Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with yet more Kapow! Con stuff. It seems to be have some real geek drawing power as our UK readers and regulars seem to be all over it. BillyHitchcock has come forward with a little coverage of Jonathan Ross' playful panel pitting comic book professionals against comic fans in trivia and other shenanigans. I particularly like the What's My Line type game, which I've always wanted to see come back in primetime. Anyway, the Kapow! coverage continues with BillyHitchcock's below report (with some quite amusing photos). Enjoy!
Hey Harry,
have just read Adrian's great Kapow write ups and thought I would offer some extra bits on my favourite part of the day, the Pros Vs Fans Quiz hosted by Jonathan Ross.
I'm sure you guys are aware of him by now, over here in the UK he is a total comic book/film nerd disguised as a mainstream chat show host/tv presenter. His finest moment of subversion for me was mentioning the works of one Mario Bava (who he is a huge fan of) during his presentation of the BAFTA's one year. He also had 4 copies of Amazing Fantasy #15 before donating one to charity. His Turf book is also awesome by the way.
Solid bloke all round then and the perfect choice to open the Inaugural Kapow Comic Con with some comic related comedy.
So the teams are introduced, Mark Millar, John Romita Jr and Dave Gibbons on the Pro's team and to begin with British Comedian Stewart Lee on the fans team.
Jonathan then asks the audience who wants to participate for the fans and asks them to stand up. What follows is a series of nerd qualifying questions where they're asked things like, did you go see Sucker Punch? Sit down. Everyone is whittled down until Joe and Rachel take to the stage to represent us. They did a really awesome job and although Jonathan kindly lent the scoring in their favour to win they totally deserved it. Oh yeah, White Kryptonite kills all plant life within 25 yards!
The best round was a collection of questions based on some classic comic covers from Jonathan's own collection. It was no coincidence that all the answers were drenched in innuendo :-) He admitted that he actually forgot to bring any of the questions with him so he had to wing it with the powerpoint presentation and the following pictures will give you some idea of the humour involved. Needless to say we, the audience, were in stitches.
Next up was the mystery guest round where the contestants were blindfolded (with socks) and through a series of yes no questions had to identify the comic book character they were interviewing. Here's a clip. Apologies for the sound, it was on my phone.
Dave Gibbons was the winner of the point by correctly identifying Bat Mite! I'm now gonna have to read some Bat Mite stories as I'd never heard of him before (Marvel Fan) but it sounds hilarious.
It finished off with some audience participation where we in the front few rows had a red sheet or a blue sheet to decide once and for all who would be the victor in some theoretical superhero battles. I voted for Cap Vs Batman but was overruled by the majority and Jonathan himself with the decision that if Batman can beat Supes then Cap would be no problem. There were 2 others which I've forgotten, maybe some talkbackers can fill in my memory.
Anyway the fans were victorious and it was a very enjoyable, banter-filled, way to start Britain's answer to SDCC. The whole event was really well organised and there was enough going to hold even the most attention deficient fanboys interest. I'm just gutted I'm not gonna be there today!
BillyHitchcock.
