SDCC 2017 Panels Part 1: Composers and Jim Lee

* Anatomy of a Superhero Panel

I went to this panel by accident, thinking it was the Anything Goes with John Barrowman one. This one had a variety of superhero movie or TV composers talking about their craft, challenges, and projects. Mark Isham, famous for the TV soundtrack Once Upon a Time, composed the soundtrack to the upcoming Marvel show Cloak and Dagger. Ludwig Goransson composed the soundtrack to the upcoming Marvel film Black Panther. Brian Tyler composed the most superhero soundtracks with Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, and Avengers: Age of Ultron. Mark Beltrami unfortunately couldn't make it to the panel. David Russo composed the soundtrack to the DC show Gotham. Lorne Balfe, who composed The Lego Batman movie, moderated the session.



A video montage of each composer with snippets of their work and the TV and movie played on the screen. Each talked a little about their projects and played a clip. Brian Tyler's was my favorite because he talked about using music to portray the aftermath of Frigga's death, a beautiful funeral rite with no dialogue. Goransson talked about recording the music for Black Panther in Senegal and Africa. Russo talked about the swift schedule for Gotham where he had a lot of freedom to explore themes with the trust of producers. The consensus of the panel was that film is a medium to luxuriate in themes and explore more while TV is more about speed and making fast changes when needed. They all have different opinions about conducting their work in the studio. Brian Tyler prefers to conduct as a self admitted control freak, which makes sense since a different conductor can make a work sound vastly different. Mark Isham, on the other hand, prefers to be in the listening booth to address producer problems quickly sometimes only based on their facial expressions. He also admits to not being a great conductor and wants to take lessons to improve his skill.

Audience questions were decent. One asked if failed or rejected themes ever came back in different works. Only Brian Tyler had done so and realized it after the fact. Another asked about the lack of diversity in their industry, which stunned the panel a little bit. Balfe tried to clumsily dismiss the woman's criticism, but others like Isham talked about steps they were personally taking to help with the issue. Russo was the first to admit that the industry is mostly comprised of white men, which is an uncomfortable thing to address on a panel of white men. Another question was if they miss performing. Goransson performs regularly with Childish Gambino as a DJ. Russo was in a band for years before composing and misses it. Overall, the panel was an unexpected delight. I was especially excited to see Brian Tyler as he was the only one I recognized from my movie soundtrack collection.

* Jim Lee

Jim Lee is always a delight to see in any panel situation. He draws art filmed on a projector while answering various questions or generally talking about his life and career. He drew a portrait of Wonder Woman during most of the panel and did a hurried portrait of Batman at the end. He talked a lot about his life. He moved to the US as a child from Korea and didn't know how to read or write English. Comic books helped him learn English first from following the action with just the art and transitioning over time to reading the words. His parents wanted him to be a doctor, but he chose to follow his passion for comics. However, they still hold high expectations for him. Lee started out as a huge fan in a time when the audience for comics was much smaller. One of his big motivators for the job was not having to interact with a lot of other people, but the industry has vastly expanded and meeting fans at convention became a regular part of his job. When he first started his job, he expected the writers to have years of plot planned out and was very surprised when a writer asked him to choose his favorite Marvel characters to write a story about.



Lee talked about how his style of art changed as he has gotten older. As a young artist, he packed each frame full of stuff to impress and become a sought after artist. As his career solidified and he didn't have to try to impress anymore, he was more contemplative about conveying the story and what is needed in each frame to do that. He answered quite a few audience questions and it would have been nice if less of those audience members treated it as a signing session when it wasn't. My favorite audience member didn't ask a question, but gave Jim Lee his own drawing of Wonder Woman. The best moment of all was when Jim Lee gave Scott Williams a Batman Rolex watch as a surprise gift for their 30 years of work together and gave a heartfelt speech about their relationship (video above). Williams in turn gave an emotional speech about their collaboration in the X-Men issue 258 cover and how it was a huge turning point for him. If you ever get the opportunity to see Jim Lee in person, go! He's always hilarious, very kind, and incredibly talented.

Keep an eye out for more SDCC!

SDCC 2016: Panels Part 1: Teen Titans Go and Jim Lee

My first priority at San Diego Comic Con was to see panels and I went to quite a few.

* Teen Titans Go!

Teen Titans Go! is an adorable, comedy based cartoon show on Cartoon Network. Tara Strong (Raven), Greg Cipes (Beast Boy), Scott Menville (Robin), and Khary Payton (Cyborg) with producers Aaron Horvath and Pete Michail were on the panel to discuss the show. I personally enjoy the show. I never watched the original unfortunately because I didn't even hear of it until after it was over. This show is very light, over the top, and enjoyable.Each episode pretty much starts fresh because the characters can die or get into crazy situations. They mentioned their new season is starting tomorrow (August 1st) with a new episode every day for 5 WHOLE DAYS on their island adventure. We saw the first episode including the new theme song to go with the event.

The panel talked about the organic, crazy way they make the show. They talked about the easter eggs in the art may not be seen by anyone else until the show is out. The actors can brings improvised material that makes it into the show. It was fun to see each of the actors going in and out of their character's voices. Tara Strong also performed her Bubbles voice to allay awkwardness about discussion of the crossover with the new Powerpuff girls TV show. Most of the actors talked about how much they love the show, how much they love working with their Teen Titans family for so long, and how they came up with their characters' voices. Tara, Khary, and Greg came up with their voices in the studio during their auditions.

