Comic-Con International - San Diego, CA -
July 14-17
Welcome to our Comic-Con writeup. Your hosts are Erik and Michele. This
was mostly typed up by Erik, so he is usually the "I" in the writeup.
Michele did the editing and added some bits here and there. If this
sounds/looks familiar, you may have seen our Slayercon 2004 report. We
cut our Thursday, Ren and Stimpy, and Filmation/He-Man panel writeups
for space, but there's still a lot of non-Whedonverse content here.
There are no Serenity spoilers, and a few f-words in the Kevin Smith
writeups,
as expected. We highly recommend
checking out Seth Green's new comic book, and the Serenity RPG, which
sounds like a great complement to the series even for non-gamers.
FRIDAY
The Cavern that is Hall H (no
Whedonverse content)
Friday began with an early rise, a lengthy trolley ride and our first
lineup in front of Hall H. We didn't care about the presentations in
Hall H at all on Friday. We were doing this to see approximately how
big the room was, how many people were in line in front of us, and how
early we should expect to arrive on Saturday. That was when the two
panels we were there to see would take place. We got
there and got in line around 9:20am. We were a good two thirds of the
way back, but comfortable while all of the fanboys and fangirls told
Natalie Portman she was hot and what an amazing actress she is and
other stupid pointless drivel. We got a V for Vendetta mask, starring
Hugo Weaving as V and Natalie as some bald chick, second unit
directed by the Wachowski Brothers, produced by Joel Silver and no one
asked him any Wonder Woman questions... all of the questions were for
"Miss Portman." We got bored, so we left.
Top Cow/Seth Green/The Freshmen panel and
signing
We wandered the exhibit hall a bit, then headed upstairs for the Top
Cow/Seth Green presentation. The only disappointment was that I wasn't
allowed to videotape the panel. I got a few good pictures, and got to
ask an important (to me at least) question about The Freshmen, Seth and
Hugo's new comic series that just launched last week. As a reward, Seth
Green handed me a comic "Top Cow Triple Play" issue. After the panel,
we headed downstairs to the Top Cow booth, located, as they put it, at
the ass-end of the giant Pikachu. I quickly bought a copy of the
extremely (only 200 made) limited Freshmen Comic-Con exclusive which
also included an autograph ticket that allowed my wife (who is a huge
fan) the opportunity to meet Seth and get his autograph and a picture
with him. While in line, someone slipped Seth a contraband Buffy item
to have autographed. He was told he could not sign it, but he did
anyway and slipped it under the table, telling the guy receiving it in
front of the table that the eagle has landed. Seth, Hugo and the other
guys from Top Cow were great and I really look forward to reading this
comic series as it sounds like an awesome concept.
Bones
We then headed back upstairs to Ballroom 20 for the Bones pilot
screening and Q&A that included Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz.
The producers were no shows. I got a few good pictures and took video
of the presentation, but the series looks WAY TOO MUCH like CSI to
appeal to me. My wife said she might flip to it every now and then due
to the fact that there is some hot Asian chick in it. David was very
funny, and his chemistry with Emily is very effective. We got Bones
pens and bookmarks on the way out.
Bumping into Joss, part 1
Then, we went out for a bit, ate at the Cine Deli over in the Gaslamp
Quarter and wandered back to the Convention Center to stand in line for
the Eisner Awards. Joss Whedon was nominated a few times for his work
on Astonishing X-Men, as was John Cassaday, who is a tremendously
talented artist that we had first met at Wondercon in San Francisco.
Joss was also a presenter, so we HAD TO be there to see him on stage.
Turns out that while my wife was taking a picture of a window, Joss
just walks on by. I tried to get her attention and she took a really
bad picture that you can almost make out the back of Joss's head in,
but that was not so great. We were excited that he was there, and
things got a little strange after that. You see, our place in line was
directly in front of the men's bathroom. Joss wandered back out and
into said men's room. When he came out we asked if he would mind taking
pictures with us and had mentioned that we had seen Serenity three
times already and hopefully would see it a lot more in the months to
come. He mentioned that he'd seen it around 4200 times, and he was
finally finished with it. With that, and two great pictures with us,
Joss was off and we continued our wait in line.
