Gearing up for WonderCon

Just a quick update, today we received renewing press pass information for WonderCon, the sister show to Comic-Con San Diego, which is normally held in San Francisco. Due to rennovations to the Moscone Center, however, WonderCon is being held in Anaheim this year, March 16-18.

Some special guests have been announced, including Marv Wolfman, J. Michael Straczynski, Mike Mignola and Wil Wheaton, but Programming, Exhibitors, Autographs, and other scheduling has yet to be confirmed. We expect to start receiving convention-related press releases and press opportunities now that our registration is in, so keep an eye out here for updates regarding potential interviews and events we may be doing (did somebody say League of Extraordinary Ladies?). And, as always, the popular Where's Peter? segment will be a part of our WonderCon coverage too. Keep an eye on the official WonderCon website for current information. This is a great show, don't miss it!

Is Comic-Con Too Big?

I first attended San Diego Comic-Con in 2007, and have been to three others, as well as a few other conventions of this kind, such as WonderCon and Dragon*Con. In 2007, you could still buy a four-day Comic-Con pass within a few weeks of the opening, but this year tickets sold out in January in a matter of two days, and tickets for next year were on sale at the convention, ensuring another sellout crowd. The attendance of Comic-Con is over 130,000 people, but I submit that the real capacity is actually much smaller.

It was Friday morning, I think, that was the final nail in the coffin for me. I had planned on attending the Torchwood panel as press, and had no aspirations of sitting in the front row, so I made my way over to Ballroom 20 at about 9:00 AM to get in line. After some time of being directed here and there and still having no idea where I was going, I asked one of the security personnel where the end of the line was. He pointed across the yacht harbor, and I saw a line of people stretching beyond that and around the corner behind the trees probably a half mile away. There was literally no end in sight.

I said something to the effect of “Are you s---ing me,” and after determining that it was, in fact, the line for Ballroom 20, I walked away.

Comic-Con has changed over the past five years. This year, as I passed by other people, I kept hearing the words “frustrated” and “disappointing” as they conversed with others. I saw the same thing on Twitter. I heard other attendees complain about how difficult it was to get into the panels they wanted. Friends that I had hoped to see there, both attendees and professionals, didn’t go this year. There seemed to be less of a feeling of joy and exhilaration in the crowd, and almost more of a sense of duty to be there.

And then there’s the problem with security. As you may or may not know, Rhys Ifans, who plays The Lizard in the upcoming Spider-Man movie, apparently pushed a female security guard out of the way after one of the people he was with was questioned about not having the proper pass. The security guard placed him under “citizen’s arrest” but he was later released without charges.

When I arrived on Thursday afternoon (hot and exhausted after an eight-hour car trip), the first thing I did was to walk to the back of the hall in order to pull out my cell phone so I could locate the friend I was supposed to meet up with. One of the red-shirted guards (if you’ve ever been there, you know the ones I mean) immediately took it upon herself to yell at me to move, despite the fact that I was standing there a total of about ten seconds next to several other people in the same area. I explained that I was merely getting out my phone, and she became hostile. I looked at her, clearly hot and tired, and said “Don’t. Just don’t.” Her reply was to raise her voice even more and yell at me “You don’t!” in her best “oh no you di’nt” voice. At that point, I thought it best to try and find somewhere else to stand to make my phone call.

Again, others experienced the same thing. Everyone I asked, which was a random sampling of friends, vendors, professionals and random people I was standing in lines with, said that security was a lot more belligerent and rude this year. I passed by one area where a dozen or so people were seated along a wall, and a man was saying to the nearby security person, “They get to sit there and I don’t? You just kicked me out of there!”

I’m not surprised in the least by what happened with Ifans’ group, since it was happening to less famous people all over the convention center the entire time.

The other question I asked my random sampling of attendees was, “Is Comic-Con too big?” Every single one of them, without exception, said yes. One man even applauded me. Literally. He said “thank you,” and clapped as we were standing in line for the Deepak Chopra booksigning which was across the street at the Hard Rock Hotel because there was no room in the convention center itself.

