Multiple Redundancies: SDCC 2013 Pre-Registration Is Over

And that’s that. Preregistration for San Diego Comic-Con for those who attended as members this year opened at 8 a.m. Pacific Time yesterday… and closed at about 9:20 a.m. thereafter.

Unlike other years, which for us have entailed either obtaining our four-day passes for the currently-starting convention and immediately doing a 180 to get in line to obtain passes for the following year, or, as last year, setting an alarm for 4:30 a.m. to catch a cab to the Hyatt to the right of the San Diego Convention Center… and then walking to the end of the line near the Hilton to the left of the San Diego Convention Center to wait for five hours to purchase the next year’s passes, this was a relatively bloodless affair. Simply log into a particular URL with your favorite Web browser, upon which you pressed the Big Green Button, and were directed to a virtual waiting room, which told you what your place in line was. Every two minutes, the page would update, and tell you how far along you were. All in all, it was simple… except for the fact that it was anything but. Not if you wanted to make sure that you could go.

Can has Goblin? Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch One-Shot Review

As Trebuchet can attest to, I often amuse myself to no end anthropomorphizing our dogs. So, although I’m late to the party in learning about the existence of these characters, I knew I had to pick up a copy as soon as I saw the description for Beasts of Burden in the weekly Dark Horse Digital newsletter:

The four-legged occult-investigating team—a heroic gang of dogs and one cat—are doing their best to protect their home, Burden Hill, from a chicken-stealing goblin, a frightful basilisk, and a strange lost herd of sheep!

Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch is actually a collection of three short stories originally printed in Dark Horse Presents #4, 6, & 8 back in 2011.

Food Run sets the stage with Rex (dog) and Orphan (cat) teaming up to take on the aforementioned chicken-stealing goblin. I was immediately drawn into the world by Evan Dorkin’s dialog and Jill Thompson’s beautiful watercolor illustrations. Food Run is fast-paced and action-oriented, and at its conclusion, I couldn’t wait to dig into the rest of the book.