Tuesday, July 17, 2012

San Diego Comic-Con 2012 : Day 1 Diary

In recent years of SDCC attendance, I'd find Linkmyself flying into San Diego and in a frenzied 2 hour block, check into the year's designated hotel (based on who is paying), pick up badges and launch onto the con floor to show the world all the movie company displays as they are erected and give a first look at the most awesome toys in each booth. This year, I decided two weeks of pre-show coverage would be EVEN MORE AWESOME!!! Such a horrifically bad idea. Must have been great fun for those watching but my body is paying for it today. At any rate, the 2 weeks of pre-gaming distracted me from little things like packing, making a schedule or booking tickets, so to save some cash on a last minute flight, I was dropped in Burbank to meet up with Mika Tan (the hottest super geek I know) where I loaded my gear into her all terrain strike vehicle before heading to the international house of Emi in San Diego. Keep in mind my first flight required me to wake at 4am, so I decided staying awake to work on H.I.S.S. Tank pictures would be more rewarding than 2 hours of hollow sleep. Landed in Burbank at 2:30..hooked up with Mika about 3:15 and we got to SD around NINE THIRTY. Pain. You west coast people sure do love to make traffic.

Preview night started for me at around 9am. My goal is always a simple one. I am privileged enough to get to watch the biggest, greatest show on Earth take shape and I enjoy taking you along with me. This year, we figured out a way to shoot our pics and have them go right to the website...which of course fell apart as soon as I had to compete with 400,000 nerds all taking twitpics of Slave Leias. You can actually SEE my signal fall apart in the slideshow as the images pixelate and look more like an Andy Warhol creation. Kind of unintentionally cool! Getting in crazy early meant I could take my time and seek out the most killer of new movie posters hiding around every corner, but DC Entertainment had other plans for my valuable time.

When I was invited to DC's pre-show shindig, my reply was "I must come, but please tell the bosses I am giving them the stink eye for dragging me away from the floor." DC made it up to me and the rest of the chosen few with new toys and collectibles to shoot, answers to all our burning questions (mostly about the now fully revealed 3 and 3 quarter inch Green Lantern action figure line), face time with Jim Fletcher, Geoff Johns & Jim Lee, rooms filled with incredible DC Comics inspired art....and a couple of beers as icing on the cake. Those of you wandering the show floor surely saw all DC had to offer (and the rest of you will be able to drink it in shortly), but there were several items you didn't see...

- Arkham City Harley Quinn Statue - In scale with the Adam Hughes Women of DC comics line - sporting a monochromatic color pallet - 1st in a potential line of statues - dropping January 2013
- Aardman Batman Action Figure!! - Though this piece looked chunky and art toy-ish, it was NOT rotocast vinyl - When asked if this was the first in an Aardman DC line..or the first in a DC Nation line, reps remarked either is a strong possibility. We suggested Super Best Friends Forever would make for a killer, mega popular line and they agreed. The only limits are on what the public wants to buy, so let yourselves be heard in the comments! Aardman Batman drops September 2012
- Dark Knight Rises "The Bat" Vehicle Etched Crystal - December 2012
- MAD Magazine: Spy vs Spy 3 inch scaled figure & vehicle line - Tank and Helicopter in black and white decos were shown - April 2013
- DC's NEW52 Action figures - Pandora sporting dual guns and Green Arrow on the way this February 2013
- Superman DC's NEW52 statue by Jim Lee - June 2013
- Superman by Frank Miller statue - Depicting the hero in mid-flight - February 2013

No pics were allowed so this will have to suffice. We also had a quick chat with Geoff Johns about his baby..the 3 and 3 quarter inch Green Lantern action figure line. A year and a half in the making, this line has been a labor of love and had to be pushed hardcore to see the light of day...and still DC is testing it out as convention only exclusives. Before the show, G4 visited DC Entertainment and got a look at a massive Central Power Battery playset proposed for the line. You may have seen this from pics on the show floor already. Geoff says they would kill to make this but so far, the numbers are frightening. Until they can get the piece to a price point they can live with and we can afford, we'll just have to cross our fingers and cheer them on. Characters for the action figure line revealed so far include Guy Gardner, Hal Jordan, Larfleeze, Atricitus, Hannu, Saint Walker, John Stewart, Tomar Re, Bleeze, Soranik Natu, Isamot Kol, and the Kilowog and Kyle Rayner 2 pack that was sold at the Graphitti booth this past weekend at SDCC. John Stewart and Atrocitus are set to be the next two pack. We expect them to drop at NY Comic-Con.













After a quick photo op with Jim Lee and nerding out with Blair Herter of G4 over LEGO's revealed con exclusive giveaways we would have to beg for, I met up with friends and headed over to the Activision Transformers : Fall of Cybertron party. Inside, rows of gaming stations welcomed eager gamers and drooling geeks wishing to relive their Transformers cartoon memories by blowing holes in some robot enemies and spilling 40 weight oil everywhere. The game isn't THAT intense, but having over a million variables for building your robot character and inclusion of Dinobots, Insecticons and Metroplex, the giant city scaled Autobot, surely make up for it. We got a full interview with gameplay in the background, so look for that very soon. Other guests at the party included Jason Trost, the genius/madman behind the movie "The FP" (where warriors play Dance Dance revolution...for their liiiives!!) and the upcoming "VS" (which combine aspects of SAW and your favorite super hero thrillers for a thoroughly original movie plot) and wrestler Shane Helms who reminisced about the two Go-Bots he owned when he was a kid. Both surely Transformers fans...and both totally not attending just for free eats and booze. Seriously...some people do that. I can't believe it either.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Cali, Mika had finished Porn Star Karaoke and was managing to hit every traffic jam on her way back to San Diego. She texted often about wishing she drove a monster truck so she could pull a Bigfoot and roll her car over everyone in front of her. So much in life would be simpler if we drove a monster truck.

We've just begun adding pics to our little corner of the Flickr universe, so HIT THIS LINK and check out images as they are tossed in!

1 comment :

  1. I must go to San Diego Comic Con next year. Loved the bit about Nathan Fillion.

    By the way, I read your post about Astonishing X-Men # 51 and I really liked it. I had never read a Marjorie Liu comic but as soon as I found out that Northstar was getting married I knew I had to buy it. And to be honest I was thrilled. It's one of the best X-Men stories I've read in recent years. So many touching moments. Awesome!

    www.artbyarion.blogspot.com

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