In July we discussed a great summer panel from virtual San Diego Comic-Con discussing the final ten episodes of History Channel’s Vikingsseries, following the first ten episodes released a year ago (check out our coverage of the panel here at borg if you missed it). The showrunner and cast of History’s Vikings, including showrunner and writer Michael Hirst and actors Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, and Clive Standen, who we saw at their first Comic-Con back in 2013, provided a brief preview of the final 10 of the season’s 20 episodes. Now those final episodes will hop networks to Amazon Prime, where they will all be available for binge-watching on December 30, followed later on their original network, History. Along with the news of the change in networks and streaming date is a new trailer–check it out below.
The showrunner and cast of History’s Vikings, including showrunner and writer Michael Hirst and actors Travis Fimmel, Katheryn Winnick, and Clive Standen, who we saw at their first Comic-Con back in 2013, invaded Comic-Con this weekend with a new preview for the last time. That’s a virtual invasion, because of course this year it’s San Diego Comic-Con@Home, but as panels go this was just as you’d see at any ordinary SDCC, but without the lines and squinting from the back of Hall H. Hirst and actors Fimmel, Winnick, and Standen were joined this year by actors Alex Ludwig and Jordan Patrick Smith, to discuss the fates of Fimmel and Winnick’s characters on past episodes, the six seasons of the series, and what’s next.
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.
San Diego Comic-Con goers got to see a sneak peek at the first view of the unprecedented, Kickstarter-generated, 91,000+ fan-supported Veronica Mars movie last weekend. Even more cast members than you would imagine are back for this reunion movie, including of course Kristen Bell as Veronica, but also Jason Dohring as Logan, Tina Majorino as Mac, Percy Daggs III as Wallace, Ryan Hansen as Dick, Enrico Colantoni as Keith Mars, Krysten Ritter as Gia, Chris Lowell as Piz, Sam Huntington as Luke D’Amato, Francis Capra as Weevil, Ken Marino as Vinnie Van Lowe, Brandon Hillock as Deputy Sacks, and Duane Daniels as Principal Clemmons.
Check out the sneak peek of Veronica Mars, the Movie:
And until this gets pulled down from YouTube, you can watch the full SDCC 2013 Veronica Mars panel here:
The History Channel pulled out all the stops at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend for its Vikings series. If you didn’t catch the first season of Vikings, which we previewed earlier this year here at borg.com, you missed out on a series that rivaled Game of Thrones. Vikings publicity was all over Comic-Con and we even landed great swag–this exclusive SDCC 2013 comic book prequel for the series, just begging to be made into a monthly series. Vikings writer and creator Michael Hirst (who also wrote the comic story) was on-hand along with book artists Dennis Calero and Anthony Spay for signings.
You could also land a set of four exclusive lenticular trading cards at the Vikings events:
I’m not sure anyone likes to wait in lines. When you wait in line at a restaurant it just means more time to get hungry and cranky. When you wait in line to check-in at your hotel, it means more time holding your backpack or moving your luggage along beside you before you can deposit it on the floor of your room. When you wait in line at the DMV, the post office or any government agency, you can really start to hate all government and think Ron Paul is amazing. When you have only two minutes to make your movie and the line in front of you is full of teens not sure of what movie they want to watch, you might consider less strict rules on 48th trimester abortions. I’m not going to say that waiting in line at Comic-Con is awesome, but I tend to get a lot less impatient in the realm of the Convention Center of San Diego during one weekend in July.
There are a couple of reasons why. First, as a multiple attendee of Comic-Con, it has slowly dawned on me that there are thousands of people with the same interests as me that all crave the same scoops, information and presence of the creators. Second, once I realized there are at least one hundred thousand people crowded onto sidewalks in a 30-block area, I thought that moving quickly in any direction is a lost cause. Third, most everyone at Comic-Con is pretty damn cool, well “cool” in a wonderful nerdy way.
However, Hall H is a completely different breed of line. It is Godzilla to the DMV’s Western Skink. It is King Kong to your hotel’s Pygmy Marmoset. It is the monster truck Bigfoot to your grocery store’s matchbox car. Still, it’s Comic-Con, so even though it is the worst of the lines, it’s still pretty ok.
