Welcome to the latest installment of your breath of snark free air!

Enjoy!

COOL COMIC THINGS

A really neat thing about comic books is meeting up with other folks who ALSO like comic books!

This past weekend, the New York Comic Con happened, and I attended meet-ups Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They were a lot of fun. Here are some photos (courtesy of Joe Rice, Ed Cunard and my pal Das)

On Friday, we met after the convention at a restaurant called Hudson Yards Cafe.

Here is a pic of Meredith (with commentary by Das), who was Comic Should Be Good's official correspondent for the New York Comic Convention this year. We'll have an entry by her up later.

Das also made a neat animated avatar out of a couple of photos she had of me!

Not pictured, but present were Adam Jones and RAB, both blog commenters.

Saturday, at a Picture Box release party at Alex Cox's awesome comic book store, Rocketship, more meeting-up took place!

Here is Alex and his girlfriend, Kelly!

Joe Rice and Ed Cunard bump butts!

Ed Cunard stands next to NeilAlien, who is secretly Steve Ditko (shhhh! Don't let anyone know!) (By the way, happy SEVENTH anniversary to Neil! WOW, SEVEN YEARS! So impressive!).

Das, Devin, Chris, Lena, me and Meredith!

Look at the turnout! Doesn't Rocketship rule?

Not pictured, but present, were Michael, Mordechai and more (including CBR head honcho, Jonah Weiland!).

Sunday, we met up for dinner and drinks, as well. No photos yet!

Comic books are awesome, and meeting up with comic book fans are even more awesome!

Now if only karaoke could be worked into it, too....

COVER THEME GAME

As always, here is the game. I show three covers. They all have something in common, whether it be a character, a trait all three characters share, locale, creator, SOMEthing. And it isn't something obvious like "They all have prices!" "They all have logos!" "They all feature a man!" etc.

In addition, please note that you must have some familiarity with comic book history to correctly guess these comics. You cannot guess the connective theme just by looking at the covers solely, you must have some knowledge beyond just the covers.

Good luck! This one is a BIT tougher than usual, I think, so TWO cool points to the first one who figures it out!

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SNARK FREE CHALLENGE

Make up the best basketball team you could possibly make up of Marvel characters without superpowers (and if their powers are in their suits, then they can play, so long as you think they'd be good enough without their suits - like the Falcon, who was a tough cookie even before he could fly), like Hawkeye or Silver Sable.

COVER HOMAGE

Here's how this one works.

I give you a cover, and you have to tell me a comic cover that homages this cover.

You get a cool point for each cover (one cool point per commenter, so one single commenter can't just blow it all in one fell swoop), with double the cool points for any cover homage from four on (because if you can think of more than three cover homages to this cover, then your cover homage mojo is strong, and I personally cannot think of more than five, so a sixth one would REALLY impress me...)

WHO IS IT?

Remember, tell me who it is and what number clue gave it away!

1. This character is female.

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2. This character is not an American.

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3. This character had her corporal body destroyed and needed to possess a human to return to "life."

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4. This character debuted in the Defenders.

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5. This character was a member of Deep Six.

Who is it?

Well, that's it for this installment of Snark Free Corner.

Hope you had fun!