Comic-Con wrap-up

At the 2009 Comic-Con, Marvel blew everyone away by announcing that they'd acquired the rights to Marvelman. If you're not familiar with the character or its history, it's a little hard to explain why this was so exciting. I guess, imagine if the Nationals announced tomorrow that they'd signed Babe Ruth. It's far from a perfect analogy, and in the year since then, Marvel hasn't really done much with those rights. But at the time, it was a major fucking deal.

The 2010 Comic-Con didn't quite have anything that good. And what good stuff there was, was mainly limited to the film/TV side of things. But here are the things that caught my attention:

-- The character of Chloe from Smallville is being written into the Superman comics. See what I mean about this year not having much in the way of news? This was actually considered a huge announcement. And unless you care about vintage Mickey Mouse comics being reprinted or a new Kull series, that's really about it.

-- Will Eisner's A Contract With God is being made into a film. The most depressing film ever made.

-- Grant Morrison is launching yet another new Batman series: Batman, Inc. I love the title. I have no idea what it might refer to. What I do know is that this brings DC's number of titles each month featuring Batman or Batman-related characters to roughly a thousand. Okay, a thousand is a bit of an exaggeration. More like 983. Maybe Batman, Inc. is about the department at DC Comics that keeps churning these titles out to make an easy buck.

-- The Walking Dead trailer looks incredible. I picked up Volume 12 over the weekend, and if the show sticks even somewhat close to the comic, this is going to be a great TV series. (About five years ago, I was at the Baltimore Comic-Con and Robert Kirkman was sitting all alone at his table. I bought the first volumes of The Walking Dead and Invincible from him, and got them autographed. I'm guessing the line would be a lot longer now.)

-- I avoid MMORPGs like the plague, given the time and money commitment involved. I barely play my Xbox. So the idea of keeping up with a game that requires constant attention is a bit off putting. But man, this looks good.

-- If I was Ryan Reynolds and I was at Comic-Con and I was asked to recite the Green Lantern oath, I would have probably said, "Screw you, nerds," and gone off to have sex with Scarlett Johansson or stand in front of a mirror admiring my abs. So the fact that he was willing to stand up and do it was actually pretty cool. I hope they're doing something about that costume, though.

-- The big news about the rumored Wonder Woman film is that there was no news. People were apparently expecting an announcement, but there was nothing. I think WB knows it'd be a flop. Just picture yourself going to the movie theater and asking, "Hi, can I get two tickets for Wonder Woman?" I think most people would wait for the DVD, if not skip it altogether.

-- Marvel doing something with the CrossGen characters isn't exactly Marvelman big, but it's still kind of interesting. The only CrossGen series I really enjoyed was Ruse, and the main reason I didn't warm to the others was because of the sigil/shared universe nonsense, which totally undermined the entire point of doing all these comics in different genres. Hopefully, Marvel will fix CrossGen's mistakes.

-- The whole cast for The Avengers was announced.

I love Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye. But Mark Ruffalo, just like Eric Bana, seems a bit too good-looking to play Bruce Banner. I really wish they'd been able to work things out with Ed Norton.

-- Finally, someone got stabbed in the eye in a dispute over a seat at a panel. It was shocking, but frankly, I'm surprised it took this long. All those people in such a limited space with such strong opinions on controversial issues like DC vs. Marvel? Wars vs. Trek? Old Galactica vs. new Galactica? By all rights, stabbings should be a yearly occurrence at Comic-Con.