When you put on a pink Digimon character costume, you lose all rights to hit on women. It doesn't work. It does, however, give us hours of fun with family in-jokes later. So remember faithful readers, if you don't want to look like a complete dork loser, don't put on some full body cartoon character costume, and go looking for love. Go as Spawn or Batman or something!
Opinion #2:
For you folks who run Comic Con International, at least let the press know what time we are supposed to pick up our press passes. Sending any information to my house 3 days before the con is due to start isn't going to help me a bit. Some of us *drive.* Making me wait in line to pick up our badges and holders on Wednesday evening, and then being told that the press has to pick up the badges on Thursday morning at 9 am, makes me think that you people do not have your collective shit together. I really liked being let into the convention early one morning, heading to the press room, and then discovering that the press room was locked.
I'm just getting started, too. But enough of that for right now. We had a wonderful time at the con, and sat in a lot of panels. I rarely do news on my site, because I'm not interested in updating it on a daily basis, nor am I interested in participating in the cut-throat news journalism of the comics biz. When I go to San Diego and hear things for myself, I pass it on to you. This is not a news report. This is not a con report. This is a newsy con report, or a con report with news, or something.
DC:
The Bats writers have lots of things planned to "annoy" you and thrill you in the coming months.
Ed Brubaker is taking over the writing chores for Catwoman. His goal is to take Catwoman away from stealing every jewel that comes through Gotham and to turn the comic into a crime comic that he would like to read. There is a 5 part series starting in November that focuses on the relationship between Batman and Commissioner Gordon. The first one takes place during Batman Year One and the third one takes place in the aftermath of The Killing Joke (I can't tell you what the others are about, my tape recorder started to screw up about that time.) Staz Johnson is NOT drawing Robin in the foreseeable future. Detective is NOT going full color any time soon. All the Bats books will have a theme in December, and no, it's not some warm, fuzzy holiday theme: it's a warped, darkly funny type of theme. I can't supply you with more details, because the creators asked us not to put it on the net yet, but it sounds like it will worth your bucks. You may be able to find this information elsewhere on the net, which explains why I don't do comic news journalism on a regular basis. Reportedly. Frank Miller is "on fire," working on his graphic novel. Someone on the panel stated in regards to Miller, "Yes, hell has frozen over." Tim Sale provided a very interesting discourse on the detail that goes into his art. Check out the desks in his comics as examples. Greg Rucka explained why his novel "No Man's Land" is different from the comic. Rucka had a plot outline, and several of the scripts, but then he didn't get a script, and he had to wing it. No Man's Land, in both the novel and comic form, end up in the same place, but the ways that they get there are different. It was suggested that we all buy both, to see the variation on the same story.
Lex Luther is running for President, but will he win the election? The Superman Panel remained mum, saying only, "We think that what we've come up with will be fun. And we know one thing . . . you guys will let us know!" Mark Shultz (Superman: The Man of Steel) suggested that inhabitants of the DCU could cast write-in votes for Turtle Boy.
Plot-lines they DID reveal: The (married) romance continues between Lois and Clark with a trip to Africa. Nightwing will make an appearance in Action Comics (in September), with Spectre and Martian Manhunter to follow sometime later. Plans are in the works for Supes to get an updated Fortress of Solitude and learn more about his Kryptonian heritage - probably in Superman: The Man of Steel. The panel said that DC definitely plans to visit some of the "other places" in Hypertime.
What religion is Superman? The panel joked that Superman was Protestant and Clark was Jewish, but no one seemed to know for sure.
Opinion #3:
I do believe that the security guards this year must have gone to the Adolph Hitler School of Crowd Control. Maybe it's just the funky fire code laws of California, but a lot of security guards spent a lot of time this year making folks stand up who weren't blocking hallways or stairs. "You *must* stand at attention, Ja." And I thoroughly enjoyed the first day of the con, when security made all the PROS, who were trying to get to their booths prior to the con opening, stand behind the ropes with us lowly press people and wait for the con to open. "We were just following orders." I bet the gripe session that day was a doozy, and I'm sorry I missed it.