The one thing that annoyed me about the panel was that the children asking questions never paid attention and always asked the same questions. Someone should have been screening them and maybe prompting them to think of a different question since it was already answered. This sucked up a lot of time and made the vibe a bit awkward. Other than that, I enjoyed the panel.


* Jim Lee

I stumbled on to a Jim Lee panel the last time I was at Comic Con waiting for a Neil Gaiman panel after his. He charmed me and my fiance with his hilarious commentary, beautiful art, and crazy talent. Now, we try to see his panels whenever we can. This panel was a little different than usual. He didn't complete as many drawings this time, but he was also demonstrating his technique and answering many fan questions. The main piece he drew was of Harley Quinn with hair buns. The minor piece he completed was to demonstrate how he draws mountainsides and then later added Batman throwing tons of pokeballs at a Pikachu (based on his own experience playing Pokemon Go).

Jim is hilarious to listen to and he can poke fun at his fans a bit, but it's all in good fun. He shows his drawing process, but admits he doesn't usually do the undersketching. He just didn't want to intimidate people away from drawing. He talked about moving to the US as a child and not knowing the language. He cited his experience to being more attentive to visual communication cues like the way people stand and their expressions among other things that helped him become a better artist. He mused over the new Alfred from Batman vs. Superman who not only works as a butler by day, but also helping Batman at night with weapons and backup. The conclusion was he must be on meth and it totally sucks for him since Batman can sleep during the day. Jim Lee is always a joy to watch and it's interesting to see his artistic process as he draws.

More tomorrow!

Panels Part 3: Magic, Jim Lee, and The Sandman

1) Magic: the Gathering

This year, Wizards of the Coast celebrates Magic: the Gathering's 20th anniversary! Yay! The panel consisted of Mark Rosewater, Mark Purvis, Jenna Helland, and Dave Guskin. One of the celebratory things is the upcoming From the Vaults: 20 that rereleases a card from each year that changed Magic in a significant way. Unsurprisingly, the most coveted and expensive card is Jace, the Mind Sculptor, which made standard play hell for its entire run. I was most excited by the alternate art to Akroma's Vengeance and Guilded Lotus.

Other cards in the set include Hymn to Tourach, Dark Ritual, Green Sun Zenith, Chameleon Colossus, Kessig Wolf Run, Char, Chainer's Edict, Fact or Fiction, Tangle Wire, Thran Dynamo, Wall of Blossoms, Fyndhorn Elves, Swords to Plowshares, Cruel Ultimatum, Venser Shaper Savant, Ink Eyes Servant of Oni, and Impulse. You can buy this for about $200 online or at a local game store. They talkd about the new versus deck, Heroes vs. Monsters, which plays into their new set. They also mentioned that a new Commander preconstructed decks would come out November 1st. These decks feature many reprints of older cards and 51 brand new cards, including this one:

Then they moved on to the upcoming set in a new block: Theros. It's heavily influenced by Greek mythology (which I love! It makes my nerd heart sing!) and features 3 main factions: gods, monsters, and heroes. Here is some of the gorgeous art of this set.

This last art is my absolute favorite. No cards were spoiled, but the new border for some of the cards was revealed and of course it's beautiful.

For the prerelease, events will give players packs in a way similar to the faction packs from Return to Ravnica except they will be monocolored and are different paths for the hero (you) and each pack comes with a different hero card that can be used to fight a hydra on game day.

I can't wait for this new set and I'm so excited to find out about the different cards. Not many cards have been spoiled yet, but I hope all the gods are enchantment creatures, which hasn't been common before.

2) Jim Lee

Jim Lee is a comic book artist for Marvel comics and Image comics. This panel is a live demonstration of his art. I expected it to be mildly interesting, but he was hilarious. He talked about his life, his family, and his art. His family really wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer when he was growing up. He talked about choosing the name Jim (after James T. Kirk) when he moved to America from Korea. There was no real organization to anything and he just commented on what he drew or whatever he wanted while he drew. He called up 3 people from the audience to help him fill in some areas in black and then gave away the art using a bizarre method of serial numbers on money. Here are the completed works that he gave away. (Sorry for the bad pictures. His hands moved a lot.) This first one is of Death from The Sandman.

This next one is of the Joker from Batman with very scary teeth.

This last one wasn't completed, but it was of Superman bursting through some boulders. There were lots of jokes about the sleep-like face and the fascist arm position.

The panel was unexpectedly delightful and I will definitely go see it again next year.

3) The Sandman: 25th Anniversary and Beyond

The Sandman series has been completed for quite a while and this year marks its 25th anniversary. Recently, it has been announced that a prequel will come out. Most of the panel was dedicated to looking back on The Sandman and the great many comic book covers for the artists, author, and others to reminisce. The panel consisted of Dave McKean, Neil Gaiman, Sam Kieth, Todd Klein, and J. H. Williams III. The interesting thing to note about these mixed media covers is that there was no photoshop then. It's an amazing feat to create them anyway, but when limited to actual photographs and drawings that can't be easily resized or manipulated in photoshop is even more amazing. Here is one of my favorites.

The new Sandman comic is called The Sandman Overture, written by Neil Gaiman and J. H. Williams III. The first issue will be released October 11, 2013. They showed the cover art, an alternate cover art, and then the first couple of pages.

I can't wait to read this, but I will probably wait for the trade paperback just because I don't have much room for individual comic books.

That's all the panels! I count myself very lucky to have gone to so many.