6,130 people can fit in Hall H. (The next biggest space, Ballroom 20, can host 4,250 and the adventures in that line can be very similar.) To give you an idea of what it is like to wait in line for a panel in Hall H, I’m going to construct a timeline from my memories and texts to describe and to possibly prepare you for years to come at Comic-Con. Most times are approximate, though the first is spot on because it burned in my memory as the thought, “What the hell am I doing?” seared it in my mind. Some events are fictional and others are exaggerated to improve your reading pleasure on the subject of lines. I won’t tell you which ones.
In contrast to an upcoming post about Concrete Volume 1: “Depths”, I saw the magic of work on display Saturday at Comic-Con. I attended three panels and they all gave me a glimpse of those special relationships that develop between co-workers. From Matt Smith calling Steven Moffat “Moff” and Steven “Fat” telling Matt that he’ll be dying soon (on Doctor Who), you could tell a bond had developed. The Being Human panel featured a question from an audience member named Audrey and that led Sam Huntington to comment that was his daughter’s name. Then came a whole riff on whether or not this was his daughter time-traveling from the future, and then when Sam Witwer was on the other end of Audrey’s question, eventually Meaghan Rath dropped the mic and left the stage as it was one of many questions directed Sam W.’s way. The smiles back and forth between those three and the continual riffing revealed how close they were. However, neither came close to meeting the emotion of the Warehouse 13 panel.
(I so wish I had photos to share with you of Warehouse 13, but my phone died. I would have looked to the ceiling, clenched my fists and yelled, “PHONE!” but I didn’t want to interrupt the panel.)
The first emotion – excitement. The panel started out like any other with introductions of the participants. When the moderator came to Eddie McClintock, I didn’t see him up on stage because he ran up one of the aisles of the Indigo Ballroom as a human version of a t-shirt cannon.
Comic-Con means major panels in the big halls and building buzz for releases we won’t even see until next year. Two of the most anticipated panels this weekend are for The Amazing Spider-man 2 and Robocop, and unlike many panels, these have been released by the studios for redistribution. So first check out a 10-minute edited version of the full panel for The Amazing Spider-man 2 here, with stars Andrew Garfield and Jamie Foxx:
The Amazing Spider-man 2 hits theaters May 2, 2014.
Here is the panel footage released for the 2014 reboot of RoboCop, featuring co-stars Michael Keaton and Samuel L. Jackson:
The winners of the 2013 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards were announced at a gala ceremony held during Comic-Con International: San Diego, at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, on Friday, July 19. We’re particularly happy with the choice of David Aja’s Hawkeye, one of borg.com’sfavorite series of 2012 and Dark Horse Presents, the source of some of the best stories last year, as best anthology series. We also liked the judge’s selection of Dave Stewart for colorist, who had such incredible work last year on several books including the Batwoman series.
Here are this year’s winners:
Best Graphic Album—Reprint
“King City,” by Brandon Graham (TokyoPop/Image)
Best Archival Collection/Project—Strips
“Pogo, Vol. 2: Bona Fide Balderdash,” by Walt Kelly, edited by Carolyn Kelly and Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
Best Archival Collection/Project—Comic Books
“David Mazzucchelli’s Daredevil Born Again: Artist’s Edition,” edited by Scott Dunbier (IDW)
Best U.S. Edition of International Material
“Blacksad: Silent Hell,” by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (Dark Horse)
Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia
“Naoki Urasawa’s 20th Century Boys,” by Naoki Urasawa (VIZ Media)
I got to see Pacific Rim this week, and let me say, if you want to watch aliens fighting robots, you’ve come to the right place. It’s a fun popcorn movie that just keeps amping up the stakes and the fights. The star of the movie is the great design of both the aliens and the robots.
The thing that got me thinking the most about this movie though was “the drift.” In the first few minutes of the movies (so I will not say spoiler alert, but still, if you don’t want to know anything about the movie, abandon all hope, ye who read on further) as the narrator (revealed to be Raleigh Becket played by Charlie Hunnam) talked about how the first attempt to build Jaegers (the robots) fried the mind of the single person involved so that the mental processing was moved to two people so they could share the burden. They had to link their minds and when they did, they existed together in the drift, sharing memories and sharing thoughts to power the massive Jaeger to battle the Kaiju (the monster aliens.)
Pacific Rim display at the Legendary Pictures booth at Comic-Con 2013.
