Comicon

[Teleku]

So, Comicon International in San Diego has been going on the last few days, which I always attend every year (benefit of living in San Diego).  I've had a fun couple of days so far, and figured I would write down some of the random crap I've learned from attending various panels, in case anybody gives a rat’s ass.  I don’t know how much of this is actually new information or rehashed information, so I'm just going to say it right now to be safe: 

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Comicon Day 1 and 2:

Marvel:  Civil War Panel

I started reading the Civil War crossover comics recently, and having nothing better to do, decided to attend this.  They had quite a number of panelists, whose names I have forgotten (except I remember the guy who did Babylon 5 was there).  Here's a picture:


So, random tidbits.  Keep in mind I'm a very casual comic reader, and have little personal info about the greater background of the marvel universe's history (other than basic character origins):
Thor makes a return in Issue #3 of Civil War.
Spiderman becomes more conflicted with Tony Starks stance and eventually breaks with him.
As Wolverine uncovers conspiracy around Nitro, he fights some random mutants he's never fought before, whom they wouldn't say.
There are sleeper cells in Atlantis conspiring against Namor.
Mutants finally say fuck it and primarily all go against registration.
There is a split in the X-men, and basically the members of the original team form one group, with rest forming around bishop.  Forgot which side which is on.
New Mighty Avengers.  "Return of the leisure suit wonder man."  I have no idea what that means.  I'm not even sure if I'm saying the name of the hero right.
Split in the Fantastic 4, Ben leaves the country.
They wanted to do less X-men stuff for Civil War since they felt X-men have been over used.
Guy in charge of Ultimates promises the series will be finished by the end of the year or everybody gets to punch him in the taint at next years Comicon.
Wolverine #50 will start concentrating on the relationship of him and Sabertooth.
When asked, they promised they weren't going to undo Peter’s identity reveal using Wanda or something.
Joe Quesada will be on the Colbert Report on July 27th.

Family Guy/American Dad Panel

So they had a bunch of the writers/creators of these two shows (except Seth McFarland who they called and annoyed with a cell phone.  They stuck the phone up to the mic and he did stewie/quagmire voices.  Was funny.), and they basically just said some of the things they were working on for episodes in the next season.  They also played the first 10 minutes of the first episodes of American Dad and Family guy’s next season.  Both were very funny.  I would have taken video with my digital camera, but from the very beginning they were yelling that no picture or video taking would be tolerated, and had people actively walking up and down the rows looking for violators.  Ah well, some random info about family guy (I don’t watch American Dad, so I didn’t really pay attention to what they said, though I admit it sounded funny.):

Episode #100 is coming up.  The title of it is “Stewie Kills Lois”
One guy is working on an episode called Blue Harvest where all the characters are portrayed as starwars characters.
Another is working on an episode where conservative Christians come to Megs school and preach abstinence, getting all the condoms taken away.  So all the students start fucking each other in the ear for fun.
Another is working on an episode were peter finds out he’s not an American citizen and is actually a Mexican immigrant.
They thought the south park making fun of them was hilarious, and make references to it all the time while they work.
Both shows new seasons debut Sept. 10th.

George RR Martin Panel:

He read the first chapter of the next book to everybody (the ENTIRE THING).  Then took random questions.  The most important thing was that he didn’t say anything about the progress of the next book.  So shit.

I was somewhat interested in going to this panel for comedy sake, but decided on the George RR Martin Panel instead:

12:00-1:00 Snoop Dogg’s Hood of Horror— It's ghouls gone wild as EC Comics gets the urban treatment in this hip hop horror anthology hosted by the Hound of Hell, Snoop Dogg. Join Snoop for an exclusive sneak peek and Q&A along with co-writer/producer Tim Sullivan (2001 Maniacs, Driftwood), producer Martin Shore, and cast members Billy Dee Williams (Star Wars), Ernie Hudson (Ghostbusters), Danny Trejo (Devil's Rejects), Daniella Alonso (One Tree Hill, Wrong Turn 2) and Brande Roderick (Baywatch, Starsky & Hutch). Room 20

I think I made the right choice.

