FUN FUN FUN AT THE COMIC-CON!

I spent a full Friday and Saturday at the 2007 San Diego Comic Con, and really really enjoyed myself. I was there last year, mostly in a behind the booth capacity, so it was a refreshing change to just be able to wander around aimlessly and enjoy myself. Brad Hamlin from Mystery Island and I made a nice mini-vacation out of it all and soaked in the geekness of it all. Now in its 37th year, Comic-Con has evolved from a bunch of comic book nerds sifting through boxes of back issues, to an insane black hole of anything pop culture related. You can see fat hairy guys dressed up as Sailor Moon and legions of Stormtroopers skipping down a hallway. Popularity has reached an all time high, with the event selling out all days for the first time ever. Hell, 7 months before the event nearly every hotel room within a 5 mile radius of the place was already booked. To maximize your enjoyment, you'll definitely need to plan ahead for next year.

There was a ton of panels and appearances by TV and Movie Studio folks to announce upcoming projects, but I'll leave that to other websites to cover, because even I can't be 8 places at once. I just wandered around meeting a ton of great people, and picked just a couple of panels to go to.

Man-Thing and Werewolf By Night artist Mike Ploog with his Ink-Pot Award

"Marvel Comics in the '60s and '70s" was a really great panel which featured Roy Thomas, Mike Ploog, Gary Freidrich, and David George. Lots of cool stories about working with Stan Lee, Steve Ditko, and the late Jack Kirby were there. I was blown away by how young Roy Thomas still looks. You'd swear he was only 50 instead of 67. The panel was hosted by longtime comic writer Mark Evanier, who had the unique situation of working for both Marvel and DC simultaneously during that era, and had some interesting things to say about the rivalry between the two companies. I asked Roy Thomas about what it was like to work with Lucasfilm when they did the famous Star Wars comic series, and he mentioned that he had to stop writing it after a while because he didn't enjoy the meddling with the creative process. He joked that working on Conan was great because Robert E. Howard was dead and the estate gave him a lot of leeway with the book. They also mentioned that Marvel honcho Stan Lee wasn't a big fan of the DC style of art, but was really interested in bringing Joe Kubert over if they could get someone else to ink his pencils. This is pretty funny, Thomas said, as Kubert's pencils were too vauge for anyone other than Kubert himself to ink on top of. Ploog had some fond remembrances of doing the art for Werewolf by Night, Man-Thing, and Frankenstein's Monster, and was perfectly happy being pigeonholed doing monster books.

Another surprisingly fun panel was "Two Rays: Bradbury and Harryhausen" which was just a fun bunch of stories from the legendary writer and stop motion effects pioneer duo, who have been near life-long friends. Bradbury shared a neat story about meeting Walt Disney and the two of them professing the love for each other's work. Walt had Bradbury over at the studio for lunch, he asked if he could visit "The Vault" and came out with a giant arm-load of original animation art, including Snow White cels, which he still owns to this day. Just a lot of cool tales about working in Hollywood and writing Sci-Fi in the golden age. It was cute to the see the 2 Rays brought to opposite sides of the stage in their wheelchairs, and the hydraulic lift on Bradbury's side had a stuck door for about 5 minutes, but they played if off nicely. The event used 4 ballrooms worth of space and easily had more than 3,000 people inside. The standing ovation they got for more than 2 minutes was pretty fantastic.

There were plenty of cool exhibits from the big studios to enjoy. Disney brought along a 40 foot replica of The Black Pearl from their "Pirates" trilogy. You could walk through and look at HD images of the film. Too bad they didn't design it where you could go on the boat itself.

There was a giant armored polar bear on display to promote The Golden Compass movie, and his fur became quite filthy from dirty conventioneer hands and furry jism, by Saturday.

The fine folks at LEGO had some neat things to show off, including these life size sculptures of Chewbacca and the droids. When nobody was looking, I took a brown brick from Chewbacca's toe and stuck in on C3PO's butt, so it would look like he had a dangler.

Lego also had a gorgeous giant mural featuring scenes from all 6 films. Click the picture on the right to get an idea of how big and detailed this sucker is.

Hot Wheels was at the show to promote their scale version of The Batmobile. It was really nice, but kind of a gyp at $20. No matter how many times it in person this car is always awe-inspiring and it remains the coolest vehicle in pop culture history. Above right you can see George Barris, who designed it, as well as The Munster Koach, and Green Hornet's Black Beauty. You can click the pictures above to see the larger versions.

NEW TOYS!

One of my favorite reasons to go to Comic-Con is to check out all the great (and not so great) new toys coming out. I did a pretty crappy job of remembering what companies make a few of these, so if I slighted you, please email me and I'll make the changes.

Mattel is making DC versions of the tot oriented Marvel characters under the Super Friends brand. They look pretty sturdy and should be great for the young 'uns. The Aqua-Man is particularly good.

Meanwhile, Hasbro is making dramatic expansions to their Smurf-like Marvel Superhero Squad line, including a way too cute Galactus. Sorry these ones came out a little blurry. I bet these won't be bought too much by collectors and be pretty valuable 20 years from now.

Also from Hasbro is a special Stan Lee action figure. You can use him to make annoying cameo appearances with your Spider-Man, Hulk, and Fantastic Four action figures.

Come out and playyyyy...with The Warriors! Mezco's booth had these and a ton of other cool items.

Mezco's classic '70s style McDonald's character line. MEGO made these back in the '70s and these look like near perfect reproductions of the originals.

At last, a Gwen Stefani doll for your very own. Now if you could only find a way to shrink down to her size, your dreams would come true. The Gavin Rossdale doll wasn't there, because he was busy at home raising her baby.

It's hard to read the cards in this photo I took, but if my memory serves me correctly these are from a new line of Gothic dolls. The first one is called "Hot Topic Manager" and the one on the right is "Nobody Understands Me But Anne Rice". Each comes with special cut marks you can stick on their arms.

Here's Sawyer, Sun, and Mr. Eko from Todd McFarlane's 2nd series of Lost figures. You could take your Eko figure and put him in a cage with the J.Jonah Jameson figure from the Spider-Man line and make your own Oz play-set.

McFarlane really outdid themselves with this perfectly awesome Godfather figure. Hopefully it'll come with a horse head and an orange for accessories.

Windlass Studios was showing off these gorgeous classic Iron Man helmet replicas! To the right you can see a stylized Thor helmet as well.

Also from Windlass is the classic Thor helmet, perfect for babysitting mayhem. And if you want your hand to look like a shitty Ron Lim drawing, pick up their Infinity Gauntlet replica.

A cool "Shadow Stormtrooper" mini helmet replica from Master Replicas.

One of the many cool artist interpretations of Darth's helmet on display at the con.

Show off your bling, Empire-Style!

You have to admit, Leatherface was pretty cute as a baby!

Giant Optimus Prime statue, who apparently had the ability to transform the air around him into a giant cloud of body odor that filled the entire convention floor.

Props to Topps for continuing their wonderful legacy of gross trading cards! There's a new line of Garbage Pail Kids coming out this Fall, as well as more additions to the time-tested Wacky Packages. Plus, we get an all new series called Hollywood Zombies! From Mars Attacks! in the early '60s to now, Topps never fails to impress.

YIKES! FOR THE LOVE ALL THAT IS SACRED, DON'T CLICK THIS PICTURE!

And now...on to the best part of any Comic-Con...

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