Posts Tagged ‘ New York Comic Con ’

I just caught the end of this panel – and the fact that it was attended by Wes Craven was just great. The man’s a legend, he really is.

The most interesting thing was the question that was being asked when I walked in, about the victimisation of women in horror movies. Craven was very forthcoming, saying that the sad truth is that women are very often victimised, and what happens with horror movies is that they reflect the times we live in. That said, he pointed out that he also has had very strong women in his films. And he has. Nightmare on Elm Street‘s Nancy and Scream‘s Sydney come to mind immediately.

He also said that he thought the increase in torture-style horror films – such as Hostel – was reflective of what you see in the news on an almost nightly basis. He thought that how these things worked is that filmmakers wondered what would happen if they were subjected to things themselves – and then they build out from there.

Craven also said that the original Hills Have Eyes was inspired by the story of Alexander Sawney Bean – and sometimes that ideas come from just hearing about something and thinking ‘that’s horrible’.

Very interesting…

The BSG panel kicked off with the big announcement of Sci Fi teaming up with Virgin Comics to produce new properties after a number of media platforms – a really smart move, I thought.

After that, compere – and geek god – Kevin Smith (“I have nothing to do with this show at all, which might explain why it’s o good.”) kicked off by introducing Adam Stotsky (SVP Marketing), Tricia Helfer (Six) and James Callis (Gaius) – and then a very funny trailer/clip show showcasing the panel’s two main guests.

The questions were the usual – and are pretty thoroughly documented here – but I was really impressed by both Callis and Helfer. Aside from both being ridiculously good looking, they were both very, very good with the crowd. Callis especially was cracking everyone up with virtually everything he said, and Helfer was pretty forthcoming and playful with Smith’s – and the audience’s – questions.

And my wife became a very jealous woman indeed when Helfer said that she had been dating Nathan Fillion while he was filming Firefly. Oddly, I became very jealous of Fillion at almost the exact same moment…

The main points of interest coming out of the panel were:

• The trial of Gaius is coming
• There will be a BSG DVD or TV movie soon
• The Caprica spin-off is still in the works

The rest of the panel was just fun. Very, very good stuff!

So the weekend blogging didn’t quite work out…

Anyway, you can catch all the announcements and stuff over on Newsarama and CBR – there’s no sense in rehashing every word, plus I didn’t go to the Cup of Joe panel as I was con’d out by that point Saturday, and I got there too late – ie past 6am – to get Stephen King panel tickets dammit…

Photos – blurry and indistinct though they may be – will be added tonight!

Buffy panel
No Nick Brendan – apparently he was running late. I’m not sure if he turned up for the autographing later, either. Kind of sucks – if someone makes a commitment like that they really should honor it. Ah well.

These things always creep me out a bit. The actors either are kind of quiet and look that they don’t want to be there or throw themselves into it a bit aggresively. There’s often a quiet desperation to these kind of things, I find. A sense of ‘if my career was doing better, I wouldn’t have to be sitting here taking questions on something I did eight years ago’, or ‘You don’t see Gellar, Boreanaz or Hannigan doing this anymore, do you?’

But I digress – this wasn’t quite that bad, although Bianca Lawson (Kendra) was kind of quiet. Jonathan Woodward (Angel‘s Knox, Firefly‘s Tracey in The Message and Buffy‘s talky vampire Webs in the excellent Conversations with Dead People) and James Leary (Clem) were both on great form and had the crowd eating out of their hand – literally in Jonathan’s case. Jonathan’s story about ‘winking’ at Lawrence Fishburne’s wife whilst being straddled by a tall Canadian man in very tight pants was priceless – and if you’re not geek enough to get what that means, man you’re really in the wrong place.

Juliet Landau (the incomparable Drusilla) was also entertaining, relating how she and James Marsters came up with a lot of their physical interactions early on and doing a frankly kind of creepy little Dru bit into the microphone.

Leland Crooke (Angel‘s Archduke Sebassis) related how much fun it was to kill Wesley knowing that he was going to stay dead. Only Bianca Lawson (Kendra) – who is absolutely tiny – looked pretty shy at the mike, and didn’t have too much to say.

Even without Nick Brendan though, this was a fun hour and a pretty good way to start the day!

…there was a poster in the Marvel booth for Annihilation Conquest: Prologue with a suspiciously Quasar-like character taking center stage….

