Comic-Con 2008 - Fourth day

Arrived at the Convention Center around 9:00 AM, and before entering powered up my camera and was astonished to see it displaying a message to the effect of "Can not record". Powered off, opened the door for the storage card, and yep, it was not there. After my head exploded from that shock, I realized what had happened. The evening before I had decided to copy to my computer photos I had taken of the Con up to then, in order to use them as memory aids while I typed up preliminary blog entries. So, after I had done that copying and removed the card reader from the computer, I had simply kept the card in the reader.

I did some thinking about where near the Convention Center I could purchase a new card. I walked the four or so blocks to the Longs Drug Store at Horton Plaza, and obtained there a 1-GB card for less than $20. Not bad.

First panel I went to Sunday was another one for DC Comics -- DC Nation: One Weekend Later. My interest here being the promise of a major announcement. Dan DiDio was again the moderator, but this panel was mostly composed of DC editors and managers. The hour was composed of reviewing the DC panel's that had occurred earlier and a questions-and-answers session. The big announcement? That Neil Gaiman is writing a Batman story. Sweet.

Also went to an annual Comic-Con Sunday event: Starship Smackdown. Like the annual events I wrote about in the post for Comic-Con third day, I've also never been to this before, so no clue from the description in the program exactly what might occur. This deals with what is the best starship, so I had thought that perhaps there would be computer generated videos of famous starships battling each other.

Not so much. What this turned out to be was the nearest thing to anarchy I saw the entire Con! Firstly, a list of 10 well-known starships was written down on a white board. Six more starships were needed on the list, which was thrown to the audience, and that's when things started getting wild. Names of other starships being shouted out, the moderator and panel accepting or rejecting (for all kinds of reasons) them, boos and cheers from the audience for the decisions.

The moderator and panel then began discussing which of each pair of starships (as written down on the whiteboard) would be the survivor in a battle, all to more shouting, booing, and cheering from the audience.

After the first round dropped half of the starships, the moderator introduced a random element to add to the remaining starships: a captain for each one. Names of 20 captains had been written on slips of paper and were pulled out of a hat one the panelists had worn. Included in the first seven captains selected were: Captain Merrill Stubing of "The Love Boat", and the Captain and Tennille. The audience loved those. For the final captain, the moderator read out the names of all remaining captains and asked the audience to select which one to use by cheering. And the selection was: Cap'n Crunch! Good times, good times.

Now, for the first time ever, the Smackdown had another panel running immediately after it, so the moderator was for the first time did not have the luxury of allowing discussion and voting on which starship survives each battle to run long, and had to press the panel to finish in the allotted time.

The final decision on victorious starship was: the Star Wars Imperial Star Destroyer, as captained by James T. Kirk!

Here are my fourth day photos.

Comic-Con 2008 - Third day

I had written before about intending to not go to Comic-Con on the Saturday, but after thinking about it, decided the key to having a good Saturday experience there is to not go in the exhibit hall. I recalled being in the exhibit hall on a Saturday was the real source of horrors, from the frequently non-moving monstrous masses of people in the aisles to the huge piles of trash not being collected. So, closest I got to it on Saturday was entering and exiting the building via the lobby areas

First panel I went to Saturday was an annual event I have not seen before, Quick Draw!

The idea is that three cartoonists draw cartoons on the spot, very quickly, based on topics given them by the moderator, with the cartoons being displayed simultaneously for the audience on three large screens as they are being drawn.

So, the participants were:

• The moderator, Mark Evanier, a comics and cartoons writer and historian.
• And the cartoonists:
• Sergio Aragonés - Well known as a long-time cartoonist for Mad Magazine. (Though that is by no means all he has done, as can be seen at the link.)
• Scott Shaw! - (Apparently he uses the exclamation point as part of his name.) A comics artist and writer for many years, he also has experience in cartoons. He demonstrated the cartoons experience during this Quick Draw.
• Mike Peters - The relative new kid on the block in this group, he is known as both an editorial and comic strip cartoonist.

This was a wonderfully very funny time.

