Pictures from the 2018 Comic-Con International, part 5 (Friday, 7/20)

I apparently took a whole lot of pictures this year at Comic-Con. There are a whopping 40 in this post, all of which were taken on the Friday of the show. But these aren't all I have from Friday! I'll split the post up again and show Friday evening's images soon. For now, let's all take a look at what I saw from the time the convention center opened at 9:30am until it closed at 7:00pm!

The Fantastic Four blockade is ending, people! Marvel highlighted the new FF series on the back of their booth this year.

DC tries to make their movies good...I guess. Their Aquaman display was prominently placed at the convention hall.

And the New England Comics booth remains next to both of these giant displays. Have you seen our sign?

This Megatron might have been the best costume I saw for the show. Any outfit that requires stilts gets points from me.

This Tick brought his own spoon.

And this individual...came out to play-ay-ayyy.

Group shot. Is that Captain Marvel?

The Dark Horse booth held a Dr. Horrible signing on Friday, and I was fortunate enough to get a wristband for the event. In attendance were Joss Whedon, Felicia Day and Nathan Fillion!

This is a pretty good Fillion face, can we all agree with that? And congrats to Felicia Day for having what looks like a Polly Pocket phone case.

I'm blocking Fillion with the brim of my hat, but do you what you can.

We've got Hellboy on the left. On the right...is that from Steven Universe? Should I know this?

This is a pretty good modern Batgirl costume. Constantine is okay.

Look at this Shiny family!

Those Duff energy drinks they sell come in handy as props.

I have a feeling that this is a bait-and-switch.

I ambushed David X. Cohen, co-creator of Futurama, as he passed by the booth. Yes, I talked to him about "Jurassic Bark". There's nothing to be done about it.

I can really appreciate dressing up as a character from a show that hasn't aired new episodes in 50 years. Looking good, Skipper.

The DC Bombshell line is kind of weird, but this costume is great, regardless.

She-Ra! Yes!

I apparently took a walk outside at this time. What is the reason? It's impossible to say.

These guys were born for this. Good for them for going all in.

The Patch Wolverine is really nice.

I enjoy this picture because the background is a little blurry, making it look like the Flash is casually speeding by.

The second Tick of the day!

Deadpool's Super Duper Dance Party animatronic display was as garish and annoying as it should have been. It blared Dolly Parton's "Nine to Five" every 15 minutes or so. There was always a crowd.

Should I know all of the different Judges? It's a job well done in any case.

Funko makes these giant models...what happens to them after the show? Where to they store these things?

Incredibles 2 was so great. So great! And this is a really nice Elastigirl costume.

These folks were hanging out and chatting, so I couldn't get a posed group shot. There was still some impressive work done. And is that Han Solo in the back, or is it just a guy in a vest?

That's a spot on '89s Scott Summers.

Peace and long life to these Trekkies.

I had to tell my dad that there was 10-foot Lawgiver statue at Comic-Con. Beautiful.

This is from Empress, right? Or am I totally off base?

It looks like the guy from "Up" got trapped in Jurassic Park.

This is the second Fifth Element costume I saw! What are the odds?!

Nice of her to offer free fruit to passersby.

Ghost Rider with Troll hair. It works.

The Batman Returns Penguin might be the scariest comic movie villain. I'm standing by this.

As the day was ending, I took the stairs up a level and got a few pictures of the show floor. This one is of the small press area, where you can see...my wonderful banner.

This picture shows about 4% of the show floor, I think. What an enormous convention this is. So big that I still have pictures left to show from Friday evening. Next time!

The Black Terror by Ramona Fradon and Duane Redhead

Perhaps you recall my Black Terror: Wednesday at the Diner webcomic/comic strip/mini comic/whatever that Rafer Roberts and I worked on a few years ago. It's been a while, but I'm slowly putting together some new material on that front for an eventual book, and two cool pieces of that recently came together from two great artists, so I thought I'd share them here!

The first is an image of the classic Black Terror from Golden Age artist (and personal favorite) Ramona Fradon. Fradon is an underrated legend in the comic book industry, and I'm kind of stunned that I was able to commission her in the first place. She's been drawing comics for almost 70 years and might be best known for co-creating Aqualad and Metamorpho for DC Comics. What a thrill it is to work with her in even the slightest capacity.

