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Awesome Con, taking place next weekend at the Washington Convention Center in DC, will not only be giving us a plethora of media guests, Future Con for the science and tech geeks, and Awesome Con Jr for the family, the convention will also be celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Superman!  Check out the press release from earlier this week below for more info.  There is still time to get tickets! I’ve enjoyed myself every year!

Awesome Con 2018 to Celebrate the 80^th Anniversary of Superman with All Star Line-up of Comic Talent

Washington, D.C. (March 21, 2018) – Top illustrators, writers, and celebrities in the comics world will unite at Mid-Atlantic pop culture convention Awesome Con presented by LeftField Media, taking over Washington, D.C.’s Walter E. Washington Convention Center fromMarch 30-April 1, 2018. Comics powerhouse DC Entertainment and other renowned publishers will present special programming like industry insider and celebrity-driven panels, share exclusive announcements, debut designs, and more at the show. Awesome Con is proud to mark its sixth year by working with comic book artist Patrick Zircher on the official show poster and original art in the con’s program guide, distributed to all show attendees.

Show attendees can look forward to programming celebrating eight decades of Superman, marking the icon’s 80^th anniversary since debuting in April 1938 from DC. Fans will be able to attend events and interact with special guests Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum, who played Clark Kent and Lex Luthor in beloved television series “Smallville,” during the weekend. Kids attending Awesome Con will also receive special keepsake badges featuring official Superman artwork from acclaimed artist and DC Publisher Jim Lee specially commemorating the weekend. Creators from renowned publishers like DC will meet-and-greet with fans throughout the weekend at booths on the Awesome Con show floor, making it easier than ever to meet the makers behind some of the most beloved characters in pop culture.

Comic fans will love events like Past, Present & Future: The 80^th Anniversary of Superman, a panel bringing together DC artist Greg Capullo and writer Scott Snyder and comic book artist and writer Dan Jurgens, alongside Tom Welling and Michael Rosenbaum to retrace the iconic character’s history and discuss what’s next for the Man of Steel.

Attendees can also reserve tickets to special limited-access events during Awesome Con weekend to closely engage with the industry’s most celebrated creators. A DC Writer Panel and Meet & Greet on Friday, March 30 brings celebrated writers and artists Tom King, Frank Tieri, Joshua Williamson, Sam Humphries, Matthew Rosenberg, and James Tynion IV together for an intimate hour-long Q&A with attendees. Tickets for this special experience are available for $100 at www.awesomecon.com/tickets, and include an autographed variant comic cover featuring each guest’s work, a photo opp with all the guests, and up to five autographs from each guest. Attendees must also have a Friday day pass or Weekend pass to Awesome Con.

The creative minds behind Batman comic miniseries “Dark Nights: Metal” come together at Awesome Con for a Batman Metal Q&A and Meet & Greet on Saturday, March 31. Artist Greg Capullo, writer Scott Snyder, and inker Jonathan Glapion host a private one-hour Q&A with attendees, who will each receive a color Greg Capullo Batman print, a black-and-white Greg Capullo Batman print, and an inked Batman variant comic book cover by Jonathan Glapion. The iconic trio of guests will sign the prints and comic cover along with up to five items per attendee. Tickets are available for $100 at www.awesomecon.com/tickets; attendees must also have a Saturday day pass or Awesome Con Weekend pass.

Special Guests

Comic Guests

• Scott Snyder (Superman Unchained, American Vampire, Batman, Swamp Thing, Voodoo Heart)
• Greg Capullo (Dark Nights: Metal, Batman, Reborn, X-Force, Quasar, The Creech)
• Sean Gordon Murphy (Batman: White Knight, Hellblazer: City of Demons, Punk Rock Jesus, Shaun of the Dead, Teen Titans, The Wake, Tokyo Ghost)
• Tom King (A Once Crowded Sky, Batman, The Sheriff of Babylon, The Vision)
• Clay Mann (Batman, Batman Eternal, Gambit, X-Men)
• James Tynion IV ((DC’s Detective Comics, Batman, Teenage Mutant Turtles, The Backstagers, Red Hood and the Outlaws, Constantine: The Hellblazer)
• Josh Williamson (Skybound, Flash Rebirth)
• Frank Tieri (Wolverine, Ultimate Spider-Man, Marvel vs Capcom 3, Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3)
• Sam Humphries (Nightwing)
• Matthew Rosenberg (4 Kids Walk Into a Bar, We Can Never Go Home, The Archies)
• Jonathan Glapion (Superman, Batman, Curse of the Spawn, Elektra: The Hand) Entertainment Guests

