The first Saturday of each May is a very special day to all fans of comicbooks. That first Saturday is known as “Free ComicBook Day” – and many publishers put out a special free issue that day, as a way to excite their current readers and to hopefully draw in new readers! This FCBD, as with last year, I put on a special event to share my passion for comics – I put on “SPOILERS MKE” – a combination art exhibit/dramatic reading.
Original artwork hung on the walls of the Boulevard Theatre, and nine very special people performed the roles of various comicbook characters, reading scenes that I “curated” from my collection. This year’s scenes focused heavily on relationships – between heroes, lovers, family members, husband and wife, gods and men, fathers and sons – and more! There were scenes from “Hercules”, “Scalped”, “Wolverine”, “Cages”, “Ultimate Spider-Man”, “Alias”, “Uncanny X-Men,” “X-Force,” “Knights of Pendragon”, and “Starman”.
Really, I cannot overstate what it means to me that these friends shared so much of themselves with these performances. Jony, Lisa, Kristen, Byron, Jabril, Jason, Jaime, Luke, and Dan “became” the characters, and really brought their personalities into the roles. They make me grin from ear to ear, and I can’t thank them enough for being part of SPOILERS MKE.
Byron was fearsome as a thunder-throwing Zeus in “Hercules”;
Dan channeled Sean Connery as an “Arthurian-Green-Knight-Meets-Swamp-Thing in “Knights of the Pendragon”;
Jabril was a humorously nervous Spider-Man in a scene from “Wolverine”;
Jaime did great as Ant-Man on a blind date in “Alias”;
Jason impressed us all as an elderly Native American in a scene from “Scalped”;
Jony embodied the character “Storm” so fully in a scene from the classic “Lifedeath” issue of “The Uncanny X-men”;
Kristen was funny as the sarcastic, maybe a little bitter, former-superhero on a blind-date with Ant-Man in the “Alias” scene;
Lisa made us all laugh with her turn as an over-the-top bartender in “Cages”;
Luke was our most “international” performer, filling the shoes of the German Nightcrawler and Canadian Wolverine in scenes from “The Uncanny X-Men” and “Wolverine”.
All of the scenes were video-taped, and you can see the performances HERE.
