WonderCon: The Geeks of San Francisco

This past April Fool's Day, I pulled off the ultimate prank of tricking people into thinking I was a nerd by attending my first-ever WonderCon during a weekend in San Francisco. WonderCon is sorta like a Comic-Con lite, but this year's convention went big with some appearances by stars like Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively (Green Lantern) and Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan (Hanna).

Anyway, the joke was on the WonderConventioneers when they realized I pulled the April Fool's wool over their eyes and turned out to be a totally supercool dude merely pretending to be geek. Suckers! It was cosplay, whatever that means! You should've seen the looks on their Batfaces!!! It was like Issue 104 of the DC Comics classic Silver Age... I mean, wait, what?

Um, just check out my show coverage after the jump»

Comic-Con 2010 - Thursday: The Nerdical Limit

Thursday morning I arrived in San Diego to attend Comic-Con International 2010, and let me tell you, my warp drive is exhausted! Nerd humor! I'll be here all weekend. Try the veal! No, really, I'll be here all weekend. Dunno about the veal, though.

Anyway, Day 1 of my annual trip to the San Diego Convention center culminated in reaching the nerdical limit of geekdom -- previewing movie props and new toys including merch sneaks from Monster High, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Super 7, Scott Pilgrim, Mez-Itz and Minimates, scoring bags full of freebies and exclusives, and attending a highlarious panel with Rob Corddry, Rob Huebel, Ken Marino and the rest of the cast of Adult Swim's Childrens Hospital.

Read more (and see almost 100 pics!) after the jump.

LEGO DUPLO Gallery

Welcome to the first installment of my LEGO DUPLO Gallery. Me + boredom + toy blocks = this...

Superman


Spider-Man


Iron Man & the Hulk


Iron Man vs. the Hulk


Black Widow


The Vision


Cyclops


The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' Raphael


Optimus Prime


Optimus Prime ready to go cruisin'.


Soundwave


WALL-E


Mickey Mouse


Oscar the Grouch


Papa Smurf


Chewbacca


C-3PO, R2-D2 and a Jawa

Comic-Connage

I feel like poopsticks today, so while the boys are at Comic-Con, I'm sitting here crying softly in the hotel room (which is located so conveniently close to the highway you can actually tell how heavy traffic is by sound alone), eating extra crunchy peanut butter out of the jar without the help of utensils and overpaying for internet access to upload some piccys.

Comic-Con is like crowded or something. It's never a small group of people, but the damn thing almost totally sold out this year, so I think that means that there are more nerds and geeks in the world than ever before. It's funny that this is the year that Comic-Con is blowing up huge, since in my opinion the programming isn't as good as it has been in past years. I dunno, maybe I'm just jaded.

Anyhoo, I took some pics of cute toys and stuff.

They were actually advertising the fact that you could get real, live Stargate Atlantis water at some concession stands. It's been forever since we made it back to Atlantis, so it was pretty exciting to get a taste of the sweet, life-giving water of the lost continent.


I think this is like a copy of a gold box from some Bible movie or something.


The cutest little world-eater you'll ever meet.

Batman, from the Super Friends series. I like his little half-smile.

Get a load of these huggable heroes. I really like the idea of superhero toys for little kids. I don't know why.

Blogger is being weird so I'll do more pics in another post.

2006 in Review, Part 2

There are mere moments left in 2006, at least here at Hands in the Air HQ, and I'm taking a break from getting drunk off my ass and singing the wrong words to Auld Lang Syne to post my year in review.

Best Comic Event:
Marvel's Civil War


It's the kind of thing nerds crave--who would win in a fight between Captain America and Iron Man? Now we're kind of getting a chance to answer that and many other hero vs. hero battles that were once the realm of "What if..." tales. This also proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that Iron Man is a dick. I've been saying that for years, and it's nice to finally have some back-up.

Worst Comic Event:
Spider-Man: The Other

Spider-Man ate a vampire's head, died, came back to life after a spirit-quest and then confronted an enemy made out of a swarm of mystical spiders. As Stan Lee would say, 'Nuff Said.

Comic Movie that Raped my Childhood the Hardest:
Superman Returns

Brian Singer, in remaking the original Superman: The Movie, basically took the world's most iconic super hero and turned him into a deadbeat dad. Thanks. There's so much wrong with this movie that I don't know where to begin, but when I'm rooting for Lois and her love-child with Superman to drown in a watery grave, that's a bad sign. The sweet irony is that nerds all over, myself included, were panicked that Singer's departure from the X-Men franchise would spell certain doom, but Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand is in every way a better film (not great, but better), than Superman Returns.

Best Movie of the Year:

Trick category. No Star Wars films were released this year therefore cinema, as both art and entertainment, stagnated. Maybe there'll be something in 2007. I hear good things about Spider-Man 3.

Best Movie Ending No One Saw:
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Sure, the theatrical version just kind of stops after a long, meandering 2-and-a-half hours, but I've heard that in the super-secret ultimate collector's edition, Gore Verbinski will include the real ending. I hear Disney plans to release the finale, which also clocks in at 2-and-a-half hours or more, in theaters next year. I think it's called Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Since I paid for the first half of the movie already, will I have to pay for the rest? Time will tell.

