It’s 7:00am and the plane is just pulling away from the gate. It’s the first sunshine filled morning here in New York City in almost three weeks of rain and I’m sitting on a plane heading for Chicago, the windy city! So not where I wanted to be at 7am on a Saturday morning. "Excuse me, I think I have the aisle seat." Did I mention it’s 7am . . . in the morning!? We got word that Joss Whedon was going to be speaking at the Wizard World Comic Convention and what better addition to CityofAngel.com than a few words from the Creator of all the madness himself! So I found myself, air plane ticket in hand, and my boss telling me I was headed to another convention. "Don’t worry," Dawn says happily over the phone, "Chris Golden will be there too!" Like that’s supposed to be a triple espresso caffeine injection or something. Chris, a man with a mission. He’s my inspiration after all. Who else could write his own accomplished novels, a series of two full-time comic book lines, Buffy the Vampire Slayer tie-in novels and the just released mega Monster Book. (Note to self: Call Kate at Barnes & Noble and complain that they haven’t gotten the book in yet!) Okay, well maybe Joss works as hard, but he’s supposed to! "No thank you, it’s a little early for peanuts!"
A preview of Fray, the new comic
being written by Joss Whedon.
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The plane lands ahead of schedule, 9:05am and I disembark - don’t you just love that word? I mean, really, how many times do you get to use a word like that. Disembark. Sounds like something you’d do to your neighbor’s dog at 3am. I’m laughing to myself because I’m thinking, ‘Dawn won’t be able to use any of this!’ So I step off the plane to find Dawn patiently waiting for me. Her flight arrived in Chicago at 7:30am, so now I don’t feel as bad. We catch a cab to the hotel and gather our gear up to catch another cab over to the Rosemont Convention Center. This is the second day of the three day convention and at 10:20am the ‘Welcome to Wizard World!’ banner greets us as we step up to get our badges. "Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ . . ." (never mind!) We first went to scope out the conference room where Joss would be speaking in less then three hours. It was huge! According to the convention stats, this room, opened up from four smaller rooms, held a capacity of over 900+ people. Dawn and I looked at each other and collectively let out a whispered, "Whoa!" Kind of like that surfer vampire dude in the premiere of this season's Buffy. Two gigantic viewing screens bordered either side of the stage. A large dais was set up complete with podium. The sound crew was working on the last minute touches, checking the mics and reviewing the stills to be shown from the overhead projector. We got a sneak peek at the up-coming Buffy and Angel comics due out this month and the very first cover art of Joss’s own penned comic Fray to be released in 2001.
Time check, work mode - 11:15am. We entered into the main section of the convention where all the dealers, distributors and expositions were being held. Everyone who was someone was represented here, from DC Comics to Marvel to the new television series Witchblade starring Yancy Butler and John Carpenters’ Dark Angel. First stop for CoA were the booths for Dark Horse Press and Inkworks, Inc. Thankfully they were only one booth apart from each other and although the convention had just started, fans and industry personnel alike were already piling in looking for their favorite expos. Dark Horse, the producer of both the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ANGEL comic series were swamped handing out posters and previews of up-coming issues. Later in the day Scott Allie, Editor on Angel/BtVS/Fray for Dark Horse Comics, would be looking at artists' portfolios in hopes of hiring on a budding new artist to the already amazingly talented DH staff. Christopher Golden and Tom Snieogsky would be doing an autograph signing right after Joss’s panel.
Scott Allie, DH Editor, had this
to say about CoA: "CityofAngel.com
is a great resource for Angel fans.
It's well designed, has many in-depth
articles and features, a thorough
listing of information of the Angel
comic books from Dark Horse
Comics and a lot more!"
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Tom was just as eager to get his hands on a CoA T-shirt so we blackmailed him for an interview! "Hey, who said comics can’t be ruthless? Hey mister! That poster’s mine!" "Swoop, let him have it." "Why?" "He’s 12!" We were lucky to meet up with Micheal Ring, one of the Public Relation reps for DH and he had some very nice things to say about CityofAngel.com. Chris was also nice enough to introduce us to Eric Powell, one of the featured artists for DH who does a lot of the work on the Buffy and ANGEL comics. They have some really cool issues planned and both Chris and Tom were very excited about the forth-coming Spike & Dru comic and the Giles one-shot coming out later this year.
Meloney Chadwick, writer for the Inkworks trading cards, popped around the corner to say 'hi'. She then herded us over to the Inkworks booth, leaving her old pals Chris and Tom to fend for themselves. Martha Modlin, Exec. VP of the company, was eagerly handing out Promotional Cards for all their up-coming series lines. Not only are they busy with the fourth season of Buffy, but this year, along with the new ANGEL cards, they have also added Charmed and Roswell to their growing successful collection! Martha looked like she was happy for any excuse for a break, having just spent the previous weekend at the San Diego Convention. When she informed us that San Diego was about three times larger than Wizard World we were speechless. And for a writer, so not of the good! We got to preview a couple of the new ANGEL cards as well as the fourth series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
The Man. Some call him Evil.
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We were shown the Spike and Xander cards and were given a cast card especially created for the WW Convention. Season Four cards will be launched the end of September and will feature a 90-card set containing categories such as Beastiary Cards, Willow’s Wicca Ways, Inside the Initiative and Strange Sightings in Sunnydale plus three levels of Bonus Cards. Also included will be autograph cards from cast members Emma Caulfield (Anya), Marc Blucas (Riley) and Danny Strong (Jonathan), just to name a few.
It’s 12:30pm, time to lock in our seats and get ready to hear the man who created it all. The room filled up quicker than you can imagine with some people even filing in to secure a spot while the preceding X-Men presentation was still going. Before you knew it the room was completely full and humming with a buzz, or is that a buff, of anticipation. 1:00pm, right on time and the lights began to dim slightly as the first screen lit up. They previewed the forth-coming comics, art and photo covers from both Buffy and Angel and capsulated what we could expect in coming issues. With the final shot of the much anticipated Fray cover, Joss was introduced and stepped from behind the curtain, how apropos, to thunderous applause!
... the front of
his shirt had just
one word on it,
HACK.
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He wore a comfortable ensemble of jeans, T-shirt and draping flannel shirt, The man has style! And humility, as the front of his shirt had just one word on it, HACK. This was quickly commented on from the audience. "I like your shirt!" shouted a young man. "Thank you!" replied Joss smiling.
And so it began, 45 minutes of questions and answers from the fans to the man and the man to the fans. The creative driving force that brought Buffy into our living rooms each week now brings us ANGEL! With his own penning Slayer Comic perched in the wings and the ever present thought of a feature film looming in the distance, Joss allowed us this very rare glimpse into the source of his creative genius. Am I gushing too much? No really, it was funny, inspiring, amusing and intriguing! Although a lot of questions were asked that Joss wouldn’t/couldn't answer, he did offer some interesting tidbits. The floor was opened up to questions and the audience offered their adulates as they took their place in line before the mic. So, from Joss Whedon to his fans, here are some of the highlights!
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