Kapow! Comic Con, which you may or may not have heard of before this week, is a small comic book convention (small by your American standards that is) which has recently seen it's second year here in England and there were a couple of announcements of note.
Saturday
The day started uncomfortably early for me but energy drink in hand, I managed to make it up to the convention in time and began queuing for DC's first panel as soon as I had registered, 'DC's All Access- Special Edition'. The panel was largely 15 minutes of DC trying to justify 'Before Watchmen, followed up by 15 minutes of news on the revamping of Vertigo. Both interesting but nothing that would require spotlighting on The Batman Universe… and I remain indifferent to 'Before Watchmen'.
Even in this Watchmen-centric panel, the subject of the New 52 could not help but rear its head but as is usual for any convention other than San Diego, no exclusives were dropped and the closest we got was reiterations of established news.
Later that day, an Arkham City panel was held with the game director and the directors of art and sound. The focus was on the Game of the Year Edition, particularly the new Harley Quinn DLC pack, but there was also a lot of time for questions from the fans. Something of not when discussing the DLC pack was the assurance that it was never the plan from the start to create the Harley Quinn add-on but after the game ended, it seemed right to follow it up.
On the aesthetic of the game, the directors spoke of how they tried to create a realistic environment for Batman, in the so called "Arkham-verse", whilst still allowing the fantastic elements of the character to shine through. This being the reason for the character's armor-like costumes and the gritty surroundings. The sound of the game was also created to evoke an in-game experience, allowing the player to fully project themselves onto Batman. The directors also spoke of the freedom that DC gave them with their characters, leading to such things as The Penguin's unique portrayal as well as the ending to the game.
A fan asked whether there were any characters that the directors would have liked to have seen in the game to which they cheerfully replied "Are there any left?" which lead to laughter amongst the crowd which was silenced when the same fan asked whether Jason Todd was a possibility. To this, the directors said that, regrettably, the character has too much convoluted history which would be difficult to work into the game.
Finally, on the talk of Easter Eggs, the panel mentioned that they were surprised that there were still several Easter Eggs that had not been found by anyone, including one that has been visible from the very first trailer. There was, however, no mention of a sequel.
After this panel, I joined the rest of the convention which by that point, had grown to accommodate the stereotypical comic book fan, the body odor was pungent and one couldn't move for being pressed against a moist, novelty T-shirt. However, I soldiered on and managed to track down some back-issues I'd been after.
To end the day, I went to the Stan Lee awards panel, a profane and chaotic hour and a half which was far too energetic considering the amount of walking that took place during the day. However, it was an exciting panel for a DC fan as out of 12 awards, only 8 of which were relevant, DC won 6! Those were:
Best Comic Series- Detective Comics (Vol. 1)
Best Writer- Scott Snyder
Best Comic Hero- Batman
Best Toy/Game- Arkham City
Best Publisher- DC
Man or Woman of the Year- Scott Snyder
Congratulations to DC and especially Scott Snyder for their awards, they were definitely well deserved!
And so ends day one at Kapow! Comic Con.
Posted by Joe Jinks
