This is the worst part about covering SDCC while not actually being there: you can get a pretty good sense of what a panel was like from a liveblog, but there’s just no replacement for seeing a singing, dancing Dark Knight, especially when Neil Patrick Harris is involved.

Diedrich Bader, the voice of Batman, returned to Comic-Con alongside John DiMaggio (Futurama), the voice of Aquaman, and executive producer Sam Register (Teen Titans), producer James Tucker (Justice League Unlimited), producer and story editor Michael Jelenic (The Batman) and voice director Andrea Romano (everything DC has animated in the last twenty years), to screen the upcoming “Mayhem of the Music Meister” episode‚ featuring the voice of Neil Patrick Harris (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) as the Music Meister, and take questions afterwards. ComicVine gets props for managing to stop watching the spectacle long enough to liveblog. Some highlights from the panel:

• Bat-Mite Masks were distributed to attendees before the panel started.
• G.I. Robot, Detective Chimp, Vixen, Captain Marvel (plus the Marvel Family), Firestorm, the Metal Men, the Doom Patrol, and Starro are all making appearances in upcoming episodes.
• “Outrageous!” came about as Aquaman’s catchphrase accidentally–John DiMaggio just channels his inner outrageousness.
• “Black Manta, Clock King and Gorilla Grodd appear.  There’s Aquaman! 
  Along with Green Arrow and Black Canary.  Why is Black Manta suddenly
  singing?  Now Aquaman is.  They can’t help themselves!  Gorilla Grodd
  singing and dancing?  You HAVE to see this!” – from the liveblog
• Twitter user @the_real_winson says that when NPH’s character first appears, the crowd couldn’t stop cheering.
• The episode got a standing ovation!
• During the Q&A afterwards, the child who asked about the Batmobile at last year’s SDCC asked today what Batman’s favorite gadget was–and got an answer in Batman’s voice. It’s the Batarang, by the way. 
• Crisis on Infinite Earths, BatB-style? “Only if we get to do it as a musical,” DiMaggio said.

More reactions (and possible spoilers) at ComicVine.

The Photographer
By Didier Lefèvre, Emmanuel
Guibert, and Frederic Lemercier
First Second, May 2009, $29.95

Lefèvre was a French photojournalist – he died, unexpectedly
and too young, in 2007 – and this book is an unusual combination of drawn
comics and [[[fumetti]], telling the true
story of part of his life. In 1986, Lefèvre took the first of several trips
into Afghanistan with the group Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF, aka Doctors
Without Borders), to report on the work of the MSF during the Soviet
occupation, particularly on one particular mission to set up a field hospital
in Zaragandara in the Yaftal valley up in the mountains of the north.

Nearly twenty years later, after hearing stories of that
trip many times, Lefèvre’s friend Emmanuel
Guibert, a well-known cartoonist and graphic novelist, turned that trip into
comics form, using Lefèvre’s words and photos.
As this book credits itself, it’s “A story lived, photographed, and told by
Didier Lefèvre, written and drawn by Emmanuel Guibert, laid out and colored by
Frederic Lemercier, and translated from the French by Alexis Siegel.” (I think
that means that Lemercier did the panel breakdowns from Guibert’s script – for
those who obsess about comics workflow – but that’s not completely clear.)

So every page of [[[The Photographer]]] is a comics page, with captions, panels, borders
and word balloons. But many of those pictures are not Guibert’s drawings, but Lefèvre’s photos – used as panels (wordless; the
captions and balloons never overlie the photography) or in strips of film to
convey time passing or just the atmosphere of a scene. It’s a style that
quickly fades into the background, but it gives The Photographer the power of a documentary – we see these people’s
real faces, and the real landscape they inhabit, as well as Guibert’s versions
of them.

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Sigourney Weaver received a standing ovation at the Comic-Con 2009 panel “Wonder Women: Female Power Icons in Pop Culture,” moderated by Entertainment Weekly.  The “ass-kicking” icon shared the dais with Elizabeth Mitchell (Juliette on Lost), Zoe Saldana (Uhura in the new Star Trek film) and, in an unannounced appearance, Eliza Dushku (Echo on Dollhouse.)

Weaver said “MTV called Ripley the second biggest badass after Clint Eastwood, but I think she could take him.” Apparently, the part of Ripley had originally been intended for a man, then Weaver came “and she was better,” said Saldana, who expressed her excitement about appearing with her.  Said Weaver of the part of Ripley, “I never thought about playing it as a woman, I thought about playing it as a person.”

With regard to the evolution of women’s roles, Weaver said, “I think that society is changing much faster than Hollywood understands.” She also said, “Hollywood gets really wrapped up in what women should wear and I was lucky when I did my action role that I got to wear real clothes.”

The other panelists also discussed their recent empowering roles. Saldana said, with regard to playing a new incarnation of Uhura, that it was “humbling” to continue the role of an original character that “everyone admired.”

Dushku talked about working on Dollhouse with Joss Whedon, known for creating strong female characters in his other TV series. “There was a reason I went back to Joss when I wanted to find my next role. My role in Buffy was so amazing. When I went back to him, I had such trust that he is the reason why I have all these opportunities. I asked Joss to make me the most multi-dimensional, deep character he’d ever done and he delivered.”

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