About Jamison Sacks
Location: Manhattan, NYC, NY
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The Con of the North
The Comic Con. Nothing illicit such a quick shudder from comic book geeks as that phrase. The Comic Con. So many different people. Artists, writers, retailers, product pushers, media managers, editors, and, of course, fanboys. Each of them comes to the ‘Con for a different reason. Usually none of them leave disappointed though, as the ‘Con serves all types. From comics, to art, to toys, to movies and gaming, the ‘Con can overload even the most staunch of fanboy. The 2008 New York Comic Con, only the 3rd New York Comic Con, proved bigger, better and far more crowded than the previous year.
Taking up the entire third floor, a bevy of conference rooms and the main concourse area of the NY Javits Center, the NY Comic Con already takes a daunting amount of space. Throw in the 3000 seat IGN.com theatre and anyone can be easily overwhelmed. The show floor itself showcased hundreds of retailers, artists and other guests. These booths ranged from the normal industry behemoths such as Marvel and DC, to many small publishers trying to entice their way into new reader’s minds.
Comic Cons tend to have an energy, a life, a hum all their own. I think the NY Comic Con still searches for the exact beat it wants to follow. A lot happens all at once and some of the most popular panels ended up scheduled at the exact same time. On Saturday all of the panels could have (and should have) been held in rooms twice as big. Waiting in line for an hour before the panel you wanted to see just ruins the fun of a con. The 3000 seat IGN theatre proved to lack enough room for everyone that desired to see the Wanted/Hellboy 2 and Incredible Hulk previews even!
Costumes of all kinds were everywhere. From Storm Troopers, to giant Ugly Dolls, Ben 10 Aliens and lots and lots of Manga characters. There seemed to be a real fondness for Bleach characters in particular.
Let us talk about some of the more interesting things I saw over the weekend.
Stan Lee and Ultimo
Apparently, Stan Lee shutting off will not happen anytime soon. I think he will continue to create comics until the very end. His new creation comes from collaboration with Japanese Manga writer/artist Hiroyuki Takei. The new book, Ultimo, has a decidedly different working process then most comics. Stan Lee created the overall concept and plot and sent that to Japan. Takei and his editor then actually came up with the story and script. Therefore, the story will not quite show up how Stan may have actually envisioned it. When it comes to Shonen Jump America Stan will be handling the American translation.
Iron Man & Hulk Video Game
Iron Man. Awesome, awesome, awesome. They had the Xbox 360 demo running at the Marvel booth and the game was a remarkable sight. Incredible graphics. Smooth game play and easy controls. Ripping off the rear of a helicopter to cause it to crash causes far more joy than it should. Unlike many movie based properties the game only follows about 1/3 of the story of the movie. Incredible Hulk impressed as well. Being able to destroy anything in the game world is rather fun.
Marvel & DC
Marvel had many guest artists for the signing. Not a lot of new information was revealed at any of the panels; however, the most interesting image I saw was a picture of Illyana and Darkchylde together. Of course, they refused to say anything about what the image meant. Quesada did mention on answering a question that Iron Man no longer is aware that Spider-Man is Peter Parker due to ‘Brand New Day’ and that their father/son relationship never happened now.
The ‘biggest’ announcement from DC I saw was the return of Gail Simone’s ‘Secret Six.’ A fun book and will be great to see who compromises the rest of her team this time. OH and poor Catwoman’s book will be falling under the axe.
The signings at the booths caused total chaos. It was more fun to watch them from a distance. It seemed like most of the artists and writers were generally enjoying themselves. Has anyone else noticed that Grant Morrison looks a little like a shark circling his prey when he smiles? I talked to and will be talking with a few of the different artists and creators and we will see some of that in the coming weeks.
Ben 10: Alien Force
Sitting down at this panel was pure fanboy selfishness as I find Ben 10 one of the most entertaining action shows Cartoon Network has aired in the last few years. The reboot into Alien Force intrigues me to no end. According to the creators, they more or less ran out of real story ideas that they wanted to get across in its current incarnation and decided to reboot the show for its 5th season.
Color me surprised when Dwayne McDuffie (Justice League Unlimited and current writer of JLA) sat down on the panel. Turns out McDuffie was tapped to help with the relaunch and brought into write the show. He was very enthusiastic about working on the project. McDuffie even stated, “By episode 26 you will know exactly what the watch really is.”
Goddammit that place was packed on Saturday! Could barely move around there were so many people! Not to mention the twenty minutes I spent in line waiting to use the damn ATM!!
The ATM lines were insane! The best was hearing someone yell at one of the food vendors “WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU TAKE CREDIT CARDS! I JUST SPENT 30 MINUTES IN LINE FOR CASH!” The look of ‘what?’ on the woman behind the counter’s face was awesome.
That’s what your report should have been about. Stinky nerds and jilted checkers.