Polite Dissent

I. Arriving at WizardWorld
Despite a slight delay to our starting time, Polite-Wife and I crawled into our rental car and made the 3-hour drive to Chicago. Our room was at the very nice Hotel Sofitel, conveniently connected to the convention center by a covered walkway.

As it had been over a decade since my last visit to Chicago ComiCon (or WizardWorld), I was impressed by the fact that the show had at least quadrupled in size. The Exhibitor Area was large and DC, Marvel, Aspen, WizKids, Dark Horse and Tokyo Pop all had large displays (though Marvel’s was very plain). The Dealer Room was impressive and Artists’ Alley was large enough that I was able to see both familiar and new names and faces.

The “freebie bag” handed out to advanced-ticket holders had special editions of Ultimate X-Men #50 and Humankind #1. It contained a free Hero-Clix, but it was the ubiquitous Checkmate Agent (#009). There was also a TokyoPop sampler and a Mighty Beanz trading card game sample pack in the bag.

We circled the exhibition area first, deciding what booths to hit when the crowd died down. In the back row, Gil Gerard, Erin Gray and Lou Ferigno were signing autographs. I don’t think they were very busy because they kept announcing overhead that they were “available for autographs.” Marc Singer was back there too and I just had to laugh, well, because it WAS the beastmaster (unlike this guy).

Next we ventured into the dealer’s room and began hunting for comics missing from my collection. Demo #7 and #8 were found easily (thank you Mostly Independents), but Spider-Girl #50 and my missing issues of Xombi took longer to find. I found some nice copies of Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare, but unfortunately they were too nice (and too expensive) as I’m pretty much just looking for reading copies.

II. The Cup O’Joe Panel
We had intended to go to the Phil Noto art demonstration but it had been canceled, so we decided to stroll into the main ballroom and see what Joe Quesada and Marvel Comics had in store for us.

Quesada took center stage and went through a brief slideshow of some of Marvel’s comics, both old and new. There was a brief Q&A session, and then he introduced the “young gun” artists of Marvel. Finally, there was a second Q&A session. All told, the Marvel session lasted about an hour and a half.

In the slide show presentation, Quesada talked about the Marvel Knights line, the Ultimate line, the Supreme Powers universe (alternately referred to as the Supreme-verse and the Supreme Power-verse) and other Marvel titles. My favorite comment was when he stated that the Ultimates and Supreme Power were the “best team books” being published by Marvel. This seemed ironic given that there hasn’t been a new Ultimates issue published in the past year and there is no team in the Supreme Power book (unless you count Hyperion and naked-woman, or Doctor Spectrum and undersea-naked-woman as a team.)

He showed some finished pages from the Frank Cho illustrated issue of Marvel Knights Spider-Man and all I could think was “Look – Brandy with red hair! (Oops, it’s Mary Jane.)” They also showed a Shanna splash page and the Polite-Wife was amazed by the way the contents of her bikini top defied gravity.

The pages from Darrick Robertson’s Nightcrawler series looked spectacular and I hope the writing is as good as the art.

Quesada did announce a new series of What If? Specials. This will be a series of seven comics done as a fifth-week special in December. Regular readers will know that I am a fan of alternate histories, so I look forward to these books. While previous What If? tales often suffered from poor writing and art, it seems they’ve got it planned right this time with the regular writers and artists of the books involved on the specials. Titles include What If Jessica Jones joined the Avengers? (by Brian Bendis), What if Karen Page Had Not Died? (by Bendis and Kevin Smith – and Bendis promises to finish writing whatever Smith cannot.), What if Thunderbolt Ross became the Hulk? (by Peter David), What if Aunt May has been killed instead of Uncle Ben?, What If Magneto and Xavier Formed the X-Men Together? , What if Victor von Doom Became the Thing? and a special comedy issue.

Quesada was generally well-spoken, though Dan Buckley seemed to detract from the presentation as a behind-the-scenes comedian. The “young-guns” are all good artists, and many I enjoyed at CrossGen and DC, but I wondered if Marvel was putting as much emphasis on their “young gun” writers?

III. The Bendis Panel
After the Cup O’Joe panel, I meandered next door for Brian Bendis’s panel. He is the only comics creator I have seen who brought his own “posse” with him to his panel. I believe they were members of his online board, but they pretty much just sat or stood behind him on the stage and contributed next to nothing.

There has been a great deal of internet discussion regarding Bendis’s approach to writing dialogue. Let me just say that he talks exactly like he writes: short bursts of phrases with pauses in-between. Listening to him was like reading one of his comics.

As undoubtedly reported elsewhere, his “big announcement” was more of a statement of intent than anything else. He says that he would like to do a Daredevil/Batman crossover in a “noir” style. He states that he has lined up other big-name writers and artists for the project. He says that when he mentioned his idea to Marvel they said “fine.” The initial people he talked to at DC also agreed, but when it got to Paul Levitz he vetoed it, essentially saying that DC would not agree to another Marvel/DC crossover as long as Joe Quesada remained Editor-in-Chief of Marvel. Before you think this is just Bendis hyperbole, DC VP Bob Wayne showed up at the panel unannounced, reiterating that DC would like to do crossovers with Marvel, just not if Quesada is still at Marvel. In the military, we called what Bendis was doing “going outside the chain of command” and it was a good way to accomplish nothing other than peeve people off. I’m not sure it accomplished anything worthwhile here either.

Otherwise, he answered questions about his upcoming plans including what’s in store for Powers, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Daredevil. He spent more time on his plans for the Avengers and going over the new Avengers line-up. He also talked about the upcoming What If? specials and a possible Nick Fury series.