In-person cancellations have not kept every event this summer from canceling entirely. One of those is typically one of the summer’s biggest events, San Diego Comic-Con. As with last year’s Comic-Con At Home, events for SDCC 2021 are proceeding this week, once again providing a rare opportunity for fans of all things pop culture a chance to sit through the kinds of panels you might see were you to attend in person in any regular year–without standing overnight in lines. You can even grab a lanyard off the rack, print your own badge (for you and your pets), cosplay with your family, and load the panels up on as big of a screen as you have. Check out some suggestions for building your own fun convention week experience with SDCC 2021 below.
Nathan Fillion–with a moustache? One of the more interesting panels from this year’s San Diego Comic-Con and one certainly not to miss for Browncoats everywhere is a panel devoted exclusively to the star of Firefly, Castle, and The Rookie. It’s definitely one of those atypical panels (even for 2020) like we saw Fillion host back in the days of Nerd HQ, this time with added wacky editing and Fillion stepping in to provide commentary along the way. That’s right, Fillion has enough pop culture street cred to get a panel to himself. But he also knows how to share the stage.
The most eagerly awaited movie in years received some nice treatment this week as part of San Diego Comic-Con@Home. We’ve previewed and re-previewed new trailers for The New Mutants probably more than any other movie in our past decade of coverage here at borg (just type The New Mutants in the search box to the right and you’ll see it all). The new and improved, post-merger 20th Century Studios even nicely mocks the delayed release dates in its Comic-Con@Home panel footage below, which features the director, cast members, and the legendary comic artist most closely aligned with The New Mutantsby way of his 1980s artwork, Bill Sienkiewicz. It also previews the entire opening scene and a trailer with new content from the film. All in all, some good stuff for a very patient fanbase for a film made in the summer of 2017.
In a normal year for San Diego Comic-Con, we at borg would be taking photos and checking out the new products, panels, and movie trailers, and trying to share as many as possible. But first we’d go through the badge line and get our annual, over-sized haul bag, which we’d probably keep folded up anyway because it makes it difficult to move around. But with that bag is the annual “Comic-Con book,” which is not a comic book, but an official book about half of a medium-sized city telephone directory (what’s a telephone directory?). The book would be full of discussions about anniversaries of comic and pop culture events and salutes to individuals who have gained some portion of iconic status for fanboys and fangirls everywhere. But you never read this during con week. Why? You’re too busy trying to cram in all you can before the show is over. Sometimes you don’t even find this book until two months after you get back home after the con and are revisiting your swag. This year, the SDCC staff has made it possible for everyone to download a copy of that book.
In-person cancellations have not kept every event this summer from canceling entirely. One of those is typically one of the summer’s biggest events, San Diego Comic-Con. Events for SDCC 2020 are proceeding ahead beginning Wednesday, but this time providing an opportunity for fans of all things pop culture a chance to sit through the kinds of panels you might see were you to attend in person in any regular year–without standing overnight in lines. You can even grab a lanyard off the rack, print your own badge (for you and your pets), cosplay with your family, and load the panels up on as big of a screen as you have. It’s 350 panels over five days, beginning Wednesday, July 22, and wrapping up Sunday, July 26. Check out all our suggestions for building your own fun convention week experience below.
Peter Mayhew, the actor known best for playing Chewbacca in all three Star Wars trilogies, passed away Tuesday, April 30, 2019, according to a message distributed by his family yesterday.
I was lucky to have gotten involved in the past 20 years with the convention circuit. It allowed me to meet some interesting people, including the gentle and soft-spoken actor. I saw him at five conventions over this time, and he was always that friendly gentleman you’d expect the man behind the furry suit to be. My first encounter was shaking his hand at the opening of an early Planet Comicon show. Unless you’re also 7 foot 3 inches tall, your hand was immediately lost in his King Kong-sized hand. When I met him he was either late or early to the show and had no helper so I offered to help him set up his table. His conversation getting ready for a line of fans eager to meet him was generous and warm.
