Yes Sir, Captain Tightpants: SDCC 2012’s Firefly Reunion Panel

Later on today, we’ll try to post some of the remaining videos we took at SDCC 2012, but it will be a bittersweet experience. Because the one question we’ve been getting from most of our friends and acquaintances since we got back to the Crisis On Inifnite Midlives Home Office has been: “Did you get to the Firefly Tenth Anniversary panel?” Even the owner of our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop talking about movies to the paying customers, or at least to stop talking about the movies I find on Web sites with a top level domain name ending in “.XXX”, who you would think would be more interesting in upcoming developments in the products he sells, was disappointed that we didn’t spend hours in line for Ballroom 20 to see the reunion.

But we chose not to do that because we know that all the high-demand panels, like the Firefly panel, arrive on YouTube within ten days of their occurrance.

Case in point: please enjoy the video of the entire Firefly reunion panel, available after the jump.

(Intellectual Property) Crime And Punishment: Thomas Jane Debuts Punisher Fan Film at SDCC 2012

We are back in the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office with wretched reverse jetlag and crippling hangovers. And while I am working on my recap of Sunday’s The Amazing Spider-Man panel by Marvel (Teaser: it wasn’t really about Spider-Man!), I have learned that, while we were frittering around in actual comics panels on Sunday, Thomas Jane, the actor who played The Punisher in the 2004 movie adaptation and therefore had the unique joy of blowing John Travolta’s head off, ran a panel to promote his Raw Studios project that he started with cover artist Tim Bradstreet.

And at that panel, Jane debuted a new Punisher movie. Not an authorized Marvel Studios picture, and not a true sequel to his Punisher flick, but a ten-minute long fan film. Which rumor has it is better than, frankly (“Frank.” Ha!) both Jane’s original edition and the Punisher: War Zone move that came out a couple years ago. The dude fronted his own money, and got a cameo from Ron Perlman, to put it together. Why? Who knows? Maybe he’s courting Marvel Studios to get the nod for another round at the front of a full-on Punisher movie. Or maybe he’s just a giant comics geek (I’ve read that the dude went to the Rocketeer anniversary screening wearing a full Rocketeer costume) who wanted to make something really fucking cool. Regardless, I’m bummed I missed that screening.

What’s that, Internet? We have the video? And it’s right after the jump?

SDCC 2012: Incriminating Photographic Evidence

SDCC 2012 is over now, and last night’s buzz has been replaced with this morning’s hangover. And all of this means that it’s time to pack up the books, original art and… shall we say paraphernalia from the convention, bring it to UPS and ship it home to avoid a TSA inspection (“Son, is this your white, owl-looking face mask? Howsabout this detailed line drawing of a man with three guns by someone named, ‘Darrow?’ I’m gonna need to to step into this windowless room and remove your trousers…”), and return to the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office in Boston.

This means that we will be in the one place that has less Internet access than the area directly surrounding the San Diego Convention Center: an airplane. So while we cross the country in an aluminum tube while quietly whimpering for nicotine, please enjoy these snapshots we took at this year’s SDCC. Some are of cosplayers, some are of just cool shit, but regardless, they are a small document of what happens at SDCC when you’re not haunting Room 6DE to live-Tweet comics panel discussions. Click any of them to see them full-sized.

And as an added bonus, we also have Amanda’s video of Nicholas Brendon’s introduction to the screening of Once More With Feeling to close out the convention, all after the jump.

Enjoy, and see you tomorrow, suckers!

End Of Line

The annual screening of Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s Once More With Feeling (introduced by Nicholas Brendan) has just concluded. The main floor is closing, and SDCC 2012 is all over bar the shouting and the fuzzy, hungover flight home.

We still have a few panels we attended to report on, so our coverage of SDCC 2012 will continue over the next few days.

But for now, it’s time for a few cold ones at the Hyatt bar while we watch for celebrities. If you’re there, come look for us. We’re the ones being thrown out.

So for the next few hours at least: see you later, suckers!

The Wire

If you haven’t noticed, Amanda has been live-Tweeting the bullet points from every panel we’ve been attending here at SDCC 2012. And she’s been a trooper about it; her thumbs are raw to the point we can now only hitchhike from people with some kind of raw meat or leprosy fetish.

While we’ll wrap things up every day with a bit more analysis, including pictures and probably some video, when we get a chance to sit down (and find some WiFi that’s worth a shit), if you want the minute-by-minute of fresh, breaking comics news, keep an eye on our Twitter feed.

In the meantime, here is a picture of a flailing Batman.

Previews Are The Best Part: SDCC 2012 Preview Night

So Preview Night is past us now, and while I know it’s not even theoretically possible that it was busier than last year – after all, Preview Night passes have been selling out since about 2009 – it sure feels like it was. A few years ago it was possible on preview night for someone to, say, get ripped to the tits on Stone Arrogant Bastard IPA for four hours before he doors opened and then cruise around the floor, staging stupid and adolescent photographs with the Jabba The Hutt prop at the Hasbro booth. If you tried that now, you would inevitably stumble into someone waiting in a truly horrific line for an exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playset, be unable to convince said line-waiter that you weren’t claim jumping, and wind up instigating a pathetic slapfight.

There is very little convention programming that occurs on Preview Night, so the action is centered on the main convention floor. The night’s original and intended purpose is to allow people who are attending the con to obtain exclusives, or who are looking for some particular, special item, piece of art or back issue, to have access to the vendors early and get the purchase out of the way so they can enjoy the rest of the convention. As such, any actual comic news is few and far between on Preview Night… but there is certainly some, and if there isn’t? There is spectacle.

San Diego Comic-Con 2012 : A Quick Batmobile Preview Before Preview Night

Greetings from sunny San Diego, California!  We are at T-minus 2 hours to the convention floor opening up for SDCC 2012 Preview Night.  While we bide our time in hot, sweet anticipation of the press of nerd flesh upon booth babes, the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Temporary San Diego Office thought we’d take a moment to share some photos of one exhibit that’s already up and open to the public: Warner Brothers Batmobile exhibit.

This shrouded sight greeted us from out of our hotel window as we stumbled from our beds this afternoon morning.  Six Batmobiles, ranging from Adam West’s 1955 Lincoln Futura to the brand new camouflage Tumbler from this year’s Dark Knight Rises.  Here’s a closer look at the vehicles the public can currently gawk at, after the jump!

Walk The Line

Thanks to horrific jet lag, I was up and about at about 5 a.m. San Diego time, with Amanda dead unconscious and nowhere to hide except the hotel room bathroom, and, well, a man can only shit so much before he gets antsy. So I ventured out to take a little just-past-dawn walk past the convention center, hoping to find that maybe a Dunkin’ Donuts had opened up sometime since last year’s convention.

No such luck (Although the Starbucks downstairs was open, providing something close enough to coffee to prevent me from dying), but I found that the Gaslamp District is busily in the process of being nerded up for the convention proper tomorrow.

Also, it wasn’t just the Twi-Hards that were lined up; at this point, there was a line of about twenty or thirty people queued up to get their laminates.

Boots On The Ground

We have arrived in San Diego and begun the frantic set up of our Southern California Stringer Bureau Office at an undisclosed location downtown, just steps away from the San Diego Convention Center… and by “frantic set up,” I mean “sipping an IPA at the closest bar while battling jet lag and fatigue hysteria.”

Things are quiet now; Preview Night is tomorrow, and things are generally quiet. Yes, quiet.

Except for the Twi-hards. Who have already begun lining up for the Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2 panel…

…which doesn’t take place until Thursday.

That’s all the news we have the energy to muster now. For now, we will drink away the jet lag, and prepare for more coverage tomorrow.

Pros And Cons: Tips For Attending SDCC 2012

If you’re as fortunate as we are, you are in the throes of final preparation for disembarking to travel to San Diego for the 2012 Comic-Con. And, if you’re anything like us, you’re running around like spastics, pulling together those final bits and pieces to make the trip.

Now, this isn’t our first rodeo – we’ve been attending SDCC annually since 2006 – so we want to share just a few tips that we’ve picked up along the way to help make the trip as simple as possible.