SDCC 2015 – Con Man Trailer Released at Show Panel

After a hugely successful Indiegogo campaign and months of anticipation from fans, the trailer for the upcoming web series Con Man was released at the show’s Comic Con panel on Thursday, hosted by Nerdist’s Chris Hardwick. Con Man is a sort of spoof on the popular, yet short live Sci-Fi show Firefly and the lives of its actors after its cancelation. The show revolves around Wray Nerely (Alan Tudyk,) an actor who played a pilot on the canceled Sci-Fi show Spectrum alongside the ship’s captain Jack Moore (Nathan Fillion). Jack has gone on to be wildly successful, while Wray is still very much stuck in his past, begrudgingly attending conventions to celebrate his one and only successful project. Naturally, Wrey is more than a little upset about his lack of a colorful resume.

The release of the trailer brings in even more exciting news. While the Indiegogo campaign released many big names that would be on the project (Seth Green, Felicia Day, James Gunn and Gina Torres,) even more stars were announced during the panel and can be seen in the trailer. The cast list includes Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Amy Acker (Angel, Dollhouse), Joss Whedon, Sean Maher (Firefly, Eastsiders), Seth Green (Family Guy/Austin Powers), Mindy Sterling (Austin Powers), Jewel Staite, (Firefly), Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: SCC), and Sean Astin (Lord of The Rings.) 

The web series will be released exclusively on Vimeo On Demand for $14.99 and is available for pre-order. It’s curious that fans will have to pay for the show, as web series are usually free. It is especially strange given the Whedonverse routes that this is coming out of. Joss Whedon’s web series Doctor Horrible Sing-A-Long Blog was first released for free before going to DVD as was Felicia Day’s The Guild which is still available to watch on YouTube. With the $3.2 million that was raised for the project, one would think Con Man could afford to go the same route. Regardless, the show still seems to be worth every penny.

Shot from Spectrum.

Tudyk has sacrificed a lot for this project. He originally brought it to a television network but was unsuccessful, which led him to take to Indiegogo instead. He even loss his agents over the show because he decided to take time off during pilot season to dedicate himself to the production of the show. “My agents fired me,” Tudyk said. “I said, ‘I can do something in six months.’ They said, ‘Yeeeaaah, we’d be happy for you to do that with someone else.’ ” Tudyk took the risk anyway. This show means the world to him.

The most difficult part for Tudyk was getting people outside of his friend group involved. Many agents are wary of web content and wouldn’t even tell their client that they had been approached for the project. They didn’t want to take the risk, much like his own agents. “There is a sort of firewall,” Hardwick said about how the agent/talent dynamic sometimes works. Tudyk said that he is hoping that Con Man will show the film industry just how lucrative the web can be. Felicia Day believes it could “blow up the world the way Doctor Horrible did.” So far, this doesn’t seem like a far off claim.

Another cool thing that came out of the panel was a marriage proposal between leading visual effects artist Billy Brooks and makeup artist Barry Bishop after Tudyk invited them on stage. Bishop tearfully said yes. “We were born and raised in the deep south, and now we can go to our home states and get married,” Brookes said.

Photo by Comic Book Resource

Things are definitely looking awesome for this group of creators. Con Man will release September 30. There is no word yet on Bishop and Brookes’ wedding date, but is certain to be equally exciting.

“Respect My Craft” – John Layman

In this consumer-based industry, it can be easy to forget the years of hard work that the people in the business put in. Behind every panel, it takes a skilled writer, artist, inker and colorist to make the product complete. Behind each scene goes hours of preparation. Hush Comics’ weekly article “Respect My Craft” will dive into the history of these comic book and pop culture greats that will hopefully give a new perspective on how the men and women behind the pen (or stylus) contribute to the collective awesome-ness of the nerd world, or at least give you a reason to invest in their work.

 

Click on the link to take you to all of our Denver Comic Con 2014 “Respect My Craft” articles

 

Name: John Layman

Profession: Writer

Notable Work: Chew (2009-present), New 52 Detective Comics (2012-2014)

“…Now that CHEW has reached levels of success I never expected, sometimes I freeze up, feeling like I am under a microscope. Eventually I have to shake it off and just do my own thing in order to make the strongest story.” – John Layman

 

John Layman is best known these days for his creator owned, Eisner Award winning series Chew, which he started with Rob Guillory in 2009. He did start out his career in a much more resigned position of an editor at Wildstorm, a branch of DC comics. He eventually moved on to being a writer for Marvel Comics in 2002. Layman has made a good name for himself working on pre-existing licenses such as Xena, ThunderCats, Godzilla and Mars Attacks. He also did the story arc of the Marvel Zombies storyline with Marvel Zombies vs Army of Darkness. Starting in 2005, he went on to create his own characters and stories. In May 2005, John Layman released Puffed, a story about an amusement park mascot beaten up and dropped off in the roughest part of town still in his costume. He followed up Puffed with his amazingly well received Chew in 2009.

