Countdown to @Comic_Con: 34 Days

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @AdamReisinger

Note: This is part of an ongoing series looking ahead to San Diego Comic-Con 2011, as contributor Adam Reisinger prepares to attend the convention for the first time.

Holy crap, we're basically a month away from San Diego Comic-Con. That's insane. Somehow it seems too close and too far away simultaneously. I didn't really realize quite how imminent the show was until I started getting multiple "pre-order SDCC exclusives" e-mails this week.

Now, when I'd originaly planned my SDCC trip, I wasn't too focused on show exclusives for a few reasons:

1. The cost quickly starts adding up, especially when dealing with stuff like statues and busts

2. When you buy them at the show, you have to deal with transporting them back across the country

3. Many of them aren't really "exclusive" anyway; some can be pre-ordered for non-attendees while others don't sell out in San Diego and are available for weeks after

But eventually the reality of "I'm going to Comic-Con and I can easily buy all this stuff" sinks in. That happened for me a couple days ago, when I finally put in a pre-order for the SDCC exclusive issues of the "Dollhouse" comic from Dark Horse and the "Charmed" comic from Zenescope, along with the Emma Frost statue pictured up top.

As for what else I'm going to get, well that's going to take some planning -- and even with that planning I probably won't know for sure until I'm walking the show floor. Bleeding Cool has a nice list of Previews exclusives, and AwesomeToyBlog is keeping an updated list of action figures, statues and the like that is regularly updated as new exclusives are announced.

Perhaps the most impressive list I've seen so far comes from the SDCC Blog, which has an ongoing list of exclusives along with pretty good pictures of each. Among the ones I haven't ordered yet, here are the top 5 items I want to get (in no particular order):

- Ultimate Fallout #1, White Cover Edition

- "The Simpsons" Comic Book Guy Ornament

- Gremlins Gizmo Comic Con Edition

- Ghostbusters Stay Puft Marshmallow Man - Carol Ferris Barbie Doll (for my niece, I swear!)

Be sure to follow Adam on Twitter @AdamReisinger or visit his website, www.adamreisinger.com

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#Fact: Amazon's @LadyGaga Sale Results in Failed Opportunity

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's Adam Reisinger

I honestly was not planning on buying Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" today, or at any point in the near future. What I'd heard of the album so far had ben a disappointment, and I wasn't looking forward to shelling out $10 or $12 or $15 on the album.

99 cents? That's a different story.

So when I saw that Amazon.com's MP3 store was offering the entire album -- not just the single, but all 14 tracks plus the digital booklet -- for under a dollar, I figured it'd be the perfect opportunity to not only get the album, but give Amazon's key iTunes competitor a test run.

Apple's iTunes is of course the 800-pound gorilla in the digital music sales industry. I don't buy music as much as I used to, but when I do, I generally do it through iTunes. Part of that is a matter of convenience -- at this point my entire media library, including music, movies and TV shows is stored in iTunes -- and part of it is a matter of familiarity. I know how the iTunes store works, I'm used to using it, and frankly, I've never had any problems with it.

I figured the Amazon.com MP3 store would work just as well, but I quickly learned I was wrong. First, when you buy a digital song or album from Amazon, you can't just download an MP3 file. The site offers you up a proprietary Amazon-formatted file that opens a "downloader" application, that then downloads your MP3s from Amazon's server. You can bypass the downloader if you choose to have your music sideloaded to Amazon's cloud player, but that still requires a download process, then if you want to load your music into iTunes or your non-Android music player of choice, you still need the downloader application.

Still, that's really more of a "first-time buyer" pain, and now that my expectations of the process have been properly set, I'll be prepared for it next time I use the Amazon.com store. The bigger problem was something specific to today, and something that really could set Amazon.com back in this market share battle.

Putting it as simply as possible, Amazon.com was not prepared for the influx of traffic the specific sale of this Lady Gaga album would create, causing massive server congestion and download times of up to 8 hours for the album. 14 songs, one digital booklet, 121 megabytes of data, eight hours. That's actually WORSE than the download speed that would be expected from a 56K modem.

This was the situation that nearly everyone trying to download the album today encountered, and for many of those people, it was their first experience with the Amazon.com MP3 store. I can't imagine a lot of those people are interested in coming back after their experience today.

On top of that, the Gaga sale was intended to be something of a trojan horse to re-introduce users to Amazon's "Cloud" music player, something that launched with much fanfare back in March, but hasn't taken off the way the company -- or industry pundits -- expected. Today Amazon was offering everyone who bought any album, including "Born This Way" for just 99 cents, a free upgrade from Amazon's 5 GB cloud storage to its 20 GB plan, which normally costs $20 a year. But because of the Gaga-related server issues, the cloud player and uploader weren't exactly functional for much of the day. So that was a wash too.

The fact is, Amazon.com has an incredibly good and competitive set of products with the MP3 store and the cloud player. Their prices on many songs and albums are better than iTunes, and the files are standard MP3 files, which play on just about anything, as opposed to Apple's "Protected" (but now DRM-free) AAC files, which are hit-and-miss on third-party products. But today turned from a showcase for those products into a day-long frustration for customers.

For most of the day, Amazon.com was silent on the issue, responding to individual complaints with a standard "the servers are being slow, just be patient and you'll get your music" answer. Eventually Amazon.com did take down the text about the sale on the album going "while supplies last", and replaced it with a message about "high volume", seen to the right.