Starwars Panel:

So, they had the head of Lucas films fan relations there for a panel, to discuss all the future Star Wars shit that is coming out.  They heavily pimped the new “Original” cut that is coming out, that they took from the Laser Disc.  They took all the bitching about not remastering it good-naturedly, promising that the quality was excellent, and that they where going to show a clip of it so we could see.  Then showed a clip that was all horribly fuzzy and fucked up.  They then showed the clip over again as it really was, and the quality did look OK to me, though still kind of faded.  But maybe that’s just because I haven’t watched the original Starwars in a long time, and forgot what the film quality looked like.  He swore though they went frame by frame retouching the whole thing.  They then proceeded to talk about lots of other random crap:

Lego Starwars 2 is coming out, and it takes place in episode 4-6 universes this time, and not the prequels.  It actually looked really fucking hilarious, though I never played the original.  I guess now you can swap heads around and go kill people with yoda’s head on princess leia’s gold bikini body or something like that.
They are going to have two Starwars floats at the Rose Parade next year to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the movies, and are going to recruit hundreds of Storm troopers from clubs all across America, Europe, and Asia to be in it………….
They are working on a Live Action Starwars TV series.  It takes place between episodes 3 and 4, and they are working on stories for it.  It will probably debut by “the end of the decade”……
They are working on a CG Starwars television series, which takes place during the clone wars, after Anakin has become a Jedi.  Suppose to be “gritty war story” type of stories (I’ll believe it when I see it).  That should debut in 2008.
Lucas arts is working on two new video games for the “next gen consoles”.  One is an Indiana Jones game, and one is a Starwars game.  They are suppose to use this new engine they developed called “Euphoria”, which basically promises all the usual amazing AI crap that Black & White and Hero promised us.  It’s also supposed to have an amazing physics engine where you can interact with “everything in the world”.  They did show clips from the game which looked pretty neat, and even gave a live action tech demo of Indian Jones on a bridge that they kept shaking, and showing how he reacts to it.  Still, they basically promised a game engine that has all the usual advanced AI promises, and physics system better than HL2.  We’ll see.  They are not as far along on the Starwars game, and just showed us concept stuff the team pitched to Lucas to get him to sign on to it.  In short, they basically want to make this game with Jedi’s: http://www.gametrailers.com/player.php?id=9855&pl=game&type=mov
They have no plans currently on releasing Starwars for HD-DVD, choosing to wait to see what formats gain the biggest market penetration.
They are planning on making games for the Wii.

Snakes On A Plane Panel:
I was very stoked for the panel, considering how retarded the whole movie concept is.  I forgot to read the fine print though, and New Line started out the Panel by pimping Final Destination 3.  Kenan Thompson came out to host the whole thing (sadly).  They brought the director and two lead actors from Final Destination 3 out, and asked them stupid questions for awhile.  I guess on the DVD they are going to allow you to stop the movie before a death happens and pick some action (such as Live or Die, Step Left or Step Right), and you get to see different deaths or different stories.  Or something.  Hurray.  They were going to show clips from the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but decided to skip it (THANK GOD), saying the clips were too “scary”.  I think they just realized the audience was getting pissed after the Final Destination interruption.  After that, I was happy to see they showed info for “The Pic of Destiny” by Tenacious D.  Jack Black and the other guy didn’t come, but they made a special video for Comicon to talk about the film.  Then they showed 10 minutes of it that was fucking hilarious.  It consisted of Jack Black as a kid rocking out, then his parents punishing him.  Then he prays to a poster of Dio for answers, at which point Dio comes alive in the poster and tells him what to do.  ALL of this is done singing like in the style of a Rock Opera.  Fucking awsome.   Looking forward to seeing it now.
   Finally, they got to snakes on a plane.  They showed all sorts of photoshoped posters’ people had made on the internet, and had the lead snake handler for the film bring out all sorts of giant snakes to the stage, including a 20 foot Anaconda.  Then they brought out the director and Samuel L. Jackson.  They had fan questions, which was hilarious due to the stupidity.  Samuel L. Jackson is fucking hilarious and was slamming people left and right.  They showed us 10 minutes of the film, which was pretty awesome.  Just shit loads of snakes biting people in face repeatedly, with Samuel L. Jackson running around and smashing their heads into the wall, or shocking them with tasers, or using a homemade flamethrower to fry them.  This movie is pure gold.  Overall, hilarious panel, except for Kenan Thompson cracking awful jokes the whole time.


Apparently they are working on a Stardust movie, and had a panel about it with Neil Gaiman and several others discussing it.  I wanted to go, but decided I really needed to eat lunch.  So oh well.  They are also making a movie of Dead or Alive, staring “Jaime Pressly, Holly Valance, Sarah Carter, and Natassia Malthe”.  I was going to see it for much the same reasons I was going to see Snoop Dog degrade himself further, so I’m not really crying I missed it as well.  But hey, at least it had boobies.  Also, there is a new television show comming out called "Heros", about several people suddenly finding they have various superpowers.  My friends went and watched the episode they primered while I was listening to George RR Martin read for 45 fucking minutes, and they all swore it was really good.  So you might want to check it out.

