Comic Con 2010 Report: Part 1

[corrielle]

Comic Con 2010 has come and gone, and I've been back teaching summer school for and grading a horrendous amount of student work for the past couple of weeks.  So, before I forget.... here it is.  My yearly roundup of panels, free swag, and awesome con experiences.

Wednesday


On Wednesday morning, we woke up, did some last minute errands, packed the car, and drove out to lynxgriffin's house to get her and purapea.  Luckily, all of our stuff fit in the back seat and trunk of my car with room to spare (good think Lynx and Pura pack light, is all I have to say...) I had never had the chance to meet purapea before, and I am SO glad I did.  She was lovely, and she gave me reason to get my butt out of bed for important things I might have snoozed through otherwise.

The drive to San Diego was uneventful.  Mostly, we talked, catching up with Lynx and getting to know Pura better.  We got to Old Town San Diego where our hotel was around 4 PM, and we checked in, grabbed a quick snack, opened the window and turned on the fan to air out our room (we had to settle for a smoking room... it was all we had left when we made the reservation).  Then, we got trolley tickets and headed over to the convention center. 

Thanks to Lynx's pro badge, we all got our passes after waiting for less than five minutes, and then it was off to the dealer's hall! Rae and I immediately headed over to several familiar booths to see if they had any Preview Night specials.  One of them was the Badali Jewelry booth.  They were having a nice special, and I ended up buying two rather expensive but very special things. The Badali people are the ones who have the license to do the official Wheel of Time stuff... they're the ones who made my Great Serpent ring that I wear almost every day. Anyway, I ended up with Mat's signet ring and Lan's ring as a necklace.  And yes, it hangs on me just about the way Nynaeve wears it.  *sigh*  These are two pieces of jewelry I have been wanting since... I'm not kidding... I was about twelve.  I am SO happy. Now all I need is a men's ren faire shirt that fits me, a green coat, and a spear with some ravens on it, and I'm good to go for Mat.  (Not to mention the fox head medallion, but I'll be back to that booth next con I have a feeling.)

Wednesday really was my heavy shopping day, because I also ended up with:

- Still Flying from the Browncoats' booth
- An awesome Star Trek shirt that I wanted last year, but they didn't have my size.  This year, they DID, and I snatched it up. (I resisted getting a shirt with DeForest Kelley!Bones on it that said something like: "I am not... a.) a bricklayer, b.) an escalator, (a whole bunch I don't remember) f.) ANY of the above!)
- A Nene Thomas calendar that we got signed by the artist.  I didn't know it was her until I dragged Rae back to the booth, mostly to look at this stunningly beautiful lady, and she ended up asking which ones we liked best, and she was really sweet and kind and I got to fangirl a little because I've always thought her art was just lovely.
- The Sherlock Holmes Handbook because everyone should have a reference that explains the inner workings of Victorian Era locks.

We ran into some guys from Rum Party completely randomly on the trolley back to Old Town after they closed the Exhibit Hall, which was fun, and we had a dinner of noodle bowls and oranges we'd brought from home in an attempt to offset the outrageous (but not at all regretted) amount we'd spent already.


Thursday


We were up decently early on Thursday, but since the first thing we wanted to see wasn't until one, we hung around the Exhibit Hall for a while, and I picked up a copy of Tongues of Serpents from Mysterious Galaxy, the awesome sci-fi/fantasy bookstore that comes every year. Yay for supporting independent bookstores! We also hit the other publishers for advanced readers' copies, and snagged a few of those. We got into the line for Ballroom 20 where the Burn Notice panel was going to be and made it in with no problem.  We sat with estelofimladris and scifichicx, who were in their snazzy Peter and Neal from White Collar costumes. Catie's Neal even had handcuffs dangling from one wrist.

I had debated a little bit whether I should go to the Tron panel on the off chance Disney showed some PotC footage or dropped some major news or had guests.  However, I knew FOR SURE that Burn Notice was going to have Bruce Campbell and Matt Nix, and that was enough to make me choose my favorite burned spy show over the hope of pirates. I think I made the right decision. It was AWESOME. First of all, aside from Bruce and Matt and Alfredo Barrios, they had Dead Larry (who also directed a couple of episodes... I didn't know that!).  Continuing the tradition of having "villains" from the show run the panel, this year it was moderated by Chris Vance, who played Gilroy last season.  He was hysterical, and his banter with the creators about favorite villain to write made me grin.

Highlights from the panel include:

- Comic Con spy tips were back!  Michael did one about how to get your script into the hands of someone in the industry that ended with something like, "But if your script includes vampires that sparkle, you're better off cutting your losses."  Heh.  At the end, Jesse did one about how to get into con without a badge which was also quite funny because he was SO in character and confused by all the geekiness.

- Apparently, Dead Larry tends to be... slightly unrealistic when he directs about what is actually possible to get in the amount of time they have to shoot. Everyone kept making fun of him, saying that it's sometimes like, "And then we'll get a crane... and put it on top of ANOTHER crane, and then it'll EXPLODE...."

- Matt Nix handled what I thought was a kind of rude question about Fi's accent very gracefully. The question was something like "When did you know that you HAD to get rid of Fi's accent?"  It was asked in a tone of voice that added "Because MAN did it suck," to the end of the sentence.  Brief aside... I hate it when people ask questions like that in a disrespectful tone.  It's fine not to like something, but first of all, don't be rude about it to the creator's faces, and second, don't act like your opinion is universally accepted, jackass.   Some of us might have liked Fi's accent. Anyway, Matt explained that on a show where characters are doing different accents all the time as part of their covers, having Fi speaking in a (for America) non-standard accent would be confusing and take away from the specialness of the other times she and Michael have to put one on.

- Bruce Campbell was, as mentioned before, hilarious. He expressed a great deal of dislike for Dead Larry (the character, not the actor...) and he told stories about the Charger and filming in Miami.  The Charger, it seems, didn't have any air conditioning until very recently, and it only got some because Jeffrey (who Bruce swears never sweats) looked down with surprise during a take and went, "Huh... I'm sweating..." And there was AC in the car a couple of days later. 

- In the middle of all of this, a USA executive came on stage and announced that they had JUST made a final decision about a Sam-centric prequel movie, and he announced it to everyone - fans, cast, and creators, at the same time.  I don't think I've ever seen Bruce really surprised before, and he only looked it for a split second. It was awesome.  Matt made a comment about putting a chain saw in Sam's hands at some point, and the crowd went crazy.

- Before the panel, Jeffrey Donovan had twittered that someone should ask "Where's number one?" to the panel.  And the last girl up at the mic did. Lots of people (included me....) cheered, and Bruce rolled his eyes in mock exasperation and explained that Jeffrey is number one on the call sheet. And, if I remember right, not there because he was filming. 

- They showed a preview of that night's episode (the one with Burt Reynolds, which ended up being wonderfully fun...)

- We got Chuck Finley t-shirts!!! They're grey, and they've got a picture of "Chuck" on one side and "The Finley Method to Success" on the back.  (Which is, by the way, "Always let your reputation make the first impression; A legend is two parts mystery, one part swagger; Men of few words make the most impact; Always operate in the shadows; Mojito first - questions later.)

After that was over, we went right over to the room where Namoi Novik's panel was going to be held.  We sat through the urban fantasy/paranormal romance panel that came before it, and I spent much of it wishing that caedhe was there with me, because that genre is so much more her thing than it is mine.  It was still interesting, though.  The panel was a whole bunch of women and two men, and it was fun to hear the varying opinion on the "monstrous" characters they write and the grey areas that lets them play with. I also learned what the difference is between paranormal romance and urban fantasy.  The romance books must not only have a focus on the relationship, but they also have to provide a resolution (almost always a happy one) to the relationship at the end of each book. I can see why romance readers expect that and why publishers have those guidelines in place, but that is also the reason that I'm usually not particularly interested in paranormal romance. I don't want to know. I don't want to be sure, and I want to be able to see characters and relationships go through rocky patches and uncertainties over the course of a series. This is not to say I would never read it, I'm just less likely to invest in a fantasy series where I know each book is going to be tied up neatly. I read fantasy for the sprawl, even though I do complain about it sometimes. 

The panel Ms. Novik was on was called "Twisting Genres," and it was about authors whose work takes elements of several genres, or who had made a leap from one genre to the other. Naomi was sweet and classy as usual, China Mieville was smart and really well-spoken and made me sorry I haven't read any of his books, and Scott Westerfield and Keith Thompson did a short presentation about illustrated novels and how they used to be quite common.  They even pointed out that nowhere in any of the Sherlock Holmes stories does it mention him wearing a deerstalker.  That was apparently the invention of the artist, and it has become such an iconic Holmes symbol that it sometimes gets used as a symbol for mystery novels in libraries.  They also showed some artwork from their Leviathan novel that was so cool I ended up buying it at the signing...

There was a lot of tongue in cheek reference to "idea sex," where ideas from different genres get together and... have idea-babies with elements of both parents. It was pointed out that genre is a potent marketing tool, and that it helps people who like something find more like that, even as it does tend to cause a certain amount of "sameness" within genres.  However, someone, I think it was China Mieville, said that writing in a genre and trying to adhere to form and the rules of the genre closely while still doing something original was a challenge.

There were a couple of interesting comments about the Young Adult market.  First of all, someone observed that YA readers tend to be less "monogamous" with their genres.  However, the division that is more strictly observed is the one between boys' fiction and girls' fiction.  Scott Westerfield wrote The Uglies series that is primarily marketed to girls, and so when he switched over to Leviathan, which looks very militaristic and "male," even though there is a major female character as well, I guess he got some odd looks.  Hearing that frustrated me.   First of all, I'm a girl, and I think his book looks awesome, and I would have thought so even when I was a "YA" age reader.  Second, the "girls won't read books about boys or war, boys won't read books about girls or relationships" presumption is hogwash. Stupid false gender dichotomies.

When it came time to ask questions, I was sitting close enough to the mic that I got in line very quickly.  So, I was the last one to ask.  My question was, "Do you think there are two genres that should absolutely not be crossed because it would go terribly?"

I was hoping for one of two things here: tongue in cheek answers, and serious discussion about there weren't two genres that a decent author couldn't make work.  I got both.  I don't remember who said it, but one of the panelists leaned into the mic and said dryly, "I think that YA erotica might be a bad idea..." China said that he'd tend to take the question as a challenge and find the worst two he could think of and make it work just to show he could, and another panelist said he'd been writing horror westerns for years, which are the two genres that authors have historically not wanted to be labeled because they tend not to sell.  (After seeing the display for AMC's Walking Dead, I wonder if that's going to change...)  Anyway, I was happy with my answer, and it was a neat end to a really fascinating panel.

Rae and I headed straight over to the autograph area to get our copy of Tongues of Serpents signed. Naomi was... really sweet.  She is taking drabble prompts, and when I got up to the front of the line, I threw in mine, which is "Granby and surprise."  Because... let's face it, poor Granby is permanently surprised since getting his mercurial Iskierka.  Since she'd doodled Temeraire in one of my older novels and Iskierka in Victory of Eagles, I asked her to doodle Excedium, whose name I could not remember, to my fannish embarrassment. She knew what I meant when I said, "Jane's dragon..." though. And she commented on my spiffy New!Trek shirt!  It is SUCH fun to know that she's just as fannish as the rest of us. We also got our copy of Leviathan signed by the author and the artist and told them they'd just sold us their book with their neat little presentation. 