I’ll try to get a pic tomorrow – where I probably won’t be blogging live due to time constraints…

There are 5 key ads for the new Countdown and the tag lines are:

• Jimmy Olsen Must Die!
• Seduction of the Innocent – with an image of an Eclipso’d Mary Marvel
• The Search for Ray Palmer – and the world’s smallest man will be the biggest piece of the puzzle
• Villains Defiant! – with two villains chained togethere
• Unto Man Shall Come A Great Disaster - Darkseid lives!

Other reveals:

• Manhunter is NOT cancelled – AGAIN!
• Kyle Rayner is not dying
• 3 or 4 spin offs from 52
• Kingdom Come is required reading
• There’s a story to be told with how Faust gets out of his pact
• Countdown will not be a direct sequel to 52 but one character will feature in its early stages
• Flash is not as directionless as you may think (although that seemed like a cover)
• The next Wonder Woman writer after Jodi Picoult can’t be named yet but is set. Didio teased: “Who would you like it to be?” Oddly, nobody said Joss Whedon which I thought was the obvious answer…

He’s a legend.

He really is.

That is all.

• The Initative and the SHRA are here to stay – they won’t be ending with WWH
• Thor by JMS and Olivier Coipel is coming in July
• Barry Kitson is now exclusive to Marvel – and will be taking on Champions with Matt Fraction
• Joe Quesada explained his take on Cap in CW #7 – and quite reasonably
• Joss Whedon’s magic bullet can’t be explained yet as its still to play out – give it a month
• Omega Flight looks great – and Oeming thinks that USAgent will provide the most fun while Julia Carpenter will provide the heart
• There’s another Great Lakes one-shot coming from Dan Slott and Fabian Nicieza – in fact it might just be called Great Lakes Initative/Deadpool Summer Spectacular!
• Jim Rhodes is in charge of the Initative
• Ms Marvel and Spider-Woman’s past friendship will be a factor in the upcoming Mighty/New Avengers clash
• Ares should be the breakout star of Mighty Avengers – and an additional Ares may be on the cards

Bullet points!

• About 36 tie ins including the World War Hulk mini, but you won’t need them if you don’t want to read them.
• Peter David will be writing the one-shot Prologue
• WWH mini has 5 interlocking covers: #1 v Black Bolt & Iron Man; #2 v FF inc Reed & Sue; #3 v the Army; #4 v Dr Strange and a mystery #5 – maybe vs Thor? Or Sentry?
• WWH: X-Men #1-3 by Christos Gage and Andrea DiVito will take place within WWH #1 – Hulk wants words with Prof X and doesn’t care that there aren’t many mutants around amymore…
• The core Hulk title will explore some allies – an image showed Hulk with Hercules, Angel, the new Scorpion and Namora. Namor will also appear.
• Front Line: WWH will run 6 issues by Jenkins and Bachs, with 3 stories per issue – and no crappy war analogies!
• Titles tying in will be: Ghost Rider; Ant-Man; Heroes for Hire (Humbug can talk to bugs…and Miek and Brood will be around); Iron Man; Avengers : The Initiative. Young Avengers will have a one-shot tie in.
• And Dan Slott also wants everyone to buy She-Hulk #18 – which leads straight in to WWH

The New York Comic Con lands today, which means that I’m taking off half the afternoon and hauling my ass over to the Javits Centre for a few panels later.

On the agenda today are:

4.30 – 5.30 World War Hulk

5.30 – 6.30 Civil War Fallout

6.30 – 7.30 Stan Lee

7.30 – 8.30 DC Nation

At least that’s the plan. Oddly, the Stan Lee event isn’t ticketed, and I suspect that all 3 of the Marvel events will be in the same room so it should minimise running around.

In any case, between that, tomorrow (the better half is accompanying in an attempt to get into the Buffy panel, including Nicholas Brendan and also the ticketed Stephen King panel if possible) and Sunday I’m expecting a pretty busy weekend – and I’ll be trying to update fairly regularly from home – only about 20 blocks north of Javits, conveniently.

Maybe from the centre itself tomorrow thanks to the Javits Wifi…

It occurs to me that sometimes it can get a little trying blogging about comics 5 days a week as sometimes I don’t have that much to say. On days like that, I tend to post scattershot posts like this that touch on a few things but probes into none, and don’t always reference comics. False advertising? Maybe. Easier blogging? Definitely.

Because apparently having female role models involves being stick thin and showing a lot of skin and boobs.

Good job DC aren’t trying to capture the female market.

Oh, wait…

One last thing

That profile pic up in the top right?

I don’t really look like that.

Honest.