I missed it last year because I was flying back from Japan, but this year I went to Fan Expo again. It was a lot like the first time, with the cosplay and lining up (strangely though, there wasn’t as much NDS action); so I won’t describe all that stuff again.
Peter and I went to a couple of events, the first one was a DC Universe Editorial Presentation by Dan DiDio (Senior VP / Executive Editor). I didn’t really have any expectations or idea what this event was about, and it turned out to just be a presentation on the key DC “franchises”. It was a bit surreal sitting in the room and hearing the talk. Dan would talk about how they were revitalizing the Green Lantern franchise with the Blackest Night DCU event and people would start clapping and wooting. I can’t imagine the same reaction if I went on a stage and started talking about the products I work on, or if the CEO of Walmart was up there announcing a new line of clothing for American people. Now I know what it’s like to sit in a Jobs keynote.
We also went to two sketch duels (which I kept calling sketch-offs and that confused a lot of people who were asking us what the line was for). The first one was between Ethan Van Sciver and Ivan Reis. Ivan is from Brazil (and the artist on Blackest Night) so his English was very poor. He couldn’t understand the questions well and so the Q/A part of the duel was mostly done by Ethan. Ethan drew Sinestro and Ivan drew Killowog. Other than that, this duel wasn’t very noteworthy.
The second sketch duel was between Marko Djurdjevic and Olivier Coipel. I though I recognized Olivier’s accent, and it turns out he was in the other sketch dual I saw two years ago! The highlight, for better or for worse, of this dual was Marko though. People would ask him questions like, if you could draw any book which would it be, and he would just say “I don’t know”. At one point he complained about the “philosophical questions” people kept asking him! I thought this was hilarious that he was rejecting the fandom that the audience was giving him. He really did only want to draw, and in the sketch dual he drew Thor and 2 bonus pieces: Dr. Doom and The Hulk. Later J. Michael Straczynski showed up to raffle off the 4 drawings but unfortunately I didn’t win anything.
The other awesome thing that I saw at Fan Expo (well I saw a lot of awesome things) was a 2D girlfriend! The little note is awesome “Perv Pillows – You know you want one – $30.00”. I didn’t see anyone carrying them around though.
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