The best way I could find to organize the Quick Draw photos was to post them up by the topics that I recalled (should have taken notes of the topics!), then link here to each topic. So, here we go:

• Bad Decisions by Popeye
• The Incredible Hulk as President
• Why You Don't Bring an Elephant to Comic-Con
• Things Not to do with King Kong
• Worst Costume YOU have ever worn
• Worst Costume you've seen at this Comic-Con
• New Jobs for Iron Man
• You as Batman
• Guess the words A word of explanation for this topic. It involved the moderator pulling a person out of the audience, then having three words displayed while the person's back was turned to the screens. The person than guessed the words based on cartoons illustrating the words. These sequences were especially funny.
• Aragones - Don't Do That And again a word of explanation for the topic. From time to time throughout the Quick Draw, the moderator would say "Sergio, don't do that", at which point Aragones would do a cartoon of something that should not be done. The last of these had the condition the cartoon include a pig.
• Shaw - Draw Hanna-Barbera characters
  For this the moderator would from time to time give Shaw a string of names of Hanna-Barbera cartoon characters to draw. Shaw had worked for that studio in the past; he drew the head of each and every character whose name he was given.
  

Second panel for me on Saturday was DC: A Guide to Your Universe. This was moderated by Dan DiDio, senior VP and executive editor of DC Comics, and the panel was composed mostly of a boat load of DC writers. This was basically general chatter about the current state of DC Comics and what is in the works for the rest of the year and early next year. They also answered lots of questions from fans.

And my third event for Saturday was another annual happening I went to for the first time: Oddball Comics. This is presented by the same Scott Shaw! who was part of Quick Draw earlier in the day. He explained he owns a large collection of comic books from years past that have very strange covers, and each year he presents slides of a selection of them, based on various themes he selects. This was a hilarious show, the comics covers he showed were absolutely wild!

I'm uncertain why, but I took no photos of the slides during this, though now that I think about it, I think it might have been possible to get decent photos without using the camera's flash.

But, as Shaw announced at the end of the show, he does run a web site where these covers can be explored: Oddball Comics.

And here are photos from the third day.

Comic-Con 2008 - Second day

First panel I went to Friday was for Batman: Brave and the Bold, a new cartoon coming out this fall on Cartoon Network. I was curious how it might be dealing with Batman in a way that might be unique.

The panel was comprised of producers Sam Register and James Tucker (Tucker seems to be the big ideas guy for this cartoon), writer Michael Jelenic, director Brandon Vietti, voice director Andrea Romano, and voice actor Diedrich Bader, who does the voice of Batman in this cartoon.

The new take on Batman being done in this instance is:

• Does not take place in Gotham City.
• Does not use Alfred.
• Does not use Commissioner Gordon.
• Does not use Robin.
• Has Batman teaming up with generally lesser known DC heroes.
• Has Batman fighting against generally lesser known DC villains.
• Does not take a dark tone, as it needs to be child friendly.

A very entertaining video was shown of short clips from the cartoon.

Also went to Spotlight on Connie Willis. I've enjoyed many of her novels, so definitely wanted to see and hear her at this.

She was first given one of Comic-Con's own achievement awards, the Inkpots.

She then talked about what she is currently is working on, especially a novel that she has had in the works for more than 10 years, All Clear, and is hoping to have wrapped up and on the way to her editor within 4 weeks.

She also talked about other writing she has plans to do, a couple stories and then a novel.

She then took questions, which got her talking at length about her passion for history and incorporating it into her science fiction, about writing comedy science fiction, and other topics.

Here are my second day photos.

Comic-Con 2008 - First day

Attended three panel discussions.

The Gene Roddenberry Legacy: Roddenberry in the 21st Century

Hosted by Gene Roddenberry's son Rod, with Trevor Roth, COO of Roddenberry Productions, and Paul Keller, editor of a feature documentary that firm is creating, Trek Nation.

Discussed Gene Roddenberry's philosophy, that he imbued it into everything he did in television, and how Roddenberry productions is bringing it into the 21st century. In addition to talking about the documentary, also discussed two web-based comics that are hosted by Roddenberry.com, Gene's Journal and Rod and Barry.

And to wrap up the hour, they revealed a large object that had been sitting in the front of the room covered during the session: a functioning replica of the captain's chair from the original Star Trek series. It was announced this chair would be given away to Roddenberry.com's member of the year.

