Comic-Con Freakout Blast-O-Rama!!!! (Pt. 1)

I'm going to be honest with you all. It is not possible for me to properly express the affect that attending the San Diego Comic-Con has had on me. At times like these, I wish that I was either a professional journalist or William Shakespeare so that I could fully utilize the power of prose to paint a vivid picture of what I have seen and heard during my time here. So before I go into this, know that the reality of Comic-Con is twenty-seven trillion times more amazing than the paltry scribblings found here.

The sheer amount of bodies was the first thing that Sheree and I noticed as we made our way to the San Diego convention center. Within the pulsing crowd, pretty much every character from every comic book, movie, TV show, video game, and anime series could be found. And as if this wasn't enough of an assault to the senses, we entered the vast geekdom of the exhibition hall. The only way I can even come close to describing the synapses and images that were being fired into my brain at many gigabytes per second is this: Imagine an enclosed space the size of three city blocks packed full of everything that you ever thought was cool in your whole life. Every major movie, comic book, TV, and video game company was present, and best of all, they handed out tons and tons of free crap. Sheree and I just kind of stood in awe of the sights and sounds that were constantly assaulting our fragile senses. After some time, we went upstairs to watch the pilot of J.J. Abrams' new show called Fringe, which looked okay, but the principle of seeing a TV show that isn't going to air until September was pretty awesome.

And thus concluded Wednesday, otherwise known as Preview Night.

On Thursday, Comic-Con officially kicked off. Now, each day at Comic-Con is packed with panels, previews, fan group meetings, and spotlights. They've got about fifteen rooms that each have full programming schedules that last from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM. So it's important that you plan your day out to maximize your chances of seeing cool stuff. Our day consisted of seeing a preview panel for the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still and Max Payne, followed by another panel for Push (some hack-job movie about psychic soldiers), Knowing (Alex Proyas' new flick about Nic Cage and disaster predictions), and Twilight (the adaptation of Stephanie Meyers' teen vampire book). Here's my critical analysis of what we saw: The Day the Earth Stood Still looks really dumb. It was cool to see Keanu Reeves, but he too is a really dumb guy. Jennifer Connelly managed to address her questions like a normal person, but Mr. Reeves had a tough time explaining what it was like to play an alien who's taken a human body ("It was like, uh, when I looked out of his eyes, I was like, looking out" his exact words. No joke). Overall, not so impressive. The Max Payne panel was much more entertaining. Mark Wahlberg was hilarious, and Mila Kunis was smokin' hot. Ludacris was awesome too. Plus, the footage they showed made me really excited to see the movie. After these two panels, we sat through one for Push, which looked pretty dumb too. The panel was kinda cool (Chris "Human Torch" Evans and Djimon "Blood Diamond" Hounsou were pretty entertaining). Then they brought out Alex Proyas (he directed The Crow, Dark City, and I, Robot) who has some disaster movie with Nicolas Cage called Knowing coming out. The movie looked okay, but I dunno.
The most surprising panel of all was for Twilight. There were a billion screaming teenage girls who were going nuts and all, but most of the cast seemed like they were either drunk or coked out of their minds. It was all very odd, and seeing them twerp it up on stage made me want to not see the movie.
When this concluded, we headed upstairs to see one of the Entertainment Weekly "Visionaries" panels. This particular one involved comic book writers/artists. Let me just give you the panel lineup, and we'll see how fast you crap your pants: Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, Grant Morrison, John Cassaday, Robert Kirkman, Matt Fraction, and Colleen Doran. All of them, in the same room, talking about how comics are awesome. On the negative side, Mike Mignola seemed like kind of an ass, which made me feel bad because Hellboy is so freaking awesome. But Robert Kirkman (he wrote the excellent Walking Dead series), Grant Morrison, Jim Lee, and John Cassaday (he draws Astonishing X-Men) were really pleasant and had some good stuff to say. The whole thing just made me feel happy in my heart.
After this, we made another trip down to the exhibition hall, and there was much rejoicing.

And thus concluded Thursday, otherwise known as day 1 of Comic-Con International.

To be continued with days 2, 3, and 4....