verité style that mimics the original film, it takes you behind the scenes as Godard directs his film with no script and in guerrilla style, sometimes to the consternation of his actors and crew. Actress Zoey Deutsch is particularly luminous as American actress Jean Seberg.

Blue Moon
Also directed by Richard Linklater, Blue Moon was released just a few weeks after Nouvelle Vague. Set in a single night at a bar, it stars Ethan Hawke in a rare bit of character transformation as musical lyricist Lorenz Hart, as he reflects on his life and career during the opening night party of the musical Oklahoma!, written by his former colleague Richard Rodgers with his new partner, Oscar Hammerstein (a terrific Andrew Scott in an otherwise small role). Like a play, the evening unfolds as Rodgers struggles with the state of his life (obsessing over a young ingenue he has befriended played by Margaret Qualley), fearing that Rodgers and musical theater is moving on without him (as it did). While the film was a little talky at the beginning, the film hits its stride as it marches to a sad and tragic conclusion.

Remembering the 1994 Northridge Earthquake

I was reminded that yesterday, January 17, was the anniversary of the 1994 Northridge earthquake—which that year, like today, was Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Though I lived “over the hill” from the epicenter in the San Fernando Valley 25 miles away, we nevertheless felt much of its force, being suddenly shaken awake at 4:30 in the morning. I vividly remember sitting up in bed as the house violently swayed back and forth, like an old 1930s cartoon. Fortunately, the rented house we were living in at the time didn’t experience any serious damage other than a partial collapse of a cinder block retaining wall in the back of the property. 

 That said, my job at the time was in the very epicenter of the earthquake in Northridge. I was asked to report into work three days later. The building where my office was in had been deemed unsafe to occupy and for the first few months we worked in an open field in what looked like a MASH unit. We eventually worked out of new temporary trailers for the next several years as the office building was retrofitted and eventually re-opened. A parking structure at the site had completely collapsed. It was fortunate that it not only occurred in the early morning hours, but also on a holiday. 

Though freeway collapses had occurred, they did not fortunately affect my commute directly—in fact, two of the freeway collapses occurred a few exits outside of my commute on both sides, one just about a mile from me. (An on-duty highway patrolman on his motorcycle lost his life in the other collapse since he did not see the missing section in time.) A year later, President Clinton visited our site to mark the recovery.

(These are all my personal photos.)