More and more of the convention is spilling out into the adjacent Gaslamp District, with many downtown parking lots being converted into party zones and the kind of spaces that companies used to have inside the convention center, which merely compounds the downtown parking and traffic nightmare. One entire parking lot was taken up with some kind of Playboy party – we could see the distinctive bunny logo on a flag from over the high security fences as we walked by.

What does Playboy have to do with a comic book convention? For that matter, why does Glee have a panel there? Why did I receive email press releases and onsite handouts for some kind of smokeless cigarettes?

San Diego Comic-Con has become a marketing machine that attendees have the privilege of paying through the nose for, if tickets can even be had at all. Once there, if you even want to get into the room for one of the larger panels, you have to camp outside in line for hours and hours. I later heard that the Torchwood line that I had been trying to get into was already 3000 people long at 6:00 AM.

Disappointingly, it looks as though Comic-Con may get even larger. A publicist friend of mine (one of the many who agrees that it’s too big) told me that there are plans to push the entire back wall of the convention center out into the current marina area, doubling the size of the hall, just for Comic-Con. I would guess that this is how the planners were convinced not to move the convention elsewhere – the promise of an even bigger San Diego Convention Center in the future.

Honestly? Count me out.

By contrast, WonderCon in San Francisco is a wonderful convention. Unlike San Diego, which doubles or even triples their hotel room rates, the flagship Marrott Hotel just two blocks away has a special half price WonderCon rate, making it accessible to most people who wish to attend. Additionally, since it is the flagship hotel, most of the talent stays there, and I had the pleasure of running into Sergio Aragonés in the lobby last year.

“Hey, I know you!” I said, recognizing his trademark glasses, mustache and tropical shirt.

“Yes, hello! Nice to meet you!” he said enthusiastically, shaking my hand.

“Are you having a good con?”

“Yes, I love WonderCon. You can actually talk to people here, unlike Comic-Con. That one’s just too big.”

Comic-Con pre-news

Just a quick entry to let people know what's what. So far we've secured interviews with the talent and producers of both Ugly Americans (the hit animated show on Comedy Central) and Grimm, (the new fairy tale police procedural mashup debuting this fall on NBC).

We're purposefully leaving our schedule as open as possible so that we can remain flexible to get other interviews as talent is available. Between the scheduled press interviews, visiting certain booths and displays we have on our checklist, grabbing people as they become available and evening parties, we're booked solid!

Sleep is for chumps! We'll report as we can, time and internet connectivity allowing. For the most current news from the convention, please follow us on Twitter and don't forget to tell your friends!

San Diego Comic-Con 2011 is Go!

A quick informal post to let everyone know that UFN will have two reporters on site at San Diego Comic-Con later this month! We're lining up interviews already, so if you have someone you'd like us to try and interview and any questions you'd like us to ask, be sure to message us here or on our Twitter.

Possible interviews we're working on obtaining include actor Matt Smith (the 11th Doctor Who), actor Todd Stashwick (Heroes, Supernatural), artist Dennis Calero (Batman, X-Factor, X-Men Noir, Legion of Superheroes), Heroes writers Oliver Grigsby, James Martin and Chris Zatta... and more! Often, surprise interview opportunities present themselves on site, so you never know who will show up here on Urban Fantasy News during convention coverage. Stay tuned!

Walter Simonson’s The Mighty Thor: Artist’s Edition at San Diego Comic-Con

Legendary comics writer and artist Walter Simonson will appear at the IDW booth every day during the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, signing copies of Walter Simonson's The Mighty Thor: Artist's Edition. In addition to the regular edition available in July at comic stores, IDW will offer a limited Comic-Con exclusive edition featuring a variant cover, only available through IDW at the convention. Readers can now pre-order both editions direct from IDW Publishing for pick up at Comic-Con.

“I wrote and drew The Mighty Thor for Marvel more 25 years ago now, at a time when it was the fate of old comics to be deployed to the back issue bins in comic shops and at conventions.  No one had any expectations of reprints or trade collections.  Now, it’s a new day,” said Simonson. “I’m pleased that IDW and Marvel have seen fit to go back and revisit this work as they have. I couldn’t be more delighted to know Thor, Beta Ray Bill, and all their friends turned out to have a much longer shelf-life than I would ever have imagined.”

The oversized, hardcover collection will present Thor 337-340, Simonson’s first classic story arc, which introduced Beta Ray Bill, and Thor 360-362, Simonson’s choice for the second arc in the book. All the pages in the Artist's Edition have been scanned from Simonson’s personal original art to ensure the highest possible quality reproduction. While appearing to be in black and white, each page was scanned in color to mimic as closely as possible the experience of viewing the actual original art—for instance, white-out corrections and blue pencil notations.

“Walter’s run on The Mighty Thor is one of the best ever in comics—period,” said editor Scott Dunbier, “and to be able to see it now as an Artist’s Edition, printed the same size as drawn, and scanned from all the originals… well, I just can’t wait to get my paws on it!”

This will be Simonson’s first visit to San Diego Comic-Con since 2004. Joining Simonson will be his wife, Louise “Weezie” Simonson, a noted comic book editor and writer. This book will be the first in a series of Artist’s Editions featuring legendary creators and comics from Marvel.

Alternative Press Expo (APE) announces special guests for 2011

Coming off its biggest year yet in 2010 with attendance topping 5,500, the Alternative Press Expo (APE), returns to San Francisco this fall at The Concourse Exhibition Center. The Expo, taking place Saturday, October 1 and Sunday, October 2, will again feature the expanded Exhibit Hall and additional programming tracks that debuted in 2010.

Five special guests have already signed on for the show: Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant!), Daniel Clowes (Wilson, Mister Wonderful; courtesy Drawn & Quarterly), Craig Thompson (Blankets, Habibi), Adrian Tomine (Optic Nerve, Scenes from an Impending Marriage), and Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man, I Thought You Would Be Funnier).

“Interest in APE has never been higher as evidenced by our growing attendance and roster of exhibitors,” said David Glanzer, APE’s director of marketing and public relations. “This year’s terrific mix of special guests really helps us continue that momentum as one of the ‘must-see’ independent comics shows in the nation.”

APE showcases the best in alternative and small press comics, with an Exhibit Hall packed with cutting-edge creators featuring their comics, books, zines, original art, hand-made items, and much more. Further details on APE 2011, including a complete list of exhibitors and the full programming schedule, will be announced closer to the event.

Exclusive: Brea and Zane Grant on their upcoming projects

Zane and Brea Grant

You may remember Brea Grant as Daphne the speedster, Hiro Nakamura's frenemy from Heroes. Our Heroes-related section of the interview is on our sister site, House Petrelli, but UFN asked some more general questions about Brea and Zane's upcoming comic book projects, which are both entertaining and very diverse.

UFN: We Will Bury You... I was going to say that launched at Comic-Con '09? Am I right on that?

BG: We started promoting it in '09, but it actually didn't come out until a year ago, and then the trade came out this past fall.

UFN: And who's the publisher on that?

BG: It's IDW.

UFN: Ah, okay. And what's the premise?

ZG: It's the story of a zombie apocalypse that begins in New York in 1927 and follows a sex worker and her girlfriend as they try to survive, the people they meet and so on.

UFN: Okay, interesting angle on it. So we see the underside, and they see these things happen in the corners where most people don't?

ZG: Yeah, it's basically a survival story set in the 20s.

BG: There's a lot of comic books and zombie comic books specifically that look at people with power, with money, who are cops, who have skills... and we wanted to look at people whose survival skills are more street skills. Street smart rather than having money to buy your way out, or get on a boat, or do whatever you would do to survive.

UFN: Are there other projects you guys are moving into? Other titles, other...

ZG: Yeah, we're still working on comics together, we're pitching out a few things right now. We're pitching out a slasher book with Eric J who does some really amazing art. He was the co-creator of Rex Mundi and he's doing a book called Fly right now. So that's a really fun one, and we're working on a comic about a graffiti crew that learns to do magic. It's really an urban fantasy thing. The tentative title is Dead City Kids.

BG: And we have a Suicide Girls comic book coming out in April with IDW as well.

UFN: I think of them as pictures... what are they going to be doing?

BG: Well, we wrote a story for them. It's sort of a Charlie's Angels-esque group of elite fighters fighting against a giant religious corporation in a sort of dystopian future.

UFN: I did not see that coming.

ZG: It's sort of a science fiction spy story kind of thing with espionage. It's fun. I think we did a good job! And we have Cameron Stewart who does some amazing art, and David Hahn who also does some amazing art, and Steve Niles is writing a back-of-issue story. I think it'll be a fun project. It's coming out in a few weeks.

UFN: And is that with IDW?

ZG: That one's with IDW, the other ones we're still pitching out and we're talking to some people about them. I'm doing a web comic with a friend called Detective Warlock, Warlock Detective. It's kind of a horror-comedy about a small town warlock detective. He does things like he fights a graveyard hag at a skating rink, things like that.

UFN: Is that set in the present-day?

ZG: Yeah, it's set in the present-day. It's pretty cool. I think that'll be up next month.

UFN: Do you have a website?

ZG: I do, it's ZaneGrant.org.

UFN: Dot org?

ZG: Yes, I'm an organization.

UFN: Or you're very organized. Or both. Do you have any parting thoughts or other work you're doing?

BG: I co-wrote a screenplay that's going to shoot in September that's one of the big projects I'm working on on my own besides other acting ventures. It's independent and still in the early stages, it's called Best Friends Forever and it's an apocalyptic road trip movie.

UFN: The horror genre, pardon the pun, just will not die. Zombies and vampires and the apocalypse... do you think there's still a lot of audience? Do you think it's played out at all?

BG: I don't think horror will ever play out. I think people are drawn to it for whatever reason they have. I never wake up and think, "No, I don't really want to watch a horror movie or read a sci-fi book. I consistently want to be in those genres, whereas I do sometimes feel like I don't want to watch a depressing drama or something like that. I think it's here to stay. I think certain things will probably go out of style. I have this theory that werewolves are the next big thing. So I think zombies will go out of style, other things will go out of style, vampires will go out style, but I think at some point it's still gonna cycle through.

UFN: Horror as a genre, obviously, has been around forever, since Mary Shelley, since before that, scaring people, things that go bump in the night... it's kind of blown up recently, but you don't think it's going to shrink any time in the near future?

ZG: I don't think so. I think as a genre there's a lot of room to find new stories, especially now that so much money is going into remakes, or even just rehashing the same stories from the same authors. And those monsters do have specific meaning to our society. In international horror, over the last ten years people there have been some really interesting new kinds of stories that people are telling, or telling in a different style. Even vampire stories, like Let the Right One In, that movie's amazing. It's so different than anything.

UFN: Well, like Priest is coming out, and the interesting thing about the vampires on that is that they're actually some kind of non-human alien infection kind of thing, and the people are light-sensitive instead of... it's a twist on it that's really interesting.

ZG: Yeah, I think there's a lot of room for tweaking things and playing with what's there, but definitely the genre is getting maybe a little bit stale involving the mainstream-ization of it, but hopefully some money will go into some great projects.

BG: I think the true fans will keep it alive.

