For The Love of Comics

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Batman steps into the ring with a new, all-yellow, full-body suit, so ridiculous that only Batman could make it look cool. Green Lantern tries to trap Batman with a big green cage, apparently forgetting that his ring doesn’t work on anything yellow.

Denied the advantage that the most powerful weapon in the universe gives him, Jordan has no other choice but to engage Batman in hand-to-hand combat. Batman, clearly outclassing Green Lantern, toys with his opponent by dodging blows and giving light slaps, but not throwing a single serious punch.

Eventually, Batman tires of the game and nods towards a shadowy corner in the rafters. Dick Grayson swings down and punches Hal Jordan in the throat, fracturing his windpipe with a single blow.

Batman wins the battle and becomes the Awesome Arena Champion!

Now for our winner…

Apparently, everyone forgot to vote but Midknight, whose faith in Batman and pimping on his blog and comicvine account were enough to bring him out of second place and five points ahead of AJ for the victory!!

Mike will most likely be announcing his prizes later, but from me, Midknight has won:

In honor of the premier of the Incredible Hulk Movie, a Marvel Legends “1st Appearance Green HULK Variant” Galactus Series 9 Action Figure and the Incredible Hulk Vol.1: Return of the Monster Hardback. Yes, I know this link is to the paperback; I can’t find a link to the hardback.

Because I picked them up at Megacon and thought I’d spread the love, a CGC/Comics Price Guide.com variant of Atomik Mike #1, CGC Graded 9.9, a copy of theAtomik Mike Vol. 1 TPB, and a copy of the After the Cape, Vol. 1, TPB.

And finally, to honor our Champion, a copy of Batman Black and White Vol. 1 TPB.

Congratulations, Midknight! E-mail me your info so I can get this stuff shipped out to you.

Technorati Tags: Awesome Arena, Tournament of Champions, Final, Batman, Green Lantern, Champion, Prizes

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Okay kids, I’ve teamed up with Mike Haynes of Panels of Awesome for the first contest to win some stuff.Here’s the deal. Readers of POA will be familiar with his “Awesome Arena” series of posts where he comes up with a dream-fight between two characters, usually heroes, and everyone discusses who will win and votes in a poll. Until recently, that was the end of the concept.

Yesterday, Mike set up a concept called Tournament of Champions, similar in execution to the NCAA March Madness and Final Four tournament. Two combatants enter an arena, everyone votes for one week, and the winning combatant moves on to the next round to battle another victor. This time around, we have four rounds, including the championship round.

This is where the contest comes in. Mike has posted a bracket, also similar to those used in the March Madness tournaments. Are you starting to see a pattern here? Good, because the contest will be similar to the office pools that people dump money into every year, except there’s no buy-in for this one, other than your time and attention.

Here’s the rules.

• Each week, Mike will post the week’s battles (this week is Batman versus Iron Man) and I will post the current standings.
• Within that week, you will post a comment to each of our posts telling us who you think will win and why as well as voting in the poll in Mike’s post. The poll is also essential because it determines who wins. For this week, this post will serve as my standings post and Mike’s bracket post and announcement of the Batman/Iron Man battle will serve as… exactly what it is, the announcement of a battle.
• Correct predictions in the first round will earn you 1 point each. Correct predictions in the second round will earn you two points each. In the third round, you will earn 3 points for each correct prediction. In the Championship Round, you will earn four points.
• Bonus points can be earned by spreading the word around via your own blog, Myspace, Facebook, forums, whatever you like. Just tell everyone about the contest and make sure you link back to both my blog and Mike’s. Mike has an announcement on his site as well, so feel free to paste either of our posts verbatim, just make sure to link us both. To make sure you receive your points, email me at crackerbob@fortheloveofcomics.com with a link to the post/comment/bulletin/whatever.
• Finally, four rounds means 15 battles means 15 weeks. We realize this is a bit of a time investment for you all, so we’re working on some good prizes and a method of how to distribute them. We haven’t completely decided if it will be winner take-all or first place, second place, and all that. I welcome your input on that one and we’ll let you know as we decide. We just wanted to make sure to give everyone a chance to jump in as soon as possible.

