Wednesday is Comic Day!

12-1pm Zenescope Presents Wonderland: The Director's Commentary At previous WWTexas shows I had picked up the trade paperbacks for Grim Fairy Tales (unfortunately, one of those trades, signed by all the creators) was destroyed by Hurricane Ike. At last year's show they had talked a little about a story in that vein that was too grand to just fit as a chapter in Grim Fairy Tales. It was a look at the universe of Alice and Wonderland through a twisted lens and was called "Return to Wonderland". This panel was a look back at that work and a look forward to its sequel "Beyond Wonderland" and featured the writer (Raven Gregory), the colorist (Nei Ruffino), and editor Ralph Tedesco. The penciler, Dan Leister, could not make it, but Erik Basaldua (one of the cover artists) did attend. The first thing to stand out was that Nei Ruffino is a good colorist and is particularly skilled at coloring blood! The book looked like a lot of fun, so I picked up the hardback. 1-2pm Director's Commentary: The Joker Hardcover with Azzarello and Bermejo The team of Azzarello and Bermejo came to my attention with their mini-series Lex Luthor: Man of Steel. Azzarello is known for his dark and realistic take on characters and their environments and Bermejo is known for his fabulous detail and rendering.

The Joker is a graphic novel that has been released post Dark Knight and looks a lot like the movie. It would be easy for a reviewer to assume that the team based their Joker off of Heath Ledger's performance. Several reviewers have done that, but it isn't at all true. In fact, much of the art was finished before Warner Brothers even released the first picture of Heath Ledger in costume. Bermejo also pointed out that if one looks back at the Luthor mini-series, they will see a page where Lex is reading a newspaper and on that paper is an article about the joker and a picture of him. The picture shows the scars on his cheeks and the crazy hair.

2-3pm DCU: Crisis and Beyond! The DC Nation panels are usually amusing, sometimes informative, but always frustrating. Frustrating in that many audience members waste time asking questions that the panel obviously aren't going to answer (i.e. "Will you be bringing character X back from the dead, this year?") and frustrating in that the panelists (usually Dan Didio) have to be such a smartass. Dan Didio wasn't there, this year, but in his place Ian Sattler performed the role of smartass. In fact, he even appeared to be doing a Dan Didio impression for the whole hour. This year was a little different in that there was obvious concern from the audience about how confusing "Final Crisis" is and the panel was actually open to admitting that that concern exists.

3-4pm Director's Commentary: Astonishing X-Men Cassaday's run on Astonishing X-Men feels a little old news by now, but he's usually an interesting panel guest and I wasn't able to make it to his other panels, this year so I decided to attend this one (well that and that the Green Lantern one next door ran out of seats). It was a good panel.

5-6pm Frank Cho: How to Draw Sexy Women This was the panel I had been waiting for - the opportunity to see the master at work. At first glance at the schedule it was obvious that Wizard had made a mistake here. They had Frank Cho talking about how to draw sexy women and they put it in the smallest room they had. To increase my chance of getting in, I didn't attend a 4pm-5pm panel and made sure I was outside the door by 4:30pm. A lot of other people decided to do the same, and it was obvious by 4:50 that there were way too many people. My girlfriend decided to take charge of the situation and when Frank arrived, led him off to go request a bigger room. They moved us across the hall to a room twice as big and it still filled up. Frank was absolutely hilarious and deadpan at the same time. He first told us the three rules of drawing women: 1) face; 2) boobs; and 3) butt. Then he went through the stages and drew a few women on a flipchart easel.

6:30-8:30pm Hero Initiative Game Show Event The Hero Initiative is a good cause. They are dedicated to helping comic creators in medical or financial need. This was a version of the Match Game, put on to raise money. Attendance was $5 and raffle tickets to be a contestant were $2 each (or 3 for $5). The panel consisted of Scott Adsit (“Moral Orel,” “30 Rock”), Ethan Van Sciver, Terry Moore, Sean McKeever, Phil Hester, Talent Caldwell, and Shane Davis. Also up for raffle was an Ibanez Silver Surfer guitar donated by Ibanez Guitars! Andrew got selected to be a contestant and matched two of the panel, winning an original art page from Green Arrow #28, by Phil Hester. In the final raffle, I won a statue of Invincible, by Clayburn Moore. 8pm-11pm Heroes for Heroes at Sheraton Overlapping with the Hero Initiative Game show was a Live Art Auction at the Sheraton hotel.

After being at the con all day, by 8:30pm, when the game show ended, we needed food, so we went to eat and didn't make it to the Heroes for Heroes event until about 10pm. We therefore only saw a little bit of the art creation process and about half of the bidding process. The event was run by the guys at Fanboy Radio and the charity Heroes for Heroes. There was some amazing art put together in an hour or so, including amazing Captain America's from Marko Djurdevic and Mitchell Breitweiser (which made me more excited about my commission) and an astounding Joker from Lee Bermejo. Pictures from the event are linked from the Heroes for Heroes website.