After the signing, we had to sit down from all the awesome, and that's when I realized I had a text message from Lynx. Our text conversation went something like this:

Lynx: There were pirates at the Tron panel.
Me: OMG who?
Lynx: Jack Sparrow.
Me: *has heart failure, flails to Rae, nearly starts crying at the idea that Johnny came to con for something pirates-related and I wasn't there* *takes a deep breath*
Me: Video or in person?
Lynx: Video... sorry.
Me: *huge sigh of relief*  

I have since seen the video, which is no longer on YouTube, though I'm sure it's still hiding some places on the internet.  I... love Johnny Depp so much every time I watch it.  I'm trying to decide if that was unscripted or not, because Jack going on about bloody marys or drinks on the mouse is not Disney-approved, I don't think.  What I like to think happened is that they set up a camera, called Johnny over while he was in costume, and said, "Hey, can you say hi to the folks at Comic Con in character and hit the following points?" And that video is what came out. *grin*  Jack looks like he's got some lighter patches in his hair this time, and some new dangly things, and... is SO himself, the cocky, quick-witted pirate I've loved since the day he stepped off of Anamaria's poor sinking boat onto the Port Royal docks.  In case I haven't mentioned it already, I can't wait for next May. /piratesquee

On Thursday night, we decided to splurge on dinner at the Baja Cantina, which we've walked by all the other years we've stayed in Old Town, but never eaten at. It was delicious.  I had seafood enchiladas, half of Rae's potent oyster shooters, and a fantastic pomegranate margarita that was strong enough to make me a little woozy for the next couple of hours.  Woozy or not, we went back to our hotel room and watched Burn Notice when we were done with dinner.  It was... a great episode because... Burt Reynolds was a lot of fun, but then, at the end, with Fi getting angry at Michael for having to hide the truth from Jesse... that hurt. A lot.


Friday



On Friday, we made the mistake of dropping by the Exhibit Hall before getting in line for Ballroom 20, where everything we wanted to see was taking place that day. However, we did end up getting a cute squishy shark plushie that is enormous for Lynx and a Doctor Who action figure set and shirt for lady_entropy17. So... it was shopping we needed to get done, I just wish we had done it some other time.  Oh, and we also ended up with the first two Mad Hatter graphic novels that tie in to the Looking Glass Wars series.  The lady who co-authors them was there, and she signed them for us. I also got a sweet deck of cards that have characters from the novels on the face cards and a photograph of Lewis Carroll as the Jokers. I was so happy about those... I collect interesting decks of cards, and this deck is certainly unique.

Then... we went to get in line for Ballroom 20. And they told us the line was closed.  Not that the ballroom was full for the current panel, but that the line to even get into the ballroom for future panels was closed.  The thing all of the event staff were telling people was that it would open up in three or four hours.  Now... I have been going to Comic con for long enough to know crowd control methods when I hear them. They didn’t want people hanging around hoping the line would reopen, and I knew that.  I also knew there was no way they were going to keep that line closed for the next four hours.  So, Rae and I sat down near where the entrance to the line was, ate our sandwiches we’d packed, and kept our eyes peeled. Sure enough, fifteen minutes later, they opened the line up again and let us in. 

For the next two or three hours, I sat in line, read one of the freebie novels I’d picked up, and seethed a bit at myself for not getting into line earlier.  We missed the Bones panel, which David Boreanaz was actually at this year. *cries* We also missed the Joss panel.  We finally got in for the “Kick Ass Women of Sci Fi” panel, which was ok… I didn’t really know any of the actresses or characters this year, but it was still fun to hear them talk about their takes on the roles available to women in the genre.

Then… there was the True Blood panel.   It was fantastic.  (Or should I say “fangtastic?” Probably not.) Anyway, pretty much every major star was there, along with Alan Ball and Charlaine Harris.  Alexander Skaarsgard, who plays Eric, was noticeably absent. It was pretty funny, actually… when everyone was seated, Alan Ball looks down the row of people, looks out at the audience, and says, “It looks like we’re missing someone!”  Immediately, the crowd starts laughing and shouting out, “Where’s Eric?”  Alan nods at Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, and the two of them dash off stage and come back with a cardboard cutout of Eric in his trademark black.  They put it on an empty chair and proceeded to snuggle with it.  I think I nearly died laughing.

