Comic Con 2013 Coverage (From Someone Who Did Not Attend)

Comic Con, the weekend-long celebration of nerddom, or whatever the media likes to believe is nerddom, has come and gone once again. And, once again, the geekiest boy in San Diego county missed his opportunity to attend.  It's come as a surprise to many of my friends that someone like me is so conspicuously absent from the activities, and I am positive I was missed.

My relationship with Comic Con is tenuous, much like Ross and Rachel's; everyone knows I'm going to end up inside it one day, but its just a matter of time as to when. I attended once in 2006 with me dad, and all I remember was walking around in the main hall (you know the one with all the actual comics, where the real nerds go), and then attending like two or three panels about children's trading card games and nickelodeon shows (the biggest panel I've ever attended was the nickelodeon one). My dad used to take me to nerd conventions a lot when I was a kid, because setting up conventions was more or less his career, and by 06 he was retired and I was a friendless kid in high school so neither of us had much of a life  we both had plenty of time to go do cool shit together. I remember the biggest things going on were the panels for the upcoming Simpsons Movie and Spider-Man 3 (poor little dears were so excited), as well as a lot of press for that summer's upcoming box office disaster, Snakes On A Plane. I wasn't quite the same kind of guy that I was back then. Remember how I said I used to just like Bionicles and trading cards? That was the summer I became a true geek. To put it in perspective, that very same summer I saw Bryan Singer's X-Men 2 for the first time and I have never been the same since. I went from a shy, closet nerd to flamboyant media whore in the span of a summer

Left: me before Comic Con, Right: me after Comic Con

Why I Was Not There

This is all an incredibly long way of saying that I have not, for various reasons, been back since. Why? Laziness, lack of someone to go with for a few years, and that fiasco back in 2011 when the site crashed during sales (even quicker than usual). This was because a panel for the final Twilight film: Breaking Bad or whatever the fuck it was called, had been announced and the sheer volume of nerds who don't normally attend Comic Con (those exist) suddenly buying tickets made it near impossible for anyone else to. To put it in perspective, imagine if there was panel where Tim Tebow was officiating, and you could punch him in the face whenever you wanted. Nerds wouldn't care, but chances are, so many sports fans would come just for one panel it would fuck up the whole system.

                                                 

I don't even pay attention to sports, and even I don't like this guy.

And then the year after that I was in Ireland. This year, I was just busy, and considering most people who get tickets to Comic Con get them a year in advance (that is, they literally buy them at the convention) it's incredibly hard to get them again. Every time it seems like not that big of a deal, until it comes and I get all upset that I wasn't there when a bunch of big things happen without my presence (let alone my permission). However, I still try to stay in the loop, so lets look at a few things we did find out this year.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Let's start with the least surprising news by far: there is going to be another Avengers movie. Big surprise. While 2011's revelation of the long-planned Avengers movie, and its full unveiling of the cast, is precisely the sort of reason you go to Comic Con, the Avengers 2 panel could not have been that interesting, in my completely less-than-credible opinion. I also imagine it was a dissapointment, and everyone there was secretly thinking "gee, if only we skipped the whole thing and just stayed at home and blogged, that would have been the smart thing to do!"

Okay, as much as I wish, that probably isn't the case, and the panel did have some badass news (and any opportunity to see Whedon in person has to be well worth it). Among them was the news that the next Avengers movie would be based on the Age of Ultron storyline from the comics. You know, the one that's not even a year old. And involves not just the Avengers, but the entire Marvel Universe getting their asses kicked by Hank Pym's robot. Of course, keeping in mind that, in Avengers math, ludicrosity directly correlates with badassery, it should be pretty cool.

Yeah, remember this guy? He's not gonna be in it after all. 

Days of Future Past

But if there is one panel that I am genuinely sorry I missed, it's this one. As I mentioned earlier, X-Men, specifically the films, will always have a place in my heart, and Brian Singer's movies, though criticized extensively by some of Marvel's bitchier fans, remain among my favorite films ever made. Since then, in a desperate attempt to keep the series going since Brett Ratner's shitty ending, we've had two Wolverine spinoffs (one of which will not be out for another week, and the other of which was a piece of shit), and a prequel. So when it was revealed that the sequel to First Class would not only be an amalgamation of the original trilogy and the newer films, but also an adaptation of one of the greatest X-Men stories of all time, Days of Future Past, I was already pumped. But I didn't really feel it until I saw the pictures of the entire assembled cast at the panel.