Paul Bettany on Priest, in his own words

Courtesy Sony Pictures

This interview was part of a media roundtable, where about eight media folks (including myself) were seated and the talent was brought to each table in shifts of about eight to ten minutes each. Unfortunately, I was unable to catch the names of all the media present at our table, so the other questioners will be noted simply as "Q" (how mysterious!), with "UFN" being my question in particular. (The Legion poster referenced was mine, I brought two to get signed from Comic-Con, which he did gladly! //fangirl)

Q: So is the second time a charm? (Referring to Bettany's second major film with Scott Stewart as director)

Paul Bettany: Is the second time a charm? I think it's 'third time's the charm,' but in this case it was the second. It was a really great working experience, and I think you could ask anybody in the cast or crew, and I mean it, if they had a great time, and they'll all say yes. Even the days I got injured, we had great days.

Q: What sort of injuries did you sustain?

PB: I fell on a de-acceleration wire, and I landed on my foot, which is where you should land, but it failed to de-accelerate, and I landed about 20 feet... it was painful. But it was fine, thanks to the pleasures of Vicodin.

Q: Were you doing your own stunts?

PB: Oh, yeah! As many of them as insurance would allow me to do, I did. I really enjoy that stuff, and, I mean, if you're in an action movie, and you're not doing the action, what are you getting paid for? I wanted to do it, I wanted to have that experience. It's such an amazing experience, and I loved it.

Q: What you said at the footage screening last night, was 'I'm British, so I'm starting from a butch deficit.'

PB: Yeah, it's true, so I started training before the movie, and my trainer came out with me from New York. I've known him for years, we worked together on Legion. He did a really amazing job, I think. He kept me safe, put a bunch of weight on me, made sure I didn't eat badly, and woke me up at 4:00 in the morning to go training every day. We start work at 6:00, so Mike would wake me up to go training at 4:00 in the morning. I can be a rude bastard at 4:00 in the morning if you're waking me up.

Courtesy Sony Pictures

Q: The six-pack on the [Legion] poster she had, does that come naturally?

PB: No, it doesn't come "naturally." It comes from a huge amount of deprivation! Yeesh... my body very quickly retreats very quickly back to the body of a reader who eats too much cheese and drinks beer. I can't get fit unless somebody's... I have a very strong work ethic, but I can't stop eating cheese unless somebody's paying me an enormous sum of money not to eat it.

Q: You're walking kind of a fine line in this movie. You're a supernatural priest who's reciting "Yea, though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death..." before he throws crosses at vampires. How do you, as an actor, keep the line between that and camp. How do you walk that line when you're reciting those scenes?

PB: I think you understand, as the actor, that this is a sort of really enjoyable moment for the audience. You understand that it looks like he's reading from a Bible, and the familiar says "Your words mean nothing here, Priest," and then the audience get revealed that what's inside the Bible ain't f***ing words. But you have to play it straight. You understand the entertainment value of that as a series of shots. I love that kind of stuff. I really do.

Q: Is that what drew you to the part?

PB: Well yeah. A bunch of things drew me to the part. Scott being a huge part of that. Scott with over three times of the budget that he had the time before -- a really broad canvas and enough money to buy really great paints finally for him. It's really paid off for him, and I'm really proud of the result. I was so shocked last night at the footage that we saw. So proud.

UFN: Is this your favorite genre to do?

PB: I love making movies. I love watching movies, I love making movies. From Legion I went on and played Charles Darwin and put on a bunch of weight for that, then I lost a bunch of weight to make this movie, then made a film in 17 days, unbelievably, with Kevin Spacey and Stanley Tucci. A small little independent film about the financial crisis, so I will continue to make as many different sorts of movies as I'm allowed to.

Q: How is it going from action to a more serious type of role?

PB: It's like two different jobs. They really are. They're totally separate.

Q: You have a pretty good sense of humor, so what kind of humorous subtitle would you give "Priest 2?" Sequels always seem to have an odd subtitle.

PB: I haven't the smallest idea...

Q: "Priest 2: The Priestening?"

PB: I remember at Comic-Con last time, Karl Urban signed a poster to me and said, "Thanks so much for being in my movie." He signed a poster to me, which I didn't ask for, and he'd hand written in his name, "Priest, starring Karl Urban."

Priest opens in theaters Friday, May 13.