Hey folks, Ambush Bug here. It’s been a while since we’ve done a Shoot the Messenger column. Every now and again, the @$$holes turn off their computers, put on some clothes, and venture forth into the world outside of our basement windows. This week, fellow @$$hole Prof. Challenger took some time away from his experiments with monkey/cheese gene splicing and went to the 2005 WIZARDWORLD DALLAS Comic Convention to report all of the goings on. The Prof brought his son, Prof Jr. and his own photographer/sister, Cheri Howell, along for the ride. Let’s see how the trip went.
WIZARDWORLD DALLAS 2005
Saturday Report
I have not been to a Comic or Sci-Fi convention in over 15 years, but my fairly recent acceptance as a resident @$$hole here on AICN led me to look at attending the next Con that was held close enough for me to drive. I'm stationed just barely north of Austin, Texas, so a 2 ½ hour drive to Dallas was the perfect opportunity. Unfortunately, I knew that with work scheduling and family obligations I was only going to be able to make it on Saturday - which turned out to be a good choice.
Now, one of the reasons I stopped going to Cons was that, truth to tell, I got turned off a bit by the nutjobs that infiltrate these things. The other thing that happened is that my last Con was right around the time that the speculator frenzy was reaching its apex and I got flat out disgusted by all the little kids waltzing around with briefcases full of sealed, bagged, and boarded comics haggling over values as they tried to sell them for insane profit to the Simpson's Comic Book Guy and his myriad clones. I just kind of lost my taste for the Ferengi-style atmosphere.
But here's the good news. I brought along my 10 year-old son with me to his first convention of any kind and I must admit that seeing a lot of it through his eyes made this whole experience a great day.
First let me kick this thing off with PROF'S COMIC CONVENTION ETIQUETTE 1.01. For anyone ever attending a Comic Book Convention THIS is a prime example of what NOT to do:
Do NOT show up wearing a homemade costume of your own original character that looks something like an albino wearing a white Robin-style mask with a white trashbag for a sleeveless tunic and a painted yellow flying thing on the front, blue sweatpants tucked into white boots, a homemade sheath painted yellow and a sword with a hilt that looks like a rubber chicken, and a long white rat tail attached to your butt. Furthermore, even if you DO show up dressed like this, please do NOT hijack every panel discussion by asking the editors and vice-presidents of the two largest publishers how to get a job writing for them. Moreover, when they try to redirect their attention off of you and your ridiculous costume, please do not continue to densely repeat your question over and over with some sort of ignorant expectation that the answer is going to change from one moment to the next. And especially, especially, do not obsessively fixate on the ages of the female members of the Teen Titans until both panel guests and audience members are insulting your intelligence.
Ok. Now that that's out of the way, on to the first panel. At 11:00 a.m., I sat in on the MONDO MARVEL! Presentation. At least that's what WizardWorld called it in their nifty program with the cover art previewing Bryan Hitch's DVD cover art for the upcoming ULTIMATE AVENGERS DVD. However, the PowerPoint presentation by Nick Lowe, Assistant Editor of X-MEN/ULTIMATE IRON MAN/1602/NEXTWAVE was oh-so-cleverly entitled "The LoweDown." Hurm. After the lame hip-hop version of Billy Squier's STROKE they had playing in the minutes prior to the start, I was starting to get a sinking feeling. First off, Nick Lowe? I was expecting that fabulous 50-something British songwriter with the sardonic wit most famous here in the States for "Cruel to be Kind" and "I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock-n-Roll." Instead, I got that 12 year-old boy who lives around the corner in Everytown, USA. A nice enough guy, but I can't believe he's even reached puberty yet. Anyhoo…he kicked off the show with his PowerPoint and then a short Q&A. If you want the press-release version of this panel or any of the panels I mention in this report, just go visit wizardworld.com for the boring rundown that everyone already knows from reading Newsarama and Diamond Previews. What I'm going to talk about is the stuff that may or may not be widely known or was just plain interesting to me.
