Friday, there were plans to leave around 10:30 or 11 for Comic Con. I got up at 9 or so, showered, got ready, then rode the trains over to Brantley's, where Steve was staying. I was buzzed in, this was around 10:15 or so, and everyone was asleep. Awesome. So, I played some Little Big Planet on their PS3 while I waited. Everyone finally woke up and around 11:30 we finally left. During the hour before we left, Steve realized that he left his weekend pass to the con on his kitchen table in NC. So we had to stop at R/GA and use the printer there to show proof that he bought one.
After that was handled we ate Go Go Curry, which is delicious, and obsessed with Hideki Matsui. Read that page and see how obsessed they are. I'll wait.
Ok, so then it was off to comic con. Since we were both new to this whole thing, we got lost in the epic show room floor, and missed most of the panels we wanted to see (Dark Horse, Yatterman preview). Steve spent hundreds of dollars on comics, and anime figures. 25% off of every comic is a very strong selling point. You could pretty much get anything you ever wanted.
We were walking by the booth for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, and they were having a mock-debate with 2 chosen audience members. The winner got the new Spider Man game, and the loser got...something. I don't remember. So these were the contestants:
When asked their names the guy on the left (stupid hair) said "Old School Fool" and the guy on the right said something normal like Kevin or Rick or something. So, from the outset, I hated that guy on the left. Just tell them your name.
The first topic they were supposed to debate on was who was the better butler: Jarvis: butler to Iron Man, or Wong: Butler to Dr. Strange. Wong is the obvious answer to me, but KevinRick decided to argue for Jarvis. He clearly had read plenty of Iron Man/Avengers books and gave an informed argument. Then it was O.S.F's turn. He decided to just say "Wong is better, because it's Wong man! I mean come on. This is Wong. Jarvis isn't as good as Wong. We're talking about Wong here! Jarvis isn't as good". That was it. That was his great argument. I don't even think this guy had any idea who Wong was. I got agitated and walked away.
Decided to check out this T-Shirt booth that was selling shirt versions of every single different Lantern Corps. Pretty awesome display. While looking, I noted to Steve how awesome the Capt. Marvel / Black Adam T's were. Here's a Capt. Marvel T-shirt:
While looking at it, a guy walked up with his girlfriend and pointed at it, saying "Baby.....The Flash! God I love the Flash, but it is so hard to find good Flash stuff! Oh man. I want this Flash shirt" He ended up not buying it, and I think I would have spoken up if he started to buy it. Here's a flash shirt, for comparison:
The minute this guy walked away, another guy walked up and pointed at the same shirt. "Oh god, that's a cool Flash shirt!". I walked away from this too. What kind of Comic Con is this, where people don't know who Wong is, or what the Flash's logo looks like?
Later we attended the DC Vertigo panel where they announced all the new books they would be putting out this year/soon. They are going to be taking a lot of my money.
Saturday, we woke early and raced to the convention because Steve wanted to go to the Penny Arcade panel. It turns out that so did everyone else. We couldn't get in because they cut off the line like 10 people before us. So, we roamed around the show floor, then went of to our next planned activity, which was to watch the screening of Chocolate which we found out was cancelled. So, we headed over to the Robot Chicken panel. That too was well beyond packed. Tired of standing up and walking around, we headed in to a random panel called "Freemind". I think this turned out pretty awesome.
It was a panel about this comic book called "Freemind" that I had never heard of. The plot was semi interesting, but it was really the creative team that was most surprising. 4 guys I had never heard of, all with credentials longer than my arm. The writer and artist were both involved with Iron Man in the 70s/80s and created a lot of the stuff that was in the movie. So, they were involved with the movie, too. One of them had created Venom in the 80s, while writing Spider-Man. That's pretty nuts. So, this panel was about the new Freemind movie that they were working on. They had the director there too. He's David Nutter, who directed the early Smallville episodes and even some Band of Brothers. For something I had never heard of, being talked about by people I had never heard of, it was a pretty awesome panel. I'll look forward to that movie. This panel had like 12 people in it...
While roaming the floor, we stopped to check out BioWare's new PC game "Dragon Age", which I had forgotten about but had previously been looking forward to. While Steve played, and I watched, I noticed one of the BioWare employees seemingly had a full-sleeve tattoo of this game. Knowing that there was no way he was that committed of an an employee, I asked where I could get one.
He gave us both one. They are these super thin-mesh sleeve things. The seem on the wrist is so completely believable in real life, that it was blowing my mind. I would love to see something like this made with real tattoos, and you could easily fake having spent a lot of money getting your arms done..
We spent the rest of the day spending too much money...or, I did, at least:
I really want to find some friends/people to try out that Mouse Guard RPG with...sigh.
We were going to go again today and watch the pilot episode of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse...but we were have decided to skip the whole day. It's just too much.
October 2010 is when it comes back around. I'll go again, for sure.