Comic-Con 2009: Preview Night - StayTuned Magazine

By Stacey Harrison

Your intreped reporter, hanging with SpongeBob — Your intrepid reporter, hanging with SpongeBob

If you want to look like you know what you’re doing at Comic-Con, wear a collared shirt. That’s the only reason I can think of as to why no less than 10 people came up to ask me about the line I was standing in. Not the hundreds of people standing around me, the vast majority of whom were sporting comic-book-themed shirts and whose noses were buried in books or laptops. I thought maybe it was my position in line. I was situated in front of a pillar that jutted me out a bit from the crowd, so I could have just been a logical person to ask. But then when the line moved ahead, the questions kept coming. “Hey, what line is this?” I answered happily each time, concluding that my decision to leave my Transformers T-shirt at home had been effective.

Comic-Con got under way Wednesday, ushering in the biggest pop-culture blitz of the year. More than 120,000 people are expected to jam downtown San Diego from now through Sunday in order to get a taste of the latest and upcoming popular entertainment, including movies, TV, comics, books, video games and more collectibles than there are sand pebbles in the Sahara. It’s the geek nirvana, where dressing up as your favorite crew member of the Enterprise, manga character or Mario Brother is de rigueur and camping out for two nights in front of the convention center so you can catch the unveiling of a few minutes from the new Twilight movie is viewed as an admirable display of dedication and not evidence of psychosis.

BTW, that line I was standing in? It was for the special Preview Night event, open only to attendees with a four-day pass. Last year, it featured the unveiling of the Fringe pilot, and the positive reception it received is somewhat credited for that show’s success. So Warner Bros. again provided material for Preview Night, this time with three pilots premiering this season — Human Target, V and The Vampire Diaries. I’d seen Human Target (loved it!) and Vampire Diaries (not for me), but not V.

I’ve been covering V for our Fall Preview package, and interviewed star Morena Baccarin and executive producer Jeff Bell, so my anticipation was soaring. Bell told me that the goal for the pilot was to encapsulate the arc of the original 1983 miniseries about aliens visiting Earth into that one episode, paving the way for the new series. That it did, my friend. While the middle section was a bit plodding — focusing on rather routine relationships between mother and son, boyfriend and girlfriend, priest and congregation — the payoff at the end is worth it.

They just hate the attention, don't they?

Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) is the determined FBI agent who finds out the hard way that the Visitors are not the benevolent saviors they are portraying themselves as. She’s also a single mom to a teenage boy who is quite taken with the “V’s.” And it has nothing to do with the hottie Visitor who recruits him to join their Peace Ambassador program, I’m sure. Morris Chestnut is a nice guy who would like to propose to his girlfriend, but his shady past keeps catching up with him, and it also may hold the key to exposing the Visitors for what they are. I really enjoyed Scott Wolf’s performance as a lecherous TV journalist willing to go to any lengths to increase his profile. But even he has his limits. When the lead Visitor, Anna (Baccarin), gives him an exclusive interview, she insists that no questions be asked that could paint the Visitors in a negative light. He balks at first, citing journalistic integrity, but eventually caves. There’s also a New York priest, who finds his fellow man’s devotion to the Visitors troubling. He’s not sure how aliens fit in to what he knows about the Bible, and that these Visitors may replace God for many of his congregants. Pretty heady stuff. But don’t worry, you also get to see some lizard skin.

OK, so now how about some weird, random things I saw on Preview Night?

Favorite T-shirts: