by Eugene

Three grown men hurtling down the interstate at 7:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning with a partially-formed Marvel Legends Galactus riding shotgun. Painstakingly-crafted checklists folded neatly into their pockets, armed with the mobile phone numbers of friends only known by internet message board handles, our heroes ventured forth bravely into the wasteland known as... wait. Which was the bigger wasteland? The Wizard World Con or the city of Philadelphia? I forget. No matter. Same-same.

Bright-eyed and bushy tailed, I high-tailed it to Philadelphia’s Wizard World convention on Saturday morning accompanied by two friends from YMB. The 12 hours that followed were jam-packed with moments of pure geekgasm, overpowering whiffs of unbelievably powerful B.O. (seriously, there were a couple of people there who were the Beyonders of B.O.), and relentless mocking of out-of-shape fanboys who were clearly lower than us in the Geek Heirarchy.

First, the news. I’d love to provide an entire column’s worth of announcements and happenings in the comics industry, but frankly, I only made it to one panel. And that was the one where half the audience was going to be selected to watch Batman Begins that very night. In IMAX. (I wasn’t selected. I got a friggin’ poster instead. But really, I feel that makes up for it. It was an honor just to be nominated. Really.) So I’m not exactly going to be able to provide you with the blow-by-blow of the con. Hell, if you’re coming here for that stuff, you’re just a fudgehammer, anyway. But let’s get the formalities out of the way. Here’s what was announced at the DC panel:

• There was something about Showcase that was announced, but I was late and missed it. I was eating lunch. I had a wonderful pulled pork barbecue platter. It was totally worth it.
• Andy and Adam Kubert are now exclusive with DC. Which explains the whining heard across internet fandom on Saturday.
• Joe Kubert will be penciling and writing an upcoming Sgt. Rock mini.
• The Mr. Miracle featured in Grant Morrison’s upcoming “Seven Soldiers” mini will be Shiloh Norman, and not Scott Free. And here I was thinking Shiloh was stuck in the Antarctic playing Oz for a while.
• Bruce Jones and Ben Oliver will work on a new Vigilante title. No word on whether DC required Jones to submit a Veteran’s Employment Preference Form.
• Bruce Jones and Bart Sears present a new Warlord series, proving once and for all that no one at DC reads comics published by their competition.
• Jim Lee and George Perez will be providing covers for Infinite Crisis.
• Ed McGuinness will return to Superman/Batman. I didn’t catch when or for how long. It really doesn’t matter. After all, Jeph Loeb will still be writing it. Loeb will also pen another unnamed DC project. Hopefully, he’ll find a way to butcher Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and make it the narrative in captions throughout an entire comic.
• They mentioned the creative team for Infinite Crisis but the statement was drowned out by some fat tub in an overly-tight Green Lantern t-shirt trying to be the cut-up of the room.*
• Bob Wayne announced for the second con season running that Frank Miller will join Jim Lee on All-Star Batman & Robin and Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely will produce All-Star Superman! Wow! And in related news, Joe Quesada announced that Daredevil: Target #2 would be forthcoming soon.

  * Why is it that every panel at a comicon has to have some idiot in a Graphitti Designs t-shirt making continuity-laden jokes? In what universe is this amusing? I have a lot of hate, as you can see.

  
  And that, I’m afraid, concludes the informative portion of our program. Like I said, I’d love to be able to provide all sorts of industry news announced exclusively at the convention, but really, just go to Newsarama like everyone else. You want internet snarkery and flamewar beatdowns? I’m your man. Comics news on the internet is just not my strong suit.

  What is firmly within my area of expertise, however, are the subjects of spending too much money on toys and doing the quick skirt through Artist’s Alley to see who’s selling topless photos of herself. I’m telling you, there’s not much I wouldn’t give to see Aimee Sweet dressed up in a pleather Dark Phoenix outfit and invite me to “share a psychic rapport” with her, you know?

  Aside from the porn stars though, there were plenty of people to look at. Predictably, there were Star Wars characters galore, but there also was (we think) an Earth X Spider-Man, a burly DC Captain Marvel, a pudgy Alex Ross-type Batman, and a hominahomina Black Cat. One thing we all noticed was there seemed to be many more people there dressed up in costume than we remembered there being last year or the year before. Hell, there were just plain many more people period, than we ever remember seeing before. The peak of the influx seemed to be around noon on Saturday, and by early afternoon, you couldn’t walk the convention floor without getting sticky with someone else’s grease.

  

  But getting lousy in some sweaty fanboy’s filth was actually worth it when considering the action figure finds I made. And the best part of the entire day was being able to be at a comicon with good friends, talk comics, and make ourselves feel superior by relentlessly mocking the overweight and socially inept.

  That’s all I got. I’m tapped. Although I came away with a bit of fashion advice: Apparently, the new “in” look is the visor. Ain’t that a kick in the head? Oh, and apparently tipping is not a common practice in certain corners of the Marvel Universe. But really, that’s all I got.

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