Will Eisner awards
We got in a bit later and took a seat in the corralled off area.
Eventually we got front row seats, right behind the tables reserved for
guests and presenters. We could see Joss schmoozing with fans, and his
table was right in line with us, a couple tables away. He was sitting
with John Cassiday and another presenter. All the presenters told a
story about Will before they presented their first award. Joss, in
normal fashion, opened with a joke, and then said something very
poignant following the joke. Joss got to present John an award (and got
to say "We have a tie" very dramatically) which was cool, but that was
the ONLY award that was related to Astonishing X-Men that they won.
John definitely deserved the award, and the winners in the other
categories did as well, but it would have been nice to see Joss win
something for the great comic book he is writing. The main awards ended
at like 11:30pm, and we'd projected that we'd need to be back in line
for Hall H by 6am to get a good spot for the presentations on Saturday.
We rushed to the trolley station and caught the next Orange Line to El
Cajon. We ALMOST made it back without incident, but a possibly gang
related fight and lots of commotion on the train caused us to not really arrive back at our hotel til around 1am, finally falling asleep around 2, and waking up again at GRR ARGH 4am.
SATURDAY
Back to Hall H (no Whedonverse
content)
Saturday morning at 6:24am we arrived in line for Hall H. We were
already a good hundred back in line, but close enough to the door. We
got food (deluxe Lunchables and a bunch of snack cakes) from the AM PM
across from our hotel at around 1am before we retired early Saturday
morning. Unfortunately, Vons and Wal-Mart had both closed at that
point, so we were stuck with non-food to consume for the day. We
brought our travel chairs that we sometimes use for concerts. We were
prepared for a long haul marathon wait. Then they let us in around 9.
It was an hour and a half earlier than the day before, but I'm assuming
it was justified due to the huge crowd... which was not there for
Serenity.
Superman Returns
(no Whedonverse content)
No, this is Comic-Con, and the first film they were going to preview
was Superman Returns, a Bryan Singer film that is being filmed in
Australia right now. Mr. Singer, famous for such films as X-Men and
X-Men 2, and I guess soon to be famous for a remake of Logan's Run and
a sequel to the first Superman film from 1978, even though there were
already three sequels to that film, flew in from Australia just for the
panel. Due to the long flight, he was a bit incoherent, calling
Superman Jor-El, instead of Kal-El. Upsetting comics geeks and almost
causing them to turn on him with their bloodthirsty tendencies.
Fortunately he had some extra ammunition, a strung together, not final
preview teaser for the film, which was apparently made on a new digital
camera called Genesis. Which according to some geek behind me records
everything to a computer chip, but I'm thinking it is more likely that
it is hard drive or tape based. The footage looks like any other
footage taped for a Superman movie, with some Smallville thrown in. It
actually was kind of boring, but to these huge comic book fans, it was
the holy grail. They asked for it to played again... and probably would
have asked for it again as well had time permitted. The person who
opened the door in the middle of the presentation was almost lynched,
they wanted more... but they weren't getting any more. Not until next
year, when the preview says you should look up in the sky.
War
of the Worlds fx (no Whedonverse content)
Up next, some dude named Pablo who did special effects for War of the
Worlds to kill time. He showed a clip from the film, which most of the
audience had already seen. He discussed a bit about the special effects
and how great Steven Spielberg was to work with and then he was ushered
off the stage for the Aeon Flux panel. Incredibly, his panel was
probably the most focused and informative of all the panels we saw that
day.
