Thanks to the lack of a shuttle bus, I was forced to miss the panel where Stan Lee talked about how he singlehandedly created Spider-Man, the modern superhero comic book in general, and Steve Ditko‘s second child (“I meant to Excelsior on her back, but I couldn’t get out of the trench before my Gamma Bomb went off, and when I tried to say ‘shit,’ it came out ‘thwip!’ And that’s how amyl nitrate created Spider-Man! Now which of you True Believers has The Man’s check?”).
And as much as I wanted to hear Stan speak, I was not willing to go to his next panel, which was about his new Sci-Fi Channel show, Who Wants to be a Superhero? If you haven’t seen it, Stan takes a bunch of regular jerks, dresses them up in spandex and auditions them to become a superhero. Which would be a great concept if Stan would take the whole Goddamned thing seriously and try to actually give them superpowers by exposing them radiation. Because I’d pay extra to see Cell Phone Girl become Brain Tumor Woman. But no; instead, he gives up superheroes like Fat Momma, and I have no respect for a superhero who only has powers at last call.
So instead, I went to see the pilot for the new NBC show, Heroes. The concept behind the show is that a bunch of people around the world look at a solar eclipse and wind up getting superpowers beyond the standard power of becoming blind. There’s a fat cop who gets the power of reading minds and thanking Christ he found work after Alias. There’s a stripper whose reflection can simultaneously protect her and reminder her that James Van Der Beek saw her tits. And there’s a high school cheerleader who can take any beating and heal instantaneously, giving her the power to make every cheerleader fantasy I had in high school come true.
I spent high school in marching band, so don’t you fucking judge me.
SATURDAY
Saturday at ComicCon is a baffling, unholy mess. There are about 125,000 comic book geeks with questionable hygiene in one space. There is no room to move. I spent the entire day mouthbreathing and stutter-walking behind the morbidly obese like I was trying not to attract a sandworm.
The first thing I did was stake out space in Hall H, the big room, to see Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino talk about their new movie Grindhouse. Rodriguez showed some footage from his half of the movie, which featured Rose McGowan with a prosthetic leg made from an automatic rifle. Which sounds great until you realize that the first time Rose sneezed, coughed or wheezed her gun-leg would go off, sending the firing pin into her pelvis at the speed of sound, leaving you with a rag full of chloroform and a broken dream. And by “you,” I mean “me.”
The main thing I took from the Tarantino panel was, when he was asked how to make an indie movie that got the same attention that his first movie did, he said, “Make Reservoir Dogs! That was a fucking awesome movie!” Which was great advice. After all, I know an actor who would be willing to be in my movie who’s the same caliber as Harvey Keitel. By which I mean, he’s willing to expose his genitals to the camera of anyone who asks him to or looks uncomfortable. Of course, if this actor looked into my camera and said that his name was Ken MacDonald, I’d ask him for his ID before I believed him.
After Tarantino was done, I sat and waited for Kevin Smith to speak… and waited… and waited. Except he didn’t show up; he claimed that he was stuck in traffic. Now, I recognize that, as an artist, the only thing Smith owes to his fans are good movies. However, I’d like to believe that he feels he owes a little more to his fellow fucking cigarette smokers. I spent two hours waiting for that bastard, trying to force nicotine gum into my salivary glands with the business end of a DC Nation pin, before he finally sent Rosario Dawson out onstage to relay his regrets via her cell phone. After a couple hours without a smoke, the only way I was gonna be satisfied was if Rosario came out with her cell phone on vibrate, and regrets had better not be what are relayed to me.
When I finally stormed out of Hall H, I distracted myself from my crippling disappointment by horrifying as many furries as I could find (And at ComicCon, you can’t swing a dead cat, ironically, without hitting a furry). For a sexually liberated people, I expected a better reaction to my simple entreaties of, “I noticed you have a fur fetish. I, personally, have a fetish for cornholing the still-twitching bodies of abnormally-large dead animals. Can I buy you a drink? Wait, first – do you know what Ketamine tastes like?” Baffling; these people force innocent dry cleaners to steam semen out of synthetic tiger fur, and yet I was the asshole.
Conclusion
I make it sound like ComicCon’s full of targets for mockery… and make no mistake: it is. But at the same time, if you’re a comic book fan (even a cynical one like me), there’s as much to respect as there is to make fun of. All of these losers in the silly costumes are completely willing to pose for pictures to anyone who asks, even if you’re laughing at them when you ask (And I was. However, almost none of my pictures actually came out. For more photos, check out Amandarama; I can vouch for her laughing while asking for pictures).
I got to meet one of my favorite comic artists, talk to him for a bit, and take home an original piece of his art. As much as I goofed on NBC’s Heroes, I’m looking forward to seeing more this fall. And it’s fun to be in a place where, if even for only a few days, no matter what bar you go into and no matter who’s sitting next to you, you can turn to them and ask them their opinion on Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin, and not be stared at like you’re a lunatic.
That happens when they tell you that they’re not furries, and you threaten to jerk off into their teddy bear anyway.
[tags]Nerd Prom, San Diego, ComicCon, Stan Lee, Heroes, Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez, Grindhouse, Kevin Smith, Clerks II, furries, dark humor[/tags]