Of course, that wasn't enough for many customers, who took to the reviews section to express their dissatisfaction. As of 10:00 p.m. EDT, there were 358 reviews of the digital version of the album, and 108 of them were 1-star reviews, with the vast majority of those complaining only about the download process and not the music itself. Of course, to offset that, there are now 178 5-star reviews, most of the latest of which ALSO only talk about the download process.

Through all of this, Lady Gaga has yet to say anything, which is interesting for someone who is so invested in her fans and has more Twitter followers than anyone else. Of course, given that her official website has a link to buy the album on iTunes, and not on Amazon.com, and she re-tweeted the official iTunes Store link, maybe that shouldn't be so surprising.

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Countdown to @Comic_Con: 63 Days!

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @AdamReisinger

Note: This is part of an ongoing series looking ahead to San Diego Comic-Con 2011, as contributor Adam Reisinger prepares to attend the convention for the first time.

I generally don't go to "The Cleveland Show" for pointed social commentary (or, really, anything for that matter), but this past Sunday's episode was particularly relevant, as it was set at San Diego Comic-Con. One of the main stories of the episode centered around Cleveland's son, Cleveland Jr., leading an uprising of the traditional "geeks" at Comic-Con against the new media "invaders", who had taken over the show space but really had nothing to do with comics.

Though I've never been to the show, I'm well aware about how big of an issue this has become. In fact, almost every I've talked to who has been to the show has generally expressed two sentiments to me when I tell them I'm going for the first time this summer:

- You're going to have so much fun

- It's too bad you couldn't have gone before it got so big

In this case "before it got so big" is really code for "before Hollywood decided Comic-Con was the perfect venue to show off everything, regardless of its connections to the worlds of comic books, fantasy or science fiction." On "The Cleveland Show", that was represented by the fictional NBC sitcom "Schwim Team", starring David Schwimmer, but in the real world, things got out of control -- based on the reaction I could see around the blogosphere -- with last year's "Glee" panel. It seemed the only connection between the show and the convention was that fans of "Glee" call themselves "Gleeks". As much as I enjoy "Glee", when I think "Comic-Con", I think Stan Lee and Adam Hughes and Batman and cosplay and all that stuff. Not Lea Michele and overwrought teen drama.

As it is, that ship has sailed on Comic-Con, and while it might (read: will) result in having a harder time getting a seat for panels, I'm not going to let it get in the way of enjoying the things I want to enjoy at the show. And if it does, I'll just have to do this:

#nerdsunite

Countdown to @Comic_Con: 70 Days!

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @AdamReisinger

Note: This is part of an ongoing series looking ahead to San Diego Comic-Con 2011, as contributor Adam Reisinger prepares to attend the convention for the first time.

So last Thursday, when I was supposed to be writing a weekly installment of this series (whoops… my bad), I went to see a midnight screening of "Thor", which, in case you hadn't heard, was pretty damn awesome. After that screening I started looking at the comic movie release schedule for this summer and realized something pretty amazing:

"Captain America" has its national release date right smack in the middle of the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con.

Now, there are about a dozen movie theaters within a five-mile radius of the San Diego Convention Center, but as far as I can tell, none of them are selling tickets for "Captain America", which opens nationally on Friday, July 22. Of course, I truly doubt the majority of the people going to the convention are going to bother waiting until Friday, as every theater in the area will probably be sold out for the midnight showings on Thursday night. 

Of the major comic book movies coming out this summer, "Captain America" was probably the one I was least looking forward to, but this completely changes everything. The possibility of watching the movie with a crowd that is entirely comprised of the movie's target audience, at the showcase event for that target audience, is an experience you can't put a price tag on. Well, I guess technically you can, and it'll probably be around $18 in IMAX 3-D (plus $13 for popcorn and soda). Just add this to the very long list of things I'm already excited for come late July.

Check back next Thursday for the next installment of "Countdown to Comic-Con", and be sure to follow Adam on Twitter @AdamReisinger or visit his website, www.adamreisinger.com



#nerdsunite

Countdown to @Comic_Con: 84 days!

#TalkNerdyToMeLover's @AdamReisinger

Note: This is part of an ongoing series looking ahead to San Diego Comic-Con 2011, as contributor Adam Reisinger prepares to attend the convention for the first time.

84 days may be just a blip in the whole of human existence, but when waiting until San Diego Comic-Con arrives, it feels like an eternity.

That's why it's good to have a "holdover" convention. Something that isn't to the scale of SDCC, and doesn't require a massive amount of travel, but has a good enough guest list to keep you interested.

For me, that convention happens to be taking place this weekend: Boston Comic-Con. 

This is my second consecutive year attending this show, though this year it's moved to a larger venue in Boston, the Hynes Convention Center. The show doesn't necessarily have the largest national following, and it's only a two-day affair, but the high-profile names they're able to bring in are impressive nonetheless. This year's show is headlined by Neal Adams (Batman, Uncanny X-Men), Joe Kubert (Hawkman, Flash), J. Scott Campbell (Danger Girl) and Frank Quitely (Batman & Robin, All-Star Superman) among many others. I'm particularly interested in seeing Campbell and popular cover artist Adam Hughes, and hopefully getting original sketches from both of them -- though admittedly the odds of that are exceedingly slim. 

Even if I completely strike out on sketches and don't buy a single back issue from a vendor, just the experience of being at a show will go a long way towards holding me over until July.

Check back next Thursday for the next installment of "Countdown to Comic-Con", and be sure to follow Adam on Twitter @AdamReisinger or visit his website, www.adamreisinger.com

 #nerdsunite