I was blessed to attend Wondercon in San Francisco. I had a great a great time! It was really well-organized as fun. I wanted to write a post on this blog and on my main blog. I've decided that the decision about what to post here and what will be placed on the main blog will be defined here. On this blog post I want to focus on some of the formation I gained about the characters.
Much information has been released but I wasn't able to attend everything. I did attend that DC Comics Panel. It wasn't as good as past years panel. The focus was on Superman and Batman. A lot of info was spilled about Superman who's writer, James Robinson, was there. He was cool. He talked about the direction he was taking the book. He said that Kandar, the Kryptonian City (yes, the same city in other continuities that Brainiac had shrunk down and placed in a bottle) has been returned to full size and re-settled on an uninhabited fictional planet orbiting the sun. With over 1000 Kryptonians, all with Superman's powers they can't come to earth and Superman will leave earth and to live with them. To complicate matters Zod is among them. You know the man that hated Jor El, Superman's father, and caused all the ruckus in Superman II. The Panel didn't say anything about Lois Lane and if she leaves with him. He also mentioned that Supergirl has yet again been changed and now more like the Pre-Crisis-of-the-Infinite-Earth's version of the character. She remains on earth but hides her identity. A new Superman limited series will begin detailing Superman's life on New Krypton and the current Superman books will focus on what happens in Metropolis while Superman is away. I'm not sure about this direction. I prefer Superman to be the only humanoid survivor of Krypton. I think it cheapens the character to have so many survivors. But we'll see where this goes. Here is the trailer:
As for Batman: Good news! Bruce Wayne is not dead! I haven't read Final Crisis yet but from what I heard it looks like Batman died saving the DC Universe. But, he is missing and although the writer and editors were present at the panel, they would give up very little information. All they would confirm is that Bruce is missing and Gotham is self-destructing without him leading to battles among Batman's allies, apprentices, and enemies for the mantle. Also by the end of this Summer there will 8 on-going books connected to Batman.
Another major thing that was discussed it the upcoming story line called "Blackest Knight" where previously dead characters return in a kind of green lantern corps but instead of green rings, they're sporting black rings!
I also attended a panel about the Spectacular Spider-man television series. Best thing about it was that they brought clips of season 2 and they announced that the series will be returning to television in the United States airing on Disney XD starting March 23, 2009. They are going to show Season 1 and then Season 2. I want to be clear: it is one of the best Spider-man Animated series ever!
Additionally, there was a panel about the new Black Panther animated series on BET this Summer. I missed it, unfortunately.
I went to a Marvel Panel and that was fun too. I found out that Spider-man is embarking on a major storyline in which he will be arrested. They played the same trailer that has been on their website recently.
Marvel also announced that Dark Reign and Agents of Atlas are going to be very important! In Dark Reign, Norman Osborn is the head of SHIELD but still very evil. Anthony Stark is on the run and he is "lobatomizing" himself to keep secrets out of Osborn's hands, also decreasing his intelligence, and making himself easier to track. I'm not sure If like the way that is going, but the writer of Iron Man, Matt Fraction, was there, and I think the character is in good hand. Agents of Atlas are really good guys trying to take Osborn down from the inside. WE'll see how that goes. They also confirmed that Spider-man will be involved in these events.
As for the goodies I bought, I got a couple Black Panther tradepaperbacks to help in creating a Black Panther character for mugen.
I'm going to cover general implications and thoughts on my other blog in part 1 of this post at What Had Happened Was...