Wizard World Philadelphia 2007
06.17.07 / 04:21AM / Joe / comments: 2
Spent the day at Wizard World Philly, along with Josh and Molyneaux. It was our first time, so be gentle. Both of those jerks took about 10x as many pictures, so I'll point you towards their galleries once they get around to posting them.
Wizard World seemed busier than Origins, but that's because WW is pretty much just a vendor/exhibit hall without 24 hour gaming rooms to siphon off nerds. I noticed a lot of the same booths, and probably a lot of the same junk that I've pawed for years. Naturally, the chief distinction is the preponderance of booths selling comics and action figures.
And celebrities. Noel Neill was directly across from Lou Ferigno. I personally talked to Burt Ward and Marv Wolfman (who, aside from being one of the architects of DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths, also created Blade, Bullseye and the awesome version of Lex Luthor).
Wizard World also has a stupid amount of cosplay going on. Here's Josh harassing some innocent Venture Bros. fans.
THEY HAS TEH STORMTROPPERS!
Fantastic paintings. I assume they're for sale.
PaRappa? Really? By the middle of the day, they stopped trekking the PaRappa suit to a secret location for costume changes and just had the performer dress up at the Sony booth. You should have seen this poor thing try to walk.
Some classic backsweat on a dude waiting for Hayden "Kairi" Panettiere to appear. No, she doesn't know anything about Kingdom Hearts 3 (she even asked her Mom for verification). Best quote: "I was driving around in my Por... car."
And when I wasn't trying to figure out who had the better hairpiece, Richard Kiel or Dirk Benedict, it felt like I was home at Origins. Look at this super-sweet Pirates demo table, with giant whirlpool and purposeful "edge of the world" waterfall. Gorgeous. I bought enough Pirates packs to score this year's Convention Exclusive, which consists of two subs (yes!), one unique treasure, and one of those crappy overpriced dudes who steals another crew member on a roll of 6. On a roll of 6. How often is THAT going to happen?!
Here's why I would go to both Wizard World and Origins and not feel like I was wasting my time: the DC Comics panel discussion. They previewed cover art for some upcoming books, and then said "we can't answer that" to pretty much every Q&A question.
Back to the Sony booth. Why aren't the video game guys at Origins? I don't get it. Here's Eye of Judgement, which I watched for a bit but did not play. It's an interesting idea (one that Nintendo should have already done with the Pokemon card game), but I'm not sold on it after seeing it in action. The guys playing it were barely paying attention to the game, just flopping cards and watching animations play out on the PS3. One thing I did like about it was that when the TV showed any panaramas of the battle (not the boring overview pictured), you could see the card characters populating the background... IE, every card on the table was in the shot.
And people get on Nintendo for re-releasing games. U rappin' the same!
We've reached the point where the ad posters for Minimates are cooler than the Minimate figures themselves.
Here's a quick timeline on the coolness of Black Suit Spider-Man:
- when first introduced, not cool at all... universally hated
- when revealed as evil, very cool
- when turned into villain, very very cool
- when said villain turned into lame anti-hero, completely not cool
- when announced as plot feature in new movie, suddenly cool again
- when actually seen in new movie, all new low in cool
- when trotted out in cosplay, makes you think how cold that guy must be
I have a few more stories from Philly, but I will hold those until I steal some pictures from my Wizard World Street Team Touring Crew buddies. | 