• Stephen Amell (Arrow)
• John Barrowman (Arrow)
• Tom Welling (Smallville)
• Michael Rosenbaum (Smallville)
• Cress Williams (Black Lightning)
• Will Friedle (Batman Beyond)
• Phill LaMarr (Justice League Unlimited)

Awesome Con runs from Friday, March 30 until Sunday, April 1 in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. More information about Awesome Con and tickets are available at www.awesomecon.com.

About Awesome Con

Awesome Con is the biggest annual comic and pop culture convention in Washington, D.C., having welcomed over 71,000 attendees in 2017. Awesome Con celebrates all aspects of geekdom and pop culture, with a wide assortment of engaging events, comic books, collectibles, toys, games, original art, cosplay and more. Awesome Con is presented in partnership with LeftField Media, an event organization company developed by the founder of New York Comic Con. Learn more at www.awesomecon.com.

About LeftField Media

LeftField Media, LLC is an events company focused on developing face-to-face events in a range of communities rooted in contemporary culture and shared passion. LeftField was formed in 2014 by Greg Topalian (President, LeftField Media) and is now owned by Topalian and Clarion Events Ltd. With a keen sense of the evolving needs of businesses and their consumers, as well as new opportunities created by change, LeftField takes a clean slate approach to its work. LeftField’s portfolio includes Play Fair (playfairny.com), a family-focused celebration of toys and play built with the Toy Industry Association; Awesome Con (awesomecon.com), Washington D.C.’s Comic Con; Rose City Comic Con (rosecitycomiccon.com), in Portland, O.R.; Anime NYC (animenyc.com), a Japanese pop culture festival presented by Crunchyroll; and the Classic Auto Show (theclassicautoshow.com), a vintage auto show launched in Los Angeles. LeftField Media is headquartered in historic Trumbull, C.T. (leftfieldmedia.com).

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We start the episode with Sterling K. Brown sauntering into the station. He’s then greeted by Gina who informs him in the rudest way possible that he’s been called in for questioning. Captain Holt stops by on his way to the opera to see what’s going on and finds out Jake is interrogating someone. He […]

The post America’s TV Husband Sterling K. Brown Brings Three “Oh Damns” to ‘Brooklyn Nine-Nine’ appeared first on Black Girl Nerds.

Writer: Mat Johnson / Artist: Warren Pleece / Dark Horse Comics

Last month’s origin story brought Zane closer to solving his murder mystery but came with immediate consequences. Now we find Zane captured in his first adventure undercover as a white man, and it turns out less lethal than it seemed. False climaxes always feel a bit cheap, but the encounter brings Zane to an audience with the woman he meant to question, and that makes way for the issue’s emotional heft that makes it all worthwhile. Zane meets someone like him, a black person able to go “incognegro.” Only she can do it even better, having sacrificed her identity to pose as white full-time.

The realization turns into a great conversation between the two of them discussing the emotional costs and payoffs of their ability to hide their race. Are they freaks? Should they use their ability to pass? Would they be stupid not to? The theme of their conversation is underpinned by the guilt that comes with the decision to pass, and the reasons one might do it anyway. It’s a winning scene for its honesty and vulnerability, and lays the foundation for a budding romance that, given we know Zane’s future, probably won’t end well. We look forward to seeing it play out.

Overall, the plot thickens a bit with our new discovery of the victim’s family, but even better is the new angle added to Zane’s search for justice. Great mystery, compelling characters, and a quest for justice — what more could you want? Incognegro Renaissance is on pace to be the prequel that the original graphic novel deserves.

