Farscape at 2009 Comic Con

Blasting off in November 2009, as the show marks its 10th Anniversary, the treasure of the newly re-packaged DVD line will feature a Farscape home entertainment first: THE COMPLETE SERIES MEGASET™. Never before available in one package, A&E Home Entertainment brings together all four out-of-this-world seasons with countless hours of absorbing bonus programming featuring multiple commentaries, interviews with cast and crew, behind-the-scenes featurettes and much more! Single season collector’s sets will also be released, offering genre fans of all walks the opportunity to sample this superlative sci-fi classic.

To launch this eagerly-anticipated re-release, there will be a Farscape panel convening at this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego. Executive producer Brian Henson, creator Rockne O’Bannon, and stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black (Officer Aeryn Sun) will be in attendance to discuss their favorite moments from the series and the DVD re-release

There is no single reason to attend Comic Con International in San Diego

If you go around asking people why they have come to San Diego Comic Con (aka Comic Con International in San Diego) you'll get a wide variety of answers.

Some come to see what is "hot" in entertainment in general.

Some come to meet creators of comic books, whether they are current books, or books they've loved for years and wish were still putting out new issues.

Some come to go up under the sails and get auotographs, this year new autograph signers included Eric Estrada and Lindsay Wagner.

Some come for the schwag, the freebies at the booths that vary from day to day, and cover the range of everything from dogtags (a popular give-away this year, I think I got dogtags from at least three different booths), t-shirts, bags (ranging from grocery size plastic bags to nearly four foot square canvas bags), bobble heads, pins, posters (by the dozens of designs and thousands of copies) and a great many of other items.

Some come to sit in the panels for the once in a lifetime experience of hearing someone they respect tremendously talk about a project them enjoy emmensely.

And others, like myself, come to get hooked on things they had not otherwise discovered... whether it's new tv shows just starting to get buzzed about (like Fringe), new Comic Books, or independent and small press comics they aren't familiar with (Greatest American Hero, Justice For Hire, Bushi Tales come to mind) or novelists... yup, Del Rey is no longer the only publisher on the floor, and I've got books a plenty to tempt me into becoming an avid reader of a wide variety of authors.

As a result of admitting that the novels/novelists are why I come to con, I've been asked to post a list of books I picked up this year (and that friends gave me after getting and deciding I was more likely to read than they were), so {in no particular order} here goes:

Raintree: Inferno by Linda Howard
Raintree: Haunted by Linda Winstead Jones
Hard Contact (Star Wars: Republic Commando) by Karen Traviss
The Guns of the South by Harry Turtledove
His Majesty's Dragon (Temeraire, Book 1) by Naomi Novik
The Book of Fate by Brad Meltzer
Pleasure Unbound: A Demonica Novel by Larissa Ione
Grailstone Gambit (Outlanders) by James Axler
Passage by Connie Willis
The Devil's Right Hand (Dante Valentine, Book 3) by Lilith Saintcrow
Snake Agent: A Detective Inspector Chen Novel by Liz Williams
Exit Strategy (Nadia Stafford Series, Book 1) by Kelley Armstrong
Wild Hunt by Lori Devoti
The Powers That Be (Room 59) by Cliff Ryder
Out Of Time (Room 59) by Cliff Ryder
Aim And Fire (Room 59) by Cliff Ryder
Killing Trade (The Executioner) by Don Pendleton
For Love of Mother-Not (Adventures of Pip and Flinx) by Alan Dean Foster
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
Kitty and the Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville Series, Book 1) by Carrie Vaughn
Seize the Night (Dark-Hunter, Book 7) by Sherrilyn Kenyon
Witchling (Sisters of the Moon, Book 1) by Yasmine Galenorn
Shadows Return (Nightrunner) by Lynn Flewelling
Kushiel's Scion (Kushiel's Legacy) by Jacqueline Carey

And thus ends the list of Mass Market Paperbacks I picked up... as in, that doesn't include the larger size paperbacks, the hard backs, the children's books I picked up out of curiosity, and with an eye towards young people in my life, or the reviewer galleys, or for that matter, review copies such as Deborah Pratt's The Vision Quest Book One: The Age of Light (Vision Quest Book 1).

