A number of friends are seeing some well earned space in the comics shelves these days. Make sure to check out Mark Smith’s Pop Gun Volume one with a extended story by Adrian Dominguez, Ellie Saves the World. And Erik Martinez should have a story in Volume two.
And I just read that Kazu Kibuishi’s graphic novel for Scholastic Books (Jeff Smith’s Company) has been picked up for a live action film.
Check out Bolt City for the details!
Sitting in Hall H last summer from dawn till dusk the one thing that was power point planted in your noggin over and over was there was another Con just 500 miles or so north and a just a few months later called Wonder-Con. And after trying to wade through some 95,000 people in exhibit hall the idea returning to the “Wee Con” by bay was sounding pretty damn good. My only fear was that too many of the people sitting next to me might want to beat the same path to a less populated pop-culture mecca up state.
Well there was a few more people - couple of passing con goers made comments on how crowded the place was but I didn’t see it. Maybe its because I have gotten used to the crush of preview night and the mess that is Saturday but it was great to walk around and talk to creators and go right into panels without having to spend the entire day camped out.
And the level of the panels is impressive. The X-Files panel made me want to believe I wanted to see the sequel. Get Smart had some smart comedic asides and the screening of The New Frontier was a blast - despite the blasting sound system that made some of the dialog lost.
On Sunday, the creative team from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles closed out the show. The show is getting better as it goes along. Demon Hand was a great episode giving Sarah and the crew (”the ultimate nuclear family”) much more fleshed out relationships.
You can see the panel with Brian Austin Green and the Summer Glau here.
That’s all you get. Before your head hits the pillow tonight, summarize your day in four comic book frames. Do you even have four frames of comic book to say about your day? If you don’t, you’re not alone. Because neither does Clutch, most of the time anyways. But that doesn’t mean you can’t stop turning the pages. There’s something oddly compelling about reading what amounts to a visual diary of those little unimportant moments we all share but never really have anything to say about. You can’t help but love this little dude by the end of the book. By then he’s your friend.
Dang. Four frames a day. Could you do it? If anything, it’s a damn good way to develop mad fast drawing skillz. Brush yer teeth. Put on yer pajamas. Draw four cartoony, yet detailed (and Matt Groening-esque) pictures encapsulating yer day. Turn out the light. I bet Sergio Aragones can pump out an entire issue of Groo when he gets up in the middle of the night to take a piss. Wakes up in the morning and finds ink all over his junk. Better to do it in the morning, right after you finish your dream journal entry. “Dear Diary, last night I dreamed me, Mark, and Stan were in Rush. I was Geddy.”
It’s the little things like how in Europe they don’t call a Quarter Pounder a Quarter Pounder and now in San Diego they don’t call a Comic Convention a Comic Convention they call it a “Celebration of the Popular Arts”. At least that’s what the new banners say up and down the Gas Lamp district. For the last couple years Hollywood has taken over the big hall programming to promote effect heavy genre films but now the “popular arts” have expanded more to include new TV shows and CG animated features. Ch-ch-changes. The old geek mecca has become a big family show and it’s bringing in Disneyland size crowds.
The other major change this year was the huge turnout for preview night. After a couple of years one of the con’s “best kept secrets” has become the big show before the show. The frenzied masses move fast down the crowded aisles snapping up the first night freebies and lining up for the “exclusives” (Way too many this year, making them all way less exclusive). Thursday morning is now the best time to move around on the floor as the previewers are resting up from the night before. (Food Note: Thursday morning you can also get an easy table at the Sun Café for steak and eggs for $5.25 before the crowd packs this place over the weekend)
Another big difference is the overabundance of those silly amorphous plastic doodad toys. They look like prototype panda bears and they come in a wide variety of uninteresting painted details. Man, they were everywhere???
I made it to three panels Thursday: The first day release celebration of the DC Heroes Stamp, The Grant Morrison Deepak Chopra talk on the Seven Spiritual Laws of Super Heroes, and the Guillermo delToro Pan’s Labyrinth presentation.
The first panel was a grand love fest by and for the post office and stamp collectors; there was even an ovation for the local post master and the mayor. The stamps themselves are sweet, but do I really need one more thing to collect? (I bought three sheets and got them first day cancelled so don’t expect any mail from me)
The Deepak talk was in the big room but only a few people were scattered in there. Ironically, the real draw at the time was the Animainiacs/Pinky and the Brain DVD presentation, but you couldn’t get in there unless you had been camping out in the room for the talk before.
The concept of Deepak at Comic Con is a sure signal that things have gone askew in the geek world. (Do we really need spiritual validation for our pastime?) Chopra was there because his son is a comic contributor to the new line put out by Virgin, and he was interested in the form as a source of modern myth. While the talk was pretty unstructured, Chopra and Morrison made some interesting remarks about the progression of comic mythology. They traced the field’s path from its early roots of immigrant’s dreams through the long dark shadows of the over psychoanalyzed anti-hero 80s. (A time they felt almost killed the medium) Both Chopra and Morrison were excited about the medium as a possible source for new myths of hope for our troubled times. But the whole thing had a weird undercurrent as Chopra and his son seemed a little edgy and uncomfortable about coexisting in each other’s worlds. (Colman enjoyed the talk, it gave him a chance to nap)
The real treat of the day was Guillermo delToro. Wow! A great trailer and talk about passion, and a new land speed record for the use of the word fuck. DelToro could soon overthrow Kevin Smith as a fan favorite panel leader. He’s got a true passion for filmmaking and perfect rapport with the audience. He was inspirational and fucking funny as hell. After the talk the crowd jumped out of there to go rent Chronos, The Devil’s Backbone, and Hellboy. I can’t wait for Pan’s Labyrinth.
Well, more about the comic’s aspect (oh yeah, comics) in my next post.
That’s right, if you’re a movie star or director who has been press-ganged into promoting your latest project at the San Diego Comic-Con, here’s a few tips to tame the lions of Hall “H” — we the audience are the lions, by the way, in case you hadn’t sussed that out.
We don’t care if you’re famous.
Poor Jamie Foxx came to us last year to push Stealth. Foxx is an excellent actor (he has an Academy Award to prove it), but we’d already seen the trailers for Stealth and it looked like a piece of crap. Which is fine, except Foxx thought all he needed to do was show up to get us excited about the movie. Wrong! What he got was questions from the audience like, “How do you go from something incredible like Ray to something lame like Stealth?” Foxx and his cohorts were obviously confused and annoyed at our reaction. In this case some humility on their part would have at least won our respect, and who knows … maybe enough so that we would have given their crappy movie a chance by spending the half an Andy Jackson to go see it.
Questions, questions, questions.
We have come to expect Q and A at Hall “H”, but probably not for the reasons you think. You see, when folks like Charlize Theron and Marton Csokas come around (they came out for AEon Flux) we are actually a little starstruck. In fact, something you may not know, if you were to sit in Hall “H” all day long and watch all the panels, every panel gets asked the same set of questions! Why? The questions are merely a formality. They are a mechanism which provides us a chance to get to talk directly to one of you: an actual Hollywood Star™. For instance, I guarantee your panel will be asked these three questions:
