Comic-Con Bound

As we write this, we are stranded in the airport, bound for San Diego. We will make it there tonight (supposedly), though too late to go through registration tonight. That means we'll have the privilege of waiting in line with thousands of our new best friends tomorrow morning. Sigh. Nonetheless, we'll try our best to post our pix during the con with as many (lamely) witty captions as we can muster - that is if we feel like lugging our way-too-heaving laptop through the convention hall.

We can tell you that we only brought 29 comics to get signed this year, over a 50% reduction from last year. That will free us up for more panels and pop-culture goodness. We hope to issues from the following titles signed: Sword, Spider-Woman: Origin, Girls, Wonder Woman, Manhunter, Secret Invasion, Kabuki, White Tiger, Ultra and more that we can't recall at the moment. Airports completely sap all energy away from us for reasons we can't explain. It's like they pump anesthesia into the air conditioning. If it sounds like we are babbling, it's because we are: We are waiting for out laptop to charge and are sitting on very uncomfortable industrial carpet ... On that note our ass hurts and it's time to move to a pleather chair.

Comic-Con Day 3 Report

Note: Blogger hates us as it's not letting us add images. Pix at a later date.

Day 3 was a blast. Our interepid Mister Fanboy Staff photographers were out and about. No doubt about it. The crowds were not nearly as thick as last year’s Saturday at Comic-Con, and thankfully the AC stayed on this year as well (if not a bit too cold).

We finally got the entire run of Alias signed by scribe Brian Michael Bendis and cover artiste David Mack. Bendis also signed some choice New Avengers issues for us. Mack also completed signing our entire collection of Kabuki issues, and his DVD. Additionally, we made some fine purchases of Kabuki related merchanside includeing a poster and a black tee, as well as a print of a Mack cover piece from Daredevil.

Rosario Dawson struck a funny pose while signing issues of her own comic.

My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way caused quite a stir with his appearance.

Jeph Loeb did some signings as well, but was off the beaten path in this pic away from Marvel (we forget where).

Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddie Krueger was out and about as well.

We totally enjoyed the Babylon 5 panel about today’s release of the direct-to-DVD feature, which featured Bruce Boxleitner, Tracy Scoggins, and Peter Woodward along with JMS. The crowd was huge. Sadly, our pix were stolen by the Shadows.

We also ran into Ghostbuster’s Ernie Hudson in the line at Starbucks, but the Shadows stole those pictures as well.

Milla Jovovich was very gracious and friendly while promoting the upcoming release of the 3rd installment of Resident Evil. Heroes’ Ali Larter, also in the film, seemed to really be eating up all of the attention she’s been getting of late, and we don’t mean that in a good way.

A clip of Sam Raimi’s upcoming adaptation of the excellent comic 30 Days of Night scared us shitless – and we already know what happens in the film. It stars Josh Hartnett and Ben Foster (X-Men’s Angel).

We also attended the Masquerade Ball, for which we will have a seperate post.



Wondering where our sense of humor went? Ali Larter ate it.

Comic-Con day 1 Report:

Day 1 has come and gone and we’re not sure what we’ve got to show for it. Perhaps it’s because we only visited one full and two half panels. Perhaps it was the early flight, checking into our hotel and the late arrival. Or maybe it was the ½ mile line just for pre-registered attendees to register. On top of all of that, we totally dropped the ball in taking photos and the ones we did pretty much sucked. Whatever our problems were, here’s a blow by blow …

The line to register sucked. We did not encounter nearly as many problems and we cannot tell you why. Let’s be honest. Comic-Con needs to consider a different location. It’s grown way too unwieldy for San Diego to handle – and we really like San Diego. Perhaps Vegas? And we’re not just saying that because we live there. We’re saying that because there’s lots more convention space and accommodations.

The exhibit hall was packed, as we expected. Saturday will just be insane. Last we heard they had less than 2000 tickets for tomorrow left, so we wouldn’t be surprised if it already sold out.

David Mack continued to be very gracious and signed about 15 issues for us. We also bought his new children’s book The Shy Creatures, which spun out of Kabuki: Alchemy in a way.

It’ll be out in bookstores and ye oldde comic shoppes soon. We warned him that we had more to bring each day this weekend. He truly is the nicest and one of the most talented guys in the industry today. He’s at the Image booth if you’re able to attend. His significant other – her name escapes me unfortunately – is very kind as well. We’ll be back there tomorrow and will hopefully get some pix.

Mondo Marvel Panel: Oddly, it seemed anticlimactic. Sure they announced a new Captain Marvel title, but after Civil War: The Return who didn’t see that coming. JMS was interesting … but we’re more interested in his panel on the new Babylon 5 direct-to-DVD title out next week.

It was announced that Marvel beat DC at their annual softball game 16-9, which oddly mirrors Marvels recent sales dominance in terms of $’s. Other things we’re announced that we didn’t care too much about. Way too much discussion of the Iron Man movie for our tastes (we admit, we never warmed up to the creator, regardless of his sheer disckishness a la Civil War).

Film director and well known actor Jon Favre stopped by. Machine Man will be showing up as a supporting character in Ms. Marvel and will be drinking a lot (yippee). That’s about all we remember.

We also accidentally went to the 1st half of a panel on the new Demon’s of Mercy game, for which Marvel did an exclusive comic that we got.

Amber Benson (Buffy’s Tera) did one of the voices. She looked stoned as a goat.

Marvel handed out variant editions of New Avengers #31 (the Skrull issue), but it’s basically a B and W rendering of the original cover. But still, it’s nice.

After a very leisurely dinner, we couldn’t get a seat for the upcoming Superman/Doomsday DVD, which didn’t sadden us too much. We did attend the Kung Fun/Superhero Film Extravaganza which we truly liked. However, all of the walking and traveling of the day really hit us and we had to take the shuttle back to our hotel for some shuteye, but we thought we’d do this post for you all first.

Finally we did pick up some swag for our dear friend Amy Reads over at Arrogant Self-Reliance, that we’ll give her the details about next week. Sorry we’ve been so bad about visiting the blog lately Amy. More swag updates tomorrow.

That’s all for today. Not too sure if we’ll have internet access during the rest of the stay or not. If not, look for an update on Monday.

David Mack: Alchemy of Art DVD In Stores This Week

We received the following bulletin from David via his Myspace page. Yes, we have one too. Don't ask. It's Cat's - errr, we mean Phil's fault.

In stores this Week!You can see the trailer of it and order it direct from
herovideoproductions.com.Let me know what you think.

We're hoping we - and you - can get it at our local comic shop tomorrow. By the way, the most recent Kabuki: Reflections looks to be a nice complement to the DVD, or a stand alone piece if you prefer. David Mack Guide has links to trailers for the David Mack: Alchemy of Art DVD. As regular readers know, Mack's our favorite artist working in comics today. He's also genuinely friendly and gracious with fans. If you see him at a con, don't be shy.