Striptease

I wish I had taken photos of all the cool people I saw and met on Saturday. I met Roman Dirge (got him to draw something too!). I saw Quentin Tarantino coming out of a panel on Stan Winston's special effects. I saw Harvey Pekar talking about American Splendor and J. Scott Campbell siging books. Amber Benson. Lou Ferigno. Grant Morrison!

and this is what I'm taking photos of....

I know there's a lot of Cartoon Network fans out there, and there was a very nifty booth for the CN, as well as the Adult Swim gang. I missed the guys who do the voices, and the panels, but here's a photo of Brak, to show that they were there...

You can't go to a comic book convention without running into, uh, Bounty hunters and Stormtroopers? There were a lot of Star Wars people running around. They even had a fan film festival with awards! It just goes to show you that the legacy will never die even with less than perfect sequels, er, prequels... whatever.

New Line Cinema had a big chunk of floorspace in the middle of the convention center, partly for Freddy vs. Jason, but mostly for Lord of the Rings. They had a life size Gollum statue, tons of weapons, figurines, and other assorted treasures. You could even buy the "one ring."

Here is a statue of the Dark Riders...

I don't want to know what that father was pointing out to his son, but I guess you gotta start somewhere.

Saturday, for most people, was spent waiting in line, and going into panel discussions. Angelina Jolie was promoting Tomb Raider, Halle Berry was there for Gothika, Hugh Jackman was there for Van Helsing. The Sony Pictures Panel was the one I waited for. First up was the cast from Underworld, which looks decent, if not solely for Kate Beckensale. I mean, vampire or no, she's hot.

Last up, Spider-man 2. Sam Raimi was supposed to show up, but he apparently had a 102 fever, so geeks forgave him. You have to understand, this room was HUGE. There had to be like 5000 people in this room. If they disappointed this crowd, the movie would have a bad buzz right off the bat. But they did not. They showed a five minute SCENE from the movie where Doc Oc first comes to life using his new tentacles. And folks, let me tell you, Green goblin is NOTHING compared to this guy. I'm not even a huge Spider-man fan, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with this one.

I also got a hat that says "Octavious Inc." heh heh... I'm a geek.

I had to tear myself away from Spider-Man and race across the building to join in on the Keenspot panel, already in progress. Here we see Howard Tayler moderating, Chris Crosby and Darren Bleuel. There was a lot of discussion about how Keenspot was doing financially, problems that people hosted with them were brought up, and things that we could look forward to in the upcoming year.

the rest of the Keenspot panel, or at least some of them. There were fans in the small audience that got to ask creator opinions of how they thought their strip was going to grow, as well as pros and cons of being with the 'Spot. Steve Troop even put together a little flash animation promoting the site... Howard asked some probing questions, which caused some rumbling here and there, but for the most part it was an informative panel.

After a hellishly long drive through the crowded streets of downtown San Diego, I met up with Jennie, Jose, and Jae at, you guessed it, the beach. Turns out they had left the con in the early afternoon and had been "touristing" since. We walked the beach for a while, and even ran into some smaller publishers from the convention having bonfires. I hadn't gotten a pic of my old roommate, so I captured her as she was dancing to the beat of a very badly played bongo drum. After the beach walk, I dropped the three J's off, said my goodbyes, and headed back to where I was staying.

Needless to say, I was very tired.