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We return to my San Diego Comic Con wrap up, and we’re at the panels! Now I didn’t go to any in Hall H, that madness is huge and I’d likely never have gotten any other pictures. As you’ll notice, our title image is different, this comes from the Indigo Ballroom during the Friday day-long set of Adult Swim panels. We’ll get to those last, let’s start at the beginning, and when we get to the end, I’ll stop.

I went to the Womanathology booth after having gone to this panel. It was nice to hear about this Kickstarter funded collection of stories by women artists and writers. This was where we got to learn a little bit about the process behind making their stories. It was really informative and everyone should go check out that book.

The Bleeding Alliance panel had folks from all over comics journalism come together to tell about their experiences. It was really useful for someone who wants to get more into writing about comics and the interesting paths one can take to get there. We heard of one of the worst jobs ever thanks to Tom Spurgeon, I won’t repeat it here, let’s just say it involved used underwear.

This was the panel I’d been waiting to see. I’m a big Mega 64 fan and I’ve never gotten to see one of their panels live. This was their first panel at Comic Con, the San Diego-based team was so happy to be at Con. Having been fans of Comic Con for most of their lives, it was a dream come true for them to be able to be on stage there. They did an amazing job with their intro video and dance madness at the beginning. Rocco’s family got to be there to watch, unfortunately, they had to sit in the far back due to the crowd; many people couldn’t make it into the room for the show. The guys were great and grateful to be there, and answered questions and gave out gifts to some of the questioners. I hope that next year they can get an even bigger room to let everyone in on the fun, and I can’t wait for this year’s Game Days.

On Friday I went to spend my day in the Indigo Ballroom for the Adult Swim panels for the whole day. Keith Crofford was ready to introduce the day and madness that was about to occur.

We started the day with Venture Bros., this time only Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer could be here, but they still made it great (and classy with those suits). We got some footage from the new show, through animatics and images of new and old characters. We learned that while the new season won’t start until next year, we will get a Halloween special this year, so I’m excited.

National Terrorism Strike Force: San Diego: Sports Utility Vehicle was on hand to show us  the episode that was inspired by Comic Con. It changed greatly from the idea we first saw, and the footage the entire ballroom filmed last year was scrapped due to poor sound and coming up with a new idea. At least the new episode was silly fun, and the show looks like it wants to keep that up.

Between the NTSF:SD:SUV panel and the Childrens Hospital panel we were all handed bags with a comic of the former show, and some of us got wigs and glasses of the NTSF lead character, Trent Hauser, while the others got medical caps and a clown nose for the Childrens’ character Dr. Blake Downs. We then got to sign forms to allow the use of our image, and got a massive picture taken for Adult Swim’s Facebook page.

Childrens Hospital was on hand, being wonderful at improvising jokes on us. We got to see a new episode of the show involving the chaos of a communicable form of amnesia. The cast has always been good at making everyone laugh, and made jokes at Ken Marino’s robe, asking him when his boxing match was.

The Aqua Something You Know Whatever/Squidbillies panel had an amazing intro and outro of live guitar playing rocking the audience. The casts often would talk in character voices, and we got to watch episodes of both shows, both being pretty funny with one dealing with a giant robot fighting a monster, while the other was of the mystery of a killer.

Robot Chicken showed us a new episode and a collection of scenes from the new season, and their DC Comics special episode. I am really intrigued with seeing them tell a somewhat coherent story, as it looks like the whole episode may just be one long story and not just bits, which would be pretty great to see. Aquaman turning evil and in the process saving the day, has a lot of potential for comedy and action.

I’m a huge Black Dynamite fan, so I was happy to see that the show was finally coming out after getting to see the pilot last year. We got to watch the first episode a few days early from its television premiere, and it was very much in the setting of the bizarre 1970s blaxploitation world of Black Dynamite. BD is still super bad and ready to save the day from all sorts of nefarious villains. I mean a show that has Black Dynamite fight alien Michael Jacksons is pretty amazing to just hear get said, but to watch it and it be even crazier is an accomplishment.

So those were all the panels I saw, not much I know, but that was because I was busy helping out some friends. Tune in next time for my final post on San Diego Comic Con 2012: I Was A Cosplay Roadie.

Alexander Bustos
drbustos@comicattack.net