Wednesday is Comic Day!

The process of entering the convention seemed a lot smoother this year than in previous years. That was a hopeful indicator that the overall organization would be smoother. In previous years a lot of things seemed ad hoc and none of the yellow shirt/jacket Wizard volunteers ever seemed to know anything about the schedule or facility. We had been a little concerned about the entrance process, since the first panel we wanted to see was at 12pm (the same time the show began). 12-1pm Incredible Hulk Retrospective with Lou Ferrigno Lou Ferrigno has been at the show every year, I believe. This is the first time he has done a panel, though. We all got seated and the panel began with a little hiccup. The Mac laptop that they were using for the presentation did not have the Quicktime codecs and they were unable to show the video clips.

That seems like the kind of thing one would test before the actual event, but regardless, it was a fun panel. Lou Ferrigno was very open, sharing stories and answering audience questions. He came across as a thoughtful man with passion and a good sense of humor. My girlfriend asked him about his upbringing and he told us that his childhood was difficult. He lost a lot of his hearing as an infant and was a small child. He felt that he never met his father's expectations. His father was a cop. Incidentally, he also told us that one of his proudest moments was when he (a few years back) became a sherrif's deputy in Los Angeles. He finally fulfilled the expectations his father had had for him. He told a funny story about participating in a helicopter rescued of a lady that was hiking and broke her leg. Lou and another deputy were lowered down to her in a basket and the woman freaked out that she was being rescued by the Incredible Hulk. He told us several stories of his time on the television series, including having to wrestle a bear, underwater. He also spoke of his body building career, in particular his return to competitive bodybuilding at the age of 42. At that point he was 325 pounds at 2% bodyfat. At his peak he said he could bench press 560 lbs, squat 600 lbs, and deadlift 800 lbs. When someone asked who he thought was in better shape, him or Arnold Schwarzenegger, Lou flexed a biceps and asked "Who do you think?" Lou also spoke about working on the 2008 Hulk film and treated us to a roared "Hulk Smash!"

Between 1pm and 2pm was open time for me, so I used it to do a quick run-through of the dealer floor and artists alley. Friday is always less crowded than Saturday or Sunday so it can be the perfect day to meet some of the artists that are in high demand. The person I was most interested in meeting was Frank Cho. I love Frank Cho's work and think he has the best inkline in the business. Fortunately when we got to his table, there was no one there, but Frank. I bought copies of the three hardback sketchbooks he had at his table and got him to sign those and a few comics I'd brought with me. Unfortunately he wasn't doing sketchs (I would kill for a piece of his original art) but he did do a cool single line form of a woman inside one of the books, as he signed it. We also stopped by Ethan Van Sciver's table and I decided to ask for a headshot sketch. I asked for Power Girl and he said that would be no problem and to stop by at the end of the day, for it.

2-3pm Mitch Breitweiser: From Script to Layouts The Wizard School panels are always my favorites - they're an opportunity to meet with a creator and learn about their process and techniques. Mitch Breitweiser gave us an excellent overview of how he works by first showing us a page from the script of an upcoming Uncanny X-Men annual that he is working on, and then showing us the layouts for that page and explaining all the choices he made in composing those layouts. I found it fascinating. Mitch burst on the scene and to acclaim with the gorgeous artwork from the Captain America: The Chosen miniseries. Just two weeks ago he had another Captain America one-shot published. Small side note, that one shot was colored by his wife. She was with him, at his table in artist alley and she is amazingly pretty. I visited Mitchell at his table, to get his signature on a book and found out that he was doing sketches and commissions. Having listened to him on last week's episode of Fanboy Radio, talking about how much he loves drawing Captain America, and knowing he does that well, and Cap being one of my favorite characters, I asked for a Captain America commission. Mitchell said he could get it done by Sunday and that it would be fully painted (water colors).

4-5pm Creator-Owned Comics This was a very interesting panel. I'd met Billy Tucci at a previous Wizard World, but this was my first opportunity to meet the others (Terry Moore, Matt Wagner, Frank Cho, and Craig Rousseau) and they were very forthcoming about how they broke into the industry, why they do creator-owned work, and where the industry is today for that work. They were also very humorous and it was obvious they all know each other and are friends.

5-6pm WWU: The Dark Side of Super For the first time, at Wizard Texas, Wizard did some of their WW Universe panels. These are panels where they bring in experts that aren't necessarily creators to talk about a subject related to comics. The first speaker was a man named David Bugg from SUNY Potsdam. He is a criminologist and an expert on strain theory. He gave an overview of the theory. It describes the classifications that people fit into when they are put under strain. He put this in the comics perspective by giving examples of characters that fit into each model. It was obvious that this is a subject a writer would want to consider in order to have their character respond appropriately to a strain. The second speaker was James Ford and he spoke on the ethics of violence in Super-Hero films. He made an argument that Batman: The Dark Knight was too violent and probably should have been rated R. I argued back that I disagreed because I don't believe the movie actually showed violence. I think that Christopher Nolan was very clever in only suggesting the dark scenes, leaving it to the viewer's imagination to flesh them out - which made the movie scarily and more suspenseful. I believe that most of those events would go right over the heads of children in the audience. For example, the pool cue scene. My mind went to a very dark place there and made that scene truly horrific, which really made the character of the Joker appear psychotic and dangerous. But nothing was actually shown on screen. A child's mind would not go to the same place. This second part of the panel didn't have much value, for me. At the end of the day, comes dinner. For barbecue in Arlington, you can't beat Red Hot & Blue.