Our next piece is from a familiar source, Mr. Duane Redhead! Duane took some time from drawing the Tick to pencil and ink this lovely image of an elderly (but still muscular, check out those biceps) Black Terror and Mr. Q. The backdrop for this image is the city of Cleveland, because Cleveland is just kind of a funny place.

I'll update this page with more info on my take on the Black Terror in the future. For now, I'm excited to see these images.

Pictures from the 2014 Comic-Con International, part 10 (Nathan Fillion & Alan Tudyk @ NerdHQ, the Taco Truck and more!)

Ah, Comic-Con.  Where has the time gone?  We're closer to the 2015 show than we are the 2014 version, and yet here I am, still showing pictures from last year.  What can you do?  All of these pictures are from Sunday, the final day of the event, which was, all things considered, fairly low-key but still included a lot of great moments.  Here are a few.

Parodying the Comic-Con protestors never goes out of style, and sometimes includes horse masks.  The handles are, I guess, Instagram accounts, because they don't show up on Twitter.  A shame.

A big part of Sunday, for me, was spent back at Nerd HQ for their "Conversations for a Cause" series, which, as I've stated before, is pretty incredible.  I got tickets (thanks to Larry) for the Nathan Fillion panel.  The 2013 version was so much fun that I had to make it back this year for an encore.  It was more laid back as I already had a year under my belt.  Still, it was fun to see Fillion and Firefly companion Alan Tudyk again in this intimate setting.

As always, the very generous Zach Levi introduced the panel guests.

Fillion was gracious and funny as always.  He mentioned that he sometimes walked the convention floor, dressed in a costume that also covered his face, from time to time.  I wonder how many celebrities do something similar.  It's not a bad plan for blending in.

Firefly will never die, even if Wash did.

There were a lot of great items auctioned off this year.  I'm amazed at how much people are willing to spend.  It's great that all the money goes to Operation Smile, Levi's charity of choice.  I'd like to win something one day (one day...).

The NerdHQ team handled the photo booth better than they did last year, which included a mad rush after the panel had ended.  This year, if you had a ticket to the panel and $20, you could get your picture taken with both Fillion and Tudyk.  My wife and I are fans of Fillion's well documented photobombs, and so we asked to be included in that storied history.  I'd say we got a good one.  So we didn't lose our nerd cred, we were also wearing Futurama brain slugs at the time.

One of the walls at NerdHQ was dedicated to the people who donated to help fund the event.  I had to chip in a little as I take advantage of this offsite event at different points during Comic-Con.  My name made it on the wall right about...

...here.  The entire monstrosity is up online here (search for yourself!  Or search for me!): http://www.thenerdmachine.com/wall-of-honor-updated/

After the panel and picture session ended, it was time to head back.  Do these Pokemon outfits count as onesies?

And it was time for another trip across the bridge, which called for yet another picture of the convention center and the city...but this time...it was a panoramic view.  How nice.

One thing brought about by more events taking place on the back lawn is a longer line to the vaunted Taco Truck.  It was a bit distressing...but there was still a fairly short wait to the front of the line, and the Taco Truck is worth every minute spent waiting.

Here's the man in charge.  I love him.  And his burritos.

Here's a fairly prescient costume, given the ending of the Guardians of the Galaxy movie.  Good on this kid, though I'm surprised that anyone under 30 knows who Howard the Duck is.

Let's call this "battle damage Iron Man".  A nice job.

Another nice job by Aquawoman, unintentionally standing by a Ghostbuster.

It's strange to look behind you and see someone dressed like this following you.  Kudos to him for taking the picture in stride.

Here's a picture that illustrates how everyone feels at the end of a long convention.

This gentleman probably had the best costume at Comic-Con.  Apocalypse here is affiliated with the Cinema Makeup School, and questions as to if this "counts" as a legitimate fan costume are brought up.  I think it counts.  Either way, it's a heck of a costume.

Catwoman was standing next to Apocalypse.  She did a nice job, but that's a tough act to follow.

Battle Damage Dr. Mrs. The Monarch.

Love the original Trek uniforms.

To the side of the Cartoon Books booth stood this life size RASL statue.  Really cool.

How many times did this guy get described as "outrageous"?  Heck, what's one more time?

This is not the end.  There are still more pictures to show.  And show them we will.  Soon.