Notice how nobody gave Peter Dinklage a box to stand on. I'm guessing nobody had the balls.

For those of you keeping track, in the above picture are at least five of my favorite actors, including Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Michael Fassbender, and Jennifer Lawrence, in addition to five actors I really respect, Game of Throne's Peter Dinklage, Omar "that guy fromThe Intouchables" Sy, James McAvoy, and Oscar nominees Ellen Page, Halle Berry and Anna Paquin. Also Shawn Ashmore. The only guy up there I don't really like is Nicholas Hoult, whose ugly face is mercifully blocked by James McAvoy's more handsome face. There's also some guy from American Horror Story, who will be playing Magneto's son, Quicksilver; a character who will allegedly be appearing in Avengers 2 played by somebody else, because fuck you Hollywood.

Now the reason this upsets me is because, as many of you know, I'm running out of things to be excited about. Now that Harry Potter is over, Dark Knight is over, and The Hobbit is lame, the only movie I'm still really really excited about is this one. This could be the last time so much talent I respect are all at one panel. Seriously, the only thing missing from above is Christopher Nolan, Viggo Mortensen, and a T-Rex to make it perfect. But until Jurassic Park 4 comes out (which it probably never will), this is what I'm most excited for.

But that's not what you're interested in. No, you want to hear the big news....

World's Finest

Far beyond the news that there is going to be a sequel to Hunger Games that will probably be awesome, or the fact that a stuntman from Kick-Ass 2 managed to save a suicidal woman from a ledge, or the news that Bryan Cranston walked the floor disguised in cosplay as his own character from Breaking Bad, was the news at the Warner Brothers panel.

Yes, this is happening.

In typically dramatic fashion, Zack Snyder, director of 300, Watchmen, Man of Steel, and a litany of other movies that should have been amazing but were just sort of okay, invited the angry black guy from The Matrix Reloaded to read the "I'm the one man who beat you" line from Dark Knight Returns before this behemoth took over the screen. It's a bit surprising that we should be so surprised: Warner Brothers needs a new direction with the Man of Steel sequel, they need a film to introduce Justice League, and they want to reboot Batman, so why not do it all at once? I'm too much of a skeptical cynic to be completely excited though, and here's why.

First of all, the old Batman hasn't even been dead for that long. I know Warner Brothers wants to move on with their big Avengers ripoff as soon as possible, and, considering that I love both Batman and Justice League, I should be excited right? So how come I'm kind of....well...not? Maybe it's because even a super nerd like me has his limits, and I must admit I'm getting a little fatigued. I'm sure I'll talk more about this in the future, and I will probably see it, but, as far as I'm concerned, my generation already has a Batman. What's it going to be like when they reboot him, again? Is he going to keep the voice? The grit? My thoughts on how a Justice League film could work in the post Dark Knight trilogy context is enough to fill a whole nother post, which I'm sure I'll get around to in due time, so I'll keep it to this. In spite of all my cynicism, there is absolutely no way to look at the above picture and not be a little excited.

The good thing: It's directed by Zack Snyder and takes place in the Man of Steel world, so it's a fresh take on the character instead of another Dark Knight sequel. The lame thing: I't's directed by Zack Snyder. Goodie.

The End

Well, that about does it. It was probably the most momentous year for Comic Con in a long time, and will continue to be for a long time. Oh well, there is one thing I can gleam:

These two missed it too.

Also, I saw the Stones in concert and you didn't. So there.

Bionicle: An Explanation

Because, frankly there needs to be one.

                                                 Lego

For those of who you knew me growing up, you may have known that there were two things I was always interested in above all else: Dinosaurs and Bionicle. Yes, believe it or not, cinema, art, literature, video games, alcohol, women, still dinosaurs, batman, and more alcohol did not cover the bases until I was older and more developed. For most of my life, it was dinosaurs and Bionicle. And Yu-Gi-Oh (but the less said about that the better). That's because when one is into Bionicle, one is often not into other things, up to and including conversing with human beings.
The reason I bring this up is because everyone had that one thing they were really nerdy about as kids. I mean we all loved Harry Potter and stuff, but everyone had that one thing that they were absolutely obsessed with. For most normal people (or, normal nerds), it was Star Trek, or superheroes, neither of which I showed much interest in until I was older. For me, it was Bionicle. It was a magic thing for me, and like most things that are magic to children; it accomplished this with a focused combination of genius and absolute stupidity, one of which became more and more apparent over the years.

