WonderCon 2006

WonderCon moved from Oakland to San Francisco in 2002, was bought by Comic-Con International in 2004 (the first year I attended), changed its date from April to February in 2005, and moved to the new Moscone Center West location this year, marking its 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, I found this year to be pretty unimpressive.

The first difference this year was the massive line to get in. I don't know if the new building threw the organizers for a loop or if there were just too many people showing up at once, but the line extended around the block. Of course, it's not the first massive downtown San Francisco line I've waited in, but when the day's programming begins at 10:30 a.m. and you don't get let in until after 11:30 a.m. it's not a good start. Oh, and our tickets were pre-purchased.

Michael Chabon was scheduled to sign autographs at noon at the Dark Horse Booth, so we did a bit of scouting around the show floor before returning for that. We managed to be probably 2nd or 3rd in line, and were even given free copies of the latest edition of Dark Horse's Eisner Award-winning anthology Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist (try fitting that title on an order sheet!) for him to sign. Those issues cost $8.95 and I was missing that one, so it was especially fortuitous.

He was there with his young son, and signed both my comic books and my paperback copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay" (thank you again, Nicole). On questioning, he told us that the movie version of his book was closer than ever to happening. He seemed astounded when Megan told him she'd read the entire novel while waiting at the boring terminal of the Sacramento Airport.

The first programming session we attended was "Paramount Pictures Presents: J.J. Abrams/M:i:III." J.J. showed some lengthy scenes from the upcoming, unfortunately-titled film that were quite impressive. If the trailer doesn't excite you, it's because it stinks compared to the actual movie footage we saw. I was very impressed with his presentation, especially his admission that he didn't like the first two Mission: Impossible films as much because they didn't focus on the team aspect of the original TV series.

I figured he would get peppered with questions about "Lost," since he's a co-creator of the series, and maybe even "Alias." But, surprisingly, most of the Q&A session seemed to be about "Felicity." Surprising not only because the series ended years ago, but also because I don't think most people would equate comic book fans with Felicity fans.

We got a nice piece of swag from that session: a black cloth baseball cap with a red M:i:III logo. It's nice enough to wear and not geeky enough to get you beaten up. If anything, no one who sees it knows what it means. I've even had one person ask me if it was a Pacific University cap.

The next session we wanted to see was "Pixar's 20th Anniversary Tribute/Cars Preview," but because they were running horribly behind (45+ minutes), we had to wait through quite a bit of the Kevin Smith session. He was there to show some clips from "Clerks II," curse up a storm and tell stories I would generally describe as 'grosser than gross.' I will not recount them here. I wouldn't want the Internet to get inappropriate.

The Pixar session had its highs and its lows. It kicked off with a fun 20th anniversary video sequence edited together from all their films. Then some of the animators who worked on "Cars" talked, and talked, and talked, and it was surprisingly boring. They did show two lengthy scenes from the movie, however, which were very impressive. The first was the opening sequence of the film, featuring music by Sheryl Crow. The second was a scene showcasing the various supporting characters and was quite hilarious. Everytime there's a new Pixar movie I figure it will probably be the "bad one" simply due to the law of averages. But based on what we saw at WonderCon, this will be yet another great film. The final reward for sitting through the tedious commentary session was the presentation of the Oscar-nominated short film One Man Band, which I suspect will be shown before "Cars" in theatres.

The last session I was interested in attending was the "Warner Bros. Presents Superman Returns" featuring Director Bryan Singer "with a surprise to show." Of course, since the sessions were now 45-60 minutes behind schedule, I didn't return until 30 minutes after it was supposed to start (I was definitely not interested in waiting through the "Silent Hill" movie preview). And yet somehow when I returned Bryan Singer was already speaking with his "surprise" –– star Brandon Routh. And, unfortunately, they had already shown the footage. Oh, sure, every OTHER session makes you wait and then show the footage at the end. And after a couple of questions ("Why is the shield so small?") the duo left ... EARLY. To kill the remaining time, V masks were distributed.

For the most part, the exhibit hall was pretty boring. Art Adams was never at his table in Artist's Alley when I came by. And Hellboy author Mike Mignola was only signing on Friday. Noted Star Wars author Timothy Zahn was signing past his timeslot, but it looked like only his new book, Outbound Flight. I did get to have a nice chat with Erik Larsen, who's mostly back on track with Savage Dragon after becoming editor of Image Comics. I'd say he's done a pretty good job, since he oversaw the release of the 10th Anniversary Hardcover (it was originally solicited in 2003). And I managed to find the second collected volume of The Matrix Comics...