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ONE HAND CLAPPING
By Chris Ryall
July 11, 2005
Con Job 2005: It’s that time again, the pop culture geek paradise that is the San Diego Comic Con, and herein, Chris Ryall offers up the lay of the land as it pertains to this site.
I’d been planning to offer up my list of everything that went wrong with the FANTASTIC FOUR movie, but I got hung up on describing how the movie had no plot and decided to just scuttle things from there. All I know is, when you see the movie and then can’t wait to get home to throw in the old Corman flick as a palette-cleanser, something has gone awry. And since Harry Knowles actually nailed his review of the movie, perfectly summing up everything I, too, thought was good and especially bad about it (making a blonde joke about a guy who has cropped, and dark, hair? Was anyone editing this flick?), I’ll just let it stand at that and hope for a Torch/Thing spin-off movie some day. After all, there’s really no place for any comic book bitterness this week (and if you need a big, derivative, preposterous but mostly entertaining Summer movie with an attractive blonde lead, go see Michael Bay's THE ISLAND instead).
Instead, this is the week people, at least 80,000 of them, celebrate comic books down at the Comicon International in San Diego, taking place this Thursday through Sunday (Wednesday night, too, if you’re one of those attending the night-before preview).
You can all find the schedule for the whole show by following this link. And for those of you attending, you’ll find the place rife with Poop Shoot personnel.
I’ll be down there the entire weekend, primarily at the IDW booth, #2121, which is right near Kevin’s Graphitti Designs/Secret Stash booth. I’m also evidently doing a signing for SHAUN OF THE DEAD—my first signing—at the CGC booth (#901), where I’ll be scribbling on comics and encouraging you not to slab your comics… that’ll be at noon on Friday. And then on Saturday, from 1-2 again, we’ll be doing a big signing at the IDW booth, with me (and Zach Howard, the SHAUN artist), Peter David, Ashley Wood, Ben Templesmith, and many others. Marlon Wayons, of, well, the Wayans family (and SCREAM 3, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, etc. etc.) will be signing at our booth at 3 PM that same day. The one problem with that… is that I’ll instead be pushing everyone to watch me fall flat on my face when I moderate the IDW panel in Room 2. (Yes, I know our panel is the same time as Joss Whedon’s SERENITY panel, but that one will be too crowded, anyway).
Saturday, which is always way too crowded with good panels, is filled with a couple others that relate to this site, too. At noon, I'm going to sit on the Superheroes and Philosophy panel alongside Tom and Matt Morris, the co-editors of the SUPERHEROES AND PHILOSOPHY book that Scott Tipton and I contributed to (Scott, and hopefully writers Jeph Loeb and Mark Waid, will sit on that one, too), and then rush back for the IDW signing at one. Which is also the same time that Kevin will be doing his thing alongside special guest Richard Kelly.
Scott (Comics 101 for the few of you who might not know that) will also be at the Toynami booth throughout the weekend. So hopefully if you’re around, you’ll come by and say hi to both of us. (Next year, Scott just might be doing some signings at the IDW booth, too… but that’s all I’ll say about that for now.)
You can also expect to see SQUIB CENTRAL’s Joshua Jabcuga, TRAILER PARK’s Christopher Stipp, TOY BOX’s Michael Crawford, ALL AGES’s Tracy Edmunds (and her girls), BRAT HALLA and SPOOK’D overachiever Jeffery Stevenson, SHOULD IT BE A MOVIE’s Marc Mason, and other valued contributors roaming the floor all weekend, too.
I don’t expect a full break in the action in these parts, just because we’re all occupied all week, either. We’ll still be here every day (somehow), with news, columns (Mason’s is ready to go, I’ll be looking at the pilot for the upcoming show REUNION tomorrow, Tipton is offering up another of his patented COMICS 101 quizzes, and the rest will continue as per usual. Still, I hope everyone in the CA area gets a chance to head down south this coming weekend—the show is such a spectacle of movies, comics, video games, nostalgia, and, yes, a bit o’porn (and some child-friendly panels that Tracy will detail tomorrow in her ALL AGES column) that you need to see it in person at least once.
/chris
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