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"We're sorry, but that flight's been cancelled due to weather."
Oh, what a way to start out my trip.
Fortunately, the rest of my triumphant return to Chicago, and to Wizard World, was a lot smoother once I had waited eight hours for the next flight out, and got on the ground, then navigated the maze that is O'Hare airport. Ok, the airport navigation was a bit of fun, but I'm an odd sort.
Sadly, the delayed flight kept me from attending the preview night for the convention on Thursday, like I had been hoping to do, but at least I did get out there, and landed safely.
Some people go to conventions with 'goals', things to do, things to accomplish, people to see, and while I had a few people like that, I didn't really have any overall goals to accomplish at the con, aside from taking tons of photos, and attending panels, and just generally having a good time at the convention, and with my friends whom had also come out to attend the convention.
Settled in and refreshed from a good night's sleep, I attacked the con fresh on Friday, well-fed and all set to brave the crowds. I had time to kill before the first Mondo Marvel panel, so headed over to Artist's Alley, which I almost completely never got around to at my last visit to the convention. Many people had yet to show up yet, but I chatted briefly with a few, including Mark Brooks, artist of New X-Men, and several other projects. I spent most of the day looking for Tony Daniel as well, the artist on Teen Titans, to try and get a sketch, but he was booked up for the day, and asked me to come back early on Saturday.
Marvel kicked off their convention presence with a few reannouncements of some known projects in the works, and as they started hyping up the upcoming event to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Onslaught and Heroes Reborn, Rob Liefeld turned up at the panel, in his usual late fashion. He had with him action figures of Onslaught and Captain America, and simulated a fight scene from the comics. Rob made several jokes at his own expense, and sat down at the end of the table, as the panel continued.
They continued on to J. Michael Straczynski's Bullet Points "What If" type series about a Marvel Universe where a single event changes the course of history, showcasing new art from the project, and several covers, then moved on to Alan Davis' much anticipated Fantastic Four: The End limited series. With some hyping of the upcoming MAX limited series Wisdom, by author Paul Cornell, showcasing the Warren Ellis created fan favourite Pete Wisdom, they moved on to show off new art and talk about the long-awaited Newuniversal series from Ellis and Salvador Larocca, a reimagining of the New Universe line of books from the mid 80s.. The art they've shown is absolutely gorgeous, and is arguably some of Salva's most stunning work to date.
Marvel then slipped back to some books that had just started coming out, particularly Agents of Atlas, a revival of a team of 50s era characters, and a conspiract. And a gun toting monkey. As well as the Ireedemable Ant-Man and the latest Blade series, with new art featuring a vampiric Spider-Man.
With that, Marvel started to discuss the upcoming new creative team on Wolverine, Jeph Loeb and Simone Bianchi, starting with issue 50, which looks to explore Wolverine's relationship with Sabretooth at long last, amongst more action than you can shake a Canadian at.
Then, Marvel announced yet another What If event, this time around featuring alternate takes on recent hit storylines, including Avengers: Disassembled, Spider-Man: The Other, and the Age of Apocalypse among others. This made my day, since I've long been a huge fan of the What If books, and seeing more is good news, since they're just plain fun, and can showcase new takes that you could never get away with in the real continuity, like killing Wolverine repeatedly! Speaking of, they also announced a new limited series for the female Wolverine clone, X-23.
With the X-Men guys taken care of for the time being, Marvel turned over to Spider-Man, and announced that the long rumoured, and in the works Spider-Man: Reign limited series by Kaare Andrews is finally due to come out, and decided not to say much about the project at this time, but did show off several interior pages. Also, Marvel plans to continue with their Power Pack limited series, this time teaming up the tiny teen heroes with Spider-Man.
Peter David also chose to announce the new regular artist on his book, X-Factor. Pablo Raimondi, who teamed up with Peter on the Madrox series that lead into X-Factor, starts working with issue 13. Poking fun at the rotating art teams the book has had in just the last year, Peter said, "We have a new artist. Why? Because it's issue 13!" Also coming from Peter David is a new limited series starring the Avenger Wonder Man, called Wonder Man: My Fair Supervillain, in which Simon Williams takes a young supervillainess under his wing to try and convert her to a heroine, much like the musical the story takes its name from.