Oh, and there are spoilers included in this that if you are a Marvel fan and don't like the surprises spoiled, then jump to the DC panel write-up down below. First off, regarding Marvel's NEXTWAVE book coming out next year? Lowe makes this offer to any and all fans: If you will just TRY the NEXTWAVE book and you honestly do NOT like it, he says to come up to him at any convention he attends next year and tell him. He promises that he will dance for you on the spot. If that appeals to you? Go for it. If nothing else, NEXTWAVE has the best tagline ever:
GOOD.
BAD.
MONKEY.
NEXTWAVE DOESN'T KNOW THE DIFFERENCE.
Ha! I do love that. Can't go wrong with monkeys.
Damon Lindelof, a writer from the TV-series LOST takes on the ULTIMATE mini-series HULK VS. WOLVERINE. Lowe seemed especially fixated on the full pager from the first issue of the series showing Ultimate Hulk literally tearing Ultimate Wolverine into two pieces. Which brings up two idiotic logic points of the type that make all of us comic geeks especially…well…geeky. One, Hulk may be "strongest one there is" but even he shouldn't be able to rip adamantium apart and; two, Wolverine may have a "healing factor," but even that stretches the bounds of credibility if we're talking about healing a torso and abdomen back together ~ especially after every freakin' drop of blood just spilled out of his body in about 1.8 seconds. Uber-Geek in the audience yelled out something about Wolverine's body halves each growing new Wolverine halves leaving the Ultimate Universe with two Wolverines. I was just wishing for a harpoon gun at that moment. Lowe kind of looked like he did too.
Regarding ULTIMATE EXTINCTION. If Lowe repeated the lame joke that in the Ultimate Universe Galactus is GAH-LAHK-TUSS one more time, I may have had to turn the harpoon gun onto him.
*SPOILER* According to Lowe, the "traitor" in THE ULTIMATES will be revealed in issue #9 and the "traitor" will be none other than…..duh duh duh DUH….FREDDIE PRINZE JR.
Yeah. That's about the reception Lowe got to that joke. See, it's not really the joke itself that's necessarily awful, but there needs to be a bit of flair in the telling that was unfortunately not there. Sorry, Nick. Also, stressing to the audience that the issue also has hot love scenes between Iron Man and the Black Widow seemed a bit of pointless prurient pandering.
ULTIMATE VISION will be written by Mark Millar (good idea) and will be illustrated by my personal favorite post-Kirby Marvel artist John Romita, Jr. It will be a 6-part back-up story running in ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN and, according to Lowe, will NOT be collected in trades. Yeah. I remember when DC said they were never going to collect CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS in a trade paperback. I'd say, take that with a half a grain of salt.
All this DECIMATION stuff was awful looking. All of it. The only thing worse that billions of mutants running around in a butt-load of titles is a butt-load of titles focusing on a bunch of mutants who've lost their powers.
X-MEN: DEADLY GENESIS will be written by Ed Brubaker and will reveal both the present fate of Xavier and the "secret history" of the X-Men. Uh-oh. Not too sure about that. Also, a "major" character will bite the dust in this story. Judging from the cover art Lowe featured, it looks a lot like Xavier kicks it. But, they made sure the face was in enough shadow to make it unclear. Wouldn't surprise me if it was really Cyclops. Isn't it about time for Cyclops to be dead for a while?
I think Lowe needs a girlfriend. First he fixates on the love scenes between two comic book characters and then he overly fixates on some drawings from UNCANNY X-MEN #466 of Psylocke doing some stretching. It was kind of creepy. Reminded me of that guy in some movie I can't even remember the name of where he would get up every morning and watch the PBS workout lady because he got off to it. Or maybe that was just Sleazy G.
The preview of the cover to ASTONISHING X-MEN #13 was shockingly banal. Just a posed picture of the team with fire behind them. Big woop.
