by Daniel Erenberg

Like the middle chapter of most trilogies, the second day of Comic Con felt a bit like filler, killing time until the grand conclusion. I woke up in better spirits this morning (though still not great) and walked over to the Javits Center with my head held medium-high. There were only two Saturday panels that I really gave a shit about and those were Cup O’ Joe, a regular Comic Con affair, which is, basically, just a chance to listen to Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada answer fan questions, and a spotlight panel about J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5 and a guy whose comic career has included excellent runs on Thor and The Amazing Spider-Man.

When I got to the con, I went straight to the Cup O’ Joe panel and was pleased that Quesada wasn’t the only man on stage. Marketing guru Jim McCann was, of course, there. He’s been ever-present at Marvel panels for quite some time now. He’s aware of all the goings-on at Marvel and can usually answer questions other panelists cannot. He’s also charmingly flamboyant and frequently makes references to Disco-era superhero, Dazzler. In addition to McCann, Publisher Dan Buckley was there to answer business-related questions, Talent Manager/Writer C.B. Cebulski (X-Infernus) showed up quietly and writer Brian Michael Bendis was there for snark and swearing. The very large conference room was filled to capacity and it was a wonderful panel, even if Bendis probably ended up answering more questions than Quesada did. The one big reveal at this panel was a sort of re-jiggering of the Ultimate line of books, with Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four getting cancelled and the line getting cut down to four books with all-new first issues. Bendis remains on Ultimate Spider-Man with new artist David LaFuente, who did some beautiful work on the most recent Ultimate Spider-Man Annual, Mark Millar will return to the Ultimate Universe to launch Ultimate Avengers, with the always reliable Carlos Pacheco on art, and Jeph Loeb will stay on for a new volume of The Ultimates. The fourth book has not been announced yet. I’m geeking out about this as I’ve been fairly obsessed with the Ultimate line for years but, with the exception of the consistently brilliant Ultimate Spider-Man, it’s been in dire need of a reboot for quite some time now.

When I left Cup O’ Joe, I went up to the floor for a bit to see what sort of inexplicable music Marvel had playing in their booth. This time, it was “Bombs Over Baghdad,” by OutKast. Hm. Then I began to casually girl-watch a bit, but every remotely good-looking girl at Comic Con seemed to just be there to accompany her much nerdier boyfriend. I did see one cute girl dressed as Mary Marvel, but then I remembered that I’d seen her last year and she was also dressed like Mary Marvel then. And do I really want to be with someone who will continuously dress like Mary Marvel? Wait. Now I’m second-guessing myself. Anyway, there’s a lot to perv out to at Comic Con this year. I’m a 22 year-old male geek. I can’t help but get a little turned on by a somewhat good-looking girl dressed as Poison Ivy or Black Canary. What can I say? I’m unapologetic.

When I went back down to search for the Straczynski panel, I was told that it was cancelled due to Straczynski’s nomination for a British Academy Award for his work writing Changeling (which, by the way, wasn’t nearly as good as the comic book maxi-series he began this year, The Twelve). So, I decided to go to the DC Universe panel, which turned out to be fairly fun. There was a ridiculous line, which security kept kicking people off of, and I overheard these three super-geeks talking about how they’d like to perform an actual crucifixion on Grant Morrison for his work writing the awful event mini-series Final Crisis, which just ended last week. Then, the panel mostly focused on the aftermath of Final Crisis. They even had a timeline chart to try to explain just what the fuck was going on in the unholy mess that was Final Crisis. But, oh well. It didn’t really illuminate much to me. But Flash: Rebirth, by Geoff Johns, sounded like fun, so I’ll probably pick that up.

After my last panel of the day I decided to just wander the floor for a bit. I stopped by the bootleg stand where I bought the complete series of Daria last year and this year I considered picking up both Karen Sisco (an underrated gem, starring Carla Gugino) and Rocko’s Modern Life before moving on. There was a big T-Shirt booth and I’m a T-Shirt whore so I ended up buying four: a Fantastic Four shirt, an X-Men shirt with a “Danger Room” warning on it, a Serenity shirt and an X-Files shirt with Fox Mulder’s “I Want To Believe” poster emblazoned across it. So day two actually turned out pretty successful. Day three should be even more fun, because it’s the big TV day. I’m gonna try to hit the panels for Chuck, Dollhouse, Fringe and Life On Mars before the end of the day. And I may even go back and pick up Rocko because it’s kind of been calling to me the past couple of hours.

More tomorrow…

Tags: geeks comic con new york comic con
February 8, 2009 at 12:47am ∞