Mister Fanboy Comics' (Belated) Friday Comic-Con Report

Mister Fanboy Comics joins us with his impressions of Friday's Comic-Con:

Sorry that it's taken me so long to get this posted, but between the heat, going to the convention, traveling, and coming back to work, it's been hard to find time. Here are a few tidbits from my personal experiences at Comic-Con. Later in the week we'll troll the web for the best of the news and post it here. There is LOTS that we missed For now ...

*Tons of free stuff. We like free stuff.

**David Mack was gracious enough to sign tons of our comics. We brought the entire Alias run too (for which he did the covers) but decided against asking him to sign these as well so as to not monopolize his time. He probably would have done it anyway. But now we have another reason to go to another Con! He's super friendly and, even though you're probably tired of hearing us say this, he's the best artist working in comics today. He said he tries to go to a con a month and does a great job interacting with fans so keep your eyes posted to see if he'll be coming to a place near you.

***Edward James Olmos gave away too many spoilers at the Battlestar Galactica panel and no, we will not tell you.

****Snakes on a plane hype keeps building. Samuel L. Jackson attended his first con and was a bit surprised at the turnout, methinks.

*****At least 100,000 people attended this years con. We'll let you know when the #s are official.

******Gail Simone is very friendly and we had a long conversation about her new Atom series. I'm sold now. Should be fun.

*******Lots of folks in costumes I cannot identify. It's like the Legion of Super-Geeks out here, and we mean that in a good way.

********Comic-Con organizers require artists to cover nipples represented in art and the like at booths, the art show, etc. Personally, I think that they need to rethink that. Art is all about being free and telling the truth. Woman have nipples. Shocking, isn't it? We know that they are trying to keep this a family-friendly event, but we think it sucks. This rule was enforced even with the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, kind of like the ACLU for American Comics.

*********We've been to a lot of large professional conferences that were not half as well organized and fun as this. Hats-off to the Comic-Con organizers as we were really impressed. Yeah, it was crowded, but we knew that going into it. The free shuttles were great.

**********Not only can you buy comics at these events, but there are lots of panel discussions on everything from what's gonna happen next with Batman to scholarly deconstructions of characters. Tres cool. Additionally, at least half the Con focuses on TV, films, and the like. It's like a pop-culture grab bag.

***********It was too fucking hot this weekend. God only knows who the guy in the Chewbacca costume survived.

************Richard Kelly's (Donnie Darko) new film, Southland Tales, will be preceded by 3 graphic novels, the first of which is in bookstores and comic shops now. The film was reportedly booed at the Cannes Film Festival and stars everyone from Justin Timberlake to Jeneanne Garofolo to Kevin Smith. Alluding to that, Kelly told us that the film was not done at the time and they only sent it to Cannes to interest a distributor who would pump in cash allowing them to finish the film (it was being done independently). It worked, Sony's put up the money to allow them to finish their post-apocalyptic epic. We saw a clip for the film, which portends it to be really good in a weird way, or really bad. We don't see a middle ground here. Still, we'll give it the benefit of the doubt based on his track record alone. When asked by a fan about a Donnie Darko 2 film that would take a look at the parallel worlds, Kelly commented that he needs to move on with his career. Perhaps many years from now, but don't count on it.

That's it for now. More on Saturday later.

--Mister Fanboy Comics