Comic-Con Part 2: Bill Plympton, Joss Whedon, and JJ Abrams

There's so much going on at Comic-Con at any given time, you could have completely different experiences depending on which activities you chose to participate in. You could spend entire days stargazing in Hall H or Ballroom 20. You could never leave the exhibition hall and amass mountains of swag and exclusive merchandise. You could have a full schedule of comic book industry panels aimed at the professionals and would-be professionals. With the stunning variety of cosplayers in attendance, the people watching experience alone could fill hours. I was fortunate enough to be able to do a little of everything.

I knew I was taking a risk leaving Hall H and trying to go back later in the day, but I had to see Bill Plympton's panel. Plympton is one of the legends of American animation, the first animator who ever drew every single frame of a traditional animated feature length film by himself, long before the advent of Flash or other animation software programs. He produces his shorts and features independently, outside of the major animation studios, with small budgets and limited crew. I found his shorts through Atom Films in the early days of the Internet, then his films, "I Married a Strange Person" and "Mutant Aliens." All of his work has a distinctive hand-drawn style and a wonderfully ribald, twisted sense of humor. Animation is so labor intensive the length of his filmmography is astonishing. And you'd never see this kind of animation from a major commercial studio - at least not with all the sex and violence intact. Among his recent shorts are such titles as "Santa: The Fascist Years," and "The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger."

Bill Plympton showed up for the panel with a pair of young filmmakers in tow, who were making a documentary feature about him, and also a man in a chicken suit. Chicken man was there to hawk water bottles, a portion of the proceeds from which would go to support breast cancer awareness, and also to pass out coupons for character T-shirts, to be redeemed at Plympton's booth in the exhibition hall. We were in Room 8, one of the smaller classroom/meeting rooms on the opposite end of the convention center from Hall H, but it comfortably accommodated the hundred or so people who showed up. Plympton started off the presentation by introducing himself and explaining who he was for the benefit of any audience members who weren't familiar with his work. After some DVD player issues, he started showing us clips from his most recent films and shorts.

First, came the trailer for "Idiots and Angels," a film he completed in 2008 that I've been hearing good things about from the festival circuit. It'll be getting a very limited theatrical release in a few major cities soon, but Plympton is still looking for help with distribution. The trailer was my favorite out of all the clips, introducing us to the plight of a man who sprouts white angel wings that keep growing back despite his attempts to get rid of them. Plympton briefly described the plot for us as a contest of wills between the man, who is a normal schlub, and the wings, that keep trying to make him do good deeds. Next came a pencil test from "Cheatin,'" Plympton's current work in progress. I'm not sure whether it was a short or a film, but we saw what appeared to be one of the early scenes. Not as much surreal imagery here, as we followed a woman snubbing a pack of would-be admirers, including a very insistent auctioneer.

Then came a shorter clip from the feature film "Hair High," which had its theatrical release way back in 2004, but literally only hit DVD a week ago. I remember it being in production back when I watched "Mutant Aliens" around 2002 or 2003, and I'll have to remember to add it to the Netflix queue. I hope we don't have to wait until 2016 for "Idiots and Angels"! "Hair High" was followed by "The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger" short in its entirety. "Cow" had a very different look to it than any of the other animation we were shown. Everything was drawn in thick black lines, and filled in with bright, solid colors. Our bovine protagonist was mustard yellow, and had a grape jelly-colored mother. The short was actually having its premiere at one of the Comic-Con short film festivals, so we were one of the first audiences to see it. As is the norm for Plympton's work, it was a little sick and very funny, and the premise is exactly what the title says it is. The audience loved it.

The microphone was then handed over to the documentarians, who gave us a peek at the work in progress. There were a few quick celebrity cameos from Weird Al Yankovic and Terry Gilliam, who declared themselves fans, and some footage of Bill Plympton in his native New York. The best bit was Plympton explaining the origin of his popular character Guard Dog, an overzealous pup who has starred in four shorts so far, with a fifth on the way. The documentary is yet unfinished, though the filmmakers are hopeful they can generate the funds to complete it through online crowdsourcing. I did my part and bought a Guard Dog T-shirt at the booth later that afternoon, and got a sketch and autograph from Plympton to go with it. I found the whole panel mighty impressive, because you really got a sense of the tenacity and guts that were necessary to get these indie projects made and get them in front of audiences.

And then it was back to the Hall H line again for the Entertainment Weekly "Visionaries" panel with Joss Whedon and JJ Abrams.

