Life on Mars

Comic-Con 2011 - Day 2

I didn’t get a chance to write my second day recap last night, so I finished most of it while waiting for panels.

Things were a little more crowded on the second day of Comic-Con, which is fairly normal. Unfortunately, the con staff’s response to that was new and unusual. In general, the security and volunteers have been much less friendly, and downright rude in many cases. They’re really cracking down on keeping aisles and exits clear, which I can understand. However, even a slight slowdown would result in a red-shirt immediately yelling at us. After just a few hours on the floor, we had already been berated by the con staff a dozen times. Not exactly the most pleasant experience.

We ended up retreating to panels to avoid the floor. We mainly wanted to see Uncharted and RiffTrax, and we sat through the Image Comics and American Vampire panels as a result. Both of these panels prominently featured writer Scott Snyder. He stood out in my mind because his passion for the work was obvious. Furthermore, his handling of the American Vampire panel was brilliant. Knowing that most of the crowd was waiting for RiffTrax, he gave a great overview of his series. He was so successful, a RiffTrax fan got up during Q&A to compliment the panel and got huge applause from the crowd.

Finally, during the RiffTrax panel, they did their usual movie suggestion contest. Last year, my fiancé suggested the 1974 Sean Connery classic Zardoz. Sadly, it didn’t win that year, but as a result a woman from the crowd foolishly watched it. Agreeing it was ripe for riffing, she got up and suggested Zardoz herself. This time it made it all the way to a runoff against Logan’s Run. While it again failed to win (and Mike thought “it was a little rapey”), the legend continues. Perhaps some poor soul will be curious enough to watch it and then suggest it again next year.

That’s it for day two. Day three was plenty of fun, so I’ll have a recap of that as well tomorrow.