Sally Forth Comic Con Checklist #6: No Spoilers
It’s only a spoiler if you know what it’s referring to. Besides, by now everyone knows Krypto flew in from the DC Universe and saved the day.
ALSO: That yellow droid is not Artoo. It’s the long-awaited appearance of R3-A2 in Sally Forth. (Well, at least long-awaited by me.)
Sally Forth Comic Con Checklist #5: A Note on Our Story So Far
When I was a little kid I’d create my own TV shows. I would name both the characters and the actors playing those characters. I would also make up what other shows or movies those actors were on. I would then create the three competing networks on which these shows aired and came up with each channel’s backstory, from radio station to TV station to utter financial failure and eventual flooding. In short, when you’re a severely pathologically shy kid you have a lot of alone time to develop programming skeds and determine how a station could sink into the ocean.
And now, years later, I get to do the exact same thing within “Sally Forth” by creating a Comic Con, developing an 80s animated series, having that series appear at the Con, and then going into the history about both, complete with voice actor names and an upcoming cartoon PSA (that was supposed to be about the dangers of down power lines but ended up focusing on the SEC instead).
And yes, depending on your point of view this is either an enjoyable story arc or the most self-indulgent nonsense humanly possible. But whenever I feel down or don’t feel well, I can look at all this and think to myself, “Wow, I knew what I wanted to do with my life by age seven…Wait, is that a good thing?”
Sally Forth Comic Con Checklist #4: Funko Pops
For those who don’t know, Funko Pops! are highly-collectible, licensed pop culture dolls who have what in medical nomenclature is referred to as “Dondi Dilation.”
Why Dondi himself has not been made into a Funko Pop! probably has something to do with the fact that a character named “War Machine” sells a lot better than a comic strip character whose bio reads “War Orphan.” (Special Note: Dondi the newspaper comic was turned into a live-action film, complete with its own theme song that constantly reminds you the kid’s name is “Dondi” and a child actor so wooden an errant spark would have caused him to burst into flames.)
I have a few Funkos, with two of my favorite being the comedy duo of Hoth Planet Luke and Wampa, who I like to imagine have more of a querulous relationship than a deadly one, if only because I have yet to determine how best to hang Skywalker upside down from my shelves. Also, the Wampa doesn’t look so much menacing as he is ready to complain about his grandkids or let out the noise of someone who has trouble digesting dairy.
Of course, at Comic Cons the Funko Pops!—and especially Con exclusives—are the first to go, with people signing up for admission to the booth at an hour when vampires and werewolves are barely gnawing at each other in complete exhaustion but not quite ready to turn in because no one likes to leave a bar alone. And it is not uncommon to see people exit a Con with three or four or 12 full, giant bags of the things, which they will then sell online not only to fund their trip but also turn a profit…unless they are amassing a small, shaky-head army whose inky black eyes will stare into the souls of their enemies, bringing the wrath that only Chocolate Factory Lucy Ricardo can wield.
ALSO: Keep an eye out for the Trsytero Con-exclusive Sally Forth ¡Popps!, soon to be featured in our very strip! And if you’re asking why there would be vinyl dolls of characters who are actually attending the very Con and in the world of the comic are not famous at all, well, uh…just give us this one, okay?
Sally Forth Comic Con Checklist #3: Find Parking
Almost every year we go to San Diego Comic Con we tend to make a slight miscalculation in regards to accommodations. Some of these hotel errors can be attributed to not wanting to spend an ungodly amount of money during a period when even lesser lodgings charge like a Michelin three-star restaurant, only to find that upon closer inspection the pillows are actually three white multipurpose copy papers hastily stapled together.
But most of the times it’s simply that hotel options are severely limited three seconds after event booking begins, leaving one to scramble for any place with four walls, a bed, and a window that looks out at someone screaming at a vending machine for their Doritos. And often such places advertise themselves as “Con-adjecent” or “Practically within walking distance of San Diego Convention Center” but in truth are so outside the “blast zone” of the Comic Con that if a missile were to hit Hall H one would comfortably be free from fallout for a good eon.
Naturally, this is when one must rent a car. And this is also when one realizes that, unsurprisingly, all parking lot fees shoot to levels never even seen in Manhattan because 1) Like the holiday season to retailers, San Diego Comic Con probably accounts for 70% of a lot’s revenue, so might as well charge all you can to those who have no choice but to pay and 2) By simply setting up a ticket machine you not only don’t have to pay for staff but can also see just how many days you can go getting $75 per car before people start to realize from the confused family looking out their windows that you’ve commandeered a stranger’s lawn.
And parking is only possible if you’re game enough to wake up at a time the U.S. Naval Observatory refers to when calculating sunrise as “Go back to bed,” only to realize every lot by the convention center, near the convention center, requiring a taxi to the convention center or in Irvine are already full. And so like the Forths you simply drive and around and around, each person taking turns tucking and rolling out of a moving vehicle and entering the con before assuming the wheel an hour later. It’s an effective system, and while the ensuing road rash can be hell on cosplay it’s more than made up by the memories one can still retain after repeatedly rolling into oncoming traffic.
Addendum: This year, by some miracle that probably still requires us to offer a sacrifice to the gods, we got a hotel in the Gaslamp Quarter that is actually within walking distance and has a rooftop bar, meaning we may not even bother going to the con in the first place. I will provide updates should “rooftop bar” prove to mean “someone left an open bottle of Jäger on the roof tarp.”