That’s all for now, I'm going to several more panels tomorrow, including the Lost: Season 3 panel.  I'm kind of torn though because the Adult Swim Panel and the Ghost Rider/Spiderman 3 Panel are at the same time.  While I don’t really give a damn about Ghost Rider or the fact that Nicholas Cage is going to be there answering questions, Sam Raimi is going to be there talking about Spiderman 3.  Still, the adult swim panel was hilarious last year, and they are going to have almost all the creators of the shows attending this year.  I’ll probably go to it, and just have some friends tell me what I missed out on concerning Spiderman.

[bhodi]

Get this man a colored name!

[stray]

Not one word on Rosario here either. Pfft.

Also:

http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=7642.0

[HaemishM]

There is a split in the X-men, and basically the members of the original team form one group, with rest forming around bishop.  Forgot which side which is on.

Bishop is FOR registration, which makes no goddamn sense, IMO.

New Mighty Avengers.  "Return of the leisure suit wonder man."  I have no idea what that means.  I'm not even sure if I'm saying the name of the hero right.

You got it right. New Mighty Avengers will still be Bendis, so it'll still suck but the art will be pretty (Frank Cho). Leisure Suit Wonder Man refers to a costume he wore in the '80's with a terrible red leisure suit. Love the character, but he's always had a shitty costume.

Guy in charge of Ultimates promises the series will be finished by the end of the year or everybody gets to punch him in the taint at next years Comicon.

Finished forever? That'd be a shame, it's about 100 times better than the MU Avengers book.

When asked, they promised they weren't going to undo Peter’s identity reveal using Wanda or something.

Which means Spider-Man books will continue to spiral downward into a Clone Saga level cesspool of shittiness.

[Velorath]

Finished forever? That'd be a shame, it's about 100 times better than the MU Avengers book.

Volume 2 will be finished which will also be the end of the current creative team.  Volumes 3 and 4 will be done by Loeb and Madureira.

[Kryptec]

Shame about the Gaiman panel - you should have skipped lunch for it. Saw him in a reading and Q&A a couple of years ago and he was the highlight of my Comicon experience by far, surpassing even the hobbits with the incrediibly large and incredibly fake hairy feets. Man's comedy gold in person.

[Llava]

Finished forever? That'd be a shame, it's about 100 times better than the MU Avengers book.

Volume 2 will be finished which will also be the end of the current creative team.  Volumes 3 and 4 will be done by Loeb and Madureira.

Erg.

I liked Hush, but I just don't see Loeb doing this as well as Millar has.

[bhodi]

Shame about the Gaiman panel - you should have skipped lunch for it. Saw him in a reading and Q&A a couple of years ago and he was the highlight of my Comicon experience by far, surpassing even the hobbits with the incrediibly large and incredibly fake hairy feets. Man's comedy gold in person.

Agreed. He stopped by the audiobook studios to do an interview for the American Gods audiotape, and he talked about himself and how he came up with the book, and what he's planning for the future, and they included it at the end of the tape.

He talks about his disappointment in the Neverwhere script, and one time at a dinner party, talking with a guy who sort of looked at him with distain when he said he did comic books:
'Oh hang on, you're Neil Gaiman! My dear fellow, you don't write comics, you write graphic novels!'  'I felt much like a hooker who had just been told she was a "lady of the evening"'

[Teleku]

Comicon Days 3 and 4

Ok, so, just finished up the last day.  Kind of got screwed on Saturday for panels.  Due to getting delayed trying to help friends get registered, I didn’t make it over to the Lost panel until about 15 minutes before it started.  Now, normally this isn’t a problem at all, as it’s never usually hard to get into a panel.  However, 15 minutes before it started, the giant ballroom they where using was at FULL capacity, and had the most amazingly long line stretching down and all the way around the convention floor to get in.  I knew I wasn’t getting in.  This was due to the twin factor that it was Saturday (which always has the most people) and it was Lost.  Oh well.

Me and the person I was with just went and wasted time down on the convention floor, not knowing that at the same time the Lost panel was going on, the panel for the movie version of 300 with Frank Millar was going on.  Another friend went to that one, neglecting to tell me.  He said it was awesome, and they showed some scenes from the film.  Oh well.

300
So, second hand information about 300 from him:
It looks awesome.
They are using the exact same style as they did for Sin City.  Looks very similar he said.
Looks really violent.
There was a hot chick naked and a sex scene.

