"Are they really Muppets? Like, actually Muppets?" her purple-sparkle lids lowered to half-mast and her berry-frost lips twisted up-left as she tilted her head and twirled a long, Orange Crush-coloured curl, hesitating, requiring verbal authentication before further engagement.

 "As real as they get," a bemused puppeteer nodded with a genial, albeit tired

"Are they really Muppets? Like, actually Muppets?" her purple-sparkle lids lowered to half-mast and her berry-frost lips twisted up-left as she tilted her head and twirled a long, Orange Crush-coloured curl, hesitating, requiring verbal authentication before further engagement.

Run for your lives, local mortals! 'Tis time! 'Tis time! San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC) is here, again, kittens! Whilst Summer is my least fave season (Moi, aka, authoress Jennifer Susannah Devore, needs her Autumn days and Sbux PSL!), July is a glorious month indeed! Comic-Con, the reigning monarch of all comic book/pop culture conventions takes flight July 19 - 23, 2018 at the San Diego Convention Center. Once again, Yours Truly will be there with my fave con cohort and shutterbug, Eslilay Evoreday of Twisted Pair Photography and Sea Gypsy Costume Designs. As this Summer tradition remains a constant, some aspects of the game are ever-changing. Now, the game is afoot!

If San Diego Comic-Con was a geologic feature, it would be the Grand Canyon: strata upon strata of distinct, well-defined, colourful variants comprising an arresting, alluring travel poster for destinations Geekward. Every summer, America’s Finest City hosts Hallowe’en in July wherein layers of sci-fi, fantasy, history, science, IT, comics, gaming, cosplay and countless other substrata converge on the San Diego Convention Center to make each year’s Con more popular, more profitable and more prohibitive to entry than the last.

Well, cats, as Porky Pig struggles to declare, "Th-th-th-that's all, folks!". San Diego Comic-Con 2013 is a wrap. The big burg with the filthy mayor and the small beachtown chill is back to it's groovy, mellow, peaceful ways. (Save for trying to oust said-filthy mayor. What a loony, dangerous maroon!) The air around the Convention Center smells like salt air once again; the trademark smell of The Con hovering somewhere over Santa Fe by now. What is that smell, New Mexicans might wonder? It's a simultaneously exhilarating, exciting and pathetic amalgam of anxiety, camping, body odour, latex, cheap polyester, sycophancy, Japanese perfume, cheap leather, desperation, domestic "beer" and nacho "cheese" sauce.

So, for those whom did not make it to San Diego Comic-Con this year, or did and unwisely tossed your official Souvenir Guide, my odd wordsmithing made it into the book once again! This year's is a favourite thus far: article and Souvenir Guide in toto.

Sandman, the cover art commemorating twenty-five years of Neil Gaiman's Gothic oeuvre, has hit my radar anew, having not read it since the glorious, gloomy, gringy Nineties. After reading the Sandman articles and delighting in the accompanying gorgeous and ghoulish artwork, The Annotated Sandman has made my very particular birthday and Christmas lists: as there are multiple volumes, it is worthy of both.

For now, enjoy a posting here of Bartbarians at the Gate: 20 Years of Bongo on the Digital Frontier.

Bartbarians at the Gate: 20 Years of Bongo on the Digital Frontier

By Jennifer Susannah Devore

‘Cause he’s an old [comic junkie] and he don’t know what to do.

Should he hang on to the old, should he grab on to the new?

He’s an old [comic junkie], this new life is just a bust.

He ain't trying to change nobody, he's just trying real hard to adjust.

-David Bellamy

November spawned an empire. Like an impatient, petulant newborn, Bongo Entertainment spewed forth, squealing and sliding into our arms like a greased up Spiderpig. Present in the room for the birth were Radioactive Man, Bart Simpson, Itchy & Scratchy and, naturally, The Simpsons. Waiting in the hallway, anxious friends and family would queue up for years to administer the requisite welcome-slap on the bum: Bender, Comic Book Guy, Leela, Professor Frink, Ralph Wiggum, Fry, Li’l Homer, Zoidberg, Maggie, Poochie, Mr. Burns, Akbar & Jeff, all the denizens of Treehouse of Horror and dozens more.

“Welcome to the world of print comics, you magnificent bastard!” the masses cried outside the gates. “It’s about time!”

The Darlings of Orange County author Jennifer S. Devore has her well-polished finger on the pulse of Southern California: O.C. beaches, Newport shopping sprees, Laguna Beach dining, San Diego Comic-Con and the Del Mar Racetrack, just to name a few locales. As this year's Del Mar Opening Day (July 17, 2013) coincides beautifully with Comic-Con Weekend (July 18-21, 2013), it seems only appropriate that excerpts from Devore's bikini-and-martini, beach-read novel, The Darlings of Orange County make the rounds this summer. With chapters based on Comic-Con as well as Del Mar's Opening Day, she proffers you wee peeks into the scandalous, saucy, salacious world of her Darlings!

Excerpt from The Darlings of Orange County by Jennifer S. Devore

The weather couldn't have been more perfect if it had been written into a novel: 84 degrees, sunny, clear blue skies, Simpsons-clouds, a light breeze and zero smog. The ocean was sparkling and depending where you were that day, one could see not only Catalina, but also San Clemente Island. The day presented every feature possible for conditions air traffic controllers and pilots called clear and a million. Of course, this was Del Mar and on a summer's day, not to mention Opening Day, nothing less could be allowed. It was probably mandated by the San Diego City Council.

Geeks Get Published: it sounds obvious. At first blush, with the exception of folks like Snooki, the Fifty Shades of Grey author and Penthouse letters, who else do you imagine is getting published? Mostly geeks, that's who! Bookworms, academicians, poetry goths, art nerds, amateur scholars, film dorks, scientists, comic book enthusiasts, pop culture obsessives, military buffs and historical reënactors are busily scribbling, publishing and selling the most important theses and musings of all: their own.

With a plethora of visual outlets today, it takes a geek to stick with the romance of the written word, I know. It takes a geek to write anything today, even a Thank You note. The real trick is not getting a geek published ... it's getting a geek read. All those non-geeks roaming the planet, unaware as they are of being thiiiis close to mankind's discovery of the God particle, have a Black Hole's worth of activity to keep them occupied without cracking a book. Authors' efforts are being slaughtered like Britons at the hands of marauding Vikings, slaying and slicing with a force of diversions no other generation of writers has ever suffered. Sure, it was probably easy for Chaucer to be a best-seller. What else was there to do in the Medieval era? Everybody just waiting around to die from a splinter, plus everything was dark by four o'clock. Today? It's never dark.

Once upon a time there was a talented, sparkling, beauteous rocker named Leah Cevoli from the City of Brotherly Love. One day, in the historical land of Ben Franklin, The Barrymores, Will Smith and Liz Lemon, the fair Leah heard the Siren’s Song knell through Philadelphia’s brick corridors and colorful tulip gardens. Taking the form of The Black Crowes so she alone would hear it, the song trilled, lilted and riffed amidst the city streets, beckoning her independent and creative soul to the land of plenty: plenty of sunshine, plenty of sea, plenty of opportunity, plenty of cabbage, plenty of thee.