Sally Forth: Comic Con Checklist #2
1. Ted’s t-shirt features the Phoenix chest emblem from 70s animated series Battle of the Planets. Upon review, that is clearly one pain-in-the-ass logo for Jim Keefe to have to draw repeatedly and saner minds would have instead opted for the characters’ “G” belt buckle logo. But then that might have looked like a reference to the 80s reboot G-Force: Guardians of Space, and any series in which Mark is renamed “Ace Goodheart” is an outright crime.
2. Battle of the Planets was the Americanized version of the more violent Japanese anime series Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. (Which would also be the name of my firstborn. My second child would be named Laff-A-Lympics, a distinction that I’m certain would cause no problem between the two kids.) Science Ninja Team Gatchaman was an environmental/conservation-centerered series that took place entirely on Earth. But when the cartoon was repurposed for Battle of the Planets all locales were reconfigured for other planets to capitalize on the recent release of Star Wars, hence why every extraterrestrial outpost looked like Toledo.
3. After the Starlee and the Moonbeams episode “The Backpack Mentality” aired, sales of Cabbage Patch Dolls were quickly eclipsed by sales of Changeling Backpacks, despite both parents’ and stores’ misgivings of supporting a toy that screamed 24/7, even louder when the power was failing so as to remind children to buy 14 more D batteries.
4. The moment Sally and Ted head out that door their neighbor Tom Racine will pinch the top bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, squeeze his eyes shut, and mumble some obscenity, all the while thinking this is why he should hire a landscaping company so he wouldn’t have to be outside mowing his own lawn and bear witness to the Forths.
Sally Forth: An Introduction to Trystero Con
If you’re currently reading Sally Forth then 1) Thank you! 2) No, you’re confusing us with a softcore military comic strip also called Sally Forth, 3) No, you’re confusing us with a hardcore newspaper comic strip called Mary Worth and 4) Then you know that the Forths are on their way to Trystero Con 2018 STARTING TODAY!
Which means you might now be asking yourself “So, wait, what is Trystero Con? How did it become the 247th premiere event for all things comics, graphic novels, but really mostly movies and TV shows and not at all about the first two things anymore? Why is it when I type ‘Trystero Con’ into Google I just get links to a book, a coffee shop, or right back to Sally Forth? And why if this thing only exists in Sally Forth did you still accept my 4-day pass payment of $475?”
All perfectly reasonable questions of which I’m only going to answer the first two except to say this is why you buy “ticket insurance” for another $125. You see, Trystero Con began in California in 1966 as a small gathering of underground postal workers wishing to engage in conspiracy theories, listen to the music of The Paranoids, await the rise of the Trystero Empire, and draw the Trystero Con symbol on every bathroom stall, leading to the Con’s permanent eviction from the San Narciso Convention Center in its very first year.
Around the same time in the New York city of Ilium, another small con had started to celebrate Bokononism, a religion founded on little white lies, which in turn had taken over a previous con that celebrated the birth of the atomic bomb with featured guest speaker Felix Hoenikker, who spoke to no one and blithely walked over someone convulsing on a churro. Unfortunately, Bokononocon met its own immediate demise when high sales of the con-exclusive treat Ice-Pop-Nines resulted in all liquid—including human saliva—turning solid, thereby destroying almost all life as we know it well as nearby Schenectady.
But soon the survivors of Bokononocon started communicating with those not jailed after the first Trystero Con through public trash cans, eventually meeting at a sot-weed dispensary to work out the details of a new con (combining the “Trystero” from one and the “Con” from the other) that included what was claimed by some to be the very first instances of con cosplay. Alas, those mistaken for cosplayers were actually aliens who could perceive time in four dimensions and thus knew in advance of Trystero Con’s lax security. And so they imprisoned all the attendees in an intergalactic zoo and completely screwed with the concept of linear time, making it impossible for people who only purchased a one-day pass to determine exactly which day they could go.
But there was an upside to being ripped from one’s concept of reality, as the alien invasion/kidnaping/laser-gun assassinations inspired Trystero Con planners to incorporate sci-fi into their event, which in turn led to including comics books, which in turn led to bringing in all elements of pop culture that could be turned into Funko Pop dolls, including the various homicide victims featured in ID Network programming, all under the new product line “Nice Quite Town.”
Which brings us to today and the excitement of another year of con events, including an appearance by voice actor/singer Karla Philips of the 80s animated TV series Starlee and the Moonbeams! So meet us at The-Convention-Center-on-the-Hill, located between Dylar Pharmaceuticals and the most-photographed barn in America, for what is either chronologically one day, a few days, or several weeks that in the end actually occur within one day (we’re still on Tralfamadorian time), for panels, parties, cosplay, exclusives, and a writer who still needs to apologize to an artist for typing such scene directions as “The following movie, TV, and graphic novels characters appear in cosplay in the the background of panel one before we move to the crowd scene of panel two…”
Sally Forth: The Origin of Starlee
Stacey at New York Comic Con dressed as “Ziggy Stardust Meets Jem,” the cosplay that inspired Starlee and Sally Forth’s own outfit in today’s Sunday strip.
Judge Parker—Now with Non-Stop Chyron Action!
The thing about televised law enforcement press briefings is that they are real-life exposition devices with one uninterrupted camera angle. In short, I gave Mike almost nothing to work with visually and you get a full week to really study LAPD Commander Harold Mahler’s pores.
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