Drunken Comics Rage

 . . .Back to Reality.

Nothing like coming in the first day back from comic nerd Mecca and having work kick you straight in the nuts. I hadn't even set my shit down in my cube when I come to find that I have all day meetings for the rest of the week to learn a tool that I'm not going to support ultimately but will likely teach to someone they will hire in, who will make more money than me.

It's really unsporting I must say.

Anyhow, in the few momnets I had to form my owns thoughts today I struggled with how best to present the whole Con experience to everyone. The sheer magnitude of the things to report on is really rather daunting. After creating my little day by day schedule I knew I'd maybe hit half of the things I really wanted to from the list. In reality you get so caught up in everything that I maybe hit half of the half I thought I'd hit. So how do I explain all that? Do I go day by day? Really high level overviews of everything? Explicit details of the best bits from the weekend? Can I even piece together enough of Thursday night to make sense to me let alone you all? You see the dilemma.

I do know we won't be covering the actual comic announcement stuff in any level of detail. In fact, I'll barely mention them unless I thought they were really cool (which most weren't). I figure the big dog comics blogs will have covered that shit seven differents ways by now. I've got nothing of value to add to that. I'm here to talk about my experience. The rest of you are just along for the ride.

So I guess since I made mention of it, we'll start with Thursday at the Con and then Thursday night. The day started fairly simple with just a quick cruise of the exhibit hall floor. By the end of the weekend I must have walked that exhibit floor two dozen times or more and I know I still missed shit. Anyhow, I went from there to a DC panel on Countdown. I won't get into details on that now as I think the comparison between the DC and Marvel panels likely deserves its own post.

Easily the highlight of the day was the Paramount Pictures presentation mid-afternoon. A little known secret to our merry band of travelers, we accidentally ditched about two thirds of the line to get in due to some seriously bad directions from security. But thank gawd we did, otherwise I'm fairly confident we'd have missed the thing entirely. As we were walking into the auditorium they lady at the fron door was telling us "hurry, it's almost full".

Paramount pretty much went balls out on this one. They covered Hot Rod (normally not my kind of movie, but it did look funny), busted out a teaser poster for Sweeny Todd (which we all got), and talked about the Spiderwick Chronicles, which was pretty neat looking kids fantasy story. JJ Abrams teased his unnamed monster flick coming out in January, which we also got a poster for. Neil Gaiman covered Stardust and Beowulf, which of course looked awesome. With Gaiman involved in both flicks you have to think the best of them.

But we all know what the the highlights are by now don't we?

Well first, this man came out.

After messing with the crowd for a minute, he produced some footage from Iron Man in the form of a mock trailer. Let me tell you, even though it was a mock up of a trailer, it might as well be the legit trailer. Because when it was done, all 6000 people in that auditorium lost their fucking minds cheering. I'm here to tell you, if the flick lives up to the trailer, we're in for a kick ass movie. Even more frightening was the fact that Favreau told the crowd they had just started with the CGI effects. All but the last three shots of the trailer were  "normal" effects.

We got a live feed from the set of Indy 4 with Spielberg, Harrison Ford, Shia Labeuf and some other dude (who I can't remember by name). There wasn't any teaser footage, but it was cool to see them there talking about the flick. Then they pulled out a chair that said "Marian Ravenwood" on it. Sure enough, here came Karen Allen looking like she hadn't aged a day since they shot Raiders.

JJ Abrams came back out and they started talking Star Trek. Normally this is where I check out because I'm a Star Wars guy by nature. But they announced the casting of the new Spock. Which if you haven't heard by now is none other than Zachary "Sylar" Quinto. He walked out on stage and we all looked at each other and said "well hell yeah he could play Spock".

And then they busted out Nimoy.

What the hell else can you say about that?

Without a doubt though, the highlight was Iron Man. So much so that we made it a point to crash the Marvel Movie panel on Saturday just to see the clip again. The cast from Iron Man was there for the Saturday panel and they had never seen the clip either. So it was absolutely priceless after the lights came up to 6000 people losing their grip again and watching the cast on stage just as entertained by what they had just seen as we were.

Anyhow Paramount flat out brought it. Excellent presentations, even for stuff I normally wouldn't care about, and a goodie bag that was fairly sweet as well. I think the grand haul for the Paramount was three t-shirts (Iron Man, Star Trek, Hot Rod) and four posters (Iron Man, Sweeny Todd, Trek, and the unnamed monster flick). I didn't attend any other movie panels the rest of the weekend (other than Marvel), but from what I heard no one else even came close to giving away that much stuff.

Next up on the day was the Spotlioght on George Romero. Max Brooks, the writer of Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z "moderated" the panel. But given it was just him and Romero, it really boiled down to just the two of them chatting about Romero's career and the genre he created. Cool stuff all the way around.

And then we hit the evening.

Here is the bar we ended up in.

I post the picture, because without it, I wouldn't even remember what the damn thing looked like. As it is, I can't recall the name of it.

So here's the thing. We had every intention of hitting the premiere of the Superman/Doomsday animated movie.

We really did.

But the line was obscenely long two solid hours before it started. So we opted to go get food and drink and hit the encore. Somewhere about 9pm we called EvilArtist and found out he was in line for the encore. Apparently not everyone from the original line we saw got in and the line for the 10:30 encore was now longer than the line we saw the first time.

So with nothing left to do, we ordered another round.

And another.

And another.

And then a fellow Con goer saw an empty chair at our table and asked if he could join us. As the night rolls on, it turns out the dude is a shader for Pixar.

So we order another round.

And another.

You get the idea.

We closed the place down and went through three waitresses in the process. They kept going home so we kept closing out the tab each time. The first tab was $172. No one remembers what the other two tabs were. But we certainly had a great time. Dude from Pixar was really cool and you know it's a great drinking night when the evening ends with a debate about science and religion. Only at the San Diego Con, folks.

Needless to say most of the next day was pretty rough. Without a continuous supply of water to rehydrate my poor body on, they have probably found my poor trampled body on the exhibit hall floor by about 2PM.

But Friday is another post. . .

 

 

Filed under: Comic-Con