I don’t remember if she was there last year, but Kristin Bauer van Straten, who plays Pam, is absolutely amazing.  She’s gorgeous in real life, and so quick witted.  For example, one of the fan questions was about what it’s been like working with animals, and Kristin’s immediate response was, “Well, Skarsgaard’s not so bad once you get to know him…”  She also talked about how it was fun for her to get to spend a lot of time mentoring Jessica since Bill… isn’t around to do it.

Other highlights include:

-  Anna Paquin doing her best Bill impression and saying “Sookeh” for the crowd.

-  Rutina Wesley getting asked questions this year! Lots of people wanted to know when Tara was going to get a break.  Things have been hard for her since day one.  Rutina just smiled that gorgeous smile of hers (can you tell how much I love her?) and said that drama like Tara’s is what every actor hopes to be able to sink their teeth into.

- Deborah Woll, who plays Jessica, talked very intelligently about Jessica needing to love herself first before she can love Hoyt, and she very sweetly had the audience give a round of applause for Hoyt’s absent actor… who NEEDS to come to Comic-Con one of these days.  His character is such a sweetheart…

- Alan Ball thinks Sookie and Bill are soulmates… even if Charlaine Harris doesn’t. ;-) The interacation between the two creators on stage was awesome.

- Stephen Moyer was hilarious, smart, or both every time he opened his mouth. He’s loosened up in front of crowds a lot since last year.  He talked about filming a scene where he twists Lorena’s neck around and how they made it look realistic, and seemed to be having a lot of fun retelling all of the gory details.

- The actor who plays the vampire king of Mississippi makes up copious backstory for him.  That made me grin. 

- I have seen none of season 3 (hope to remedy that soon) but the fellow who plays the new werewolf is… gorgeous and smart and seems to fit perfectly with everyone else.  He told a story about being presented with the… options he had for covering himself up during sex scenes, and it was really funny. I think they also announced that he would be a regular from now on, and the crowd went nuts.  I can’t wait to see an episode with him in it…

- They showed a preview of the rest of the season that is here and even though I didn’t understand some of it, there was a pretty intense scene that seemed to be Eric getting angry at Sookie for… something, I don’t know what, there was Jason being protective of a… new girlfriend, I think?  And then, at the last, Sookie in the hospital unconscious with Tara and some other people looking very worried nearby.  Flash to Sookie standing by a doorway with light and mist coming through it, through which she can see a sunny day and a yard and kids playing… and then there’s another woman next to her, shaking her head and saying that Sookie is always in trouble… and it’s Lara Pulver.  HOLY CRAP. It was the very last scene they showed, and I was still hyperventilating a little even after the applause had died down. Yep… Isabella Lara is going to be on True Blood.  And from the looks of things, she's going to be on it a lot. Go her! I'm always so happy when actors from my favorite series get awesome new parts... *very studiously does not imagine vampire!Guy*

Anyway, after the panel we went and got our swag, which were in the same True Blood backpacks from last year.  The sway, though, was different.  It included a red shirt with “VILF” in big white letters on the front, a True Blood notebook, Club Dead novels with the hot cast photo on the front, a packet of fun postcards, and “vamp stamp” band-aids.  Truly awesome stuff, there.  I still wear my “it hurts so good” shirt from last year, and between the two of us, Rae and I have yet to actually buy any of the novels.

After the panel, we went back to Old Town and had dinner at Berta’s, a tiny little South American restaurant that we had passed by on the way to dinner on Thursday.  I cannot say enough good things about this restaurant.  They had a live guitar player and delicious food from lots of different South American countries that I’ve never sampled before.  I had some sort of spicy lamb stew that was tender and perfect, and for desert, Rae and I shared home-made flan and something with bananas that were covered in this glazed coconut stuff… it was so good I can barely describe it.  Our waitress was also really sweet, and turned out to be just as nerdy as we were.  She even told us that she read Wheel of Time and geeked out over our great serpent rings that we both happened to be wearing.  The long and short of it is... we are definitely going back there next year.