Sounds like it might be good, though I don’t remember any sex in the comics, so I’m not sure how exact its going to be.  Then again, it wasn’t the longest comic in the world, so I guess they need to add filler.  And why not boobies.  My friend did say that somebody asked the question, “I noticed how you are showing the relationship between men and women, but what about the relationship between the soldiers?”  Millar quickly responded, “It’s a work of fiction.”

Robotech

During this time also, another friend was at the panel for Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles.  Yes, they are making a new Robotech series.  From his brief description, he says it’s a direct sequel to the old series, starting right at the same time as the last episode of the old series.  It’s actually built from the ground up by them (or from the Koreans they hired to draw it for them I should say) instead of being stolen this time, though a lot of the battles are all done in CG.  So yeah.

Grind House

So next we decided to go to the Kevin Smith panel.  I’m not really looking forward to Clerks 2, but Kevin Smith is funny and we all figured it would be worth it.  So to make sure we got into it, we came in and sat down half way into the panel that was right before it.  This panel turned out to be about a new zombie movie called Grind House, being duel directed by Quinton Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.  Both of them and the cast was there (A bunch of chicks.  Two of which I remember being Rosario Dawson, Rose McGowan, and some chick that was on Xena and is normally a stunt double).  Since it was at the end, all we got to hear was the stupid questions.  All I learned from this panel is that the movie is violent, one of the actress’s has a machine gun leg in the movie, and Quinton Tarantino is a loud mouth arrogant ass.  Robert Rodriguez seemed pretty cool though.

Unfortunately, they announced that Kevin Smith was late, and asked that Tarantino and Rodriguez stay on stage an extra 30 minutes.  So I got another 30 minutes of stupid questions.  Then they showed a trailer for a really stupid looking movie called Beer Fest.  Then they announced that Kevin Smith was still 30 miles away, and stuck in horrific traffic.  We gave up on the panel and left.  I went upstairs and sat down to the end of the Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausan, and Forry Ackerman panel, where I listened to them talk about the good old days and bitch about the current days.  Oh well.

Marvel Movies

So after this we next went to the Marvel Studio’s Production panel.  I took a bunch of notes, and was going to write down everything that was said, but then I noticed Velorath linked an article in the thread he started (sorry, forgot to check the Comics forum for a Comicon thread.  But hey, I’m covering a little more than just comic stuff, so it kind of counts as general ;) ) that summarized it way better than I could.  So yeah, just read it: http://www.newsarama.com/SDCC06/Marvel/films.html.  That’s basically a complete summary.

Adult Swim

After this, a friend and I went to the Adult Swim Panel, while others went an hour early to make sure they had a seat for the Ghost Rider/ Spiderman 3 panel.  Not much to really say about the adult swim panel.  It was fucking hilarious, and they had the creators for pretty much every single show except 12 oz mouse.  They introduced each of them, and then played a clip the creators had put together of there material they are working on for comicon.  I took very crappy video with my digital camera of the Robot Chicken clips, Venture Brothers clip, and the clip they showed of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie they are working on.  I’ll upload it and link it if the mods are ok with that.  It hasn’t really been released, so I don’t know if that’s bad yet :p. 

The funniest thing about the panel was the Moral Orel people.  Apparently, Moral Orel was canceled. They didn’t take it very well.  They where being rude, insulting people, and making complete asses of themselves.  The main guy had actually brought a bottle of vodka with him, which they took away.  You could tell he was completely smashed.  He started attacking the venture brother guys (who apparently got there spot), making fun of the fact they dyed their hair and how they couldn’t be funny.  They where throwing shit into the audience, talking over other panelists, and one of them even jumped up on the table and rubbed the mic into his crotch.  Seth Green kept trying to get the panel back on track, but they kept fucking it up.  The head guy of adult swim was moderating it, and you could tell he was getting pissed.  I was really afraid it was going to escalate and security was going to have to come.  They just utterly destroyed their careers.  It was awesome!

Spiderman 3 / Ghost Rider

Meanwhile, at the other panel, my friends all had a blast.  Only thing they said about Ghost Rider was that in the clip they showed, the transformation Nicholas Cage goes through to his flaming skeleton looked cool.  However, once he was actually in it, he looked retarded.  Both Cage and Ava Mendez were there.  They said Nicholas Cage sounded like he was on medication, like he normally does.

As for Spiderman 3, Sam Raimi showed up, and they apparently showed a really awesome sequence of clips from the movie.  They then surprised the crowed by bringing out the ENTIRE cast of the movie, and had a Q&A session.  Some random things they remember:
Venom is in fact going to be a Villain in the movie.
Sam Raimi actually never really liked the Venom character because he wasn’t a human character, and more of just a monster.  However, he changed his mind about including him when he read the treatment the writers gave him.  Apparently they are going to try and make this Venom more “human”.
Harry will not be the Hobgoblin or another goblin in general.  He’s just going to be Harry trying to kill Peter with his Dad’s technology.
They aren’t currently planning on a Spiderman 4, and they finish up most of the stuff they have set up throughout the movies in this movie.  But they aren’t ruling out #4, and have left a few things open to explore.

I didn't really go to any panels on the last day.  The only one that remotly interested me was the Neverwinter Nights 2 panel, where they where suppose to demo the game, talk about its features, and take questions.  I was really burned out though, and everybody else I was with as well, and we ended up skipping it.  Oh well.

[Ironwood]

Thanks for your efforts.

[HaemishM]

Finished forever? That'd be a shame, it's about 100 times better than the MU Avengers book.

Volume 2 will be finished which will also be the end of the current creative team.  Volumes 3 and 4 will be done by Loeb and Madureira.

Fuck. I fully expect it to go into Bizarro territory.

[Teleku]

And yes, sorry, I meant that the Ultimate’s 2 series would be finished.  I don’t know why, but they do all the story arcs as volumes for ultimate’s.  What’s wrong with Loeb exactly?  Only thing of Loeb's I'm familiar with is Hush, and I liked that quite a bit.

Looking back I realize I don’t really have a lot of real new info up there, but hopefully it interested somebody.

On a side note, Comicon kind of serves as a ghetto E3 as well, as most all the major game companies set up booths to show off what they are working on.  SquareEnix and Nintendo had a really big presence this year actually (had a massive booth with 100 DS lites for people to play with).  Mythic had a booth set up where they had a playable version of Warhammer (which they informed me was a Pre-alpha version....).  I'm going to assume it was the same as shown at E3.  I played around with it for awhile, and while I like the artwork alot, the whole damn thing was just like WoW.  Only real new thing I saw was the addition of the moral bar, which increases the more you fight something.  The higher it goes the more powerful ability you can activate.  So, basically, every class in Warhammer has a Rage bar as well.  Their PvP system better damn well be awesome, cause right now that looks like all it has going for it (other than graphical style).  Also, they informed me the release date right now was going to be Fall 2007.  For some reason I was thinking they were alot farther along with the game than that.....
I kind of felt sorry for the guys at the booth though.  During the time I sat there and played around with the game, I heard about 7 different people walk by and say, "Oh cool, is that world of warcraft?", or "That looks just like world of warcraft!", or something like that.  Then you had the asshates coming straight into the booth and arguing with them about how it was a rip off of World of Warcraft.

Speaking of which, Blizzard had a small booth set up with a playable version of the Burning Crusade (same version as at E3 they informed me).  Didn't really find out anything new that isn't well known already.  Except maybe what happens if you throw yourself off the edge of the world into the twisting nether.  The answer being you fall for about 5 minutes straight then suddenly die.  In case you didn't guess.  Overall, I think whole purpose of the booth was meant as an elaborate practical joke to be played on the people running it.  For, you see, they announced the Paladin/Shaman faction cross over half way through the Con.  The next day after the announcement, the Blizzard booth had easily twice as many people jammed around it, arguing and bitching with the attendants, as if they had any control over anything.

[Velorath]

And yes, sorry, I meant that the Ultimate’s 2 series would be finished.  I don’t know why, but they do all the story arcs as volumes for ultimate’s.  What’s wrong with Loeb exactly?  Only thing of Loeb's I'm familiar with is Hush, and I liked that quite a bit.

A lot of people thought Hush didn't live up to the hype.  I've only glanced at it really so I can't really say much about it.  Loeb has a reputation for being very hit and miss I guess would be the best way to put it and it will be hard for him or any other writer to capture the "feel" that makes Ultimates popular.  I'm not really sure who I would have chosen to follow Millar though.  Morrison maybe?

[HaemishM]

Morrison would write a good series of Ultimates, which would then be utterly fucked by whoever followed him.

Loeb... I just don't think he's a great team guy. I didn't really think Hush was all that, partly because I think Jim Lee's art is just too excruciatingly precise, lacking a lot of the style of the people he was influenced by. But the whole Hush character has just left me cold. Superman and Batman was good to start out with, but he kind of lost his way with that one over the long haul, as well as missing deadlines (understandable with the death of his boy). I'm just not sure he can stay focused on the story long enough to make it as good as its predecessors.