Chew follows the story of Detective Tony Chu and his investigations into food-related crimes. Tony, and many other characters, has amazing food related abilities. When asked in an interview with Ambidextrous where the inspiration such an unique world and storyline came from, John Layman said he really has no idea. “Does anybody have a good answer for where inspiration comes from? At least for Chew, I have no idea. It’s an idea I’ve had for a long time, and I’ve taken my sweet time developing the story and working it out, but I don’t have the slightest freaking clue when inspiration first struck,” said Layman. He does clarify his original thought though. “I think this idea came several years ago, probably as a joke, when everybody was panicking about potential bird flu, and maybe there was some snarky Elliot Ness-like scenarios that spun out if it—federal agents kicking down doors to stop chicken smugglers like they did with alcohol during Prohibition,” he continued.

Aside from working on his own creator owned books, John Layman was brought on to replace Tony Daniel to write for Detective Comics in late 2012. Layman was approached by Mike Marts, an editor at DC Comics to come on board and take on writing duties. The always-busy Layman could not pass up on the opportunity to write a Batman title. While writing Detective Comics, Layman was approached to start a new Batman weekly called Batman Eternal. John contributed to the first four issues and then bowed out to focus his time on Chew. Luckily, in his leaving of Eternal there were no hurt feelings. “There were no creative differences, no drama, no bad experiences, no unreasonable rewrites or capricious changes, during Detective or during my time on Eternal,” stated Layman in an article he wrote for Bleeding Cool News.

John Layman doesn’t resign himself to just comic books, though. He’s worked in video games and movies too. In 2007, he was hired by Cryptic Studios, makers of City of Heroes, City of Villains, and most recently, Neverwinter. Chew is being made into a animated movie starring The Walking Dead’s Steven Yeun and geek icon Felicia Day. He also helped create the animals for the movie Avatar. John Layman is a extremely talented writer and creator. He’s quietly made a stellar career for himself and deserves any and all accolades given to him. He is one of the creators that really reinvigorated my love of comics as a medium for great storytelling. Take some time out of your weekend at Denver Comic Con and stop by Layman’s booth, you won’t be disappointed.

None of the media in this article belongs to Hush Comics; it is all credited to the original publishers (DC Comics, Image Comics). Join us tomorrow as we continue our countdown to Denver Comic Con with former Swamp Thing penciller, Yanick Paquette.

So Far This Week… April 23rd, 2014

If you didn’t catch it, Season 4 of The Boondocks kicked off Monday night with a hilarious guest spot from Michael B. Jordan. It wasn’t up to par with the Season 1-2 hilarity, but it was good to have it back. It made me realize how many crazy things have happened since The Boondocks were last on the air in August of 2010. Here’s a great read if you want to be in the know.

Happy Birthday to Game Boy! The iconic hand-held console turned 25 on Monday. From Game Boy to Game MAN.

Amazon Prime has made a major move in the bout with Netflix by striking a contract with HBO (sorry Thronies, no luck for you). However, you can still catch classic shows like The Wire and The Sopranos on the streaming service; check the link here for more details. Does this change your view about switching streaming services?

There is news of sequels abound… namely for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Super Troopers and The Goonies.

Ubisoft is currently working on adding a co-op mode to Assassin’s Creed: Unity. This could be the thing that finally gets me into playing the online modes for AC. Unity drops Holiday season 2014.

Months after Quentin Tarantino lost his shit when somebody leaked the script to a film titled The Hateful Eight, he has dropped the suit (for the time being) and plans on continuing progress to create the film. Nobody wins here more than us.

If you thought the Cartoon Network show Beware the Batman was dead, you were almost correct. The poorly received show will be returning to CN, but airing at 3am on Saturday night – so pretty much still dead.

Looks like we should be gearing up for a video-game version of Kick-Ass 2 (check out our review here). I won’t lie – it looks terrible. As much as I love the franchise, it will take a whole lot of convincing to pay for something that looks this bad.

If you like picking apart each episode of Game of Thrones to predict the schemes and plot twists, but haven’t had time to catch up on the books like us, here is a little bit to get you through the weeks. Episode titles and descriptions give away more than I think they should, but it’s still fun to predict.

If I didn’t love Batman so much, I would say that DC Comics is overdoing it for their 75th Anniversary celebration. We can now look forward to Batman stealing the variant cover to almost every major DC book in July to commemorate the Dark Knight.

Oh boy, let the floodgates and scandal commence; whistle-blowers are blowing (poor choice of words) their whistles to uncover a “pedophile ring” among powerful Hollywood execs. If this really is the case, I hope justice gets served to the fullest.

On a lighter note (or maybe not) Chew, the Eisner Award winning comic book series about an FDA agent who uses psychic connection from the things (or people) he eats to solve crime mysteries, will be released in animated form, with The Walking Dead‘s Steve Yeun and Dr. Horrible‘s Felicia Day already down for voice acting.

It would seem the almighty Oprah Winfrey approves of comic books! The one in particular she advocated for on her show was March: Book One. Hush actually reviewed this book in honor of Black History Month; you can check it out here.