For The Love of Comics

‘Nuff Said

Megacon 2008 - Day One

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I apologize if this is a bit short on detail, but I spent most of the day in an “OMG FIRST CON!” daze and now I’m just flat out exhausted. For what it’s worth, the day was short on news and more full of me just wandering around checking stuff out.

When I first arrived at the Orange County Convention Center and saw the Megacon banners, I may have let out a loud “SQUEE” of excitement. I’m told it happens. After a combined 2 hours of waiting in line to park and then waiting in another line to actually be let in, I got onto the Megacon floor and wandered around checking everything out. The first people I got to meet were the guys from Comic Geek Speak and I thought they were such good guys I made sure to stop by several more times throughout the day just to say hi. Of particular interest were Peter’s cat ears. They were very kawaii. One of the times that I stopped by, the guys were being interviewed by Ian Levenstein of the Comic Timing podcast (sorry I had to pass on your offer to babble, Ian. I think I have my wits about me enough now to give you something more than “umm’s”, “uhh’s”, and slightly maniacal giggles if we run into eachother again) accompanied by Raphael Soohoo of theGeeks Unite! podcast and Brandon Christopher of The Quarter Bin. It was great meeting all of you guys. Hopefully I’ll run into you again in the next two days and I’m subscribing to your podcasts now.

Strangely, the panel that I found the most interesting was the one panel that I was a bit ambivalent about attending. In “War For Comics”, Big City Comics publisher Jeff Kaufman talked about his ideas for what everyone, from readers to retailers to publishers, could do to save the comic book industry. Jeff has a brief run through of his ideas up on the Big City website, but this is something you should really hear him talk about if you have a chance, he has some really excellent ideas and has some real skill at persuasion and motivation. If you meet him, ask him to tell you about his Dark Goblin idea for Harry Osborn - he could have made Harry one of the best characters in comics today.

The “Marvelous Men” panel consisted of Marvel artists Steve McNiven, Dexter Vines, Mike Perkins, Tim Townsend, Brandon Peterson, and Paul Pelletier just basically answering any questions people had. There weren’t really any revelations, but it was interesting to hear them all talk about the creative processes and how things have changed in the industry. There will be a repeat panel which may be more interesting since today was apparently the calm before the storm, attendance-wise.

I caught the very end of Joe Quesada’s Q&A panel, but I couldn’t really here him. I’m looking forward to his Cup of Joe panel tomorrow, and not because I’m planning on heckling. I actually appreciate the way he tries to make himself available for fans and I’m over the whole OMD thing. I don’t like Brand New Day, but that’s okay. I don’t think I was ever really part of the target audience for Spidey, anyway, and I’ve heard that some people really like the new tone and direction. So, you know, evs. It’s not the first time that I’ve disagreed with someone. Not the end of the world.

There were technical difficulties for most of Arne Starr’s panel of previews, so I ended up leaving, though I heard they got things worked out eventually. I may try to squeeze him in tomorrow or Sunday.

I closed out the night with the Indie Short Film Festival, and it was actually pretty enjoyable. If anyone’s interested, I’ll try to get a list of the films shown and post my thoughts on them all.

And now I’m heading to bed. Tomorrow’s a new day that may include me getting a tattoo of the old school DC (those are my initials - Dustin Christian) logo if I can justify spending the money.

Also, if anyone reading this is attending Megacon, PLEASE look me up - I’m mostly doing this solo and it would be cool to hang out with some fellow comics geeks, even for a short time. I’ll be the dude in the black Comic Geek Speak Convention tour
t-shirt with a blue Jansport pack tomorrow.

Also, because I was yelled at for the lack of pictures today, I’ll try to include pictures in tomorrow’s recap.

Technorati Tags: Megacon, Big City Comics, Arne Starr, Marvel, Comic Geek Speak, Geekery

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