Con Report:

Comic Con International:
The Good and the Bad

This is a con report, but San Diego is so incredibly frantic for us, that it’s very hard to write a coherent, day by day, blow by blow report. Instead, I’m going to write about what I liked this year, what I’m looking forward to, and what was bad. The Good: I really liked Preview Night. This year, folks with advance ticket purchases could get into the dealer’s room the night before the con opened. This was cool. Some companies, like Image, had free comics out. The crowds were sparse, and one could walk around the entire room, check out the new set up, look at some of the things for sale, and observe where all the booths were prior to the frenetic opening Thursday morning. The convention center was larger this year; they are in the process of expanding the convention center, and part of it is open now. Dear God, if it was big before, it’s even larger now. If I hadn’t been airsick from the plane flight, I would really enjoyed myself at Preview Night. As it was, I gamely staggered around the convention center and made the best of it. What made this convention really special this year was that Joe Singleton, of Artistic License, took the bus from Dallas and met us at the con. We had The Collector Times crash pad going, and it was fun for all of us. It’s always great to see someone experience the overblown experience of Comic Con International for the first time, and Joe reflected the joy of that first experience for us, not that we don’t have a sense of awe every year when we first step into the dealer’s room, too. I met a couple of people this year that I have been dying to meet in person. People that I have emailed or chatted with on irc for years, and never managed to catch up with them at San Diego. This year I met Shannon Denton, who has a new comic coming out (and I interviewed him, too, stay tuned next month for it) from Top Cow, Markus Fang. I also met Anne Timmons, artist of Go Girl. Anne made a killing at the Friends of Lulu Awards. She won Lulu of the Year and The Kim Yale Award for Best New Talent. I was really happy for her; she deserves the accolades. I bought things for *me* this year. Usually I spend my time buying stuff for my writers and artists, and I did do that, but I also had to have some things for me this time. I bought a Ramona Fradon penciled sketch of Aquaman and Aqualad, and it’s perfectly gorgeous. I also bought a colored original art piece from Rich Koslowski, formerly of The Three Geeks and Geeksville, who is currently doing Simpson’s work. It’s a picture of Bart Simpson clutching Spawn comics, saying "Trade me for these Spawn comics man, or you can go to hell." I bought Anne Timmon’s comic Go Girl, and I bought Daniel Fu’s Love Bites. Both of them I ordered from my retailer, and he said he would order them, but he never did, the weasel. That’s OK; I bought them myself. Panels Panels Panels: I didn’t get to as many as I usually do, but I attended different panels this year. I went to the panel "From the Big Screen to Comics--and Back Again" on Thursday. I’ll write more about that next month, mainly because it makes more sense to pair it with my Shannon Denton interview, considering he was one of the panelists. One of the nice unexpected (to me) benefits of this panel was that I got to see Brent Spiner, the ex-Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Woo hoo! Sidra and I also attended "Lord of the Rings with TheOneRing.net" on Thursday. The presentation was really nice, we saw all sorts of slides from the set, and various shots of the characters. Not to mention they showed the two trailers featured on the website, and for me, it was nice to see them without all the jerky, fuzzy stuff I get when I look on my computer. Lord of the Rings looks like it’s going to be one amazing movie. One of my favorite events at the con, that Sidra and I attend every single year, is the Pro-Fan Trivia Contest. Sidra and I, along with Tom Galloway, who is the leader of the fan team, are members of The Legion of Superheroes Cult. We feel morally compelled to go and root for the fan team and try to stack the deck against the pro team. This year Sidra wore her black leather miniskirt, her black knee high boots, and her lace see through shirt and plopped herself down in front of the pro team. In fact, most of the fan team this year were members of the Legion Cult, David Goldfarb and Mike Grabois were both on the team, and we were glad we were there. The contest is always funny, and amazing. The questions asked are extremely difficult, and it’s amazing when someone can answer it...and what’s scary, usually one or more people on both teams can answer the questions. When someone can’t answer the question, they usually make something up, and it’s usually hilarious. We always