Tony's SDCC Coverage Day 3!

SDCC Day 3:

Yesterday my day started with me waking up to Ramona. Today I woke up and first thing I saw outside was a Crow picking at a dead mouse. This will probably relate to the Walking Dead panel more than the futility of life...I hope.

So today felt a lot more uneventful in comparison to yesterday's madness. I still had a great time.

First thing that was happening on the agenda was the AMC Walking Dead panel. I got there about two hours early and the line was massive, but moved extremely quick and I got a pretty good seat. Because the smart thing is to get there early so you can get in, I got there right before a Hawaii 5-0 panel started. Seriously? Do people actually care? I guess so...the girls next to me were screaming. Daniel Dae Kim also came out, and Lost is awesome so that is cool. Basically, I played Mario Bros on my DS the whole time.

After that was the Walking Dead panel. Almost the entire cast was there with Robert Kirkman, Frank Darabont, the special effects guru, a producer and head of AMC. It was really entertaining and they all talked about their characters and discovering the comic for the first time. The footage they showed was UNREAL. It was incredibly gory and Frank pointed out that this was the safe footage they were allowed to air. I can't friggen wait. Six episodes for the first season. That's pretty much an hour per chapter of the first trade! Of course there will be differences in comics/screen, but it is still going to be AMAZING.

I then headed down to the convention floor. I finally found the AMC Walking Dead booth (you'd think I would've known where everything was so far!). They had a set set up. It was intense. Broken everything, one guy killed himself with a shotgun while another body laid on the floor. The "windows" had screens with zombies approaching on it. It was great.

Afterwards I continued to roam around. I found Kody Chamberlein (Sweets/Punks the Comic) at the Image booth and we chatted for a bit. We both frequent the same message boards so he then hooked me up with an AMAZING Batman sketch. Guy was a serious class act. Check out his new book "Sweets" it came out last week.

Getting this reminded me that Christina Strain had my print still! I headed to artist alley and found her and Adrian Alphona (co-creator Runaways) hanging out. Alphona was doing sketches so I of course picked up a Niko sketch. I left him my book, then our schedules collided and I never got it back. They'll be around tomorrow though (I hope!).

I then spent some more time at Artist Alley and the Dealers section. To be honest, Artist Alley was pretty pitiful. New York Comic Con had a WAY better collection of artists and it was probably double in size. There was some awesome people there, but it was way smaller than it used to be. The dealers section (the people actually selling back issues, etc) seemed pretty tame. San Diego has turned into geek-mecha and it seems to be getting too big for random back issue dealers. Yes, it has comics, but SDCC is more an entertainment expo at this point. I actually overheard one dealer talking to his friend saying "Yeah I think I made a whole...10 bucks today!" This was about 2 o'clock too. That sucks hard.

After that I headed over to the video game booths. I don't play a wide variety of games, I usually just find one or two and play the crap out of it. I decided to check out some stuff though. I played a few DS games that were just way too overly Japanese and didn't keep my interest long. I then waited in a short line to play Marvel vs Capcom 3. This game was AWESOME. I used Captain America, Wolverine, and Ryu (In honor of Chad) and I kicked ass. I am not good at these button mashing fighting games because I simply..button mash instead of learning combos, but me and this dude had a pretty epic battle and it was super close by the end. (Action Chad Note: I am EXTREMELY jealous...but proud.)


Stan Lee then did a signing in promotion of the Spider-man Shattered Dimensions game. I've seen Stan Lee a million times so I didn't really care, but it totally opened up all the other video games. I played Shattered Dimensions for a good 30 minutes without anyone else waiting to get on. This game was awesome. The Noir section is fun because it is grainy and you have to do a lot sneaking around and the unveiled Venom section is badass. You use a "rage" power and totally f stuff up.

After that I headed up to room 6DE. There was a DC panel, then a Vertigo panel, and then the Live Rifftrax panel (which was the big thing I wanted to see). The DC panel was interesting. Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison admitted they recently started having conversations about a team-up they'll do in the future. They talked a lot about Flashpoint, the upcoming Flash mini-event. So many people were excited about Flash related things. Also, comic fans have the worst questions at these things. It's either total fanboy whining or deliberately asking "How will this happen" when the only answer you'll get is "Uh...read the book".
The Vertigo panel was pretty good too. Jeff Lemire, Ba and Moon, Scott Snyder, and many many others were there. It was packed on stage. Vertigo is doing some really interesting stuff lately and as Karen Berger said at the panel, Vertigo has become a creator owned workplace for people which is a fun thing.

Last was the Rifftrax panel. What can I say? It's the Mystery Science Theater guys...it was hilarious. Laughing out loud the entire time. They live-riffed a short called "How to Buy Food" which practically riffed itself. They then worked with the audience to figure out the next Rifftrax. They ended up deciding on Clash of the Titans and the Last Airbender. These choices are solid, but too obvious. There would probably be riffs of them anyway. I really wanted the suggestions of 2012 or Super Mario Bros or Hook to be chosen.

Anyway, that was my day. Not as eventful as yesterday, but Walking Dead and Rifftrax were both amazing. Tomorrow brings Harry Potter, Green Lantern, Fringe, Captain America, Thor, and Kevin Smith! Almost all movies all day!

-tony

PS I found Ramona again, but she was volunteering at the Dark Horse booth and seemed really busy and when I came back later she wasn't there! Gah!