San Diego Comic-Con 2007: Day 1 – Thursday

And now we’re rolling.

It’s the end of Thursday, and with one full day behind us, and things are full swing. We’ve done some interviews, and met a bunch of iFanboy faithful, and even sold a few T-shirts. Now we’re all working from the hotel room to get our experiences to you.

Today was a great day. The floor was full and bustling, but not so horrible that you couldn’t breathe, or get where you were going. As always, there was plenty to see.
We started the day bright and early and decided to attend the Spike Awards panel. The Spike Awards are sponsored by Spike TV and celebrate horror, sci-fi and fantasy movies and comics etc. So why were we there? Two words: Henry Rollins, who was moderating the panel which consisted of Linda Blair, Robert Kirkman, the producer of the Saw movie franchise and a horror actor whom I had never heard of but is apparently a big deal. The panel was amusing, but the highlight was the announcement of the Comic-Con Icon Award for 2007, Neil Gaiman, who swept in, thanked everyone for the award and then disappeared, like Batman.

Conor, Ron, Allie, and Gordon the Intern braved the “DC Countdown” panel wherein many people asked many non-Countdown related questions and Dan DiDio et al did their best to sidestep revealing anything of substance. The panelists included DC Executive Editor Dan DiDio, editors Mike Marts, Mike Carlin, artists Dan Jurgens and Jim Calafiore, and writers Sean McKeever, Tony Bedard, Adam Beechen, Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Paul Dini. The crowd was very anti-Jimmy Olsen, with many openly calling for his blood. The crowd was much happier when it was revealed that big plans were afoot for the Legion of Superheroes to coincide with next year’s 50th Anniversary of the team. Go figure. As frustrating as these panels can be because of the delightful combination of dumb questions and evasive answers this panel was quite entertaining, specifically Jimmy Palmiotti who responded to an audience member telling him that he had recently shared a bus with Jimmy’s cousin by saying “I’m sorry — I’ll get your wallet back, I promise.”

Allie then parted ways and attended an intellectual panel on gender in comics and how they redefine heroes in gender roles. Phil Jimenez and Wonder Woman was mentioned. A lot. Like a whole lot.

Josh was on the “Comics Podcasting: One Year Later” panel, along with folks from Comic Talk Cafe, Fanboy Radio, Comic News Insider, Comic Timing, Comic Book Page, and Indie Spinner Rack. It was a fun discussion about where we’re at, and where we’re going, and we’ll have the audio up from the panel as soon as we can.

At exactly the same time, Ron was gracing a panel about video on the web, “How To Become an Internet Geek Super-Star,” featuring folks from Geekscape, Tiki Bar TV, Galacticast, PurePwnage, JetSetShow, as well as Scott McCloud’s 14 year old daughter, Sky.

All in all this was a much more fun and more productive day than Wednesday. We met a few people, conducted a few interviews, talked on some panels, sold a few shirts, and now we prepare to start it all over again bright and early (ugh) tomorrow morning! Yay San Diego!

OVERHEARD AT THE CON:
“Are you okay?”
– After one guy hit the other guy really hard and the other guy fell to the ground during a medieval cosplay fight.

PHOTOS:

Check out all the photos!