That’ll teach the kids not to gamble: Comicon 2005, part 2.

MUSIC: Poets of Rhythm – Discern/Define

Saturday:
Awoke at the crack of 9 in order to make it to (had not The D been scheduled for later) THE event of the day: Bryan Singer’s “Superman Returns” panel…featuring footage from the film that hadn’t been shown anywhere (and still hasn’t if I’m not mistaken). Bryan was crazy jetlagged after flying in from Australia on location just for Comicon, which I thought was incredibly classy of him. The footage was amazing and I have no reservations that this movie will kick everyone’s ass blue next summer. After it screened, someone in the audience shouted “PLAY IT AGAIN!”…so they did!

I chose to forgo the Æon Flux panel to go upstairs to Cartoon Voices, which was one of the more entertaining ones two years previous. This year wasn’t nearly as fun, mainly because my favorite voice actor, Maurice LaMarche, wasn’t in attendance. Also noticeably absent from before were Mark Hamil (who is one of the best geek-icons there is, especially when the topic strays form Star Wars), Jess Harnell, and Billy West (who would be my second-favorite I think). So this year was E.G. Daly, Rob Paulson, Bob Bergen, and a late appearance by Gary Owens (always a treat). There were a few others, too, namely the guy who does Goofy for Disney now, but damned if I can recall his name and I’m too lazy to look it up. Anyway, I’m not a huge voice-acting nerd, but I know who I like. This year the panel did an old Superman radio show script, the highlight of which was Owens adlibbing “well, I know Lois a lot better than the rest of you” after mistakenly reading “get down, Lois!” (which was supposed to be the line “get down!” followed by the cue for Lois’s next line).

Next up was my hero, Kevin Smith, who I’ve now seen talk more times than I can remember (well, if I really thought about it I could, but…yknow, lazy). He was as funny and vulgar as ever, the best bit being this little exchange between him and a very surprised fan:
(paraphrasing of course)
FAN: First of all, my dad blames you for the way I turned out.
KEV: Why, cuz I fucked your mom?
FAN: …Actually…my mom’s dead.
KEV(without missing a beat): Yeah, who you think fucked her to death?
Talk about knowing your fan base, right? Dude didn’t think twice about saying it and the fan never stopped laughing. Bra-fucking-vo.
They didn’t give Kevin nearly enough time (less than an hour), but at the end he brought up Ricard Kelly, the director of Donny Darko and the forthcoming Southland Tales (whose website is totally creepy, btw). He was very nervous and only had a quick animatic to show, but how can you not love a clip of two cars fucking (I’m serious about this), even if it was just storyboards and sound effects? The plan, he said, was to release 6 graphic novels of the Southland Tales stories, starting this year, that will make up parts 1-6 of the overall story. The film will be parts 7-9. Sounds incredibly ambitious and immensely cool.

I missed the Family Guy movie presentation but no big deal since we now have a downloa…I mean…ahem…no I have not seen this movie…really!

I decided to skip the J. Michael Straczynski panel (sorry, JMS!), because although he’s one of my favorite writers, I was really sick of sitting down at that point, and decided to wander the floor a bit. After about an hour of drooling over Transformers that I wanted to buy but didn’t (¡viva willpower!) I went upstairs again and found Will (the bossman) in line for the Teen Titans Live! panel. After a bit, we were joined by his new “roommate” (:P) Christine and some gentleman whose name I didn’t get. So first they had the creators/writers/producers of the show, who took questions from the moderator, showed some demo reel of next season, and then opened the floor to Q&A: but only from children, and only those dress as Titans…which was of course friggin adorable (this from someone what don’t like kids…maybe if they were all in costume year-round I’d change my mind). They were giving out signed toys to all the tykes brave enough to go up there…except the young man at the end, whose question was pre-empted with “sorry, but we’ve run out of freebies”. The kid came back with a semi-whined “I just wanted the toooooooy!”…so the moderator gave him a whole handful of little Beast Boy figures ^_^

I stuck around in the room for the next panel, DC All-Stars with Jim Lee. This was Lee and Bob Shreck, talking about the new Batman book they’re doing with Frank Miller (not in attendance:\). Talk about a snoozefest! Shreck may as well have been asleep and Jim, though trying to be funny, just wasn’t. I guess I can’t expect an artist as good as him to be a stand-up comedian either, but they could’ve shown more energy…all I’m sayin. So I ducked out early to get in line for Tenacious D…and what a line it was! All the way outside the building, and looping back around…which I guess if you’ve never been outside Hall H at the SD convention center means nothing, but trust me, huge line. Luckily I got there early enough that I made it inside and had no problem getting a seat.
Kevin Smith came out to thunderous applause and introduced Jack and Kyle as such:
“There’s only 9 cocks in this world that I’d suck. It used to be 10 but I crossed Affleck off the list already. So here’s numbers 6 and 5”.
Rage Kage and Jables treated us, the great unwashed masses, to:
- Several new songs from their new movie “The Pick of Destiny”: one that I’m guessing is the title track, one about how the government “totally sucks”, one called “Dude I Totally Miss You”, and one that the lipsynched (the gag being that their toughest song to play is the one they don’t).
- Fuck Her Gently
- Flash/Wonderboy
- Lee (with Lee up there on stage, dancing like a loon)
- Saxaboom solo
- Tribute
- Dio
- an encore of The Who’s “Tommy”, with added “muthafuckin” between “mean” and “pinball”
I’m guessing the only thing better than The D is The D for free…and that’s what we got. Rock on!

After some food, Reid and I went to an even longer line for the masquerade. San Diego at night is incredible. With that air, waiting in line never felt so good.
Highlights of the masquerade:
- a prepubescent Captain America that was a little tubby and walked offstage in the middle of his performance, while his friends (Spawn and Green Arrow) continued on
- a Tomb Raider vs. Nightcrawler routine…sounds stupid, I know, but this guy playing Nightcrawler must have been a pro acrobat. Amazing flips, good choreography, and a routine that ended with Lara’s mouth all blueJ…I mean they kissed, perverts!
- a song by all the Disney Princesses set to that annoying song “Barbie Girl” (now Disney Girl), that had the biggest laugh of the evening: “STOP! Alladin Time!”
- General Grevious!
- A freakin Covenant Elite soldier with moving jaws!!! (this guy totally should’ve won)
- a person dressed as a transformer…that actually transformed

Still with me? Ok, part 3 coming this future.
Til then,
It’s good to be geeky.