Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. While my night started off with disappointment (I’m dying to get my hands on this sweet-ass Tron CC Exclusive and even though I was in the Hall 2 minutes after the door opened the line to buy it was already capped. I ain’t asking for sympathy, just telling you why I cried a little bit in public while complaining it was dust in my eye or something) I ended up having a fun night.

I will say I long for the days when preview night used to really be a preview night, not a full on start to the Con. The halls were as jam packed as they’ll be on Friday and Saturday, making it impossible to even pick up the new and final Scott Pilgrim book at the Oni Booth. The line was easily 40 people deep to just buy the book that came out the day before. Nuts.

Before I get into a ton of pics from the floor, I want to share with you a picture my faithful Kraken took earlier in the day as the upcoming “Scott Pilgrim Experience” was being assembled. Eventually this will have a few stations, manned off and on by the film’s stars, that will showcase the Scott Pilgrim video game, a free live T-shirt silkscreening and DJs spinning. When I saw it things were still in pieces and I thought this was a fun picture, especially since most you’ll see will be of this area fully assembled.

First up from Preview Night is Fox’s awesome set-up advertising the Alien Anthology Blu-Ray (available for online preorder here. Not only did they have the suspended animation pods from the Nostromo (manned by Weyland-Yutani employees… don’t trust ‘em!), but they were giving away t-shirts that said “Need a Hug?” on the front. You lift up the shirt and cover your face with it, like a toddler and there’s a face-hugger on the inside of the shirt.

Pretty rad… almost as rad as the kick-ass limited edition packaging. Check out the set-up the egg-packaging below:

It was around this time that I was joined by the lovely Erin McCarthy, a writer for Popular Mechanics and hopefully one day my future bride. I had the pleasure of escorting her around the Hall and even saw her get in a lightsaber duel with JoBlo’s Scarlet Scribe while the guys filming the Comic-Con doc Big Red is producing recorded it for posterity.

The first thing our rag tag group took in was Weta’s booth, filled with The Wind In The Willows and District 9 goodies. Holy God I want the Christopher maquette! Check out the Weta goodies below:

Next up I gotta talk a bit about the Walking Death booth, which was a recreation of a household under zombie attack. They even had screens turned vertical displaying zombies walking up to the windows while the Pa and Ma corpses were kicking back. Love it!

I also like the banner above the booth that shows the Charlie Adlard art that the photoshopped group shot is emulating.

Marvel’s booth has Odin’s throne in all it’s epic golden glory. Look at them doors… sure looks like they could open to reveal something don’t they?

Stan Winston’s colleagues had a booth showing off some of his work as well as a school being set up in Stan’s honor. If I’m not mistaken it’s going to be a practical effects educational DVD set as well. I’ll try to dig up some more info on this later in the Con. Here’s a pic of their way too small booth:

Legendary pictures had a little something to show off, too, including a pretty awesome prop from a little movie with some discussion surrounding it right now called Inception.

Also can’t go wrong with a life-sized Ecto 1 with flashing lights going off at the Mattel booth.

And here’s a banner for Battle: Los Angeles:

And a creepy suit from Zack Snyder’s Sucker Punch:

A quick stop by the Neca booth and we have a few pictures of the Predators figures and the Danny Trejo Machete prototype:

And then Kraken took this picture and dared me to include it. I ain’t no coward! Guess who!

Gentle Giant have a few really cool exclusives this year, including a Ralph McQuarrie Darth Vader mini-bust and two awesome, awesome Pan’s Labyrinth mini-busts that I have zero chance of obtaining due to my crazy schedule and their even crazier limited quantities.

They also have some Avatar busts on display that I thought were just okay…

Until the light flicked off….

Pretty cool. But not as cool as the Tron booth. Good lord how sweet…

This booth is the one denying me my Tron Arcade exclusive! But they have enough cool shit on display for me to drool over that I forgive them. Among the cool stuff was this large diorama of a fight between two programs:

And then there’s the series of toys with light up digital faces! Nuts!

And that’s it for preview night! Tomorrow brings big panels for Tron, Red, Battle: Los Angeles, The Expendables and Scott Pilgrim! Stay tuned! The rollercoaster’s about to begin!

-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
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