One prize that we will definitely be giving is my copy of Atomik Mike #1b. This is a CGC and Comics Price Guide exclusive. It has received a CGC rating of 9.9 and is worth $28, if you’re concerned with that type of thing. I’ll be posting my review of the first Atomik Mike trade sometime tonight or tomorrow.

Again, more prizes will be announced as well as how we will distribute them as those decisions are made. For now…

LET THE GAMES BEGIN!

Update: To sweeten the pot, I’m throwing in the vol. 1 trades of both The Boys and Alias, Mike will be announcing his prize contributions soon. This is where you pimping this contest starts to benefit you - I’m still holding back prizes and may or may not throw them into the pot depending on our participation level. So start pimping, kids.

Technorati Tags: Awesome Arena, Tournament of Champions, Contest, Prizes, Panels of Awesome

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There’s not really much to report on for the last day of Megacon. I spent most of my day wandering around picking up some good deals on trades and small press comics and going to a few panels on how to write for - and break into - comics, none of which I’ll probably really utilize, but it was really interesting and if I ever find myself with an idea that’s great for a comic and an artist to illustrate the idea, I have some good ideas on how to pull it off. I’d get more in-depth, but I didn’t take many interesting notes and it was mostly common sense stuff anyway. If anyone is interested in the details like what creators were at the panels and so forth, let me know and I’ll tell you what I remember.My haul was really pretty small since I’m trying to save alot of money and had myself on a strict allowance; I just bought a few things that the retailers were trying to unload cheap and caught my eye.

• A Green Hulk figure from the Marvel Legends Galactus series. Apparently the Green Hulk is a variant and the Grey Hulk is the normal one. Being a variant probably makes this thing more expensive (is it obvious that I’m not a toy collector?), but I got it for five bucks, which is likely cheaper than it was originally sold for since it’s a nice looking figure. I bought it to sit on my desk at work, but the fact that it’s a variant has me considering selling it on ebay and dumping the proceeds back into this site. I haven’t decided yet.
• I also got the first trades of both Ultimate Spider Man and Ultimate X-Men, since I was on a comics hiatus when both series were introduced and the dealer was unloading stock for cheap. I may or may not post a review. Again, I haven’t decided.
• I got the hardcover of Incredible Hulk: Return of The Monster, which collects Bruce Jones’ run on Incredible #’s 34-43 and Brian Azzarello’s Startling Stories: Banner #’s 1-4, for so cheap that I’m halfway considering dumping it on ebay, too. Odds are that I probably won’t, though. If you’re a big Hulk fan, though, get in touch and we could probably work out a deal for both the book and the figure, or either one, for a pretty cheap price.
• Remember WAYYYYY back in November when I did that review of Necessary Evil #1? I hadn’t been able to get any of the following issues until this weekend when I came across the Desperado Studios booth. I picked up issues 2 and 3 of Necessary Evil, found a supposedly certain way to make sure I could get issue 4, and picked up the trade collecting the beginning of Atomik Mike by Stephan Nilson. Stephan even threw in a CGC 9.8 of Atomik Mike #1! Expect reviews of all three sometime this week, except for the CGC copy, which I’m going to try to find something special to do with.

In fact, I have a plan. You may have picked up from some things I’ve thrown out there that I don’t really collect, per se. It’s all about the love of story for me. I hand out floppies after I’m done with them all the time and buy the trades when they come out so that I can go back and read stuff later, but I have no interest in the whole value game anymore; the 1990’s totally burnt me out on that concept.

So here’s my idea. I have a few potentially valuable items laying around now that I, frankly, have no interest in trying to maintain the value on. So, at some point, they’ll be prizes. I’ll take care of them until the day I send them out to a lucky winner, at which point they’ll be that person’s problem.

My offer on the Hulk stuff stands, email me if you’re a big fan and we may work something out. Otherwise, they go into my prize bin until I think of a contest. Hopefully, I’ll periodically pick up more stuff to throw in there that may be awesome but I just don’t have interest in keeping around.

Let me know if you have any ideas for contests folks, if you don’t mind.

Anyway, that’s enough for me. Sorry that this post has been short on real detail or substance, but this weekend has me wiped out. Hopefully I’ll get to meet some of you at my next con!

Technorati Tags: Megacon, Hulk, Necessary Evil, Desperado Publishing, Atomik Mike, Contests, Prizes, Conventions, Awesomeness

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