I next saw him in that lull between the prequels and the current trilogy at San Diego Comic-Con in 2011, when nothing much was going on in the Star Wars universe and for all intents and purposes the movies were done for good. Folks wrongly accuse San Diego Comic-Con of being too busy to have meaningful experiences with others, but I always have found the opposite true. I spun around in one of the wide floor walkways to see Mr. Mayhew alone, leaning back in his chair, nobody around at all, just watching the attendees walk around, walking past him and not even realizing they’d passed by one of film’s greatest icons. It seemed sad that he didn’t have the longest lines of all, but I also felt lucky to get that much more time to chat and get his autograph. He wasn’t bothered by not being swarmed, just an older gent enjoying a day of people walking about. But the limelight would return only three years later after George Lucas sold Star Wars to Disney and J.J. Abrams tapped Mr. Mayhew to return to the role literally billions have loved him for over the past 42 years. And there he was again, back in the thick of it at the table read for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, only five years ago. Over the past five years his health gradually left it more difficult for Mr. Mayhew to do appearances, but I would see him three more times, each time still showing up for fans with a smile, happy to take a photograph or sign whatever nostalgic keepsakes fans brought to share with him.
My favorite memory of Mr. Mayhew was asking him about his experience working with Jim Henson on The Muppet Show in the famous Star Wars episode that aired February 21, 1980. He had been answering questions from the crowd at a Planet Comicon panel, questions he’d clearly answered hundreds of times before. But he lit up when I mentioned the Muppets. Watching the show as a nine-year-old, I found the episode to be the perfect, rare event (like the Holiday Special), with Mark Hamill being featured with R2-D2, C-3PO, and our favorite Wookiee, not just another guy in the suit but the real deal, Peter Mayhew, along with Kermit and friends. When TV shows aired in 1980 you had your eyes glued to the screen, because the idea you’d ever be able to watch the episode again was still a pipe dream. Mr. Mayhew said he hadn’t been asked about that episode before and it had been years since he even thought about it, but details all snapped back for him. He remarked about the joy of working with Jim Henson and said he was amazed that the Muppets above the floor were real characters that could interact with him and Hamill as if they were as real, as if by magic, and yet he stepped back and looked down to see a dozen people underneath, intertwined and synchronized to make it all appear so seamless to the audience. You can imagine what that giant, usually soft-spoken fellow looked like when he was excited about something. And anyone who ever met him could attest to the twinkle in his eyes that was part of who he was, those same eyes that revealed plenty of the real Mr. Mayhew behind the Wookiee suit that made it onto film and became part of his famous character.
Less than one month away, San Diego Comic-Con returns to the San Diego Convention Center full of writers, artists, publishers, TV and movie studios, and vendors with representation from every major property and franchise. Legos, Sideshow, Super 7, Mattel, Funko, Mondo, and more. Already distributors have begun previewing convention exclusives–those sought-after rare collectibles usually available only at the show, but sometimes available afterward in small quantities if all of the inventory from the show isn’t pre-ordered or purchased on-site.
We think it’s time to share some of the best exclusives scheduled to be available at San Diego Comic-Con this year for those of you who are attending or have friends attending that can pick up items for you. Just can’t decide what to spend your money on? Check out the SDCC 2018 website for even more information from the vendors and more collectibles. There’s too much for anyone to be able to see everything at the big Con, so we’ve listed booth numbers so you can make sure you don’t miss out on those toys, posters, and comic books that you simply must have.
These aren’t all the exclusives you’ll find at SDCC 2018–we’ve selected a sampling of some of the best items from popular vendors who have previewed their items with still three weeks until the convention.
Now on to the exclusives.
Gentle Giant is releasing a variety of exclusive mini-busts, plus this large-scale version of the classic Kenner Star Wars action figure. You’ve seen Boba Fett from Gentle Giant here before–the original was borg.com‘s favorite toy of 2012 and one of the best action figure re-creations we’ve seen.
This exclusive provides one more chance to get this figure, this time reflecting original packaging from Return of the Jedi (sorry, no firing backpack).
From Alex Ross Art (Booth #2415) pick up limited prints and comics, including these new variant covers for Amazing Spider-man, Issue #1:
A month ago here at borg.com we discussed looking outside the comic book medium for the artwork of your favorite comic book artists. You don’t need to look too far outside of comic books to find the next great artwork from fan-favorite cover artist Ryan Sook. Every year just in advance of San Diego Comic-Con, comic book stores are stocked with the annual update to The Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide. First published in 1970, the 1,200 page log of nearly every comic book published to-date arrives at its 48th volume this summer, dated 2018-2019. Known as the go-to guide for prices for a generation of collectors, Robert M. Overstreet’s book of prices and thumbnail photos is also a source to glean what’s happened in the past year by way of comic book trends. It features its own hall of fame for comic book legends, plus full-color sections highlighting some of today and yesteryear’s best covers.
