By Shor M. Masori
SAN DIEGO — Because three of the biggest pop culture staples, Marvel, Star Wars, and Game of Thrones, were absent this year, the recently concluded Comic-Con felt much quieter and much less abuzz with nerd-hype.
This quiet is, of course, relative, as to the outside observer it was just as loud and excited as ever. Because three of the top dogs had stayed out this year, it allowed for a different company to be crowned King of the Con 2018, and that company was Warner Bros. Entertainment.
With the newfound hole left from many potential panels, Warner Bros. dominated the biggest ballrooms, bringing a whopping 15 panels to the Con, with one of their panels being the biggest of the Con almost every day. Their panels included fan favorite Young Justice and Big Bang theory writers on Friday, and the CW superhero slate and Riverdale on the weekend. Then there was arguably the biggest event of the entire Con, the 2 ½-hour long panel that spanned six different movies and three of the world’s biggest franchises. The session was simply titled “Warner Bros.”
That panel started by giving each audience member a bracelet with LED lights that were activated by Bluetooth at a specific time. When the cast of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald came out, the audience became part of the spell that star Eddie Redmayne cast to illuminate the room. Then one of my favorite actors, Ezra Miller, walked out as Toadette from the Mario franchise, to which the crowd gave a good laugh.
Soon the crowd cheered as Johnny Depp stepped out dressed in full character as the villainous Gellert Grindelwald. Indiewire reporter Jenna Marotta would later comment that this seemed inappropriate given that Depp’s ex-wife, Amber Heard, who had filed a restraining order during their divorce for verbal and physical abuse, was backstage for the last act in the Warner Bros. panel: Aquaman.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters and The LEGO Movie 2, were rather quickly done panels, as if they were waiting to spend their time on the DC Comics portion.
The DC portion started with the director and stars of Wonder Woman ‘84, Patty Jenkins, Chris Pine, and the amazing Gal Gadot.
They started by saying that WW84 is not a sequel to the first massively successful Wonder Woman, but a completely different story all together. When asked how Chris Pine would be returning, given what happened to his character in the first movie, which was set during World War One, many years before the 1980’s the crew could not respond with any definite answers besides “watch the movie to find out.”
Afterwards the SHAZAM! panel started and showed a trailer that left audiences optimistic for the future of DC, which was not an easy task given DC’s relatively unsuccessful current movies. Shazam, originally called Captain Marvel, was created in 1939, just a few months after Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s debut of Superman. The story of Captain Marvel goes that adolescent Billy Batson was chosen by the dying Wizard Shazam to claim the powers of the gods when the kid would say his name. This would also allow him to transform into a strong man and gain powers corresponding to the letters in the wizard’s name. He would gain the wisdom of the Biblical King Solomon, strength of Hercules, stamina of Atlas, power of Zeus, courage of Achilles, and speed of Mercury. How King Solomon ended up on this list of Greek and Roman figures no one really knows, but it has been a staple of the Shazam lore ever since. Captain Marvel overtook The Man of Steel in sales and become more popular than him for most of the 1940’s.
Next came the Aquaman cast and director in a panel that gave the first trailer and some renewed confidence to fans about the movie, though some still remain wary.
In other DC news: the current writer of the Batman comic series, Tom King had to be given a bodyguard because of some death threats made to him following a recent issue of the Batman comic book. This bodyguard, David, became a highlight of the Con for many, frequenting King’s twitter posts and even being asked to sign some of King’s work. During this Con, King was awarded the Eisner award for Best Writer of 2017. The Eisner Award, named for Will Eisner, an early pioneer of comic books and graphic novels, is the industry’s equivalent of receiving an Oscar.
Eisner made his mark in the 1940s and early 1950s with “The Spirit” a comic-book supplement to daily newspapers, and later produced full-length graphic novels, many of them on Jewish subjects.
Another Comic Book titan, Adam Glass, could be seen wearing a Jewish Star necklace. Fans of Criminal Minds: Cold Case and Supernatural may also be familiar with Glass due to his involvement with those shows.
For those like myself who enjoy Jewish trivia, I noted that online biographies identify Ezra Miller and Tom King as half-Jewish, in that each of them has one Jewish parent.
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Masori is a staff photographer and writer for San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via shor.masori@sdjewishworld.com