Father Geek here with a report on the first day of the phantasmagorical event known as DRAGON CON... Harry and I were special guests of this wonderful fan gathering a couple of years ago, Quint and Tom Joad of our AICN Austin crew joined us for a simply great time mixing it up with fans and old pros like Ray Harryhausen, John Carpenter, and Tom Savini. We got splattered in blood by GWAR (especially Joad), geeked out with Forrey Ackerman, and spent hours hanging in the Green Room with noted Sci-Fi writers and members of the "Misfits", really quite approachable guys. Any way couldn't make it this year, Harry opted for China and KILL BILL instead, but Grendy's there and here's the day #1 report...
Hi guys, Grendy here, enclosed below is the first day or so of the convention. Just some observations and info about some of what I've seen thus far.
Here's some observations and excerpts of Day 1 of Dragon Con in Atlanta
"Dragon Con store!" .I keep hearing a woman softly yelling, in an attempt to get people to walk over to a booth where it seems a metric butt-load of merchandise is on sale. There are T-Shirts, hats, pewter figurines, and my favorite item du jour, the foam glider in the shape of a gray dragon. You can both brag that you went to Dragon*Con and reenact your own little Reign Of Fire scenarios with your GI Joe's and hapless Star Wars figures. (fire is optional)
Dragon Con. Man, this joint's huge, spread over two mega-hotels in downtown Atlanta (which, by the way, never seems to know what hits it every year) and it takes place over 4 days, August 30- September 2 this year. The average attendance is near to 20,000 people. Imagine that, 20k of freaks and geeks. Officially, Dragon Con is the biggest sci-fi/ fantasy convention in North America.
It's about noon on Friday, the first official day of the convention. However, that partying started last night, as travelers from all parts of the states, and even Finland, come together in an alcohol-tinged frenzy. Happy to be seeing friends from afar, or perhaps meeting on-line friends for the first time. Drinks flowed, cell phone and hotel room numbers were exchanged, and everyone goes to sleep eagerly anticipating the next four days of crazy.
As I write this, I softly hear the Main Title Theme from STAR WARS floating on the air, played by a quiet flutist. A young guy with what looks to be an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on his back, and a Spengler name-patch on his tan jumpsuit poses for a digi-cam picture. It's somewhat surreal, STAR WARS and GHOSTBUSTERS guy all together. Oh wait, there's now a guy dressed head to foot as a Drow Elf from any number of AD & D campaigns. His skin's all black, and he's got medieval costuming on, a' la your local Renaissance Faire, and he's standing in front of the Atlanta Outworlders booth. They are a gay/lesbian/bi/transgender sci-fi & fantasy group. See? There really IS a niche for everyone.
To continue these little snapshots. the convention hosts hundreds of guests and speakers from all sorts of areas of pop or science culture. There are lectures, workshops on writing a screenplay or a novel to get it sold, how to write that infamous 'fan fic' that goes 'round and 'round the 'net. Some of the tv and film stars gladly will talk for an hour to a room of hundreds of people about not only their show/film, but take Q & A's after. There's also a HUGE goth scene here. Now, I know, you would not think that a sci-fi convention would be THE place for it, but, man are you wrong. There's no shortage of women and men being led around in collars and wearing squeaky black polyvinyl pants. I don't get it. I mean, granted, this weekend is especially mild for Atlanta, but it's usually 935 degrees this time of year, and who wants to be wearing shiny sun-attracting clothes?
Bands also come to play the convention, all sorts of minor or local bands, but there have also been times when the Misfits and GWAR have played here. Heck, one year, Anthrax (yes, the band, .no, not the disease) came to the con. They were in town to play a show, and being that they're big comic geeks, they had to come to the dealers' room to score some out of print and autographed stuff.
AHHHH . the dealers room. Mecca to the hordes of people just waiting to part with their hard earned cash, check, or credit with valid form of ID. Comics, action figures (not dolls. boy, they get pissed when you call them that.) books, t-shirts, and a never ending collection of slightly less then legal videos and dvds. I've heard that Spider- Man will be here on DVD. We'll see. If I can somehow score the Fellowship 4 dvd set, then I'll be on that like white on rice, ya dig?
Heck, my brother bought the pilot for Joss Weedon's new sci-fi series FIREFLY on DVD today. It doesn't premier until mid -September I believe.
So, I went to see Judd Winick speak Friday. He was on the Real World show back in '95, but, please, don't hold it against him. He talked about how he got into THE REAL WORLD, about being told he'd be living with someone who's HIV +... how he'd never known anyone with AIDS. How he's this 'big weenie liberal guy' and was supposed to be okay with this. And back in 1994 the images of people with aids showed that people weren't touched; they had big purple splotches all over them... "Here I was, this liberal guy, and I am carrying around these big bags of stereotypes".... He spoke about how his friend, Pedro Zamora came to the US in a pair of pants made from his mother's skirt and a blue Superman t-shirt his uncle sent him from America. As everyone got off the boat after the Mariel Boatlift, the first thing he was handed was an apple and a coke, both of which he'd never had before. Can't get much more American then that. He did an excerpt from his Wisner-award winning book PEDRO AND ME. He's also the author of GREEN LANTERN for DC comics and EXILES on Marvel comics.
Questions about Green Lantern storyline: in Green Lantern, about how Kyle's assistant (GL's real name) Terry came out of the closet, how it was accepted it in the comic, from the characters who knew him. Terry will be the victim of a hate-crime... being beaten into a coma by some gay-bashing idiots. Someone there asked this: "Is the press about it coming from DC or from Judd? " It seems that they sent it (the info about this new storyline) to various media outlets like usual, and then the NY Times called about it, they were even interested. It was making the front page of the art section, even. When I wrote this, I didn't' think it would be that controversial,.. why? Is it a big deal that there are gays in congress? No, ... for a long time the heroes were big white hetero guys. It seems that our generation of writers wants to change this. We wanted to show the best things about coming out, and this hate crime issue is also about one of the worst things about it. First and foremost it makes a good story" He had talked with his editor Bob Schrek about it when he first came on, and they had decided to just kill Terry after the beating. And Judd thought about it a bit, so did Bob, and they decided that it would be too cliché' as well as "why go that far. why kill him, to push GL into the direction the plot needed his anger to serve?" So they decided to "just" beat him into a coma.
Various GL storylines were talked about. About his collage strip "Nuts and Bolts" which never made it to an animated series, but he took Frumpy The Clown from there, and managed to get a syndication deal. Which did get cancelled, leading him to audition for The Real World, as he was out of work and living at home and "what the hell".
Q: "How has Real World affected you?"
A: " We (he and his wife, Pam, whom he met on the show) feel like bullshit celebrities, like Zsa Zsa Gabor. We're famous for nothing. I heard 'so you're a big shot cartoonist' before I WAS a big-shot cartoonist." It was lame."
I asked would he have made Terry gay, if it weren't for Northstar coming out first?
Judd: "Yes, and I was so disappointed with how that was handled, he was such a one-note character." I said, "Yeah, he was kinda dickheaded all along, then he was the dickhead who was gay and in-your-face about it."
Here's some Barry Ween, Boy Genius news: 3 issues coming out soon: "Barry goes to space, Barry and Jeremy in the lab, he's finally there, told not to touch anything, but of course, he does, and gets put into space by messing with something he shouldn't and they end up in space." All I'll say about this is the line: "You dick, I 'm in space!" ""You and your wife did an instructional video, how well did it sell?" "Oh who cares? . 2 years after RW ended, they were asked to host this video about how to survive graduation and after- collage life. He fessed up and told us that they were paid $3,000 each, (whooo hooo big money.) It also seems that his wife Pam is smarter then all us here combined. So he said, anyway. He also does free sketches in people books, or signs stuff for free, which is rather a rarity here at the convention, where autographs of David Prowse or Lou Ferrigno go for $20 on a color 8 x 10. I recommend both picking up PEDRO AND ME and any issues of Barry Ween you can get your hands on.
So then I went and saw Peter David. He is author of a number of Star Trek books, multiple comic book titles, screenplays and even a stage play that is in the development stage currently. He mentioned that at one convention he was at, he was asked to introduce James Marsters (Spike, of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame). In his words: " HOLY SHIT! you'd think it was the Beatles or something. There were like a thousand teenyboppers there, and I was on stage, about to intro him, and I break out into "I died, ." from Spike's song in the Buffy musical episode. They freaked out, totally screaming and carrying on. The only thing they didn't do is throw their room keys at me." He then went on to show us his great singing skills, with a little bit of the song. Ummm, stick to the day-job, Peter. He said James came on, and gave him a hug for introducing him "You know, those LA actors." As he went off stage, a woman back stage said, " He hugged you!" . all amazed. So he said he thought: "Well, I can work this." And he ran back onstage jumping up and down like a teenage girl screaming in falsetto " He hugged me, he hugged me!" If you've ever seen Peter David, with his balding head and silver/black beard and let's just say "writer's belly" to be kind, then the image of him screaming was too hilarious. (He reenacted it for us, as he's got no shame)
He read out loud, then entire script for Supergirl # 76, as well as giving spoilers for #74 (she gets her TK powers back). Here's an example of his wacky sense of humor, which was edited out by THE MAN at Marvel. Once, when in a Spectacular Spider-Man, he had Spidey find a baby in a dumpster. He takes it to the hospital. When he gives it to the nurse in the ER, she asks him, "Is it your baby, Spider-Man?" and Spidey answered back : " I dunno, why don't we throw it against the wall and see if it sticks?" Good lord! Can you imagine if that HAD made it into the comic? You'd never convince your mom that it was good clean fun again.
~~Grendy, out~~
PS... I talked to Lou Ferrigno today and will interviw him tomorrow afternoon.