For this year’s comic book store exclusive hardcover edition, Gemstone Publishing tapped Ryan Sook to create a cover to commemorate 50 years of Planet of the Apes films. Sook reached beyond the original to reflect imagery from throughout the Planet of the Apes movie saga– a great homage to the original shocking environment as Charlton Heston’s astronaut Taylor arrives in the future horrifying world of human scarecrows, with General Ursus leading the charge and the creepy denizens in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, the return to the past by spaceship for the apes in Escape from the Planet of the Apes, to the militant world and apes under arrest in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, culminating with the eagerly-awaited first appearance of The Lawgiver in Battle for the Planet of the Apes. The familiar image of Roddy McDowall behind John Chambers’ Oscar-worthy make-up takes center stage–McDowall connects all of the films alternately as Cornelius and Caesar (and later as Galen in the TV series), and here he cleverly blocks the identity of the planet.
You can only purchase this edition of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide in comic book stores, so put in a call to Elite Comics to make sure you get a copy when this new edition arrives in July.
We’ve been covering the Kenner-style retro action figures being sold by Super 7 since the toy company first partnered with Funko and revealed its first line of vintage style Alien “ReAction” figures at San Diego Comic-Con 2013. At the end of 2016 Super 7 discontinued partnering with Funko and returned to manufacturing and distributing the multi-license toy line on its own. Super 7 revealed its 2018 plans for the ReAction line this weekend at New York Toy Fair 2018, with some new surprises and expansions to current action figure licenses. Projections for any toy company at Toy Fair don’t always match reality. Compare borg.com‘s coverage of Super 7 at New York Toy Fair 2017 here, and you’ll find several Super 7 action figures only now inching their way into the market. The biggest reveals at this year’s show for Super 7’s ReAction line for fans of sci-fi/horror include two beloved film classics: Alien and Planet of the Apes.
Super 7 is returning to its first pre-Funko toy line in revisiting its Alien action figures. For the next wave, characters include more refined sculpts than the early waves, with new characters Brett, Parker, and Lambert, Jonesy the cat with new Ripley, Ash with removable head, facehugger Kane in spacesuit, and a new Xenomorph head with jaws out. Although the company has previously hinted at the possibility, it doesn’t look like we’ll see figures from Aliens this year.
It’s been a year since we saw the prototypes for Planet of the Apes figures on display at New York Toy Fair 2017. Finally the first figures are now expected to be released in two months, beginning with Taylor, Nova, Zira, Cornelius, General Ursus, and Dr. Zaius in the first wave.
Super 7 must expect some good sales results with the first wave for POTA as prototypes were on display at Toy Fair for Wave 2, also, including a Cornelius in astronaut suit, ape warriors and another ape general, a giant Lawgiver statue set, and the mutants from Beneath the Planet of the Apes with removable outer heads to reveal those (gross) inner-heads as seen in the movie.
For the Super 7 Universal Monsters license, it will revisit past ReAction figures (The Phantom of the Opera, Wolf Man, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon), while adding some new ones, including the Metalluna Mutant and the Mole People.
In a strange twist to the home video release marketing strategy, IDW Entertainment, the company behind both Wynonna Earp the comic book series and the Syfy Channel television series, is well on its way through what looks to be a successful Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign to bring Wynonna Earp Season One directly to its fans. The first season will only be released on Blu-ray–no DVD–and only via the Indiegogo campaign. Discs are expected to ship around September 2017.
Wynonna Earp follows Wyatt Earp’s great-granddaughter as she battles demons and other creatures in a town called Purgatory. With her unique abilities, a demon-killing gun named Peacemaker, and a posse of dysfunctional allies, only she can bring the paranormal to justice.
Although fans and new viewers can also watch each episode of the first season on Netflix, as Wynonna Earp begins its second season (with the premiere episode of the season airing on Friday nights beginning last Friday, June 9), it’s going to be a little bit harder for the new viewer who would otherwise be willing to buy the first season to get caught up, especially if they missed the Syfy Network recap this Memorial Day weekend. But this likely will really only have an effect on the fans of the show who would ordinarily pay to have Season One in-hand closer to the start date of the next season. Will this be the next regular marketing method for shows that would otherwise not justify a home release to still be able to make fans happy?