Opinion #4:
Over the years, the most consistently entertaining panel has been the Pro-Fan Trivia match. This year was no exception. The topic was "The Works of Jack Kirby" and Len Wein proved that he could answer trivia questions, and even managed to answer one question about a story he had written himself. The fan team got it's rear kicked, which is sort of unusual. Usually the score is a lot closer than it was this year. Mark Waid declined to participate this year, because he said he wasn't familiar with the subject matter. He attended the panel and then groaned loudly in the back when the pro team couldn't answer something and he could. It was really hilarious. Even if you don't know anything about trivia, this panel is always a riot and is on my Must Do List every year.
Marvel:
Marvel was hyping the new X-Men movie, a three-issue fantasy book named Avatar, and anything else with the Marvel logo on it. (No surprise there.) This month (August) they'll publish the first issue of a new book called Doom. When Carlos Pacheco takes over Fantastic Four in FF #35, they'll face off against Diablo. A line-wide cross-over debuts in September with a one-shot called Maximum Security: Dangerous Planet. The Maximum Security plot spreads to other Marvel books in October.
Kurt Busiek said that he always wanted to be a writer. He said that he started reading at 3, and that his mother has paragraphs of Oz stories that he wrote as a child. Kurt credits a piece Chris Claremont wrote in the letter column of Uncanny X-Man with inspiring him to embark on a career in comics writing. Paul Jenkins said he wrote his first comic at 5 years old, but that his first comic work was at Mirage Studios and Tundra. He joked that when he got his first major writing assignment of Hellblazer, people were asking, "Who the hell is this guy?" Joe Quesada reported that he wrote his Iron Man story from a dream he had. Robert Weinberg stated that the first comicbook he ever bought was Jimmy Olsen #1. He sited as among his influences Robert Howard and HP Lovecraft. He shared that he wrote a lot of novels in the 60's, but that he had always wanted to write comics, because he perceived comic writing as "fun." Weinberg likened comics writing to directing a movie. Joe Quesada explained how he got into comics...he had graduated from film school, and in the process, had produced a short film that had had some small success. It had played in a theatre in Manhatten, and a friend of his had folks at Marvel go to see it. Two weeks later, Quesada said, he was writing his first X-Force comic for Marvel. Quesada and Jenkins joked that your best route to working for Marvel would be to break some bone, preferably on Marvel's property. Chris Claremont said that the way to continue to tell interesting stories is to know the characters, ask where they are in their lives, and ask "what happens next?" and then tell the story. Kurt Busiek talked about how he and Erik Larsen are going to co-write the new Defenders series, and said, in jest, "So people who dislike my Marvel work can have another reason to hate me." Busiek said that he had an idea about to make Defenders work, and told Tom Breevort about it. Busiek denied having the time to write it, and Breevort suggested Erik Larsen write it. Once Busiek got on the phone with Larsen, he got sucked in with enthusiasm, and is now going to co-write the book.
Opinion #5:
My favorite part of the costume contest was, on about the gazillionth anime costume being displayed, someone in the back screamed, "Anime SUCKS." My second favorite part of the costume contest was the gratitude I felt while watching the entry of Sailor Jamboree, which incidently, won the contest. Sailor Jamboree was cute: there were about 20 girls, all in various Sailor Moon costumes, dancing to some Japanese Sailor Moon Music. This little production number went on for about 4 minutes too long, and I just about needed an insulin injection when they were finished. However, I was real grateful...it could have been *my* daughter and *her* friends, in *my* house putting together these costumes, choreographing that dance, and playing that music over and over and over... Oh yes, it could have been much worse.