So, with Marvel's panel kicking off the convention for me, I had a few more hours to kill, so hit the floor to wander and see what everyone had to show off. The item that most caught my eye must have been Diamond Select's upcoming replica of Beta Ray Bill's hammer, Stormbringer. Big, shiny, and golden, sitting right next to its 'brother' Mjolnir, the hammer of Thor. I've long been a fan of Beta Ray Bill, and Stormbringer just looked absolutely lovely. Diamond had a good number of their merchandise there, from busts to statues, to action figures, and all of it the usual high quality I've come to expect. There's a few busts coming up that definitely have my attention.
As if I hadn't had enough Marvel, the time eventually came to attend their panel for Civil War and all it's tie ins. Kicking it off, Joe Quesada asked the audience which people were on Captain America's side of the conflict, and Iron Man's. Surprisingly to me, it was split pretty much 50/50, with a slight edge to Captain America, which I did expect. I just didn't see coming that so many people would be on the side of registering superheroes, and it was rather interesting to find out just how many there are.
Marvel covered much of the same old ground with Civil War, talking about Spider-Man's unmasking, the superhero registration act, and the return of Thor, as well as brief mentions of all the various books the crossover is running into. They also went on to talk about some of the tangential books which weren't exactly working off the Civil War plot, but connected to the storylines that led up to these events. New Avengers 26 would take a break from the Civil War storyline, and showcase the return of Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye, long thought disappeared and or dead, as well as a miniseries featuring the Illuminati, the seven heroes whom had come together as a secret society behind the scenes of everything, and the book would reveal what they had been doing all these years.
My final panel of the day was to hit DC's DC Nation panel, which was pretty much open to fan questions the entire time, with very little direct promotion, mainly to learn what we like, and with each question that a fan asked, Dan Didio would ask something back to the fans. He started off asking the fans what storylines they liked in 52, with each meeting much applause, and Booster Gold receiving a few boos, because the fans feel that DC is 'totally dissing the guy' which Dan disputed. Once that ran it's course, I killed some more time checking stuff out, and hanging around the DC booth.
With Friday done and over with for me, I spent the evening sitting on the floor in my friends' room, chatting with them, showing off the photos I'd taken, and talking about what I'd seen.
So, I had my plans for Saturday set, starting off with finding Tony Daniel, and getting my sketch request in the queue. I was going to see Ultimate Avengers 2, even though I'm not a fan, but I won't turn away from a free movie, and was curious to see how it would come out. Because I was determined to catch Tony, I skipped that and staked out his table for most of the morning, until his brother turned up to take my request, and since I had nothing to do until the afternoon, made my presence known on the floor, taking pictures of things, booths, products, and people. And a pokemon or two.
I intended to go to the Marvel Cup O' Joe panel, but even though I got there early, the room was already filled to standing room only, out to the hall, so I went to DC's next panel, where they did have stuff to promote, as well as take questions. This panel had the usual DC faces, as well as Jim Starlin, Tony Daniel (Hey, there he is!), Keith Giffen, and Paul Levitz. Whom Dan Didio introduced to everyone after inhaling some helium from a balloon.
They first talked about DC's upcoming direct to DVD adaptations, much like Marvel's Ultimate Avengers films, but staying truer to the source material, such as Darwyn Cooke's New Frontier, and the Death of Superman. They also elaborated on the new Action Comics team, focusing on the writers Geoff Johns and Richard Donner, who made the first two Superman films. He's very excited to be working on the comics, and every time Geoff mentions something from the Superman mythos to him, his eyes light up, and Richard wants to know when they can work that into the stories.
The highlight of this panel for me was the girl who came up to the podium and asked about Devin Grayson coming back to work on Nightwing. The audience burst out into a chorus of boos. Devin has been very ill-recieved amongst the fans that I know, and seeing this person being booed, and the opinion of Grayson I've seen being backed up on such a large scale, was terribly amusing. Didio told her there was no plan in place to bring Devin back, but they had Marv Wolfman on tap, and his intial run was already extended for more issues, and everyone was looking forward to that.
