WonderCon 2022: The Return
Cons are back! After they shut down in the wake of COVID becoming a full-blown epidemic in March 2020 they’ve slowly been coming back across the country. While I don’t go to a whole lot of them, WonderCon has traditionally been one that I’ve checked out regularly each year mainly due to its “Comic-Con Without the BS” vibe. This year’s event got off to a great start because I got there when the Exhibit Hall opened, found a booth that was selling new trade paperbacks at discounts comparable to what CheapGraphicNovels.com and Amazon have been offering, and met up with, Adrian, an old friend of mine, in the process. Then came the many panels I wanted to check out through Saturday, and, well…
Spotlight on Kevin Eastman
In case the name isn’t familiar to you, Eastman is the co-creator of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.” I was looking forward to an hour of stories about the “Turtles’” creation and his subsequent career. The creator delivered on some of that as he showed off some early art and talked about the time that he and fellow co-creator Peter Laird met Jack Kirby at Comic-Con in the 80’s. Which was an encounter that impressed upon him the importance of keeping ownership of the “Turtles” brand – until they sold it to Nickelodeon, of course. Speaking of that, the rest of the pane was subsequently spent with Eastman’s friend, and director of the 2012 animated series, Ciero Nieli. He had some interesting anecdotes to tell about the series in regards to casting, but I can’t say he impressed me enough to make me appreciate the fact that we were hearing from him rather than the person this panel was meant to be spotlighting.
Eastman did say that the final issue of “The Last Ronin” is done and should be out in a few weeks. Which got a round of applause as people (read: John and Myron) have been waiting for the conclusion to this miniseries for a while. Me? I’m waiting for the hardcover collection in July, natch.
Super Dimensional Fortress Macross: Then and Right Now
The international rights to the “Macross” franchise were a mess for years until April of last year when all of the parties involved – Big West, Tatsunoko, and Harmony Gold – finally stopped fighting and came to an agreement about how the franchise (and its bastard child “Robotech”) will be released going forward. That meant we’d be getting legitimate releases of the many “Macross” anime TV series, OVAs, movies, and merchandise that have been made over the years. Helping the process along was this company formed by the two guys who ran this panel! (Yes, I do regret not taking pictures of the slides they had up identifying themselves at the panel.) As they started talking, I quickly got the feeling that this was going to be a standard “History of the Franchise” panel, covering a lot of stuff I was already familiar with. So I ducked out after half an hour to join Adrian and his wife, Kian, at another panel. But not before learning that, thanks to Fathom Events, the two “Macross Frontier” movies would be getting a theatrical release this summer. They’re both quite good and I recommend that anyone who’s interested in seeing what “Macross” is all about, and why it has amassed such a fanbase over the years, should check it out.
If Bigfoot is Out There, Meet the Team That Will Find Him!
Adrian pointed this panel out to me and the whole premise sounded like it was going to be dumb as hell. As anyone who has been listening to me or reading what I write, you know that I’m totally there for some quality dumbness. The panel itself was meant to be advertising the show “Expedition Bigfoot” on the Travel Channel/Discovery+ and while it opened up with a haphazardly cut trailer that came off like a bad imitation of “The Blair Witch Project” it quickly settled down into an utterly sincere discussion of the four panelists’ efforts to find the title creature. It was such that the presentation became more boring than laughable, even when they presented a clip of Jane Goodall talking to the Doctor of the group and effectively going, “Well, I can’t say that Bigfoot doesn’t exist…” At least I got a refrigerator magnet that’s bound to provoke some discussion when I put it on the fridge at work. Even if it’s of the, “Jason, please take this down now,” variety.
Needless to say, I bailed on this panel halfway through in favor of one that it would be far more entertaining. After all, it was about…
Adventures in Voice Acting for Anime
Not only was this the name of the panel, but it’s apparently the name of a program meant to help out aspiring actors in this profession. Featured on the panel was a director who was also a co-founder of the dubbing studio Bang/Zoom, a casting director with the studio, and one voice actor and actress. Regarding their adventures, we got to hear about the time the actor was shocked by a microphone that wasn’t properly grounded, and how the director was working with a music star who was also a fan of anime and wanted to work on a dub. Unfortunately the star was SO BAD at acting that the director left the studio in the middle of dubbing and didn’t come back. Those two anecdotes were the ONLY adventures we got to hear about. The rest of the panel was workshop-related stuff about what it takes to become a voice actor and how to break into the industry. Clearly I should’ve stuck around to see whether Bigfoot was going to be found. Or, better still, gone to the Spotlight on Becky Cloonan panel that was going on at the same time.
Women of Middle-Earth
This was a panel put on by three women associated with TheOneRing.net to spotlight the many women who populate J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy continuum to show that it’s not as much of a sausage-fest as it might initially seem. While my knowledge of Middle-Earth only goes as far as the “Lord of the Rings” and “Hobbit” movies, and the “Shadow of Mordor” and “Shadow of War” games, it was still interesting to hear all of the major and minor women talked about here. There was also plenty of speculation from the panelists regarding what roles some of these women would play in the upcoming “Rings of Power” series from Amazon along with the “War of the Rohirrim” anime film, which was also interesting. What was the most surprising thing I learned about the “Women of Middle-Earth” in this panel? That dwarven women really do have beards, and we’ll actually be seeing them in the Amazon series! Admittedly, this likely says more about me and my overall maturity level than anything else.
Law of Peacemaker
The last panel I attended turned out to be the best one. It was all about the many, MANY crimes committed by Peacemaker in his HBO Max series and how defensible they are according to state and federal law. The panel was made up of four currently practicing lawyers, and a lot of the panel’s humor stemmed from how seriously they took some of the most ridiculous parts of the show. From whether or not it was legal to keep a bald eagle as a pet, whether the chainsaw murder of a gorilla counts as “Defense of Other,” or if the butterflies’ possession of people counts as kidnapping, they covered it all. The end result was a generally fun look at a ridiculous subject, even if the descriptions of the statutes involved sucked some of the fun out of things.
We did get two good questions from the audience: One guy asked whether or not the use of a Russian tank shell, a grenade, and the rope used to bind them together is protected by the Second Amendment (it’s not, because there are limits to what counts as a firearm). Another asked if a distinction could be made between Peacemaker making oath to protect peace by killing any man, woman, and child necessary and actually acting on it (technically no, since his oath is something that would violate a Red Flag law).
So the panels were mostly a bust, and I’ll have to do a better job of picking them next time. Which there will certainly be, because the absolute highlight of my con experience was what came after the “Peacemaker” panel. That’s when I met up with Adrian and Kian, and a couple of their friends, and my buddy Doug (who had driven down just to hang out) and wound up hanging out with them for the next four hours. We were at the Hilton’s bar and while it was loud as hell, we still had an absolute blast catching up and discussing all manner of things. In particular, I came away with a couple of enthusiastic recommendations to finally check out “Ash vs. The Evil Dead.” While I didn’t have a bad time at this year’s WonderCon, I’m ultimately more grateful for the opportunity it provided to hang out with some good friends.