By Jason McClain (@JTorreyMcClain)
Since the wonderful CJ Bunce mentioned Comic-Con last week, I figured I would work in a mention of its “wonder”ful cousin. Next weekend marks my first time attending WonderCon (March 16-18 at the Anaheim Convention Center). Last year, I planned to go in San Francisco, but I needed to move out of my apartment fast (never, ever, think that you can get a guitarist and a drummer to stop playing music at 3 am in the apartment below you) and it happened on WonderCon weekend. So, now that it has moved to Anaheim, in my comparative backyard, I’ve already started to plan everything. I’ve found my train ticket. I’ve alerted my hiking buddies that I won’t be available. I’ve told people hosting a party on Saturday that I may be late due to a “wonder”ful engagement. (I’ll stop that now.)
The next step: figure out which panels to see. I know one that is easy. Sunday at 3 pm is the Community panel. I haven’t been able to catch it at Comic-Con due to long, long, LONG lines. I missed PaleyFest. Now, I hope that I get my chance to just sit back and enjoy sixty minutes and a movie-like clip. (FYI–PaleyFest has a few days left).
Then I found Ruby and Spears and it looked pretty obvious as a must attend. At first I saw the name and thinking of mash-ups (Have you seen The Charming Man-Video Games one?) I thought it would be a Wizard of Oz, Game of Thrones mash-up and that would be awesome. It turned out to be even more so. This is a panel for Joe Ruby and Ken Spears. I’m just going to quote most of the panel description so that you can jump up and down in place like I am doing:
“Since the sixties, Joe Ruby and Ken Spears have been the most successful writing, creating, and producing team in Saturday morning television. Among the shows they brought you were ‘Scooby-Doo,’ ‘Wacky Racers,’ ‘Jabberjaw,’ ‘Dynomutt,’ ‘Thundarr The Barbarian,’ ‘Plastic Man,’ and dozens of others.”Raise your hand if you had Dynomutt or Plastic Man comic books? I’m sure that if I had them, so did CJ Bunce, because I knew as soon as he mentioned Laff-a-Lympics that we were buying the same titles when we were comparative tykes and probably watching those same Saturday morning cartoons from this panel.
Next comes the “20th Century Fox: Prometheus and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter…in 3D” panel. You might think I’m going to see this because I’m a movie buff. Well, that’s a little bit of it. Mostly though it’s because of Damon Lindelof is the co-screenwriter of Prometheus and I’ve seen how well he did promoting Lost at Comic-Con. So, I have high hopes for his performance at WonderCon.
Lastly, there’s this brief hint from DC Comics in the description of their panel. “DC Comics: All Access Special Edition— Don’t miss this panel about the sure-to-be most talked about project of 2012!” You had me at “DC.”
But, that’s all I have so far. I need help. Do you have any suggestions for any panels that I should add? I know if I can get over to the Marvel one at 4 pm on Saturday (after the DC one) that would be a good one as well. The J. Michael Straczynski Writing Workshop could be cool – if I can find a late night train after it ends at 7 pm. But, I know from going to Comic-Con that trying to cram in everything is just an exercise in frustration. It never works that well. The beautiful thing, it will be around next year. These conventions are too big to go anywhere. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow, relax and just take it all in. Talk to a stranger. Look at art. Buy some new comics you’ve never seen before. It’s all part of the fun.
Still, if you know of anything really cool, please let me know. Rushing around to something cool is worth a little frustration.