Aeon Flux
(no Whedonverse content)
Peter Chung, some dude from MTV films, the producer, the director, some
elf from Lord of the Rings that is playing Trevor Goodchild, and the
paparazzi's own darling, Charlize Theron came out on stage to a large
amount of flashbulbs directed in Charlize's direction. I understand
that Joss was overwhelmed by Hall H, but there was so much camera
activity for Charlize that a murmur went up from the crowd from the
constant lightning-like presence. I don't think even Natalie Portman had
that kind of thing going on during the brief time we spent at her panel
the day before. The thrust of the panel involved some of the most
god-awful questions I've ever heard asked. Someone was so lame as to
start out her question in a very politically motivated, feed the
hungry, unite the world, we need peace sort of way, which is something
Charlize knows a lot about, as she is an ambassador for South Africa,
and then end the question, so in this world, we're all wondering, where
did you get that beautiful dress? To which Charlize answered, uh, it is
not a dress, it is pants. Then the girl's cell phone rang and it was
her mom, who she then asked Charlize to say "Hi mom" and Charlize did
it... sadly. The preview footage and making of features they showed
were pretty good, Charlize's stunt footage showed grace and intensity, and I'm anticipating a good action film later this year.
Sadly Peter Chung, who created Aeon Flux, didn't get to say much
because everyone was there to photograph and ask shitty questions of
Charlize. We had expected to see a preview of the cartoon box set and
the new comic books, since this is COMIC-Con, but they weren't shown.
Kevin Smith (no Whedonverse
content)
Up next was Kevin Smith. First question was some guy who wanted Kevin
to watch his DVD (at the end he actually gave Kevin a second DVD to
watch as well). Then someone saying how great Kevin's films are. Some
chick who didn't ask a question, but said Clerks cured her stroke by getting her out of the house to watch it.
Then came the Jesus question. See, Kevin's latest project is the sequel
to Clerks. Clerks 2: The Passion of the Clerks shows Dante and Randall
ten years later. It has nothing to do with some other movie with a
similar title, but that similar title is giving Kevin a lot of press.
Press which Kevin says, is always a good thing. He went on to say that
the movie has nothing to do with that other movie and if Mel Gibson
sues, won't end up having a title similar in the end anyway. He started
to talk about how he didn't understand why people would want to pay
money to watch people beat up and then eventually kill Jesus. Then, the
person two seats away from me started yelling, obnoxiously "He died for
your sins Kevin!" over and over. Kevin said "I know he died for my
sins. I love Jesus. In fact, I love him even more than you do
motherfucker." Then Kevin described how he would do a parody of The
Passion of the Christ. "I'd start out with the Crucifixion. Then, two
ninjas would swing in, dressed in black with uzis and they would pry
the nails out of Jesus's hands with a hammer. Jesus would be like 'but I'm supposed
to die' and one of the ninjas would say 'Not on my watch'. and people
would be like 'is this really how it happened?' and 'that wasn't in the
bible... or was it?' and then the ninjas would pull of their hoods to
reveal.... Jay and Silent Bob." Kevin showed a clip from his guest
appearance on Degrassi.
Southland Tales
(new film with SMG)
Later on he brought out that Donnie Darko dude, Richard Kelly, and they showed a very
very brief teaser for Southland Tales that involved two trucks fucking.
That pretty much ended the panel. Kevin mentioned very clearly that Buffy was in the
movie - no response from the crowd. Richard mentioned
SrahMshellGllr (he was very flustered and overwhelmed, so he was
talking fast and rambling) - no response from the crowd. Oh well...
Slither
(with Nathan Fillion)
The next panel began with a discussion of the new horror film starring
Nathan Fillion called Slither that is also due out this fall. Nathan
came out to huge applause, a huge grin on his face, and a very visible
"WOW" coming from his mouth when he saw the room, even though he wasn't
at his seat yet with the mic in front of him. Most questions were for
the director, and the cast were obviously having a good time and
goofing off each other.
Serenity
Then, Joss Whedon came out and introduced the cast of Serenity. Except,
he forgot poor Jewel Staite. And Alan Tudyk was busy doing Spamalot on
Broadway. But eight of the nine primary cast members were there. Chris Buchanan was a no-show. They
got to the questions, which were also all pretty lame. Someone asked
Joss if he could give some magic words to the fans of the Angel role
playing games, to which Joss had no clue how to respond and deferred
the question to Sean Maher. Nathan Fillion revealed that he had
something important to tell us all. He had good news...he'd just saved
a bunch of money by switching to Geico!! And then he said, oh yeah...I
went there. Gina Torres let us know that because she had become famous,
she doesn't have to pay late fees anymore at Blockbuster. Adam Baldwin
continually thanked the fans for putting their family back together one
more time. The camera operator once again focused really, really tightly on Summer's face when she talked, like at Wondercon. They showed a clip from the finished film, that part
featuring River in the first trailer. And they quickly ran out of time,
the clip was too long for the abbreviated time they were given. Despite
the usual great antics, it wasn't a very good panel, and they didn't
tell us anything. We learned more about the status of the film with our
thirty second conversation with Joss on Friday night. It was a bit of a
disappointment, but we've now seen all of the cast members of Serenity
in person, live, and were in the same room with them. That's a pretty
cool feeling.
