Though I have a million things on my mind and a really random assortment of topics floating around in my head, I'll make this Day 2 of my Comic-Con blogging though I promise not to blog about it so much I bore you. But I feel like I've had so many people ask how it was that maybe, just maybe, you do want to hear about it.
Yesterday, I tried to give you an overview of what it actually is, what being there is like. Today, I'll give you more specifics about what I did and what I saw.
One of the things people associate with Comic-Con most are the people in costumes; that's what they see on the news, that's what they tend to think Comic-Con is all about. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people in costume but there are also plenty of us normal folk whose only nod to our 'geekiness' is, perhaps, a t-shirt. For example, I own both a "Merlottes Bar and Grill" t-shirt and a "Fangtasia" t-shirt. They look like ordinary shirts but if you watch True Blood, they have meaning. That's the way I like to show my 'geekiness'.
However, for the more elaborate, hours have gone into the costumes. Some of them look fantastic; these are the people who work hours to make sure they look as authentic as possible. There were plenty of Watchmen characters milling around along with Wonder Women, ninjas, Smurfs and Stormtroopers. Some of the costumes have a cobbled-together effect, sometimes successful, sometimes not. I stood behind a girl who was clearly a pirate wench but she didn't quite seem to have the hang of the corset. Instead of pushing up her cleavage gently, and letting it brim slightly over the top in true-wench style, she had it shoved up below her cleavage so that it literally made a big, floppy shelf. While I tend not to look at things like that, the L-shape of her figure was a little hard to miss, especially when standing in line behind her for two hours.
There are a lot of anime characters there that I couldn't name but clearly, many convention-goers recognized them. That's the beauty of Comic-Con, no matter how obscure the costume or t-shirt reference, someone will get it.
Yet there is so much more than just the costumes. I told you yesterday about the Exhibition Hall. I mentioned that I attended some panels but I didn't go into detail about what the panels entail. I went to more this year than I've ever been to, some I was in just because I was waiting for a panel that followed it. These are the ones I attended:
Thursday:
Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey- I went to this one because I wanted to see the panel that proceeded it. This is an animated science-fiction movie with a VERY heavy emphasis on the Science part. Written and directed by a double PhD., this was an interesting panel that included phone calls from Chris Pine (the new Captain Kirk) and a Comic-Con special video by Neil Armstrong (you know, the man who walked on the moon). While it was fascinating and quite entertaining, science tends to give me a huge headache and the idea of the lead character being a Photon is a little much for my poor humantities-preferring brain.
Entertainment Weekly: Wonder Women: Female Power Icons in Pop Culture: This is the panel I wanted to see and why I sat through the first one. It featured Sigourney Weaver (Alien), Zoe Saldana (The new Star Trek movie), Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost and the upcoming V) and Eliza Dushku (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse). While it was an interesting panel, there were a few moments where it was a wee bit of a lovefest between Zoe Saldana and Sigourney Weaver who are both starring in the new James Cameron movie, Avatar. The women mostly had a lot to say, aside from Eliza Dushku who was a last minute replacement for Kristen Bell (Veronica Mars). Eliza barely got to say anything while Zoe took the majority of the questions. Don't get me wrong, for such a young actress, Saldana was extremely eloquent and intelligent but between her and Sigourney, the other two were a little bit stuck off to the sides. Still, it was nice to see a panel that saluted the fact that women can be powerful in action films/TV shows and they don't always have to act like men to do so.
Dexter: This was the panel I wanted to see most on Thursday. I'm a huge fan of Dexter as you probably know if you read my blog regularly. It was well worth the wait as we got to see clips and hear about the new season. The panel featured Michael C. Hall (Dexter), Julie Benz (Rita), Jennifer Carpenter (Deb) and Jon Lovitz (the upcoming "Trinity Killer") along with some of the show's producers. Jennifer Carpenter was really nervous but the cast and crew responded to questions and answered the ones they could. The thing with fans are...they're nosy and they want to know things for which we're supposed to wait. Nevertheless, it was a great panel.
Friday
24- Sadly, I got into this panel quite late and thus missed the first half. What I did catch was Kiefer Sutherland's usual calmness and dry sense of humour and Mary Lynn Rajskub's (Chloe) daffy sense of humour. What I did see was highly entertaining.
Bones: I confess, I don't watch this show but the panel was before the Joss Whedon ones and I was already in the room for 24. I had fun here though. Though David Boreanaz who I know from Buffy couldn't be there due to the fact that his wife was expecting a baby any moment, the panel was a lot of fun with just Emily Deschanel and Hart Hanson. Mostly, it was fun because they talked about some of the gruesome stuff on the show and then made fun of Boreanaz. It was a fun, even for a non-Bones watcher.
Dollhouse/Joss Whedon: Joss Whedon panels are always my favourites. He is extremely sarcastic, funny and entertaining and, of course, I adore his work. This was a unique panel because we got to see the unaired episode of Dollhouse that FOX wouldn't air called "Epitaph One". I'm sad that FOX didn't air it but if you're a fan of the show, you MUST rent/buy the DVD so you can see it before the new season begins. It's dark, it's wry, it's sad and it's pure Joss Whedon. The panel itself featured only Joss and Eliza Dushku, the star of Dollhouse, at first but later they brought out Dichen Lachman and Fran Kranz who play Sierra and Topher on the show, respectively. The audience questions were mostly aimed at Joss- his fans are loyal and tend to follow his work obsessively.
RiffTrax: For those that don't know, there used to be a show called Mystery Science Theatre 3000 which employed silly humour, cheesy special effects and the theme of being trapped in space as an excuse to make fun of awful sci-fi and horror movies. It was basically a man and two robots mocking a movie. RiffTrax is done by the same creative team but releases CD's and MP3's which fans can download and play along with the movies being riffed. I found out there's one for Twilight. Naturally, I must watch it because anything that makes fun of Twilight is going to be on my radar.
Ok, so that's an overview of what I saw on the first few days. I hope I didn't bore you. Since I'm running late because work gets in the way, I'll save Saturday and the conclusion of my Comic-Con adventure for tomorrow. If you have specific questions or want to know more about specific things, feel free to email or comment and I'll be happy to answer.
Thanks, as always, for reading. Happy Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment