Polite Dissent

Arriving early for the second day of WizardWorld, the Polite-Wife and I were amazed at the incredible number of people who had clearly gotten there much earlier than us. Given the sheer size of the line for the “special event” tickets, we decided to forgo obtaining a ticket to Joss Whedon’s Q&A session (and we had no intention of attending Kevin Smith’s sessions). Instead of wasting time in line, we got a head start in the dealers’ room and were able to scour the 50-cent boxes before the crowd arrived and I managed to fill out my runs of Fate and Hourman. We also found a single not-too-expensive nice condition issue of Dr. Kildare I was missing and picked up some Christmas presents for the Polite-nephews.

At eleven, we settled into our seats for the DC Universe talk and watched DC VP Bob Wayne emcee a show highlighting a variety of ongoing and new DC projects. The biggest announcements were a new ongoing Hal Jordan Green Lantern series and a new Demon series by Pfeifer and Byrne. Many DC creators were there as well. Jeph Loeb and Geoff Johns provided comedy relief, but the highlight was Brian Azarello who had a wonderfully dry sense of humor and deadpan presentation. There were several quips about Bendis, with Wayne at one point saying they would need to remove an introduction he had penned for an upcoming trade paperback. The last portion of the DC presentation involved David Goyer who discussed his role in writing the upcoming Batman Begins film. It was also announced that a “special guest” in regards to the Batman movie would be at the Green Lantern panel later in the afternoon. Due to this, a special wristband would be needed to attend the panel and this band could only be obtained at the DC booth. At the end of the DCU panel, we swung by the DC booth, snuck through the mob, and escaped with two prized green wristbands.

After lunch (and a trip to Artists Alley to obtain a copy of Forsaken signed by its creators – extremely nice people), we attended the Marvel Universe panel. Hosted by Joe Quesada, the panel included Mark Millar, Brian Bendis, Robert Kirkman, Dan Buckley, Sean McKeever, Brian K. Vaughn and others. The news was essentially a repeat of the previous day’s Joe Quesada panel but seemed to focus more on the Ultimate line. An announcement was made of Peter David’s upcoming Hulk mini-series, though Quesada deftly avoided the question when asked about a new ongoing Hulk series. There was a pause when Bendis’s birthday was celebrated and the members of his board presented him with a gift: a grammar guide.

Immediately following the Marvel Universe panel was what was originally scheduled to be the Green Lantern panel. Now, however, it was a Green Lantern/Batman Begins panel. Due to the Batman Begins aspect, the audience had to be severely limited and so only attendees who acquired a special wristband from the DC booth were admitted. Unfortunately, this was a late decision and not noted in the program; the only way to find out was to have attended the DC Universe panel earlier in the morning. This led to quite a few upset Green Lantern fans who found out much too late about the wristbands.

Dan Didio, Peter Tomasi, Geoff Johns, Ethan Van Sciver, Carlos Pacheco and Alex Sinclair each spoke about either the upcoming Green Lantern Rebirth or the new ongoing Green Lantern series. Johns was fairly close-mouthed, telling the audience that the Rebirth mini-series would “explain everything”. He did mention that the Green Lantern Corps would be reborn (including Killowog, though he seemed reluctant to admit anything regarding G’Nort); John Stewart would remain with the JLA; Alan Scott, Guy Gardner, and Kyle Rayner were all said to “play an important part” in Rebirth, though nothing was said about any role in the ongoing series.

Van Sciver was more open, sharing other information about the Rebirth mini-series such as the involvement of Batman as “almost a villain” (much to the chagrin of Johns). Pacheco gave a moving speech about how important Green Lantern was and how much he looked forward to doing the series with Johns.

After a brief Green Lantern Q&A session, the doors were locked and Paul Levitz took the stage. The Batman Begins teaser trailer was shown. He introduced the three special guests: David Goyer, writer of Batman Begins, director Chris Nolan and Heidi Thomas, one of the producers. Nolan spoke about the film and all the thought and work that went in to getting Batman right. A good Q&A session followed, with surprisingly good questions and some excellent answers from Nolan before he had to leave to return to the film set currently shooting in Chicago. Next, the teaser trailer was shown again (third time today) and some “never before seen” clips from the movie were shown. Goyer stated that the scenes shown were just randomly collected clips, but they seemed a little too polished to me and I was wondering if we were shown an early cut of the next trailer.

The scenes shown included several training scenes, mostly of a martial arts nature. There was one involving training with Liam Neeson (Qui Jon?). There were several scenes showing a battle with a couple of thugs inside a warehouse. One scene showed overhead lights being put out by batman-symbol shaped darts. Another scene had Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) and Lucius Fox (Morgan Freeman) riding inside a military prototype vehicle with military style camouflage. Lucius turns to Bruce and asks him if he likes it. “Does it come in black?” replies Bruce and there was an immediate segue to scenes of the Batmobile racing through the city streets. There were several scenes of Katie Holmes, the last involving her chracter being knocked out by gas blown in her face by the Scarecrow (in a good scarecrow-style mask – but no hat). The movie clips looked very well done, and the eloquence of the director spoke well for the future of the film.