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

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

Again, sorry that it's taken me so long to get this posted. Here are a few tidbits from my personal experiences at Comic-Con on Saturday. 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 ...

*Thank God/gods/goddess(es) that they had free shuttles running. The 4 block walk to get lunch at Noon wilted us and we were dripping with sweat before we reached our destination.
**Crowds! After speaking to someone who was working on organizing shuttles for the con, the line just to buy tickets completely wrapped around the entire convention center and then blocks further along the bay. Mid-day they stopped selling tix for Sat. and only sold them for Sunday. Apparently, they capped the # of tickets sold for Sunday on Sat. as well. Having said that, it didn't seem that crowded, except for choke points in the main hall (kind of like major intersections in a city) and popular panel presentations.
***Kazuo Koike received a resounding welcome from the crowd for his first US con appearance. Koike is the creator of the Lone Wolf and Cub and Samurai Executioner series. For him, the most important aspect in creating works is a good character rather than a plot or event driven story. He was clearly surprised by the sheer #s of folks attending. However, because of the language barriers and the translation lag, we jumped next door to hear from ...
****Joe Quesada, Marvel's Editor-In-Chief at his Cup O' Joe panel. We missed the presentation but we came in to hear questions from audience members. Not much "news" to report from this. Still lots of hints that Speedball won't survive Civil War. Joe is still bemoaning the fact that Peter Parker married Mary Jane and there are still fans bemoaning the fact that Joe's bemoaning it. Joe still won't tell us what other major aspect of the Marvel universe he wants to change (the infamous genies in the bottles), the first being the sheer # of mutants. Mister Fanboy Comics asked Joe for more information on the recent pitch David Mack made to him that was reported previously. Quesada said it was too early to discuss (no surprise there). Mister Fanboy comics asked of the cast of New Excalibur would be affected with Civil War (since there are Americans on that book, such as Dazzler, Juggernaut and Sage(?)). Quesada responded that with the health problems of author Chris Claremont, much of what they had hoped to do had to be sidelined until Chris finishes recuperating. Quesada expressed confidence that Chris will deal with it in some way upon his return. There were a number of DC fans who attended the panel praising Marvel's recent work expressing dissatisfaction with DC's Infinite Crisis. When asked if he's see any more Marvel vs. DC books in the future, Quesada confirmed that DC honchos have publicly said that such crossovers will never happen while Quesada was EIC. Lots more was said but we'll troll through last week's news to give you the cream of the crop as soon as possible.
*****We purchased two old Kabuki comics directly from David Mack and he signed them for us as well.
******Our other purchase was the Battle Royale live-action DVD that was recently issued and hard to find. We'll have a review up as soon as we have to view it.
*******We forgot to mention in Friday's roundup that we attended a panel on the acceptance of comics in Museums that focused on a show curated by LA's Hammer Museum and that is currently traveling the country.
********Kevin Smith's panel was 'sold out"-- No surprise.
*********We attended a poster session by various academics about comics in society. We spent a good deal of time speaking to Christian Hill of CSU Fullerton and his paper on Gallery Comics in Museum. We both agreed that most large metropolitan museums on the coasts may be ready to accept comics in galleries, but that many cities in smaller museums haven't made the leap that we both agreed was inevitable.
**********Just for fun, we attended a panel on writing that included Stephen Grant (Punisher), Tom DeFalco (Spider-Girl) and Kurt Busiek (Astro City). Robert Kirkman (Invincible) was a no-show. One of the most useful bits of advice they gave was for aspiring writers to submit pitches based on established characters so that editors can see that the writer can do regular stories. Further, they suggested getting published anywhere -- independent comic publishers, TV, film, etc. is a major help. Persevere. Incidentally, we happened to sit next to a voice actor (unfortunately, we lost his name) who does the voice of Superman on a recently released Justice League video game. He was a very nice guy.
***********We also forgot to mention that on Friday we attended the premier screening of Ultimate Avengers 2 which focuses on Black Panther and Wakanda. It was a huge success with the crowd.
************The Happy Tree Friends screenings at the G4 booth were riotous, popular and so very wrong.
*************We attended the premier of Teen Titans: Trouble in Tokyo premier that was also well-received by the crowd, irregardless of the fact that it is targeted to a young audience. Parts of it are quite funny. We see romance for two characters. We're not sure of the release date, but don't believe it will be until next year at the earliest.
**************That was it for us. Now it was time for us to go out drinking ...

--Mister Fanboy Comics.