Ryan Sook art in the upcoming Peter David relaunch of X-FACTOR may be enough for some of you to take a look. If nothing else, it should look purty. Claremont's back on EXCALIBUR with art by Michael Ryan who seems to be aping Byrne pretty well with that Dazzler panel previewed on the slideshow. X-MEN 177 & 178 are "all action" and Apocalypse returns in '06 if any of you give a damn ~ cause I sure don't.
And finally, in the arena of who in all the 7 hells would ever give a flying rat's shaved posterior about this announcement, the mini-series that absolutely nobody has ever even comprehended, much less demanded, premieres in January: APOCALYPSE VS. DRACULA. Shoot me now.
BIG CROSSOVER THINGEE FOR '06 is the extremely underwhelming "Whose Side Are You On" campaign that had some drawing of about 50 different heroes and villains. Oooh.
That's it for the press release portion. Then came the Q&A. Here's some highlights.
Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark are taking over DAREDEVIL after Bendis! bolts. They will take the book in this oh-so-original direction: "Matt's in more legal troubles." Yawn.
MOON KNIGHT is coming back in a series written by crime novelist Charlie Huston with art by David Finch. Then some nimrod asked if MK was going to be wearing a silver costume or a white costume. Argh. A flummoxed Lowe said "white."
Politically dodging a question about the debacle called MAX, Lowe said Marvel was keeping MAX open more as an "initiative" than a "line." Which Prof. Challenger shall now translate: What that actually means is that when PUNISHER gets cancelled again, MAX will disappear into the ether of every other lost Marvel imprint that failed.
Lowe says Gaiman's new ETERNALS miniseries is "super cool." Which would be nice except that absolutely everything that Lowe talked about was either "cool," "really cool," or "super cool" or even…"really super cool." So, you know? His praise quickly lost any real weight.
Quick shots:
Audience: Any plans for Hawkeye?
Lowe: Yes.
Audience: Black Cat?
Lowe: Possibly.
Audience: Michael Turner?
Lowe: JoeyDaQ knows.
Audience: Kevin Smith?
Lowe: Finished with SPIDER-MAN & BLACK CAT #4 & #5. Working on finishing DAREDEVIL: TARGET.
Audience: Too many X-Books?
Lowe: When the audience stops buying 'em, we'll stop publishing 'em.
Audience: Master of Kung Fu?
Lowe: Read BLACK PANTHER.
Audience: How does BLACK PANTHER fit into continuity?
Lowe: Don't know.
Audience: What's the deal with Ultimate Colossus and hints about him being gay?
Lowe: You'll just have to read.
Audience: ULTIMATE DAREDEVIL?
Lowe: No plans for any new Ultimate series or minis.
And one final great big *SPOILER* regarding the identity of Ronin in the NEW AVENGERS series. Lowe did NOT reveal this, but an audience member pointed out that the new DK GUIDE TO THE AVENGERS has done gone and revealed the identity of Ronin. So, after the panel, everybody went rushing around to find a dealer who had a copy of the book. So, if you don't want to know, do not read what's coming up next….the identity of Ronin is…….some old girlfriend of Daredevil's named…."Echo."
As everyone reading this does a collective Bendis! inspired "the Hell?" I shall move on.
After a sloppy and overly pricey concession-stand lunch, Prof Jr. took off with his aunt to attend the Sean Astin panel discussion. I didn't bother to go to that one.
At 2:00 p.m. Marvel and Lions Gate Films premiered a few minutes of the upcoming ULTIMATE AVENGERS DVD that is based on the first story arc in THE ULTIMATES but minus any cannibalism, racism, or spousal abuse. This panel was made up of the artist Bryan Hitch, Craig Kyle (V.P. of Animation Development) and Bob Richardson (Producer).
The character designs are based on Hitch's ULTIMATES designs with a few little changes like the inexplicable absence of Thor's beard. Other than that, they all looked pretty good. Hitch also has provided marketing art for the film that was used on three posters. One features Captain America. One features Thor. One features Iron Man. All three look real nice and Lions Gate was just givin' 'em away at their booth to all us greedy free-stuff grabbers.
