Laughing Squid reports that the Art 94124 gallery in San Francisco will be presenting the 6th Annual Altered Barbie Art Show this week. This gallery group exhibit showcases the works of a variety of artists with different takes on the Barbie concept and place in the cultural zeitgeist. The Altered Barbie site has more information and gives you the opportunity to buy the gift for that hard-to-shop-for friend who has everything i.e. an $8,000 Barbie. Bet most folks you know don’t have one of those yet. Actually, even as I type this, I feel the certainty coming on that I must know at least one person who does.

With The Sun reporting that the new Black Canary Barbie, based on the DC Comics superhero character, could be called S&M Barbie, edgy artists will need to pull out all the stops. I have faith that Art 94124’s artists will be up to the challenge. But, yes, Mattel is actually releasing a superheroine Barbie clad in motorcycle jacket-cut PVC, hotpants, fishnets, and fetish boots. I’d ask what the impact of such media on little girls is likely to be, but I saw Olivia Newton-John in Grease when I was the right age for Barbie. Grease clearly taught that the best thing was to be a nice girl like Sandra Dee, but to dress like a dangerous black-clad uber-slut. Taking my own experience as an example, obviously eleven-year-olds don’t take any weird lessons away from such media. I mean, look how I turned out.

As this year’s Comic Con looms near, it is time to take a look back at last year’s event. Looking at the gallery of snapshots from the Blue Blood crew’s Thursday at the show reminded me of some of the fun we had.

I was excited to pick up entertaining stuff from Shannon Wheeler of Too Much Coffee Man fame. I loved all the crazy Lego, including Lego Batman and Lego robots. Actually, all robots are cool, not just those made out of plastic bricks for kids. BlueBlood.com hottie Yolanda was in the house as well. The lovely blonde, Em, is almost my namesake and is a real mail order Russian bride. Special thanks to The Brotherhood for sponsoring the megabooth and making sure it came complete with a beautiful and personable mail order bride.

I was pleased to be able to literally buy a shirt off the back of the very kind Gwen from Sighco. Gwen and I are around the same size and she was wearing a shirt which read, “Guns don’t kill people. Supervillains kill people.” Everyone from our spooky ookie artistic folks megabooth was going on a Superhero and Supervillain-themed party bus that night. A bus complete with stripper pole, I might add. Oddly, the booth with the Simpsons costumes and various supergear was just displaying and was not renting or selling them at the convention. I kinda think they left some money on the table there. This meant I really did need that Supervillain shirt right away then and Sighco’s Gwen actually took her own shirt off, right on the Comic Con show floor, let me try it on, and then selected another shirt for herself. Yes, I do always have a +20 on any roll involving people around me getting naked.

Actually, we had more fun than you can see here because it was really freaking hot in San Diego. I mean hot in the sense of excessively high temperature, as opposed to merely exciting hot. So I was a little off and actually shot snaps of the first half of the day with nothing in the camera. Oops. The awesome purple superheroine with the secret identity actually fights crime with a blue-clad male partner, but, alas, I was not actually taking pictures of them, when I thought I was taking pictures of them. I’m a polar bear and the heat can be a tad difficult for me.