Too Fond of Books

First things first: updated photos are here! I felt more gutsy this year about approaching people and asking for photos; I've tried to include the best ones.

On Saturday: I got in early and somehow got funneled into a long line to get into the Exhibit Hall. There was a lot of buzz in the air because the autograph sessions were setting up, too, and people were lining up for that. yebisu9 snuck into the line to get us a place for the Quick Draw panel and I eventually went to join him, trying not to trip over the small encampments of people texting, reading comics, or catching a few more moments of sleep before the Con started to fully swing.

Prior to Quick Draw, we sat through Marvel Comics Presents Super Hero Squad!, a panel to showcase Marvel's newer, more kid friendly animated show that features chibi versions of all your favorite heroes. We obviously weren't the target audience for this, but the voice actors were all having a great time, and performed a mini-skit about the heroes and villains showing up at the Con. (Dr. Doom: "This Con is enjoyable, but $8 for a hot dog?! Even I am not that evil!") The best part was watching Stan Lee, who voices the mayor of SuperHero City. As I mentioned last year, Stan Lee is like a benevolent and charming uncle who truly loves comics and comic books and is utterly thrilled to be at the Con. Seeing him is always a happy-making experience, and his presence definitely made this panel for me. The animation of the actual show is cute, although weirdly stylized. However, this panel was a mere appetizer for the main course...

Quick Draw!: Every year I look forward to this, and every year it does not disappoint. Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw!, and Norman Lloyd did super quick cartooning on subjects from "New Jobs for the Incredible Hulk" (government-appointed president of GM! Ballet teacher!) to "scariest Con guest" and played pictionary with famous people like Peter David. The art is then auctioned off at the CBLDF auction. Watching this is like an episode of "Whose Line is it Anyway", but with drawings and often far, far funnier.

The One Panel Panel: After a brief foray to the Exhibit Hall floor, we ate lunch and attended this thought-provoking panel with Charles Vess, Larry Mander, and Michael Allred, who talked about one panel that they were especially proud and/or influenced their careers. (Hope Larson was supposed to attend, but pulled out the last minute due to illness, which was too bad, especially when I saw the panel she'd been planning to talk about!) All three men spoke about how they composed each panel. For Mander, the panel he'd chosen was the moment where he realized that his Beanworld layout would work ("two and a half dimensional" he called it); Vess' panel inspired a then-relatively unknown writer named Neil Gaiman to write in to the magazine Vess worked at and the conversations between them eventually lead to the beautiful Sandman Midsummer Night's Dream story; Allred had selected a panel that had to be shown across three pages because it was so long and talked about why he wanted to do something with the action filtering along like that. I asked about possible repetitions of panel layout and all three confessed that they'd had it happen, sometimes over a period of ten years from seeing a picture once to then unconsciously repeating the layout! All in all, it was a fascinating look into what goes into a panel in terms of layout/composition and what it takes to draw in that style.

After that, we spent more time on Exhibit Hall floor, and then Mith joined me and we all went out for dinner.

In the evening, we had planned to go to the Torchwood/Dr. Who screening. However, when we arrived, the line snaked around the outside of the room and down the other side and there was a sign saying "Room has reached capacity!" A Con staffer confirmed this and told us to find something else to do and we stood around, disappointed and surprised. Fortunately, yebisu9 and C. counseled waiting for the end of the line to come around and then see what the seating situation was like and sure enough, they were right: we did get into the room and we got seats together! So, that was good.

But even better was that before the screenings, Russell T. Davies, David Tennant, and John Barrowman came out on stage. And I don't usually act like this, but... Reader, I fangirled. Total squeeage occurred (although not as loudly and crazily as others nearer the front of the room), especially when John kissed David and Russell and then pretended to faint. They urged us to come to both panels on Sunday (as if the audience needed any further urging!) and then the showing began.

As for the Torchwood episode, I had somehow missed that there were four episodes previous to the fifth one we were watching and saw MAJOR SPOILER only in flashbacks, so a lot of the gravitas was lost on me. (I imagine this was worse for livyanne and C. who were seeing the show for the first time.) I do think that an alternative title for this episode arc could be Torchwood: Adorable Children in Peril (Now with more thorny moral dilemmas!). This doesn't mean that I didn't enjoy it; we just need to catch up on what we missed in order to find out what the hell was going on in the first place.

Dr. Who: Planet of the Dead was a great deal more entertaining and had some of the best monsters I think the writers have come up with since the stone angels. Michelle Ryan made a very good companion and had a lot of chemistry with David Tennant; the supporting characters were compelling (if briefly on screen) and the visuals were just wonderful. This episode reminded me of why I'm enjoying the show and the characters so much.

On Sunday:

We arrived just in time to get in another HUGE line for Ballroom 20 and spent about an hour waiting. I fielded a call from my Mom and Dad to wish me happy birthday; they both commented on the general hubbub in the background. We had a nice chat with the man behind us, who revealed that he loved comics so much, he named his daughter Storm. But finally the line moved and we were in to see: ( The Dr. Who panel! )

And then some shopping, and then out to lunch with livyanne and then some more shopping and then headed back home where we played Munchkin Cthulu, went swimming, and had dinner and birthday cake.

Overall Con Impressions (Final Version): I'm going to write this up tomorrow or Tuesday when I'm feeling less tired and my thoughts have gelled. Short version: it was great, but DAMN those lines!