Booth 1832 - Deborah Pratt and The Vision Quest

Making time to read a novel during Comic Con is a challenge, but I am VERY glad I have taken some time each evening, since first discovering Deborah Pratt's The Vision Quest to read several chapters.

I have been drawn into a future that I grow more and more curious about with each page I turn... and the author pays attention to some of the minor details of life that we take for granted, and has updated them along with civilization in this book.

When I was in college I first encountered a professor who wanted years denoted not as BC or AD but as BCE or CE, as in Before the Common Era, and the Common Era. In Deborah Pratt's The Vision Quest we are discovering a world that exists After the Quakes that reshaped the continents of Earth. Some have sunk, others have risen, and everywhere people are adapting and living in the years AQ.

NBC/SciFi have a Busy Saturday planned for this year

10:45-11:45am Heroes panel
Location: Hall H (Holds 6,500 people)

12:45-1:45pm The Office writers panel
Location: Room 6A (Holds 1,000 people)

2:15-3:15pm Battlestar Galactica panel
Location: Ballroom 20 (Holds 4,250 people)

2:15-3:15pm Chuck cast signing
Location: Warner Bros. booth

3:30-4:30pm Chuck panel
Location: Ballroom 20 (Holds 4,250 people)

4:45-5:45pm Eureka panel
Location: Room 6CDEF (Holds 2,000 people)

6:00-7:00pm TV Guide panel
Location: Room 6B
* This panel will feature several showrunners and stars from different network series. TV Guide has agreed to include Jason Smilovic and Christian Slater from My Own Worst Enemy and Ron Moore for the studio's Virtuality (for fox).

Comic Con, a great place to get hooked on novels!

Years ago Del Rey was the only book publisher to come to this predominantly comics convention, but as the convention embraced more and more of the popular arts, more and more publishers of the traditional novel have started appearing. As a result, one of my favorite parts of comic con is picking up the samplers, and novels that are being given away at these booths and getting hooked on a wide-range of authors I might not have otherwise given a try.

MST3K fans... a dvd set you'll wanna watch for

Celebrating 20 years after MST3K’s premiere on television, Shout! Factory proudly presents the MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000: 20th Anniversary Edition DVD box set due in stores October 28, 2008. A sumptuous ode to this cult-classic series, the 20th Anniversary Edition DVD box set features four of the show’s most requested unreleased film episodes (the four titles will be revealed at Comic-Con panel and look to have been sent out this evening, after the panel in a press release, so I've tossed them in below...) and boasts exclusive DVD bonus content that explore the genesis, life and afterlife of MST3K.

Fans will thrill to watch all new interviews with the entire MST3K family – including Joel Hodgson, Jim Mallon, Trace Beaulieu, Mike Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, J. Elvis Weinstein, as well as footage from the 20th Anniversary Reunion panel (to be taped at the 2008 Comic-Con convention) and much more! Moreover, this lavishly packaged 4-DVD box set contains collectible lobby cards and a figurine of the world famous Crow T. Robot – all assembled in a collectible embossed tin and only available with the purchase of the DVD box set.


FIRST SPACESHIP ON VENUS
In the 1960 sci-fi thriller First Spaceship On Venus, a mysterious magnetic spool found during a construction project is discovered to have originated from Venus. A rocket expedition to the mysterious cloudy planet is launched to discover the origin of the spool and the alien race that created it.

LASERBLAST
In 1978’s Laserblast, young actor Kim Milford plays an ostracized teenager who stumbles upon the remains of murdered mutated alien in the California desert. Along with the alien’s remains, a high-tech laser gun and power source are accidentally left behind by the extraterrestrial murderers. While examining the equipment, the teen inadvertently mutates himself with a laserblast, and embarks upon a murderous rampage.