If you want the play-by-play of the scene they showed, just go to the WizardWorld website. Basically, it was all just a big fight scene between the Avengers and the Hulk. As a result, I must confess to being unable to accurately gauge the film. They really should've shown at least some snippets of other scenes so that we could get a feel for how they are doing on the non-action scenes. I will say that the animation was pretty nice. Definitely better than any animation I've ever seen involving Marvel characters. The voice actors varied between good and not-so-good. The panel said that this movie is really "Cap's story"? Unfortunately, the guy doing Cap's voice was terribly weak. Very soft sounding and not at all what the hard-nosed and determined Ultimate Captain America should sound like. It was kind of like the disparity between the way Mike Tyson looks and then that little lispy kid voice he has. Not quite that extreme, but you get my drift.
They said that by necessity some things had to be changed in the story (although why Thor's beard had to go was never addressed), but that they tried their best to capture the "spirit" of the series. They are going for a PG-13 type of animated film and the intensity of the fight scenes bears that out. They also pointed out that throughout the film there will be occasional shots that were directly based on panels in the comics. So, fans of the ULTIMATES comic should enjoy looking for those
The movie will be around 75 minutes long and will have some extras. Hitch said they came and recorded about 2 ½ hours of him in his studio. "Very riveting" he deadpanned. Then he added "[Mark Millar's] in there too and he never stops talking."
As for the schedule on these animated films, ULTIMATE AVENGERS comes out in February '06 with ULTIMATE AVENGERS 2 releasing about 4 months later. IRON MAN follows that and DR. STRANGE hits the stores in February '07.
When I left the ULTIMATE AVENGERS panel, I scouted out my son who was standing in the seemingly endless line for Sean Astin autographs. Which turned out kind of funny in that when my son finally got to the front of the line and walked up, Astin was distracted talking to some guy sitting next to him. Well, after a couple of seconds of that, Prof Jr. just walked up to Astin and plopped his two wadded up pictures of Samwise Gamgee right down in front of him. A shocked Astin started and promptly apologized for making him wait and signed his pictures while attempting to engage the 10 year-old in banter involving T.S. Elliot quotes. A rather confused 10 year-old then had a couple pictures snapped of the two of them and moved on.
On to the final panel at 3:30 p.m. called DC COMICS: A LOOK AHEAD featuring the comedy team of Bob Wayne (V.P. Sales) and Dan DiDio (V.P.-Executive Editor, DCU). OK. These guys know how to throw a panel. Their jokes are funny because they've probably been told hundred times already and the timing's sharp plus DiDio's progressive mild inebriation from downing 4 Bud Light longnecks in an hour's time made the whole show a lot of fun. Bob was hamming it up with the audience at the start by taking a few preliminary questions. When somebody asked whether the Human Bomb was really dead, Bob hemmed and hawed and didn't want to come out and say for sure one way or the other. Suddenly a voice piped up from the darkened back of the room crying out "Is there beer up there?" And amidst roars of laughter, a man bearing a physical resemblance to what the bastard lovechild of G. Gordon Liddy and Telly Savales might look like, comes barreling up to the front. Dan DiDio takes his seat and guzzles the plastic cup of beer he's holding and then immediately pop the top on a longneck and gets started on that. Then Dan pops out with "Human Bomb? Dead." [evil laugh]
Nick Lowe was probably taking a nap back in his room about now.
They promptly kicked off their PowerPoint press release show which I will highlight a bit of here. Regarding the cover of INFINITE CRISIS #4 by Perez that's available for all to see everywhere on the internet? Dan says "That's not the final cover." To which Bob says "Wait. I don't see Flash on the cover." Then Bob revealed the ending of INFINITE CRISIS…*Spoiler Warning*….It will end with something that says…"The End."
They previewed the cover to JLA #125 with Green Arrow beating up Batjerk. Then Bob and Dave pointed out that there haven't been any solicitations for JLA #126. Hmmm.
