So here is my report on a very eventful first day at Kapow. Firstly, it seems the event had plenty of coverage with the Business Design Centre packed full of punters from the start. Inside the building we had the IGN arena as your first point of call with video games set up, sofas to chill out on and watch some of the newest movies, plus a stage with IGN events on all day. Further through the building we had the regular floor with loads of stalls set up selling the regular comics, merchandise and even comic related food. Then towards the back of the building were the signing areas which had all kinds of celebs and creators there for eager fans.
So my day began with a game show hosted by Jonathan Ross, comic pros vs. comic fans. It was a fun little event with Ross doing his best to make Mark Millar, Dave Gibbons and John Romita Jr. look foolish in front of a few hundred fans and was an extremely entertaining start to the weekend.
Then I attended the DC Superstars Creators Panel, which was a little oversold I must say, it was hardly DC's biggest and best but more the British personnel available. The panel was moderated by Bob Wayne, head of sales at DC, and in attendance was Frank Quitely, Paul Cornell & Peter Milligan who were all charming none the less. It was a very chilled out session and it didn't feel from the start that we were going to get much news like the big San Diego events, it was more of a friendly chat about what it is like to work for DC Comics but here are a few bullet points that I picked up on:
Cornell said there will be no new Knight & Squire series but he's happy that Squire will be appearing in Batgirl soon.
Quietly has got a really tough job ahead of him on Grant Morrison's Multiversity story and thinks the first issue is out at the start of next year.
Cornell found he had to translate nearly everything in his Knight & Squire scripts when sending them to the New York office. They had no clue, with all the British slang.
Knight & Squire was Cornell's favorite job ever in comics.
Some Vertigo and DC characters may overlap in the future, citing the character Death appearing in action comics recently, when pressed the guys didn't want to address this, making me think it's happening in the future.
Frank Quitely has no immediate plans to work on Batman Inc but would like to in the future, he's a very busy guy. He also regrets pulling out of Batman & Robin's final three issues with Grant Morrison but had to due to health reasons.
Could Knight & Squire be in Batman inc? It's possible.
Cornell spoke about continuity being a problem when writing new stories and that he used to be 'the continuity guy' but now looks for story first.
So that was all we got and I would have liked DC to put a little more effort into it but the guys there were amusing. So after the fun but rather uneventful DC panel it was time to hit the floor. Warner Bros. had a booth with a competition for tickets for Batman Live, Mark Millar books were unsurprisingly everywhere and there were plenty of fans dressed up including a big Batman pack of heroes and villains.
Next up was the big one of the day, the Green Lantern event. In this we got to see a trailer of the new Green Lantern video game, the UK premiere of the latest DC animated movie, Green Lantern: Emerald Knights which went down well from what I could tell (keep your eyes peeled on the site for my review soon). With everyone in full sci-fi mode after the animated movie we then saw a sizzle reel of this summers Green Lantern movie with a bit more footage than what we saw at WonderCon, including a scene between Sinestro (Mark Strong) & Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), plus a bit more background on the movies villain, Parallax. Some of the shots on the planet Oa looked fantastic as well as the action sequences. All in all it was very encouraging and that film is now a must see this summer.
The day was then finished off with a brief Q & A with Chris Hemsworth (Thor) and Tom Hiddlestone (Loki) at the IGN arena. The guys chatted about the differences between the comic world and what they've created in the new movie, plus they mentioned that they even saw the final film yesterday and both thought it was great.
So that completes my report for day 1. All in all a great start for Kapow and I'm really looking forward to tomorrow. The Millarworld panel will be first item for the day followed by the Misfits panel and the mysterious movie x premiere, people are guessing that it's going to be Thor that gets shown but who knows maybe Millar has a surprise up his sleeve.
Posted by Nick