Best New Magazine:
Girls & Corpses Magazine

Okay, it's probably not new this year, but c'mon. Do you like girls? I do. Do you like corpses? Who the hell doesn't? Put them together and it's like the peanut butter in your chocolate or the K-Y Jelly in your embalming fluid. HOT!

Best Prank of the Year:

Bring a copy of Girls & Corpses Magazine to work and leave it in the public bathroom. Make sure to paste on a fake label with your manager's address on it for extra punch. Stick some pages together with a few smears of glue for an added creep factor.


That's it for me and for 2006. I've got to get going because Jenni is pretending to be passed out at the Standard Hotel downtown in another desperate attempt to get groped by a stranger/star and Jason's too busy demonstrating his Jean-Claude Van Damme dance from Kickboxer for a bunch of drunk chicks to pick her up. See you next year!

R.I.P., R.I.P., R.I.P.

They say it comes in threes. This week, three influential talents in Hollywood that you might not have known about have passed away: Glenn Ford, Ed Benedict and Joseph Stefano.

Glenn Ford
(Actor, Blackboard Jungle, Superman)

May 1, 1916 – August 30, 2006

Actor Glenn Ford starred as the teacher in Blackboard Jungle and played Pa Kent in the 1978 Superman movie. His other memorable roles include Gilda and The Courtship of Eddie's Father (the movie, not the TV series starring the kid who would go on to become a hardcore punk singer in real life).

Ed Benedict
(Animator)

August 23, 1912 – August 28, 2006

Cartoonist Ed Benedict was a designer and layout artist who started out working for Tex Avery at MGM. He'd soon move on to Hanna-Barbera, where he designed Quick Draw McGraw (who, I suspect, would later influence the drawling speech patterns of Dr. Phil McGraw), The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss and other icons of the golden age of animation. Heavens to Murgatroyd.

Joseph Stefano
(Screenwriter, Psycho)

May 5, 1922 - August 25, 2006

Screenwriter Joseph Stefano wrote the screenplay to Psycho (and added the famous shower scene, which wasn't in the book) and co-created the TV series, The Outer Limits.

Superman Blows

Before you pack away all of your Superman Returns merchandise to make room for your poofy-shirted collection of Pirates figures, check out some of our additional uses for your toys in tights. Granted, all of the Superman products are about as dumb as Lois getting super-knocked-up and having a Superbaby in the movie, so only you're to blame if you actually purchased any of the movie merch.
In a follow-up to a story that Jenni posted two months ago, we're putting the spotlight back on one of this year's most ridiculous Superman toys -- the Super Breath Superman action figure. When the man of steel is permanently puckered into his blowing face, you're pretty limited with the superhero (or super-hetero) possibilities for your toy. Aside from the overall vomit-launching caliber of the movie, blowing isn't really a major theme in the film, so we've concocted some other situations for the exhaling Superman to get all huffy about...

Podcast Episode #006: It's a Bird! It's a Plane!

Podcast #006 is now available! It's been a while, but after our unceremonius firing of Star Jones Reynolds from the Hands in the Air discussion roundtable, we've finally assembled our sixth show.

Clockwise from top: Jason, Jenni, Chris and Steve
Not pictured: Star Jones

Search for the Hands in the Air podcast at the iTunes Music Store to hear us talk about Superman Returns and other topics.

Vote for our podcast! And be sure to vote for our episode at Podcast Alley so we can be the most popular podcast of the month. That'll show Star Jones!

Superman Returns

Now in theaters.


I can totally see through
everyone's clothes from up here.

The Power to Blow You Away

The Superman Returns merch has started hitting shelves, prompting polite chuckles (building to riotous laughter) every time Jason, Steve and I go into a toy store or comic shop.

As painfully awkward and unbecoming as the redesigned Superduds are on handsome Mr. Brandon Routh (Since when is Superman's cape freakin' maroon? Wha's wif the li'l S-Shield? Is the whole outfit really made of S-textured material? [It is S-textured material. It is. Good lord.] Must he wear a hip-slung belt with yet another S-shield? How many "S"es does this motherfucker need on his costume?), they look even worse on a wee plastic figure, possibly 'cause everyone knows what the costume on Superman toy should look like, and baby, this ain't it.

On our latest visit to one of the comic book stores we go to alla time we took a look at the figs and were delighted to find the Super Breath Superman figure, a plastic celebration of what is arguably Superman's least-sexy superpower. It features real blowing action and a cardboard figure of Lex Luthor to, ahem, blow. Down. Blow down. Blow down Lex! Yeah.

Immediately all three of us thought of the hours of photographic fun we could have with the puffy-cheeked plaything, and we knew we needed one. We'll be slowly rolling out the pics we take until the movie comes out or we get bored with it, whichever comes first.

Here's our first set of Superpics.

It's actually almost like a story.

Welcome back, Superman!

Mmmm. Strawberry. Luckily, my brain of steel is impervious to brainfreeze. Wait a minute! My supervision has spotted something!

Whooo-ee, boy. Batchicks are like, totally frigid. I wonder what Power Girl's doing right now. She ain't my cousin and I ain't complaining.

Jason, Steve and Jenni collaborated on the concepts and photos.