Regarding Wildstorm properties, about the only thing mildly interesting was that Capt. Atom meets The Authority in issue 5 of his ARMAGEDDON series.
Regarding Vertigo properties, about the only thing mildly interesting was THE QUITTER graphic novel by Harvey Pekar and Dean Haspiel.
Regarding those of you out there, like the "White Rat Knight" mentioned above in this report, who are always asking about how to get a job at DC? He says anytime any jobs are open at DC they are listed on www.wbjobs.com. He says "Have fun. Tell 'em Dan sent you."
Regarding DC Direct, the goofiest sales gimmick I can recall is the upcoming WHO'S WHO MYSTERY BOX SET with these little micro-figurines in a closed box where the purchaser does not know which character he's bought until he opens it. So, you might get Abin Sur, Capt. Marvel, Superman, or Batman. Or you might get someone else you don't give a flip about. Bob was also heavily promoting a new Capt. Marvel statue based on a Jerry Ordway design with a light up lightning bolt and a thunder sound effect. In fact, he pushed it so much that Dan joked about Bob having a ton of these things piled up in his garage and he's trying to unload them.
Regarding the new WARLORD, JONAH HEX, and SGT. ROCK books, Dan has been the guy pushing to get these books out simply because these are the characters that got him interested in comics back in the 70s. He loves the super-heroes, but he loves these characters outside the mainstream super-hero books even more and feels like the market is ripe to reintroduce them.
Then it was time for the Q&A. And also the first of many times for my son to ask me how much longer this thing's going to be. I lied and told him I didn't know. I sure didn't need to hear his ringing yelp of "ONE MORE HOUR?!?!?"
The discussion quickly got off onto INFINITE CRISIS and 52, where Dan repeatedly reminded everyone out there that "I like dark, dark things." Hence my usual nickname for him "Darth DiDio" seems especially appropriate. He also pointed out that "Animal Man plays a key role in INFINITE CRISIS. Hopefully, he'll make it out of that alive and we can do stuff with him in the future."
Asked about why DC changed Frank Quitely's mild redesign of the Superman "S" on his ALL-STAR SUPERMAN book, Dan essentially said that the "S" is too trademarked to monkey around with and should always be consistent. On plans for SHAZAM!, Bob and Dan said that the recent changes made in the approach to Capt. Marvel were specifically planned as a way to differentiate the character from Superman. Essentially, where it stands now is that Capt. Marvel is the premiere super-hero when it comes to magic-based adventures and Superman is the premiere super-hero for science-based characters. Furthermore, he stated that DC's goal this next year "is to push Capt. Marvel to the forefront." Part of that plan calls for Jeff Smith's long in production CAPT. MARVEL AND THE MONSTER SOCIETY OF EVIL prestige SHAZAM! mini-series to finally see print. It is still in progress, but scheduled for next year some time. Related to that, Dan said there absolutely will be "more Shadow Pact" in the upcoming year.
*SPOILER ALERT*
The ABSOLUTE EDITION of Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN will officially be announced this week.
*END SPOILER ALERT*
If I heard Bob right, the upcoming new monthly ongoing team-up series, BRAVE AND THE BOLD, will be written by Mark Waid and drawn by George Perez? Excuse me while I wipe away my sweet tear of happiness. Only thing is that Waid can't start on the series until INFINITE CRISIS is over because nobody's allowed to know which characters will be available to use after that series wraps up. I don't know, but it seemed like they were hinting that Waid's a notorious big mouth or something so they're not telling him until they have to.
Dan said that Jason Todd was brought back for one basic and simple reason: His original death was a stupid marketing gimmick. Beyond that, however, the impact that he could potentially have on Batman, Robin, and Nightwing made the longterm story possibilities too enticing to pass up.
Regarding Flash/Wally's kids, Dan said "You mean the orphans?" Then he said "There will be some exploration of Wally and his family…and then there won't." He went on to say that he sees deaths of and changes in Flashes as lynchpins of DC history. Basically, fueling the nagging rumor that Wally bites it in INFINITE CRISIS. Which, of course, makes me think Dan's just drunkily yanking everyone's chains.
