Previews Are The Best Part: SDCC 2012 Preview Night

So Preview Night is past us now, and while I know it’s not even theoretically possible that it was busier than last year – after all, Preview Night passes have been selling out since about 2009 – it sure feels like it was. A few years ago it was possible on preview night for someone to, say, get ripped to the tits on Stone Arrogant Bastard IPA for four hours before he doors opened and then cruise around the floor, staging stupid and adolescent photographs with the Jabba The Hutt prop at the Hasbro booth. If you tried that now, you would inevitably stumble into someone waiting in a truly horrific line for an exclusive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier playset, be unable to convince said line-waiter that you weren’t claim jumping, and wind up instigating a pathetic slapfight.

There is very little convention programming that occurs on Preview Night, so the action is centered on the main convention floor. The night’s original and intended purpose is to allow people who are attending the con to obtain exclusives, or who are looking for some particular, special item, piece of art or back issue, to have access to the vendors early and get the purchase out of the way so they can enjoy the rest of the convention. As such, any actual comic news is few and far between on Preview Night… but there is certainly some, and if there isn’t? There is spectacle.

For example, last night Amanda and I managed to play a round of the upcoming multiplatform fighting video game Injustice: Gods Among Us at the DC Comics booth. The game, in production by NetherRealm Studios, was an early build, with only a few characters available to play in a couple of settings, but we arrived at the booth just in time to hear that announcement that two playable characters in the final game would be Cyborg and Nightwing (Both playable in the demo).

The action in the game was smooth enough, and felt similar to other fighting games in the genre – I say this because Amanda beat my ass handily, as she does in other fighting games in the genre. But what was notable were the special moves – think Fatalities in Mortal Combat, but playable at any point when your power meter charges up. As Flash, I was able to run cinematically around the entire planet to deliver a devastating blow to Cyborg… just not devastating enough to, you know, win.

Interestingly, when Amanda asked the booth rep running the demo if Deathstroke was going to be a playable character, the dude was quiet for a second before smiling and saying, “All the available characters haven’t been officially announced yet.” So whether that was an accidental spoiler, or just the guy trying as politely as possible to move us through the chute to keep the line moving, well, your guess is as good as mine.

Speaking of Deathstroke, also on display at the DC Comics booth was the full, official Green Arrow costume worn by Stephen Amell in the upcoming CW series Arrow. Which isn’t news in and of itself, but the display also included the tattered, half-destroyed mask of Deathstroke. And while we’ve seen glimpses of the Deathstroke mask in some of the show’s trailers, this pretty much nails down that the character will be appearing in that series.

And speaking of costumes on display, the other big one was Henry Cavill’s from Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman movie, Man Of Steel.

Yes, that picture sucks. There was enough TV press buzzing around the display that it was almost impossible to get a clear shot without including some vamping TV bimbo taping a segment in front of it. We’ll try to get a clearer shot and show it later this week.

Otherwise, there was a reasonable large presence representing Peter Jackson’s upcoming flick, The Hobbit. There was a pretty large booth with a bunch of cool 3D hologram posters that the photos here don’t really do justice. Is that news? Well, I suppose it confirms that there is a movie about The Hobbit, with a variety of actors portraying the characters from that book so… maybe?

And finally, as has been the norm for the past several years, Marvel’s booth is nothing but a promo for whatever Marvel Studios book happens to be coming out in the upcoming year, and this time around it’s Iron Man 3.

The whole display of the armor at the booth seemed like a bigger deal when it was just the Mark I armor at the 2007 convention, and even then it was only on display for a limited period of time. While it’s cool to see all the armor from all the movies to date on the stage, it’s not really showing us anything new… but that doesn’t mean that it’s not pretty cool.

Otherwise, here’s pretty much all the cool and notable stuff we managed to get pictures of last night. Today, the convention proper starts, which means more concrete news, and more importantly: scantily-clad cosplayers. Watch this space for both.