WEREWOLF
1996 horror flick Werewolf begins with an archeological dig in an Arizona quarry. The Native Americans at the dig site recognize an unearthed skeleton as the remains of a werewolf, yet the team of archeologists are skeptical. When a dig assistant becomes infected and transforms into a werewolf, the ambitious team leader begins a horrific experiment, infecting the oblivious townspeople with the werewolf virus.

FUTURE WAR
In 1997’s action-packed Future War, a race of evil cyborgs kidnap humans from Earth’s future to use as slaves, and take dinosaurs from the past to use as trackers. A determined slave, the “Runaway”, escapes and makes his way to present-day Los Angeles. There he must fend off the cyborgs and their trackers, the police, and the government, befriended by a prostitute-turned-nun who runs a halfway house.

Why let the NBC Booth scan your badge's barcode?

NBC Universal (NBCU) Digital Distribution has partnered with Microsoft Zune and MobiTV to offer attendees of Comic-Con the chance to win prizes from NBC’s hit series “Heroes” and “The Office” in two promotional sweepstakes to be communicated via street teams. Together with NBCU, Microsoft will offer attendees the chance to win a “Heroes” branded Zune device, while MobiTV will give away 25 limited edition Dwight Schrute bobbleheads from NBC’s “The Office.”

To enter the Zune give-away, Comic-Con attendees can visit NBCU’s Booth (#3919) during the convention and swipe their Comic-Con badge for the chance to win the “Heroes” Zune, complete with the “Heroes” logo etched onto the back and pre-loaded with the “Heroes” soundtrack artwork that was created by Steven Parker. To enter the Dwight Schrute bobblehead give-away, fans of “The Office” can text DWIGHT to 62288. Winners will be notified by phone, mail and/or e-mail. *No purchase necessary, standard text rates apply.

Proud Owner Of A Big Frakkin Bag

During the last hour the hall was open today I was trying to make my way from one end to the other to meet up with a few folks, and stumbled across the SciFi booth handing out Big Frakkin Bags, and Fox handing out poster tubes with AWESOME straps that make them easy to sling over your shoulder (though I have seen a few folks with those who could use a few etiquette lessons in how to avoid poking a fellow fans eye out) both had fast moving lines, with very happy fans, and some very relieved fans when it came to the big frakkin bag, as it was big enough to condense their smaller bags into for the great trek across Harbor Blvd, the Train tracks, and finally the Trolley tracks into the gaslamp quarter for dinner.

Sanctuary with Amanda Tapping

I can't help but hope the line is around the block for Amanda Tapping's Sanctuary panel today. I've seen her on the stargate panels many times over the years and she is not only very entertaining, but she is a genuine and nice person... a true joy to listen to.

Last year she spoke to the press briefly about the filming of Continuum (that panel is in progress as I type this elsewhere) and mentioned having to learn how to notice if the people around you had frostbite, being warned that humans look like upright seals and polar bears (as I recall) might come after you... and being left alone with Ben Browder on HUGE ice flows, to walk, and talk, and film a scene.

This year, her web-based show has been picked up by SciFi channel, and Sanctuary is going to start reaching a larger audience, starting with whatever crowd finds the Sanctuary panel, upstairs on the back side of the convention center in Room 30AB from 5:30-6:30PM Amanda Tapping is scheduled to be in attendance, and to be joined by Martin Wood and Robin Dunne. with Michael Logan of TV Guide moderating.

30AB is one of the smaller more out of the way rooms, though it isn't located all that far from Ballroom 20 where the Stargate Panels are happening back to back to back this morning (Continuum, MMOG, then Atlantis), so hopefully Amanda's fans will scope out room 30 and remember to come back in a few hours.

time flies when you're having fun...

I am proud beyond words of the Sanctuary / Amanda Tapping fans! The line was so long 30 minutes before the panel began that I knew there was no way I was getting near it, and all I could think was GOOD! With a line like this, hopefully, the fans will find this show as it airs on SciFi and it will last.