Yes, there was a movie at one point. I watched it more than I went to church.

       

An Overview

"Bionicles" were those lego things kids bought and assembled in their homes. They had masks and swords and moving parts that you could choke on if you were too young. So, naturally, they were considered the coolest things in the world for like a week in 2003. I don't want to be completely assholeish, there is something undeniably neat about an action figure you can create, and customize, at your will. It built upon a children's imagination, and their need to buy more things to satiate their imagination. Your kid becomes smarter, and they make money off of it, great!

But here's where it got interesting: there was a story to it. A story that you had to read books and watch movies and go online to follow. Every toy had a character and a purpose. It started off small, a bunch of villagers (all available in canisters for about $5.99) lived on a racially segregated island. The white guys live in the mountains and are quiet, the black guys live underground, the brown ones are jocks, the red guys are assholes, the green guys never shut up, and the blue guys are women (if it seems like I'm above all of it, keep in mind, I know all of their names). But there's a big evil guy who wants to take over the whole island, and the good warrior guys (the primary sets) have to learn the value of teamwork and come together to stop him and his army of bigger, more expensive sets.

Because if your parents did not give you Dark Lord Teridax, your parents did not love you.

And it carried on like that for a while, and it was actually pretty badass. They even made a movie, and it was my favorite thing ever as a kid.

But then it got weird

The problem with Bionicle is that it relied on the story too heavily, a story that involved an almost obsessive compulsive level of consistency with each year being the same. So, they decided to pull a George Lucas, and make a prequel. In 2004 and 2005, we found out that the little villager guys on the island used to live on a completely different island.......way underground. And it was a futuristic city. Being attacked by plants. So the idea was to tell a story about how these weird little robot dudes lost their memories and ended up on a tropical island.....all while trying to sell a bunch of toys to little kids.
The job fell on the shoulders of Mr. Greg Farshtey.

Now Greg was the head writer of the Bionicle books and comics and shit. It was his job to build the universe based on the toy models from the boys upstairs. Problem was, the story started making less and less sense. The guys from Lego would come to Greg with toy models and be like "okay next year they're all going to be underwater, so find a way to make that work" and then the year after be like "okay now they're all airplanes, they have like fuckin' wings sticking out of their ass, because Jim did too much coke on a plane." And he couldn't explain to them that that doesn't make any sense because I just had them underwater, how can they just turn into planes?

This is your fault Jim!

Then it got really weird

When 2006 hit, the boys in the office came out with new set designs featuring Bionicles that had big ugly thuggish grills, and carried guns. Well not guns, they were called something else, but they were guns. There was a rap video released starring the characters, and it became pretty obvious they were trying to corner a certain market. It was their most successful year.

                                                        Bionicle: Straight Outta Compton

But the story continued to get weirder and weirder. By this point we found out that all the villager dudes and warrior dudes and big evil guys are all robots living on a bunch of different islands inside a really really big robot who is in a coma and underwater. Before long, Greg would have to run Q and A blogs on a major fan website just to help people understand what the shit was going on. By this point, the fanbase and the universe it loved was the saddest thing in the world. A bunch of people who knew everything about a story, but nothing else. It's like what Star Trek used to be, but it never really caught up to that level of mainstream popularity because....

And now

Now it's over. A few years ago Lego got sick of the story because they couldn't get anyone new involved, so they moved the entire story to a completely different location. A distant planet where little robot villager dudes and big robot warrior dudes lived. So, in other words, nothing changed. The line ended about a year later.

By this point, I was still paying close attention, but I was only one of about five fans left in the whole world, and I'm pretty sure the other four were Danish. To put the point home, Greg said he would keep adding story chapters online, but he stopped when he realized nobody was paying attention anymore, which is literally the most depressing thing that can happen to an expanded universe.

In the end, it's just this weird thing that happened. I'm pretty glad it did, for the most part. It made me want to tell stories, and it was a lot of fun for me as a kid. It's ridiculous in the sense that it's an amazingly complex and creative world that nobody really knows about, and they probably never will, because for all its more interesting facets, it was meant to sell toys. But a product that makes money off of your imagination is a step in the right direction. Also it got replaced by this.

New from Lego: Totally not Power Rangers, we swear.