30th Anniversary Battlestar Galactica Panel

Hosted by Richard Hatch, who was Captain Apollo on the original Battlestar Galactica ("BG" for the rest of this post), and Tom Zarek on the current version. With Bear McCreary, music composer for the current series; Tom DeSanto, a producer who had been involved with development of a proposed BG series that would have been a continuation of the original series, and Dr. Kevin Grazier, science consultant for the current series.

Interesting discussion of both the original and current versions of BG. Included a development video for the proposed series mentioned above. It was explained the story would have taken place 20 years after the end of the original series, with the humans believing they had evaded the Cylons permanently, and having given up the search for Earth to established a successful new colony.

There was also a very funny video from Bear McCreary spoofing his role as music composer for the current series.

Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life

Hosted by science fiction blog io9.com. Panel was composed of three of io9's editors, Annalee Newitz, Graeme McMillian, and Charlie Jane Anders; and author Austin Grossman, and Patrick Lee, editor of Sci-Fi Wire.

The panelists each spoke at length about works of science fiction that had inspired them to change perceptions or how they approach life.

Here are my photos from the first day.

Comic-Con 2008 - Preview Night

Arrived by trolley at the Convention Center a little after 5 PM for Preview Night to find truly monumental lines of people outside the building. Which startled me because I recall the last Preview Night I went to, a couple years ago, I went straight into the building and fairly quickly got through the process of getting my badge.

So, I went with others I had been on the trolley with to find the end of the line, which took some doing, as the lines were very confusing; they just seemed to be going all over the place. Eventually a security person was found who was saying "End of the line here! End of the line here!"

And I proceeded to shuffle forward a few feet every three or four minutes. Until a little after 6 PM, when all of a sudden the line started moving continuously forward at quite a brisk pace. After that it was a matter of just a few minutes to get my badge and then be in the exhibit area to start looking around.

As I've been typing this up, it's occurred to me what the change in policy for Preview Night between 2006 and 2008 must have been. In 2006 if you got your badge before 6 PM, you then had to wait in the lobby areas of the exhibit area until 6 PM to get in the actual exhibit area. (As I recall, the doors were actually opened at least 10 minutes late.) Which meant the lobby areas got very, very crowded. I'm thinking that between Convention Center management and Comic-Con management it must have decided that was unacceptable and Preview Night procedures were thus changed to start badge processing and open the exhibit area all at the same time, thus allowing a smooth flow of people into the exhibit area.

The highlight of the evening was purchasing the two books that have been produced by the creator of the web-based comic Octopus Pie, Meredith Gran, and getting a sketch and signature in each of them done right there and then by the artist herself! Very nice.

Here are my Preview Night photos.

Huh?

Arrived at the San Diego Trolley system's station at Qualcomm Stadium a little after 8:30 AM today to take the ride to the Convention Center for the first day of Comic-Con.

This station is elevated above the Stadium's parking lot, which basically means one can possibly park under the structure of the station itself. I've gotten into the habit of doing so under the eastern section of the structure. But when I approached that area this morning, I was waved off by security guards, which was the first surprise. So, I went around to the western section to park and proceeded into the station.

Next surprise was after purchasing a trolley boarding pass for the four days of Comic-Con. I spotted several police SWAT officers exiting their vehicle, which had parked under the western area of the station's structure.

I then spotted several men walking away from the station to a position where they lined up and each placed his hands on top of his head with fingers interlaced, a position I equate with the person being arrested.

So, I'm wondering: What is going on here?

I glanced back towards the men 2 or 3 minutes later and saw all of them drop their hands from their heads, walk over to another spot, and then huddle up for what was obviously some sort of discussion.

That's when the light came on: This must have all been some sort of police training exercise!

Bad Practice

Earlier I had a bad computer moment. I was running Google Reader, and within had clicked on one of my subscriptions that was showing 3 new items. I then turned to my bed and picked up some finished laundry that needed to be put away. At that moment, music started playing from my computer's speakers. YIKES! Very startling!

Dropped the laundry and turned back to the computer to figure out was going on. Decided to check Google Reader first, and discovered one of the 3 new items had auto-started playing a video. Sheesh.

Here's the corresponding web page, and yep, the video also does the autoplay thing there. And all but one of the comments left on the page so far are complaining about it.

License Plate Watch 37

Seen today on a Toyota Camry: "2B NT 2B"