enjoy this panel, and it’s always a must attend for us. It was a really hard fought, close battle to the death this year, but the pro team won at the end. Sidra and I are already plotting for next year, but we aren’t giving away any secrets now...mwah ha ha. The Costume Contest. Oh yes, this is another event that we attend religiously each year. This year there were some fabulous entries, too. We didn’t see as many anime characters portrayed this year as we have in past years (which is always a definite plus for me, personally,) and there was a variety to the costuming that was pleasant. My favorite presentation that didn’t win any awards, but was politically incorrect and funny as hell, was the "Cut Scene from The Empire Strikes Back," featuring a fellow playing Lando Calrissian, suavely waving around his Colt 45 Malt Liquor, and putting the mack on Leia. Oh crap, we were all laughing so hard, I thought we would fall out of our seats. My heart went out to the fellow who portrayed Batman from Batman Beyond. It was really obvious that he had really worked hard on his costume, but when it came to the presentation, the costume screwed up on him. There was a fellow who portrayed The Mysterious Monolith #42 who drove the tough San Diego audience wild. They kept chanting "42 42 42" as the various awards were being given out. Peter David and a few fans scraped together $42 to give to the contestant to "shut the audience the HELL up." Phil Foglio did his usual bang up job as Master of Ceremonies this year. I had to go buy his comics the next day, because he subtly hyped them while he MC’ed. The audience this year was not quite as brutal as they have been in years past, too, which was a nice departure from the usual. What movies I have to see by sheer virtue of the trailers: I like comedies, but I rarely go to movies. However, Rush Hour 2 looked so hilarious, I suspect I will see it in the theater this month. And I am screaming to everyone who will listen, that they have to go see Ice Age when it comes out. If the movie is half as funny as the trailer, it’s going to be a major hit. It’s a computer-animated movie, done in the best Looney Tunes type humor. I gave up on animated movies once my children were grown, but the Ice Age folks have guaranteed my butt in the seat on the strength of that trailer. Comics I must buy: I am going to give the new Hawkman/Hawkgirl series by DC a try. I like the original Silver Age characters, and I like the new premise and setting, so I’m going to give it a go. I’ll be buying the new comic by Shannon Denton, Markus Fang, because I like Shannon’s clean animated type art style, and his sense of humor. I am also going to be buying Keith Giffen’s new Suicide Squad, because from the preview copy I saw, it looks damned funny. The Bargain of the Con: Silver Aged comics, reading copies, were really, really cheap. I bought loads of 60’s Adventure and Action comics for $1-$4 apiece. You cannot get any better than that. The Bad: Aw, you knew there had to be a bad, didn’t you? Hey, I’m used to the con folks not getting my yearly press passes right, or not sending them in time, or by changing the press pass rules every year so I don’t know where we stand. By this point, we know how to handle all this, so I’m not going to complain. What I AM going to complain about is that the seating space allowed for special movie preview presentations like Lord of the Rings, and the new Spiderman movie. My daughter Sidra and I stood in line 45 minutes for the Lord of the Rings presentation (and we got there early,) only to be told 20 people away from the door, that the presentation was filled, and there would be no more showings. Now, Sidra and I could probably have waved our press passes and gone right on in, but that still didn’t solve the problem of the hundreds of people behind us in line. As it was, Sidra stood outside the room and cried, and it pissed me off. I went to the Con Command Center to complain on the spot, and was informed that I would have to attend "The Con Talkback Session" on Sunday. I was busy, and so I plan on writing the con folks after this issue goes up. From what I observed, the Spiderman presentation looked to be the same sort of overflow crowd. When one knows a movie is going to be "hot," and the demand is going to be high, and the convention center is so huge, there is no reason why they cannot allocate more space to these presentations, so that everyone who wants to attend, can. They certainly open all the rooms for the costume contest, they should have been able to schedule the movie presentations so that they could have used the expanded rooms for the movie previews then the costume contest. However, that’s my only complaint. As you can tell, the good far outweighed the bad, and we look forward to attending next year.