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Philly post-mortum
2008-06-03 17:56:50
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Convention reports can be pretty tedious, especially for those who weren’t in attendance. But there were a couple things worth mentioning about this past weekend’s Wizard World Philadelphia show, so I’m just going to bullet point them for expediency’s sake.
--I screwed up at one panel, and let a bit of info slip that shouldn’t have been let out yet. Fortunately, none of the news sources covering the panel caught my faux pas or reported it—but that didn’t stop me from feeling stupid for the rest of the show. I’m usually better than that.
--Friday was the traditional Cheesesteak excursion, where a bunch of us piled into a cab and rode out into the night in search of Philly’s signature foodstuff. I ate far too much cheesesteak, and couldn’t even finish my cheese fries. Dynamic Forces’ Nick Barrucci, who was also there, tried to get us to walk a few blocks over to sample the city’s water ice. We all begged off—but that didn’t stop Nick from buying something like eight gallons of the stuff and bringing it over to the hotel bar where we were camped out after dinner.
--Was approached after one of our Marvel panels by Bill Smith, who for a lot of years was my supplier for Japanese animation videotapes. Hadn’t seen or heard from him in two decades, so it was good to see him looking well.
--Found a few old, obscure Jack Kirby pre-Marvel romance and western comics out on the floor.
--Dan Slott and I talked through the storyline for AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #600 over lunch. It’ll either be one for the ages, or finito for the bunch of us.
--A woman who shops at my old Delaware comic shop, Captain Blue Hen’s, came by to tell me that the store owners had shown her some of the writing and artwork I’d done for their newsletter almost twenty years earlier, and she thought it was genius. Clearly delusional.
--Brian Reed, Dan Slott and I skipped out on Saturday night festivities to go see Indiana Jones at Philly’s swanky theater, “The Bridge.” It was a pretty impressive place, though a trifle pricey. The film wasn’t bad—not a great picture, but perfectly entertaining for two hours if you didn’t think about it too much (especially if you walked in with some attachment to the Indy mythos, which we all more-or-less had.)
--Had breakfast with my brother Joe and his wife Jen in the same little café we went to last year. Good food, nice conversation—good to catch up with them. I would have liked to have spent a little more time than the hour or so that breakfast took, but I had a full slate on Sunday.
--Prize or No-Prize went well. For whatever reason, the crowd in Philadelphia really gets into the competition in a way that fans in other areas don’t. Maybe it’s as simple as the fact that we debuted the event there two years back, but there’s such a positive, upbeat feeling in the room, and a real sense that everybody is cheering for whomever happens to be in the “Hot Seat” at any given time. Long lost ex-associate editor Molly Lazer came out to lend a hand and be a special Prize Monkey. We gave away an advance copy of SECRET INVASION #3 as one of the big prizes, and the winner of the book came up to me later and told me that I’d made his life a living hell—that now, wherever he went on the convention floor, people were coming up to him begging to take a look at it. Fortunately, we had him sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement upon winning the book…
--Once again, I had some time to kill, so I stopped in on Dan Didio’s chat panel on Sunday, and brought the big man a comic he had spoken about at the New York show. (I was quite astonished to see that my cameo appearance was completely omitted from the panel report over on Newsarama—make of that what you will.)
--We did the road-test for the Marvel: Your Universe panel at the end of the show, which started off slow, but came together all right by the end of it. Best moment was probably Dan Slott telling the story of how he met a live-action Spider-Man when he was a kid. All in all, we got a lot of diverse feedback about the books we’re doing, and attracted almost a capacity crowd by the time the event was over. We’re going to need to tighten up our presentation when we take this on the road to Chicago in a few weeks, but at least now we know where the bugs seem to be. And the audience seemed to have a good time overall.
--It almost took longer to drop CB Cebulski off in Manhattan and get back off the island than it did to drive from Philly to New York in the first place.
That’s it for me. How about you?
Tom B
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-- What was the info you dropped?
-- D'you go to Pat's and Geno's? That's the best way to try a lot of cheesesteak really quickly. I have a friend who whenever we're in town decides we're going to get one from Pat's and then walk across the street and get one at Geno's.
Posted by motteditor on 2008-06-03 18:25:23
Isn't it "post-mortem"?
Posted by CylverSaber on 2008-06-03 22:52:32
no cheese
...till brooklyn
Posted by notapotatoe on 2008-06-04 09:52:31
Sounds like...
...you guys had a great time.
Any news on any upcoming Marvel Video games? :)
Posted by Aziroth on 2008-06-04 14:20:50
I've always wondered
Is it rude to try and hand an editor your contact information or work you've done at a con?
Posted by kedd on 2008-06-04 17:38:54
WW Philly
Tom, I wanted to thank you guys for Prize or No Prize and the Marvel: Your Universe panels, I had a fantastic time at both! I was the guy who got 10 of the 12 mutants for the last question that you guys had to kick off for taking too long to think! So close! I love the idea behind the Your Universe panel and really enjoyed talking comics with everyone.
Also, Dan Slott was probably the most entertaining part of WW for me this year. I talked to him about ASM for a while after the Secret Invasion panel and loved his Spidey story from his childhood.
Posted by godzockey on 2008-06-04 20:22:38
Wish I was there, but passports and tickets are beyond my means. Sigh... there was a time when we Canucks didn't need to get passports to visit the US of A.
Stop by western Canada if there's a good convention. There's more to Canada than Toronto, you know. ;-)
Posted by DRock1 on 2008-06-06 11:49:17
Cheesesteaks
We hit both Pat's and Geno's again this year, as has become our tradition, to compare their respective cheesesteaks each year. We do it just like motteditor says he does it, some of us wait in line at Geno's while the others go wait at Pat's. We buy each other steaks then eat together and talk comics and food. Dan and Tom preferred Pat's again this year, but I thought Geno's was a little better this time around. Last year we also did Jim's and Iskabibles, where we had an interesting pizza cheesesteak. However, DeNic's pulled pork sandwich with sharp provolone and roasted peppers has become my Philly favorite food! I had one for breakfast every day I was there. Simply amazing!
Posted by C.B. CEBULSKI on 2008-06-09 13:53:00
I was the loudmouth w/ the GotG shirt
Tom, the Marvel: Your Universe panel was my 1st ever panel & I'm glad that I attended & that you put up with my questions/comments.
Posted by BoSoxFan2004WS on 2008-07-02 14:22:05
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About this blog:
Ramblings and musings from the mind of Tom Brevoort. "It won’t be clean. It won’t be fun. It mostly won’t be coherent."
 | About the author:
Tom Brevoort is Executive Editor for Marvel Comics, and oversees such titles as New Avengers, Civil War, and Fantastic Four. |
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