8.5 out of 10

Reading Incognegro? Find BNP’s other reviews of the series here.

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In the 1980s, Molly Ringwald wasn’t just a successful actress. She wasn’t just famous. She was a cultural icon. That was due to her starring roles in three movies that largely came to define an era of young romantic comedies: Sixteen Candles, The Breakfast Club, and Pretty in Pink, all John Hughes movies. But in an essay for The New Yorker, Ringwald revisits the movies that made her a legend as well as the man who made them, through the lens of the current era, the #MeToo era.

Ringwald had what could be considered an ideal working relationship with writer/director John Hughes. They had what she calls a “symbiotic relationship.” He called her his muse, and he actually listened to her and respected her input. (Often, she says, though not always.) On top of that, she describes having an ever-present mother who fought not just for her daughter to be treated respectfully, but would challenge Hughes on dialogue that felt “creepy,” like a line in Sixteen Candles when her character Samantha’s father asks her why she’s not wearing underwear. Apparently, John Hughes didn’t realize it would be weird if a father could somehow know that his daughter was going commando. It’s to his credit that Hughes cut the line, like he did a nude scene in The Breakfast Club that Ringwald objected to. (It wasn’t her character that was nude, but she argued that it didn’t fit the tone of the film.)

But there were plenty of other lines and scenes that Ringwald objected to that stayed. And even more that she didn’t realize were so offensive or callous until far later. Like Bender’s constant sexual harassment of her character Claire in The Breakfast Club. “When he’s not sexualizing her, he takes out his rage on her with vicious contempt, calling her ‘pathetic,’ mocking her as ‘Queenie,'” she writes. “It’s rejection that inspires his vitriol.” Or the scene in Sixteen Candles where the dreamboat love interest, Jake, “essentially trades his drunk girlfriend, Caroline, to the Geek, to satisfy the latter’s sexual urges, in return for Samantha’s underwear.” The next day, the Geek asks Caroline is she “enjoyed it,” since neither of them remember much, though the Geek took polaroids of his exploits.

Ringwald writes, “Caroline shakes her head in wonderment and says, ‘You know, I have this weird feeling I did.’ She had to have a feeling about it, rather than a thought, because thoughts are things we have when we are conscious, and she wasn’t.”

“It’s hard for me to understand how John was able to write with so much sensitivity,” Ringwald says, “and also have such a glaring blind spot.”

So she decided to investigate. She found a bunch of National Lampoon magazines from the late 70s/early 80s, where Hughes got his start in comedy. In looking at his early writing, she says, “They contain many of the same themes he explored in his films, but with none of the humanity. Yes, it was a different time, as people say. Still, I was taken aback by the scope of the ugliness.”

She also contacted the actress who played Caroline in Sixteen Candles, Haviland Morris. Her conversation with Morris is fascinating. She’s reluctant to accept that her character might have been the object of any clear wrongdoing, insisting that what happened was “not a one-way street,” and that Caroline isn’t free of responsibility for the nonconsensual sex because of how much she had to drink. It was only after she and Ringwald talked, and later emailed, that she seemed to finally realize that, at the very least, her character was traded for another girl’s underwear, and that that is a pretty gross thing for John Hughes to have dreamed up.

Ringwald might not come to any clear conclusions in her exploration, but the questions are maybe more important anyway. She writes:

How are we meant to feel about art that we both love and oppose? What if we are in the unusual position of having helped create it? Erasing history is a dangerous road when it comes to art—change is essential, but so, too, is remembering the past, in all of its transgression and barbarism, so that we may properly gauge how far we have come, and also how far we still need to go.

I encourage you to read Ringwald’s essay in its entirety. It’s an honest, nuanced look at an era in her life–in all of our lives–as well as a very real man whom she clearly loved, but acknowledging that that love doesn’t erase the dark bits. It may be difficult, but it is possible to still love and respect someone and his works, even while exploring the parts you wish didn’t exist.

(via The New Yorker, image: Universal)

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