It’s been two months since DragonCon, and the countdown to next year’s event is already underway. Formal reports aside, a few things come to mind when considering our recent trip to Atlanta.
Business cards picked up along the way:
Sugar Ninjas, “an anthology featuring over 100 female artists and storytellers,” which has some cute artwork but not much detail on their website. The book is available through lulu.com and seems reasonably priced for a 350+ page collection, but again, I can’t find enough information to decide - as a librarian - if this is appropriate for my teen area or if I should recommend it to the adult librarian. It does intrigue me, and considering how popular manga is with my teen patrons - male and female - I’d love to be able to justify a purchase.
Strawberry Comics are all about romance. Six writers/artists have teamed up to make SC home to a variety of manga, webcomics, and eBooks. They also have a discussion forum and a zine, along with photos from conventions and events, which hasn’t been updated since this summer but has some cute pictures nontheless. I’d love to see some from DragonCon.
I spent a considerable amount of time and money at the Holy Cow Anime booth. They visit a lot of conventions, so if you are a con fan, you may want to check to see if they are/will be there. Sailor Moon, Digimon, and Cardcaptors (we picked up a Challenge of the Clow Spirits board game, which kept us busy in the hotel room at DragonCon) seem to be their specialty, as they consider themselves ‘old school,’ but they do carry items of more current interest/themes, including Kingdom Hearts and Bleach. They are also an official retailer for Gaia Online.
Panels/events I missed and am sorry that I did: Dune Messiah - Frank Herbert’s Works in Prose and Film; The Atlanta Radio Theatre Company’s presentation of Lovecraft’s ‘The Call of Cthulu,’ which was cancelled; The Music of the Ainur - A Celebration of Middle-Earth Song; Chuck - A Glimpse Within the Intersect; The Future of Star Wars; Adult Themes in Star Wars; Dinosaurs Gone Wild! (dinosaurs in film); Classic Battlestar (adventures with Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch); 70 Years of Batman in the Media; Neography and Scripts; Star Wars in Art; Dreamtime, the Worlds of Neil Gaiman; The Future of Storytelling in MMOs; The Lore of Warcraft; Podcasting with Puppets (the lure? the cast of Battlestar Galactica in foam); and Vending Machine Culture and We Speak Engrish Here (Engrish is a particular fascination for me). Some of the short film festival entries looked worth the effort of catching, but like the activities listed above, the times conflicted with others I ended up attending. The dilemma of such a busy con . . . then again, I was not sorry to miss the ‘how to make your own booze’ panel, as I am aware of how moonshine comes to life - so to speak.