I was worried that I wasn't going to make I back inside the room since a lot of the people in line with me were queueing up for the "Expendables" panel that was taking place immediately after the Whedon and Abrams panel. However, the crowds from that morning were mostly gone, so there were only a few hundred people in front of me when I got in line again, and I made it back into Hall H without a problem. Of course, this also completely screwed up my expectations for the Ballroom 20 line the next day, which resulted in me missing the "Big Bang Theory" panel I had planned my whole Friday around. I did make it into the Joss Whedon Experience panel that was scheduled a few hours later in the same location, the only panel I saw that day. Ironically, both of the events featuring Whedon have popped up on Youtube in their entirety, and you can find transcribed versions over at Slash Film.

But back to Thursday afternoon and two of the most beloved genre-friendly creative types currently working. I don't know JJ Abrams' work as well as I know Joss Whedon's, but I found myself mentally checking off the list of his films and TV shows that I'd seen. I'd completely forgotten that he was involved with "Lost" and that he had created "Felicity." The panel itself was an expanded Q&A, with the moderator, an Entertainment Weekly writer, pitching questions and later letting the fans ask a few too. There wasn't much cross-talk between the two - they had never worked together - except toward the end when they started comparing writing techniques and disagreed on whether it was worthwhile to go to film school, as one of them had and one of them hadn't and both were happy that way. The questions touched on a lot of different topics, from the prevalence of 3D films to their favorite comic books to network television's love/hate relationship with serialized storytelling.

Easily the best part of the panel was hearing their stories about working in Hollywood. Abrams relayed a great one about his first near-encounter with Steven Spielberg after winning a Super 8 film contest. Whedon acknowledged some of the mistakes he'd made with "Dollhouse" and "Dr. Horrible." I don't know why I was surprised that Whedon talks like the dialogue that he writes, but he does. He sounds like an older, marginally less sarcastic Xander from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Also, there were a few teases about new projects, and Joss Whedon officially annouced that he's been tapped to direct "The Avengers," while Abrams gave up absolutely nothing new about "Super 8" or the next "Star Trek" movie. In fact, no one even asked about "Star Trek." Sheesh. If I'd known, I'd have gotten in the Q&A line on behalf of my fellow Trekkers!

The Joss Whedon Experience panel on Friday went by in sort of a blur and I probably should have skipped it, but by that time I'd been in the damn Ballroon 20 line for nearly three hours and figured I should at least have a look inside. I agree with everyone who has complained that the venue was way too small for the size of the Friday events that were being held there. In the past, the film panels might have been considered the biggest of the big events, but these days TV has not only caught up but exceeded the popularity of many of the major film franchises, not to mention the smaller, less anticipated, yet-to-be-seen horror and action pictures that dominated the Hall H schedule that day. And though there were few "Twilight" fangirls in attendance this year, since the promotional push for "Eclipse" is largely over, I found plenty of "True Blood" faithful in line at noon for a panel that wasn't going to start until 6PM. I count myself lucky that I got in at all.

So yes, I as there when Nathan Fillion crashed the panel by getting in the Q&A line to ask Whedon who his favorite actor was. And when Whedon announced that Nathan Fillion would be playing Ant-Man, one of the Avengers. Alas, Ant-Man will not actually appear in "The Avengers," so we will still be bereft of his presence. Woe. Mostly, the topic of discussion stuck to Whedon's shows, and since the man wasn't sharing the stage or stuck behind a table, he was much looser and more energetic, his schtick was funnier, and he seemed to be having a great time up there. The only major announcement was that there is going to be a "Firefly" comic that delves into the backstory of Shepherd Book, the Ron Glass character who was killed off in "Serenity," leaving the fans with a lot of unanswered questions. Alas, no mention of any peripheral "Dollhouse" projects, though Whedon did clear up that Boyd Langdon was not originally the show's SPOILER. Also while some of the deaths in his shows are unexpected, in a few cases the actors know long, long in advance, like SPOILER in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer."

Still no word on any new projects aside from "The Avengers," but Whedon gave every indication that he's probably not coming back to network television anytime soon. I'm not sure if that's a good or bad thing. On the one hand, Whedon's already made his mark in long-form television serials and it'll be nice to see him branch out into more ambitious projects. On the other hand, he's one of the few who really knows how to do these kinds of genre programs right. Maybe JJ Abrams can pick up the slack. He has a new action show premiering in the fall, "Undercovers."

Hope springs eternal. I'll be back with Saturday panels tomorrow.