Wildstorm:
I sat in this panel, and my tape recorder fouled up, which is actually a blessing. The only thing I remember is that in W.I.L.D.C.A.T.S. something is going to happen that changes the team forever. The hint given was, "Right now, all of them are accustomed to walking, and later, one of them will have to get used to not walking." It's not that Patty Jeres was bad at reading the blurbs, and it wasn't that the slides were bad... I just think that they gathered a bunch of Wildstorm creators at the last moment, said "Hey KIDS! Let's put on a panel," and up they trooped. Maybe I'm real off base, but most of them appeared not to know anything about the slides or the projects involved. I dreaded listening to this tape at home and am sort of relieved that the machine fouled up.
Gorilla:
"Eight pathetic losers trying to pick up women with free comics." Hey, they said it; I didn't. This was a highly hilarious panel, and the creators' enthusiasm for their comics was infectious. For those of you who don't know, Gorilla Comics is a creator owned and self-financed company, and is published by Jim Valentino. Right now, the first wave of comics is out. The creators involved say they like working for Marvel and DC, but they have other stories to tell, and they can do that with Gorilla.
The creators described their titles. Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo are doing Tellos, a light hearted story of high adventure. They say that if you like Star Wars and Indiana Jones, you should like their comic. Dezago says that there are lots of little secrets in their story. Karl Kesel and Tom Grummet are producing Section Zero, which Jurgens describes as, "You walk around in the dark, and there comes a point in the story where you flip on the lights, and punch the monster in the eye." He goes on to say that it is a cross between "X-files meets Jack Kirby." Mark Waid's book Empire is the "story of the first supervillain who actually wins." The new dictator has problems, too....all those folks he stepped on on his rise to power and an alien civilization who is waiting for him to get things organized so that they can take over. There are no superheroes in this book...it is populated by "bad people and worse people." Barry Kitson is drawing Empire but wasn't present at the panel. Kurt Busiek and Stuart Immonen are doing a science fiction/adventure series called Shockrockets. In a future world, an alien invasion has been driven off, and out of this conflict has come a new aerial fighter that is a combination of human and alien technology. The story revolves around a young man who is one of the pilots, who came to be a pilot outside of the usual system, and the conflicts that ensue. The final comic is Crimson Plague, drawn and written by George Perez. The story revolves around a genetically engineered woman who escapes from her captors and kills in some fashion that makes Mark Waid blush. They were not specific on the panel. The woman who kills in the heroine, and the her captors trying to get her back are the bad guys.
Each of the Gorilla books is self contained: they don't share a universe. There are no superhero books planned at this time, but the creators didn't rule them out. Gorilla does have a website:
. The creators say that the retailers can order Gorilla Comics through Diamond...if they tell you different, they are, um, prevaricating.
Opinion #6:
The t-shirt Gorilla was selling in their booth was cool and my daughter bought one. I have now been suckered in to trying a couple of the Gorilla books, because the panel was so entertaining. Like my pull list needs to be any longer. *groan*
Opinion #7:
Most thought provoking panel that I missed: Innovating Comics. I slid into this panel cause the Nazis, I mean, security guards were saying that we could not sit outside. I caught the last 10 minutes or so of this one, and I heard enough to make me wish I had arrived about an hour earlier. They were talking about the future of webcomics, and the possibilities with the increasing bandwidth. The future was here, and I missed it! Typical.
Opinion #8:
Getting a bigger car to take to the convention does not mean that one will drive home with room. Each year I go, I keep striving to drive back to Houston with my feet on the floor of the front seat. This year I thought we had it whipped, due to my buying a nice new large Saturn Station Wagon. Nope. What it means it that we'll all buy more crap, because we have room. I cannot complain about the drive home this year, because we found out something very interesting about computer prices. We bought my daughter a new computer here in Houston for graduation this year. We found the same system, only a little better, in San Diego for 500 hundred dollars cheaper. My computer died 3 days before we left for the convention. Guess what we bought, and drove home with? You guessed it! Along with comics, books, artwork, videotapes and posters, we had a computer, scanner, printer, and monitor. The luggage had to ride on the roof, and it woulda been better if we coulda strapped one of the children up there, too. So remember, before you buy a computer in your area, check with your net friends in California about the prices. It may be cheaper to have your friend buy it in California and have it Fed-Exed to you.
