Weirdos, Freaks and Me: Stephen B's Adventures at the Comic-Con Day 1

Me and Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder
Friday was my first day at the San Diego Comi-Con. I didn't go on Thursday the real day one. I'm not of a comic book fan. I am a fan of genre movies and television so all the events I visited were of that variety. I got to Comic Con around 11am. It opened at 10am but I was in no rush. I had a four day pass already so I quickly passed through the long line for door sales and got my badge quickly. The first thing I wanted to check out was the Warner Brothers prsentation which had previews of V for Vendetta, Harry Potter and The Corpse Bride. Unfortunately that line was forming *outside* and wrapped pretty far down the block. I wasn't interested in waiting in a long line, especially when it was flowing continuously. They kept stopping the line for some reason.

So I went to the Stan Lee presentation instead. He was there to talk about two of his new comics Mosaic and Condor I think and to answer questions from fans. Half of the questions were decent but some bordered on "Elite FanBoy". As always, there's that one idiot who wants to "get on" and asked if he would take a look at his portfolio. Dude, he doesn't have time for that. There are lot of people standing in line to answer legitimate questions and you're wasting everyone's time by trying to "get a deal". Half those people in there had a portfolio, but they had the class not to badger the man about looking at it and hooking you up with a job. Here's some interesting Tidbits from Stan Lee:

* Striperella Lives. He said that there's a company that is interested in making striperella DVD movies and other company is looking to have striperella episodes on cell phones.

* He doesn't really remember how he came up with the idea of Spiderman. Reporters and others always asked him how he came up with it and he couldn't remember so he always lies. He tells them he saw something crawling on the wall and imagined that a man who could crawl on walls would be a great character. He figures that sounds better to people who ask than the truth.

* His favorite Marvel Hero is The Thing. His favorite Villian is Dr. Doom. His favorite Marvel movies are Spiderman and Xmen.

* He doesn't take the changes made to his characters for the sake of motion pictures to heart. He feels that you gotta make changes (he mentioned the spiderman changes like the webshooters and the spider being genetically engineered in the movie rather than radioactive) to fit in the new format, i.e. films.

In the same room was pilot preview of the new WB series "Supernatural". It's a cross between X-Files, Kolchak the night stalker, and ghost busters. The show is about a family who's mother was killed by a poltergeist when the one son was an infant and the other was five years old. Her husband watched it happen and from that point on decided to hunt down whatever ghost killed his wife and trained his sons to be male "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" except with ghosts. Anyway, the pilot was okay. There was nothing really that made me want to watch the show, but it has some potential.

Next in the same room (I didn't have to leave my seat for three hours.) was the Veronica Mars panel. They showed a composite clip of everything that happened in the first season. I never watched the show but plan on getting the season 1 DVD when it drops in September. They then brought out the entire cast minus Kristen Bell (in Europe) and somebody else. Also on hand was uber producer Joel Silver and Charisma Carpenter of Buffy/Angel fame. It looks like she's joing the cast. She's at least in the first episode of the next season. Boy was she looking nice. Seriously, she had a bad spell when she was pregnant. She was not looking her best during that time. Especially in that ABC Family movie she was in. But she came out on point today! Anyway, during this panel there was a typical Comic Book Guy moment. This guy asked the producers, "In the flashbacks she has on a pendant. Then in three episodes of the present day scenes the pendant has a choker. Then in three episodes at the end of the first season she has on the pendant without the choker." Everybody started groaning when this guy asked that question. I'm like, WTF are you talking about? Why would you notice something like that? Anyway, I guess something of interest to Veronica Mars fans is that season 2 apparently will have a long murder story arc that lasts the whole season like in season 1.

Next, I went to the Aaron McGruder signing. He is the creator of The Boondocks comic strip. He was signing from 3 to 4pm with the Boondocks TV Show panel from 4 to 5. The TV show will debut October 2, 2005 on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim block. I wasn't able to stay for the panel so I was only able to get an autograph for my sister in law, who is a huge Boondocks fan, and a T-shirt. I got my picture taken with him and asked him about Reginald Hudlin's hiring as BET President of programming. He laughed it off and said that "Reggie is a very creative guy." Whatever that means.

After that, I was able to step into the Battlestar Galactica panel for about 20 minutes. Present were the producers, Mary McDonne (President Roslin), James Callis (Baltar), Jamie Bamber (Apollo), Grace Park (Sharon), and "Helo". Katee Sackoff was on her way or something. Jamie Bamber is very...British. He had a very strong accent. This was an entertaining panel for the short time I was there. It was mostly joking around amongst the cast. I had to leave after that.

Comic Book Conventions are definitely a geek's paradise. Tons of people walking around in costumes and loads of nerd speak. Overheard at the convention:

"I programmed Final Fantasy on my TI-89" (That's a calculator those not in the know)
Geek #1:"Stan Lee has charasma." Geek #2"Yeah, he has charasma." No, that's not a typo. They actually said CHARASMA!

I call them geeks but I must be one to some degree to have gone to this thing and post about it on an internet blog page. LOL!

Click HERE for Pictures!