Bob was begged by an audience member to get DC Direct to produce some Capt. Carrot figures. To which Bob politely said no. But he did let slip that Capt. Carrot would be appearing soon in an issue of TEEN TITANS. To which a collective "Huh?" went up in the audience and Dan chimed in with "Have to darken Capt. Carrot too!" [evil laugh] And the final revelation at this point was that the 52 series will be co-written each issue by all 4 writers: Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Greg Rucka, and Geoff Johns. They've already got 6 issues in the can and issue 2 of INFINITE CRISIS hasn't even hit the stands yet.
Which leads us to the last few minutes of the panel where they did a lightning round of questions.
Audience: What about the new DOOM PATROL series not making sense?
Dan: Will be addressed in INFINITE CRISIS.
Audience: Any chance of a KRYPTO comic series as a tie-in to the Cartoon Network series?
Bob: No the KRYPTO comic is for kids who can't read. KRYPTO is a pre-school series.
Audience: Detective Chimp?
Dan: Detective Chimp is the new Spectre.
Audience: Is Donna Troy going to become Wonder Woman?
Bob: ------
Dan: glug glug glug *burp*
Audience: Monthly Zatanna?
Dan: Good chance she will be reappearing…….if she survives INFINITE CRISIS.
Oh yeah. And Dan let it slip that Adam Strange is appearing in 52 which means he survives INFINITE CRISIS. Woops. Gotta watch them beers.
As soon as the panel was over and everyone was barreling for the doors, my son and his nifty little low-res digital camera went running up to the front to take a picture of Dan who was chatting up a couple of people from the audience. Suddenly Dan just stopped the chat and roared out at me not to let "that boy" snap that picture! Instead, he demanded that I shuffle Prof Jr. up there WITH him and snap a picture of the two of them together. So, Dan, feeling very good and obviously very friendly gave him a big one-armed hug and a huge smile for the cameras.
As soon as Prof Jr. came down, wearing a big smile himself, I asked him if Dan smelled like beer. He laughed and said "Yeah! Beer stinks." But it turns out that this unexpected experience turned into one of his favorite moments from the Con. For a 10 year-old comic fan, having the V.P. of DC Comics want to meet him and get a picture with him was very special. Dan gained a lot of points from me for that.
And that's the panels. The rest of my time was spent roaming the dealers room and artist's alley. I was mildly disappointed in the dealer room simply because of the lack of variation among product when it came to the comics and collectibles booths. Back in the day, the range of obscure eclectica available at the various dealers was much more diverse and unique. Noticed Rob Liefeld had a booth set up. Not in Artist's Alley, but in the dealer room. First off, the buzzcut is not flattering on Rob. Grow it back out man. Secondly, his bizarre off-kilter anatomical ineptness becomes really pronounced when his drawings are blown up to 6 feet. The colors were nice and pretty though. Honestly, though, Rob was a real gentleman to all the fans I saw chatting him and his posse up and he was churning out the sketches for folks.
In artist's alley, Peter David was there chatting people up like a trooper. Looked a bit better groomed than when I first met him way back in…oh…'85? I remember showing him some Plastic Man sample pages I'd drawn as an 18 year-old. Course, at the time, he was just starting to cut his teeth as a writer and seemed a bit insecure about how to even respond to my lame pages. Amazing what 20 years can do.
Spent a little time meeting and chatting with Angel Medina there at the end in Artist's Alley. Nice guy. Super artist. Also visited Ethan Van Sciver who was busily sketching for the fans. Treated myself to a birthday present of an absolutely awesome Green Lantern print by and autographed by Ethan and the colorist Moose Baumann.
All in all, a good time all around, and best of all? My son got to meet, shake hands with, and have a really cool picture taken with Ron (Hellboy) Perlman right as Perlman was leaving the autograph booth.