Aftermath
We left quickly after the Serenity panel, and since we hadn't left Hall
H all day, we didn't know about the Serenity passes for the screening
that night. We drove out to Los Angeles for a concert, but the drive
home was brutal due to exhaustion. Somehow my wife got us back to the
hotel in one piece and we passed out at around 1am. A 21 hour day with
2 hours of sleep, but again, all worth it.
SUNDAY
Serenity
RPG
Sunday morning, we woke up at a somewhat normal time of 8am. We got
ready and headed back to the Convention Center for the final day of
Comic-Con. We started out our day at the Margaret Weis Games Serenity
RPG discussion. They were planning to give us some sample pages from
the Serenity RPG core rulebook which is due out in late August.
Unfortunately, they lost the portfolio that included that information
on a trolley the day before. They also couldn't do a digital multimedia
presentation (which equals out to showing stuff on a screen at the
front of the room) because they didn't coordinate it with the
Comic-Con. The graphics designer for the book and game, 11th hour, who
sells Firefly related fanmade memorabilia on the internet, was a bit
late in arriving. But Jamie Chambers and Margaret Weis went over the
basic concepts of the game and the graphics designer showed up with
some mockup pages and we got to see those. They were very enthusiastic,
obviously big fans, and overall had a much better Serenity-related
discussion than we had at the actual Serenity panel.
Margaret Weis, Serenity RPG writer
Later in the day, we saw Margaret at the Caveman Robot booth and found
out that she and Jamie first got into Firefly by watching a pirated
version of the Pilot for the series that Jamie bought somewhere. She
said she was very thankful for that because of the way Fox showed the
show out of order. She felt that her and Jamie had a much better
understanding of the show because they had seen the pilot first,
instead of last the way Fox presented it. She was surprised that they
got the license for the game but seems very happy to be a part of all
of it. Wonderful person and I really look forward to buying the game
from serenityrpg.com in early August. It will be $39.99 and ordering
direct will get you autographs, free PDF downloads, and whatever other
goodies they come up with.
The Search
Next, we went to the floor and discovered that the Browncoats table had
a new movie poster, and some Serenity CDs that hadn't been there a
couple of days prior. Turns out the movie poster was pretty rare and
shows a gun in River's hand that won't be on the final version of the
poster. We grabbed the cd, but there were no posters to be had. We were
a bit peeved. How could Universal give out promo crap for the movie we
were there for, but not give us any? We ran off in search of the
poster. We turned up nothing. We gave up for a bit after the freebie
table showed nothing new, and went to the Threshold panel to see Brent
Spiner. It was taking a VERY LONG time and we were antsy about the
poster. So we went to the freebie table, got a Slither 8x10 with a
monster on it but no Nathan, then Fed Ex/Kinko's after a brief stop at
the Universal Mastercard booth, which was only giving out King Kong
stuff, in hopes that someone would be selling the poster "Buy it Now"
on eBay. Oops, no internet at Fed Ex/Kinko's. AHHHHHH. We were
frustrated. We went back to the Exhibit Hall and got more Aeon Flux
stuff from their booth. We had also gotten some cool Threshold hats and
shirts from that booth on Friday that I forgot to mention. The logo for
the show has a lot of promise, but I don't know what the show is like
because we left that panel.
Bumping into Joss, part 2 (!!!)
Then, we were walking along and who should be right in front of us
talking to some fans...Joss Whedon. So I asked him directly "Where did
the poster come from?" and he explained that it was a proof and that he
had a few and gave them to the browncoats table. He had his famous
backpack on, and had a good size bag, so he must have found something cool to bring home. He
obviously wanted to get going though, and after my wife took a quick photo
with him with his backpack on, we were on our separate ways again. At
least we could stop looking for a poster there was no way we would find.
