Put On A Happy Face: Batman Panel at SDCC 2012

Editor’s Note: I acknowledge that these pictures suck. We’ll upgrade our cameras once we receive your subscription check. Oh, you don’t pay for this? Then fuck you and enjoy the pictures you got.

Last year we kind of wandered into the panel for Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, mostly to make sure we’d have a seat for the DC New 52 panel that followed directly afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, we were following American Vampire in kind of a general way, but I had fallen away; the initial hype around one of the early stories being written by Stephen King hadn’t been enough to keep me in the book except in a “flip through when I happened to see it on the shelf” way. The point is that last year, we were able to walk right into Snyder’s panel without having to wait around in a line.

That was 2011. This year, Snyder’s writing Batman, which has consistently been one of the best books of DC’s New 52 and the source of the first post-reboot DC crossover event. So this time around, for the Batman panel yesterday? Yeah, we waited in line.

The Batman panel covered all the Batman family books, from Batman to Red Hood And The Outlaws… meaning walking in Amanda and I steeled ourselves for exciting news running the gamut from Batman’s post-Owls Joker encounter to Starfire’s post-Red Hood stranger’s penis encounter. However, weird former Teen Titan sex revelations or no, Snyder started the panel off with a laugh: “Avengers Vs. X-Men, who wins? Batman.” I hate it when my comic writers are funnier than I am. But I digress.

SDCC 2012: DC’s The Edge And The Dark Panel. Oh, and Neil Gaiman’s Returning To Sandman

First of all people of San Diego: it’s a fucking e-cigarette. It emits water vapor. So please stop passive-aggressively giving me shit when I’m using it on a public sidewalk, out of doors and approaching the convention center, by muttering, “Nothing I like better than a faceful of cigarette smoke blowing into my baby’s face…” Let’s clear the air here (ha!): my e-cigarette emits no odor and bothers no one, unlike your little bundle of squalling fecal production. And since my e-cig doesn’t even burn, the San Diego Fire Marshall even considers it less of a fucking fire hazard.

Okay, I feel better now. Now that we’ve got my personal news out of the way, let’s talk about what’s been happening at SDCC 2012 that doesn’t involve self-righteous self-absorbsion.

The actual programming at SDCC started in earnest yesterday, featuring panels on everything from homosexuality in genre fiction to Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part II. (Rob: This may be redundant. Consider editing. -Amanda)

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.

Walking Centennial: Walking Dead #100

Since Rob and Amanda are off in San Diego, risking life and limb dodging furries and trying desperately to avoid the dreaded ConSARS, they’ve asked me to write up my thoughts on Kirkman’s centennial issue of the Walking Dead.

Last night I caught up on the last several issues of The Walking Dead in preparation my review of issue 100, and, after reading through the past few books I was disappointed to find:

• Carl still won’t stay in the fucking house
• A stranger appears with a too-good-to-be-true offer from a nearby community
• This community, it could change everything, they could have lives again!
• Rick opts to tie up the stranger instead of putting an e-fence shock collar on Carl

It reminded me of daytime soaps and their lather, rinse, repeat storylines; though here it’s even less surprising when a character comes back from the dead. As I finished up #99, I found myself growing tired of the repetitiveness, and yet still eager to read issue 100, hoping for an interesting turn rather than more of the same.

Spoilers Ahead

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.

Instant Panel, Just Add Discomfort: Fifteen-Minute Dark Knight Rises Featurette

As we speak, we are en route to San Diego for SDCC 2012, enduring a combination of planes, trains, automobiles, TSA groping and hideous nicotine fits. So expect quiet for the remainder of our broadcast day.

But in the meantime, please enjoy this fifteen-minute featurette on The Dark Knight Rises. You can use it to simulate being at a big SDCC Hall H panel! Simply stand outside the room containing your computer for ten, maybe twelve hours. Try to fart copiously and often to simulate the smell. Maybe you can invite a neighbor kid in to irritate you during the process! Then sit across the room and watch the video! It’ll be like you’re actually at SDCC!

Just remember that you’re not allowed to urinate while you’re waiting in line.

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.