This one isn’t quite as timely since I’ve been swamped and hacking on it in pieces, but it might still contain some stuff that’s new to folks, and at the very least decorates everything with my sparkly banter. :)

So last weekend Scott and I were at San Diego Comic-Con, which is also known by a wide assortment of colorful names: Geek Mecca, Pop Culture Paradise, and even "that disturbing thing with the Sailor Moon cos-play you ignore us for every year" (I can’t possibly be the only one who gets this from folks… am I?). You'll notice that comics don't actually play into any of these quaint little descriptors, which is just as well, as the show hasn't really been about comics for a while now. It is, however, the “it” destination for pretty much everything else, as I'll try to convey with some highlights from my limited perspective. Brace yourselves. This is gonna go long. Oh, and if you're interested, you can open a new tab and follow along with the gallery I set up for the show. It also contains a bunch of highlights I won't bother repeating here, so it's worth fishing through the captions if you're interested.

WARNING!: There are a couple spoilers throughout, so skip the sections about stuff with which you'd like to remain virgin. Oh, if you comment on this one, please please flag any additional spoilers so I can avoid them if I want. Thanks!

• Schedule: The guy who's been program director for years retired, leaving the Comic-Con schedule in younger, taller, and hairier hands (well, his hands aren't younger, taller, or hairier, but... you get my meaning). The major change was to spread the menagerie of major panel action that once dominated Saturday, and as of the last couple years started spilling into Friday as well, across all four days. We had stuff like Lost Season 4, Paramount Pictures, and Lionsgate on Day 1, which was disorienting for a lot of people. It certainly boosted attendance, though, and from the statements made by the new guy it looks like it'll become the standard for years to come.
• Attendance: Word is that there were over 140,000 people there, breaking last year's 125,000-person record. I know for a fact that they sold out Saturday and Sunday, and I wouldn't be surprised if they sold out Friday as well. It was nuts. The fire marshal was on hand at every panel, threatening to shut the proceedings down. Ironically, I hear that a lot of vendors were complaining that the dealer's hall was kinda dead Saturday, which defies historical precedent but makes sense, given the amazing panel line-up that day. I never go near the dealer's hall on the busy day, as in the past it's been like crowd surfing to get anywhere, but maybe that's changing too. Still, Thursday in the dealer’s hall felt like Saturdays past, and at best, that’s a backhanded comment.
• TV Pilots: Last year they showed an extended Heroes pilot (which will be on the Season 1 DVD), as well as the inaugural episode for Jericho. Apparently that went over well, since there were a ton of pilots shown this time around. If Bionic Woman week-to-week is anything like that episode, that series is gonna be mighty. The Sarah Conner Chronicles pilot was basically a retread of Terminator 2 with Summer Glau as what I assume will be a "feeling" terminator (maybe so they can have her hook up with John - ack!), with an epilogue that sends the action to the modern day. They also showed the pilots for Pushing Daisies, Chuck, and Reaper, but I didn’t see them, so I can't comment. BTW, that's just the ones I know about. Clearly, Comic-Con has cemented itself as one of the best sources for upcoming TV season intel.
• Warren Frakking Ellis: I’ve seen him in person twice now and he never disappoints. Far and away my favorite comic author and hopefully soon to be one of my favorite authors in all mediums (I haven’t had the chance to crack Crooked Little Vein yet, but the Global Frequency pilot ruled and I’m looking forward to Dead Channel (scroll down a bit) and playing through the rest of Antaeus Rising). His two-hour Q&A covered his upcoming projects, which are mostly being released by Avatar, and a wide variety of other stuff ranging from amusing anecdotes about other British comics authors to his favorite brands of scotch. Great, great stuff. Too bad that he’s vowing not to do the show again for another decade, but I totally understand. I sometimes want to retire from the spotlight and just produce for a while myself. Of particular note: Freakangels will be a free (!!) weekly (!!) web comic that’s premiering this fall, which Warren’s a good 200 pages into already, even though he has “no idea what it’s about yet.” Also, Ignition City - which looks amazing - will be his second Avatar monthly.
• Puppet Up!: I discovered this at last year’s Comic-Con when I went to the Henson panel to get the low down on Power of the Dark Crystal. Before that, they explained that they’d been sending their puppeteers to improv classes and that it had spawned something that wasn’t yet named and didn’t have a home, but that they assumed would come out on DVD at some point. Since then it’s morphed into a full-on monthly improv show in Hollywood, with the pros – including Brian Henson himself – grabbing puppets and going to town a la Whose Line Is It Anyway? This year their presentation even had Ben Browder playing one of the puppets alongside Brian and Julianne Buescher – he’s not in the show, he was just on hand at Comic-Con. There’s a lot to love here. Not only is it muppet improv, which is enough to get me to buy tickets alone, but they have awesome standards: they pick the puppets from a collection of 80 or so before they know the details of each skit, and they never take the same suggestions twice. That’s commitment! The vids I’ve seen and the stuff they’re done live at Comic-Con is all amazing and I’m really looking forward to seeing the show in September. (Can’t make it the August gig as it overlaps GenCon.) Go check out the site’s Vids section for what they showed at Comic-Con last year and click through to the TBS site for more.
• Jericho: As you might imagine, this was one of my most hotly anticipated panels and despite them having only a very small amount of footage (they’d only been back filming new episodes for one week when Comic-Con happened), I walked away happy. There are some kinks, but they’re clearly blazing bold territory so I can forgive them the calculated risks. Case in point, we may yet wind up with a cliffhanger ending if the show fails to secure a third season. You see, the writers are sticking to their original plan for the show rather than try to compress or modify it as shows like Babylon 5 have. Since all 7 Season 2 episodes will have been long filmed by the time they air, they either have to come up with an ending now or hope for more. They’re boldly hedging their bets on Outcome #2. They laid out a multi-season arc at the outset – something I’m really glad to see - and the second season originally expanded the scale to (fairly big spoiler) tell the next part of the story from the perspective of three cities – I’m guessing New Berg was one of the other two – and so the only change they’re making to Season 2 is to only tell the Jericho part of that cycle. Biggest let down for me here – and it was minor – was that Sprague Grayden (Heather) wasn’t on hand, nor was she mentioned, so I can’t tell yet whether she’s in the second season. I really hope so, because she was one of the best things about Season 1. As I was telling my buddy Steve, I’m probably going to have to break my rule and start asking questions at these things if I want to get the answers I’m interested in. (For instance, what’s the weekly format of the Sarah Conner Chronicles going to look like? Is it serialized or episodic? We went through like twenty questions and not a single person thought to ask. Yeesh!)
• Heroes: Everyone was there, including the whole cast and Tim Kring, the creator. They showed a brief clip of stuff from early episodes of Season 2 and hinted that the plot threads left open at the end of Season 1 would linger a while (for instance, Hiro won't be getting back to the present immediately and might make a few "friends" in fuedal Japan before he does). There's a new cast member, Dania Ramirez, who plays a character named Maya. Tim and Jeff Loeb explained that, just like Jericho, Heroes will be pushing original content on the website through the off-season to keep people interested (great call, that). Graphic novel will have an Alex Ross cover! Oh, and they announced the first "auteur" to take on an episode of the Heroes: Origins spin-off/season extender: Kevin Smith! Giveaway: A first-run "Comic-Con exclusive" package for your DVD set, so you can show all the other kids wishing they could fly just how cool you are.
• Lost: As usual, the main spokesmen for the show were Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the showrunners. They brought out bells so they could tag each other out if anyone started to reveal stuff that shouldn't be public knowledge yet. The big news is that Michael's back as a series regular next year. No word on the how or why, though. I'm thinking he might land with the freighter folks, who I'm betting are Dharma. (If so, it's time for the castaways to make nice with Ben and the Others, cause the bloodlettin's about to start!). And yay! Libby's story will (eventually) be told! Also, the flash-forward at the end of the Season 3 finale is the first of many; the show will henceforth take place in the past, present, and future as they ratchet toward the end of the story in 2010. They also showed some video from the Lost game, which they say will play into the mythology somehow, and another Dharma reel that apparently deals with a cloning incident. Probably the best moment in the panel was a question about the increased violence of Season 3. Lindelof's answer: “I would argue though, that were you to go back and look at Season 1, our guys committed more acts of violence against each other than the others have committed against our guys. It's just that our guys are much prettier. When Sawyer is punching you in the face, you're kind of like, “More please. You're so attractive, do you want to take your shirt off and continue the beatings?” When Picket or Friendly is beating you up it’s like brutal violence - not the kind of violence we subscribe to. So we promise that as the show moves forward, violence will only be perpetrated by catastrophically good looking people.” Go here for a bunch of specifics and videos.
• Battlestar Galactica: They opened this one with a montage of “BSG women behaving badly” – you know, punching people and saying “frak” a lot – which worked well given that the only stars they brought out were female (Roslin, Six, Starbuck, and D’Anna). It was a fun panel, with humor aplenty (much of it raunchy), but there wasn’t a lot of new material. The only announcement was something we’d all suspected for a while – that D’Anna comes back in the final season (for a few episodes, midway through).
• 4400: This show is firing on all cylinders this season, what with 50-50, the annexation of the Seattle waste, and Kyle’s bad-ass ability reveal. The panel was lively, and my favorite part was a fan question to the cast and crew as to whether they’d take the shot. It was a pretty even split, but the best response was from the new girl, Jenni Baird (Meghan Doyle), who turned it around and asked the audience. I, of course, raised my hand (I’d take the shot in a fucking heartbeat – no consideration required!), but I was floored that I was in the stark minority. Out of the 1,500 people or so in that room (if I remember correctly), I’d say that maybe a couple hundred were with me, and that number might be high. I understand geek shyness, but come on! You get to live the dream and you back down? Pussies! Anyway, the producer Ira Steven Behr – who also brought us the best chunk of the Star Trek franchise, Deep Space Nine – said that by the end of the season, (fairly big spoiler) “the choice probably won’t matter.” Megalyn Echikunwoke is astoundingly beautiful in person, like a hundred times more so than on the tube. Oh, and to end this piece on a really high note, they showed a stack of clips at this panel, two of which revealed that (HUGE SPOILER – you’ve been warned!!) not one but both of Isabelle’s parents return in upcoming installments! Laura Allen and Mahershalalhashbaz Ali are back, baby! At least for a little while.
• Smallville: Laura Vandervoort, the new Supergirl, was clearly the draw here, and while she was hot and Kara is Kryptonian and can fly and all, I find myself less interested in her right now than some of the other stuff on the show. In particular, I’m curious to see whether the producers have the balls to finally, finally off Lana, but I’m not holding my breath. They had their chance and they wimped out, only to figure out a way to make Lana cool (as a villain, or at least close enough to one that St. Peter might frown), then take it back again by the end of the season (Note to producers: Grow a spine! Love, Pat.) Back to the panel, it’s notable that neither Kristen Kreuk nor Allison Mack were present. Nice coincidence or nice touch, it still had the right effect. Doesn’t matter, though; it’s not like any of the stuff at the end of last season will actually stick (see spine, above). But I live in eternal hope. Martian Manhunter is back next year with more Justice Leaguers and Dean Cain will apparently show up as a villain. Oh, and Bruce Wayne will never make it to Smallville. So decreeth Warner Brothers!  
• 1-18-08: They showed the trailer again and J.J. Abrahms came out for like 30 seconds to say, “We wanted to make an American monster movie - not Godzilla or King Kong, but something new. No, the film's not called ‘Monstrous.’ Oh, and here's a poster and a Slusho t-shirt.” So, still not much detail on the flick, but the poster's cool and now hangs over my desk at home. Mine actually reads "Terrifying" across the top. Rumor has it that there's also a "Fearsome" one and that they may be leading up to a final poster revealing the title. Only time and the evil Paramount marketing devils will tell.
• Iron Man: I didn't catch the big Marvel panel on Saturday, but I hear it was pretty cool, with lots from Iron Man and the new Hulk movie. During the Paramount Pictures panel, though, they had a little surprise: a recorded message from Iron Man director Jon Favreau, who said he was sorry he couldn't be there, but wanted to share some “inspirational footage” to give everyone an idea what to expect from the movie. The clip cuts to, well, basically this. That ran for a minute or so before the lights came up with Jon Favreau on stage to apologize. He went on to give a talk a bunch about the movie and showed some footage as well (which was awesome, BTW, though I won't be linking to it here because they ask that none of the screened material be recorded or distributed away from the show). Let's just say that no one will be disappointed.
• Dark Knight: Most of you probably know about the start of the viral marketing campaign for this one, the Do You Believe in Harvey Dent? sites that eventually revealed the first shot of Heath Ledger as the Joker. Well, the campaign amped up at Comic-Con. Apparently, after weeks of Warner Brothers saying there wouldn’t be a DK presence at the show (they claimed they were going to focus on Wizard World instead), another site popped up, this time recruiting folks for the Joker’s posse. Thus began an insane treasure hunt across San Diego that was so stealth I didn’t even know it happened until after the show. It’s so mind-bogglingly complex I’m not even gonna try and recap it here. I’m still trying to piece it all together, but it looks like you can find out most of what happened here and here and here and here. Oh, and outside it making 140 fanboys the happiest bastards at the con, it also culminated in the release of the official teaser trailer.
• Star Trek: Not much in the way of new info. J.J. Abrahms directing with Zachary Quinto as young Spock and Leonard Nimoy as elder Spock. Everyone wants Shatner involved, but “only if it's worthy of him and the movie.” I agree. I'd rather see more Denny Crane than more bad Kirk. No word on young Kirk, either - they actually asked the audience for opinions. Giveaway: Poster and a t-shirt, both nifty, but neither jaw dropping.
• Get Smart: Except for a bit of gross out humor in a fighter jet – IMO there is no place or excuse for visible gross out humor in any media, ever – the footage for this looks like quite a bit of fun. The production is being faithful to the source without embracing the camp so much that it falls apart. Control’s back, Kaos is back, even Hymie’s back (or so says the director – we didn’t see him)! The new characters don’t seem to get in the way and might actually serve the plot. All good signs. If I had to classify the flick, I’d put it in the same category as Cats and Dogs, which, from me, is pretty high praise. “Send in... The Russian!”
• The Mist: This looks pretty good. Frank Darabont's a great moviemaker and has a strong feel for translating King to the screen. The scenes they offered up were atmospheric and illustrated some strong characterization, plus the short story is apparently pretty slim, which always seems to produce the best results with King's work (make of that what you will). Giveaway: A decent poster [http://www.shocktillyoudrop.com/news/comicconnews.php?id=904].
• Right at Your Door: One of the reviewers out there is calling this “24 for the big screen,” but from what I’ve read and what I saw at the panel, that’s completely unfair. It looks more like a post-9/11 The Day After or Miracle Mile (if you haven't seen this one, BTW, go see it now - it's one of the most amazing movies ever shot), or a politically charged, less grisly Threads. Except, you know, with a chemical attack instead of nukes, and focusing on a couple separated in the ensuing chaos. I’m really looking forward to this one. I love the actors in this and I groove on what they seem to be shooting for.
• Doctor Who Store: Their booth ruled this year, mostly due to the overwhelming number of products spawned by the new show: everything from action figures to remote control toys to (my favorite) a Dalek dustbin that shrieks "Exterminate" and other stuff when you toss something. They even had a life-size, light-up Dalek you could take your picture with! I didn’t manage to get back into the hall with my camera, though, so I missed out. :(
• Superman Doomsday: Couldn't get into this one as the line for it was frakkin' enormous, but I hear it was amazing. The first third is apparently just the fight, with the rest of the movie following up with a single clone created by Lex Luthor. It’s by the same folks who produced the Dini animated series, so I’m sure it’ll rule. Here's to hoping it hits Cartoon Network so we don’t have to wait for the DVD release.
• Beowulf: I can't get past this looking like crude video game CG yet. It appears to be pretty faithful, but the material they showed at the con was pretty dismal. Giveaway: A crappy comic book tie-in I didn't read.
• Watchmen: Even though I have a fair amount of faith in Zack Snyder pulling this one off (so far), the panel kind blew. It boiled down to just him and two of the stars - Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach) and Malin Ackerman (The Silk Spectre) - all of whom seemed uncomfortable on stage, perhaps because they're so far from having anything of substance to show off. There were a few details - it’s period, it’s Rated R, production design apparently adheres to a Se7en aesthetic… All well and good, but personally, I think they should have held off for another year before trying to drum up any interest on this one. All they can do right now is say stuff like, "Yeah, we want the pirate story to go in. We're trying." and "The early sets look cool." Giveaway: An original Dave Gibbons "cover" movie poster, which was interesting, but so derivative of the original books it left me cold.
• Halloween: I was only at this panel because I wanted to see stuff for The Mist, with which it was partnered. I long ago decided to save this one for a video rental, as it violates the core essence of what is Michael Myers to me. He’s the Boogeyman, not some steroid-drowned serial killer. He isn’t human. You don’t know what the hell he is. The footage they showed and what was said at this panel didn’t change my mind. Still, Rob’s one of the most down-to-earth rockers I’ve ever seen and his wife is hot, so the panel wasn’t a complete wash.
• Shoot ‘Em Up: Didn’t see the panel, but I can confidently say I’ll be missing this entirely. They gave away tickets to a sneak peak at the show and I couldn’t be bothered. The trailer, or a trailer that’s been described to me, allegedly includes a bit with Clive Owen killing someone with a carrot and proclaiming, “Eat your vegetables.” Har har har. Who the hell wrote this? Ah, Michael Davis, who also wrote Double Dragon. Yes, that Double Dragon. Michael – You’re on my fucking list. When Monica “men fall dead of hormone poisoning in my presence” Bellucci can’t save your picture, nothing can. Fear the Day of the Bullet, pal. Fear.  

All that and I'd say I still missed at least 70% of the show. I skipped most of the movie panels this year, which was only a mild bummer since a lot of them only looked "eh" to me this year. I didn't get to the Torchwood panel, which is just as well, since I only managed to start watching the series after I turned in Second Printing and World on Fire. Missed Syd Mead, too, who was on-hand to talk about his work on Tron, Blade Runner (they were pimping the new 25th anniversary DVD hard at the show), Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and other stuff. All told, there around a thousand events that weekend, more than you could attend in a few months. It was a whirlwind, and just about the most telling sign that our people are poised to take over the world. Lobby for your place in the new regime now before all the good spots are taken by the Machiavellian LARPers, anal rules lawyers, and overbearing furries. (This all assuming that gamers are the superior species, of course - the rabid, uninitiated comics, movie, and TV geeks will become our Legion.