Browncoats raffle
We went to the Browncoats meeting/raffle and proceeded to not win
anything. There were some great prizes and they made around $12000
unofficially for Equality Now, which is a charity that is a favorite of
the Whedonverse. Keith R.A. Decandido, the author of the novelization
confirmed that the proof artwork would be the artwork for the cover of
the novel, which made us feel even better, as we weren't missing out on
the artwork by not winning the poster in the raffle. They weren't done
with the raffle and had to leave the room, so they went off to their
booth to finish their raffle while we went to the gaming floor.
Julie Benz and not Mercedes McNab
We went in search of the demo of the Serenity roleplaying game that was
going on elsewhere. We never found it and went back for one last stroll
through the exhibit hall, where we discovered Julie Benz and Jonathan
Woodward were signing, and there was no waiting. Jonathan was there
because Mark Lutz, George Hertzberg and Mercedes McNab all had sudden
work that came up, and he had none for the weekend. He's a great person
to talk with. We took his picture with the giant Mercedes McNab poster.
After a quick trip to the ATM, which actually had a line this day, we
went back and bought an autograph from Julie, who was sweet, and told
us she had two movies with Big Names. We went back to Jonathan and then
talked with him a bit about Serenity. He said that we had opened our
Christmas presents early by seeing the film early and he didn't want to
ruin the experience for himself, but he'd be seeing it on opening
night. He showed us some pretty dirty artwork that Shel Silverstein had
done and signed a Firefly still for us. He asked if we would be going
to the Booster Events Flanvention in December and we remarked that it
was a bit too expensive, but it was really cool that he asked us if we
were going. Then we got our autograph. It was another great moment and
with that we decided to end our convention experience, rather than the
end being some crappy line somewhere.
Misc thoughts and things we missed
Charisma Carpenter - we randomly walked by the Veronica Mars panel, and
it was jammed packed - at the time we didn't know why.
Missed autographs from Nick, Eric Wight, krad.
There was an artist at the Browncoats booth signing his original
Firefly cast art for $30, and an author from Finding Serenity. We
hadn't brought our copy of Finding Serenity, and stinking TFAW
*finally* sent our Serenity comic books out on July 22, way too late
for the con. Pre-ordering is a waste of time. Still waiting for our
Non-Sport Update too, it was tempting to buy that.
Universal didn't have a booth, just the Mastercard signup. Lame!
Inkworks had some good giveaways, including the famous Comic-Con
exclusive promo cards, and Serenity postcards. They seemed to be giving
away the keychains to random people. A woman came up and was surprised
that Serenity was a movie, and she'd liked the series. I tried to
direct her to the Browncoats booth, but she didn't notice me at all.
Too bad.
Didn't get to meet Peter David or Peter Chung, since they were both
signing while we were in panels. We saw Peter David's Spike one shot,
but it had been sold on Saturday and was already sold out.
We saw Amber Benson signing at the Diamond booth, and again with Nancy
Holder and the other writers, but we didn't have time to actually get
in line and meet her. She is *tiny!* We also missed the Sunday writers
panel, which is a shame, but we forgot about it...
Seth Green's second panel for Adult Swim was completely stuffed, so we
missed that one.
JMS was a no-show at the He-Man panel. Boooo
Would have really liked to see Brent Spiner at the Threshold panel
Missed out on the Oz figure with the Dingoes Ate My Baby poster. I'd
completely forgotten about it. Rats!
We saw the unpainted Spike figure. Don't know what the big deal was,
other than the obvious, but hey, collectibles for a good cause can't be
beat.
We saw a girl dressed up as Fray in Hall H. Her outfit, hair, and scythe rocked!
We saw Iyari's signing booth on Friday, I believe, but didn't go over. We blew some $ instead on Dean Haglund (Langly on The Lone Gunmen) instead, as I heard he has a very funny one-man show. He was selling DVDs of it, along with a "Why TLG was Cancelled" comic book he made.