Down at the SciFi booth after the panel I heard one person say they sat through the panel before Amanda's to make sure she was there to hear all about Sanctuary... with dedicated fans like that, a bright future for Sanctuary seems a very real possibility.

Before you even cross the trolley tracks to harbor blvd.

Once upon a time you had to go into the exhibit hall and find the booth for the show/comic you were interested in, then look around for any promotional give aways... now, on 5th street, before you even cross the trolley tracks you can get a bag from History Channel promoting "jurasic fight", can get a pin, and a card for free downloads of two episodes at itunes from Dexter / Californication, be handed tickets to a showing of a movie on the jumbotron at Petco Park (that may have been yesterday only, as I didn't bump into that guy on my way to the convention center today) and today in the drop off area of the trolley was the KITT car reveal for the new Knight Rider Series!

And all that, without having made it across the trolley tracks, much less the train tracks or harbor blvd and into the convention center, where more goodness, both for free, and for sale, awaits.

In the for sale category, Joss Whedon fans should be sure to hit the SoCalBrowncoats booth (as should Neil Patrick Harris fans and Nathan Fillion fans) as they have the OFFICIAL Dr. Horrible and The Sing-Along Blog shirts... and this is a case where official isn't just a cool thing to get, but the way to go, as Dr. Horrible was released via the web, and itunes sales, and shirt sales are part of the master plan to bring in enough money the cast and crew can be paid for the work they've done. (And as an added bonus it is actually cheaper to get your shirt at con, since you don't have to pay for shipping, than from the online distributor, Jinx)

More And More You Don't Have To Attend Con To Enjoy Con

There are several panels on the slate for today that I have a personal interest in, but it occurs to me where once if you missed a panel you were simply out of luck, that is no longer the case.

NBC and SciFi channel have places on their websites where people will be able to view panels, once posted, in the comfort of their own home. While they will miss out on the joy of being there IN PERSON, they will also miss out on the mass of 100,000+ people trying to make their way throughout one very large building.

Today, within 20 minutes of the exhibit hall floor opening, lines had reached capacity and been capped, and there were several places where you just had to hope the blob of people would surge forward, carrying you along with the tide, and if you were very lucky, in the direction you wanted to go.

Looking Ahead To Friday

More and more booths / panels are making it simple to look forward tomorrow... the SCIFI booth had postcards for their panels tomorrow, Stargate Atlantis at 12:15 Ghost Hunters at 3, Sanctuary at 5:30, and of course, the ever popular SciFi Friday at 8:30 with Eureka, Stargate Atlantis and Scare Tactics!

But such postcards are no replacement for the event guide and website, which also note the stargate Continuum and Stargate MMO panels going on just before the Atlantis one kicks off.

Hmm, I wonder if the Stargate Worlds booth had a postcard for all of them?

For those who come for the television segment of the spectrum of programming, there are some true highlights coming your way, and you don't even have to wait until Saturday for them to start.

Preview Night... and Day 1 of the mob

Having spent all of Preview Night on the convention hall floor I was faced with the very real fact that not only is San Diego Comic Con a lot bigger than it once was, but the crowds that preview night now draws rivals the crowds a busy Saturday drew 5 years ago.

And that was with a portion of the crowd (6,500 people) being in Hall H for either of two screenings of Fringe!

I can't help but wonder just how incredibly large the crowd would have seemed had there been no diversions.

As for the goodies being handed out at booths... a part of me thinks they've gone to extremes, smaller easier to hand out pins/buttons, stickers and temporary tatoos, and HUGE, massive, impressive, colorful, bags... and by huge I mean so large a child could fit in them! Last year children were being towed around in some of these bags.

But, so far (ie 1 day in) I'm seeing fewer flashlights with a compas on them, and more character pins, where the ever diligent fans can try and get as many of the characters from Atlantis (for example) as possible.

I am curious to see what tomorrow brings... today I've heard Hugh Jackman made a surprise appearance, and for those of us for whom the Greatest American Hero was also the coolest teacher to ever live, William Katt was in the house!