Afterwards, I got in a few minutes with Will Pfeifer, current writer of Catwoman, chatting about his past works, mostly HERO, which was my introduction to his stuff, and had a very nice chat, as quick as it was.
Finishing of my Saturday convention activities, I went to the Vertigo panel, which was a long list of various projects being announced and talked about, from Pride of Bagdhad, a book about a group of lions loose in Iraq, Crossing Midnight, the tale of two twins, one born before midnight, the other after midnight, and the way their lives differ, a brand new tale of the classic Sandman, Scalped, a story of real American Indians, fighting for their tribe in the modern world, amongst many others, and the usual Veritgo subjects like Y: the Last Man, Fables, and Gaiman's Sandman.
That night was spent again with my friends, as we went out to a dinner, where everyone cleaned up very well, and had a good time unwinding and having fun over pasta and coffee.
Sunday was a quiet day, comparatively, and I spent most of my time hunting through the back issue bins and buying things. All weekend, I'd almost completely striked out trying to find any back issues I wanted at good prices, but Sunday, I hit the gold mine. Found many books I wanted, and many more I'd forgotten about, and finally got back to Tony Daniel's booth and picked up my sketch of the new character, who has yet to do any more than appear in a lone panel of Teen Titans, Miss Martian. Sadly, there was a crowd, he was busy, and I had a panel to get to, so I didn't get to properly thank Tony, so tons of thanks for making time to do the sketch Tony! It's definitely appreciated, and I wish I had a chance to properly thank you, and talk a bit more than I did.
With my booty in hand, I went to my one panel of the day, The Comic Book for the 21st Century, with Comflix and the folks from Silent Devil comics, introducing a new venture to adapt comics to a slightly animated format, with voice actors, music, and effects, to sell online for viewing on your computers, iPods, PSPs, or whatever you might want.
This is something I'm most interested in, since I love the idea of comics being available online, legally, and this is a most interesting way to go about it. Comics as they are don't interest me on the computer. I admittedly don't get wanting to read something sitting next to me on a computer screen, trying to scroll around and read it...just not my thing. But this idea, they're taking comics, using the original art as best they can, adding special effects like fire and glows, and the usual things you would expect in any movie, and then selling them online for around 99 cents a piece. They're kicking off with Silent Devil's Dracula vs. King Arthur comic which I've talked about in my regular column here, and was intrigued to see how they would adapt it.
They presented the first episode for the attendees there, and this thing, for what it is, was just amazing. Using the art and 'animating' it in much the same fashion as Ken Burns did to dramatise photos he used in his Civil War documentaries, and many others. With the voices, and music, and everything, it was literally watching the pages come to life. I eagerly hope this project takes off, because I would love to see more comics come out in this format. For 99 cents, to get an eight minute long serial, with all those things, is a bargain, compared to the same price for just three minutes on average, for music.
I even asked them about what sort of copy protection they would have on the videos, and while they weren't entirely clear, it sounded like there would be no protection on them. I'd definitely say it's worth swinging by http://www.comflix.net/ to check out their wares.
My convention experience was just about over, but I went to Marvel's trivia challenge, "Prize or No Prize". I made it through the first few rounds, and won several trade paperbacks, but opted out of the final round, because it involved raising your hand to try and be picked out of the crowd to answer questions, and I'd never see them pointing at me. My friend, however, did get picked, and stood up in their blue spotlight (A projector) and tried a few questions, but ultimately walked away with just some trade paperbacks of his own from the first few rounds.
And with one last thing to attend, I swung by the Pro vs. Fan Silver Age Trivia Challenge, with Mark Waid vs. several well known Silver Age fan experts. Mark couldn't actually make the con, so he attended the trivia challenge via cellphone, and put in a surprisingly good showing, still blowing away the competition. There were tons of jokes, and it was fun to watch, and even see how much I myself knew, including the answers to a few questions no one got right. I'd still never compete, I'm not that good!
All in all, I had an excellent time at the convention this year, got some great stuff, saw some great people, and had a great time at the panels. Next up for me, is heading out to Atlanta, for DragonCon! Look out for photos and reports from me in a month!
Jason M. Bourgeois
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