WonderCon

Not being able to attend the San Diego Comic-Con International this year (thanks for the conflict, 10-year high school reunion!) I went to the WonderCon in San Francisco on Saturday, May 1. Here's a quick rundown of my experience at the show:

Having missed out on scheduled sessions and signings at WizardWorld Chicago, I arrived about 15 minutes early to the DC: Charting the Universe session, which turned out to be unnecessary since WonderCon is obviously not as crowded as WizardWorld. It was a fun session, though, as DC's Editorial VP gave a slide show presentation of the current and upcoming DC Universe titles and gave a panel of popular DC writers and artist Howard Chaykin a chance to comment on them all. They all had good things to say about everything presented ... until the slide with the upcoming "Catwoman" merchandise. There was a definite groan from the audience at seeing Halle Berry in that ridiculous costume and at least one of the panel members turned his head away in disgust. A fun time was had by all, I think, though I headed out a little before it ended, since the Q&A was dragging on a little. Somehow, my questions always seem to provoke a very negative reaction.

An exclusive preview of "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" was shown and it was absolutely incredible. A Q&A with the director and producer of the film revealed that the film is almost completely untainted by Hollywood studios and was financed and shot before shopping it around. Unfortunately, the release date has been moved from the summer to September. They said they are hoping to garner a good buzz through word of mouth. Watch for it, definitely. The only low point of this segment was the Q&A, where some doofus asked about whether all future WWII flying movies would use this movie's technology instead of real planes and whether the movie could succeed with matinee prices having risen so high. Thankfully, the moderator stepped in to cut him off and insisted that all future questions be related to the film. That garnered a round of applause.

There were a lot of summer movies previewed that day, as Fox presented exclusive previews of "The Day After Tomorrow" (it was the 10-minute segment that aired on FOX last night prior to American Idol), "Alien vs. Predator" (I missed that one, but did hear Lance Henriksen tell a hilarious story about "Aliens"), and "I, Robot," which also featured a video introduction from Will Smith, who addressed all the WonderCon attendees and admitted he'd had some summer hits and misses.

The big event of that day was the appearance of Tobey Maguire, his only convention appearance this year to promote "Spider-Man 2." Yet some people still left after the "I, Robot" segment which directly preceded Tobey's appearance...? Tobey told us how he was sick (it was apparent) but was committed to not canceling his appearance. Unfortunately, the Q&A session then began with a bunch of Tobey Maguire-obsessed, "Tiger Beat"-reading girls who asked him questions like "I love you so much! Can you just give me a hug?!" and "I came all the way from Los Angeles and it's my birthday and I've dreamed of meeting you in real life!" Ugh! I never thought a comic book convention wouldn't be geeky enough! Thankfully, there were some good questions asked, although the award for the funniest question is a tie between some dude dressed up with a big red mask over his face who complimented Tobey on his subtlety in acting and asked for advice (Tobey's response: "I don't know, you're pretty subtle already") and a question from Wonder Woman, who, when she spoke, clearly revealed she was actually a he (shiver!).

Steve Sansweet, the head of fan relations at Lucasfilm, gave an hourlong presentation on Star Wars (Q&A from WonderCon), including some small peeks at Episode III. The presentation was delayed for quite a while due to technical difficulties hooking up his Windows laptop to the projector, yet the presentation itself was just a DVD that had clearly been made on a Mac, since there was a giant Apple logo in the bottom right corner of the menu screen. Mostly he showed some short documentaries that are available at StarWars.com, but he also answered a few questions. The one that was most interesting was when someone asked which version of the classic trilogy would be released on DVD this year: the original or the special edition. His carefully-worded answer was that the movies included would be "as George Lucas sees them today," which seems to leave the possibility open that there will be even more changes made to the films (Hammerhead shoots first now?).

Of course, there were also comic books to be had at the show, and I found a few I'd been looking for. My favorite find, however, was a rejected "Hellboy" movie poster drawn by the inimitable Drew Struzan. If you want to see it in all its glory, you'll have to come visit.