FRED Entertainment

 

 

The following events took place at Comic-Con International in San Diego on Saturday, July 22 between 10:00 AM and 8:00 PM.

SATURDAY 10:00 AM
On Saturday I was to appear on a Comic Arts conference panel and do two book signings, so I wanted to look good. I felt I had put together an outfit that struck the right balance between professionalism and casualness. Having disembarked from my morning water taxi ride across the bay, I was heading towards the Convention Center when a female fan, whom I had never seen before, asked, “Why are you wearing a jacket on such a hot day?”

So maybe this is why Paul Levitz wisely dresses casually for Comic-Con: so he won’t get his fashion choices criticized to his face by strangers on the street.

When I went to my first event in Hall H on Friday, there was only a short line, and it moved quickly. This morning, there was not only no line for Hall H, but I was able to sit further down front than I ever had before. So why does Hall H have such a reputation for being hard to get into? Little did I then know.

SATURDAY 10:30 AM
Comic-Con’s Director of Programming, Gary Sassaman, emerged onstage, looking as dour as he had yesterday. “Welcome back,” he told the Hall H audience. “How many of you slept here last night?” He’s kidding, right? I looked at Mr. Sassaman’s face, magnified to brobdingnagian proportions, on an immense videoscreen and detected the faintest hint of a smile.

Sassaman noted that it was a “very hot Saturday morning.” (But he was wearing a jacket, too!) Then he said that today there would be “some special guests” and some “amazing, spectacular, and just plain adjective-less guests.” This alluded to the rumor that the lead actors of Spider-Man 3 were going to make a surprise appearance.

Sassaman asked the audience not to record the images from forthcoming films that would be shown on Hall H’s immense video screens in order to “share it with your 20 million friends on the Internet”; otherwise, Hollywood studios would no longer bring such preview footage to Comic-Con.

“You’re going to want to stay in here the rest of the day,” Sassaman told us. He’s encouraging them! He’s an enabler for the “campers”! But if I did not have commitments elsewhere at the Con this day, I would have been wise to follow his advice and remain there.

Then another familiar face, Jeff Walker, wearing a shirt labeled “Arkham Asylum Athletic Dept.” shirt, came onstage to present the day’s first Hall H panel: “Warner Bros. Presents 300,” the film adaptation of Frank Miller’s graphic novel about the Battle of Thermopylae, in which three hundred men from the ancient Greek city-state of Sparta, fought the vastly larger Persian army. First Walker introduced the film’s director, Zach Snyder. Then Walker brought out one of the movie’s stars, David Wenham, who played Faramir in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, and a woman sitting next to me let out a big cheer. The idea that comics conventions are invariably attended almost entirely by men has become dated. As if to offer further evidence, Walker introduced Gerard Butler (from the film version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera musical), who plays King Leonidas in 300, and female shrieks of joy erupted from the audience. (And, oh, yes, he was wearing a jacket.) After 300 opens, I expect that reporters on Hollywood will express surprise that such a violent film attracts a female audience, but this is clearly a chick flick of an untraditional sort. Finally, Walker introduced “the one and only Frank Miller,” who was again displaying his new wardrobe, this time including what looked like a large Western hat and a long, red jacket.

Snyder started off by showing us the trailer for 300, a live action film which astonishingly, powerfully captured the look of Miller’s artwork for the graphic novel. It was rife with violence and sexuality, and also featured lines that seem like catchphrases in the making: “This is madness!”, “This is Sparta!” (Maybe that explains Walker’s shirt.)

The audience reacted loudly and enthusiastically to the trailer. Once it was over, Gerard Butler, who hadn’t seen it before, said, “I want to see it again.” And so we did, right away.

Then Snyder said, in a deadpan manner, “So we were going for something warm and fuzzy. . . It’s a family thing.” Then he asked for questions from the audience. There was no immediate response, and a panelist (Wenham, I think) observed that we were “obviously flabbergasted.”

Stating that he drew the look of the film from Miller’s 300 comics, Snyder joked, “I had no ideas of my own.” Sharing the credit, Miller added that “Many of those backgrounds [in the 300 comics] were done by Lynn Varley,” his longtime collaborator. (Later during the panel Butler explained that the backgrounds in the film were computer generated: there were “cliffs that don’t exist, armies that aren’t there. Only the immediate surroundings are right there” on the set.)

Snyder declared that Miller’s 300 book “is awesome.” In order to make the movie, Snyder explained he said “Let’s do that [directly adapt the comics], not fuck it up Hollywood style.”

Miller responded, “And you didn’t. It’s really cool.”

Describing his preparation for such a physically demanding role, Butler said, “I trained really hard for this,” and “am still recovering.” He claimed, “I came out of this pretty much a cripple.” Miller wryly interjected, “He was ninety-three pounds when he started.”

Undeterred, Butler described the atmosphere on the set among all these actors playing warriors: “You have so much testosterone floating around there. At times you were willing to kill, willing to die.”

Since he was playing the king, Butler said that he “wanted to get the respect of. . .the other actors, so I worked my little buttocks off.” There was a cheer from the audience. Miller observed to Butler, “Your buttocks just got a cheer.”

Still undeterred, Butler asserted that he did “intensive training” physically which “goes a long way” towards giving him the feelings of “strength,” “determination,” and “sacrifice” that his role required.

Returning to discussing the visual style of the film, Snyder explained simply that “The graphic novel’s pictures. A movie’s pictures.” He told us that in discussions with his co-workers “I go, “˜We have a picture here; let’s just do the picture,” meaning the visuals from the comics. If someone offered an alternate suggestion for a shot, Snyder said he replied, “It’s cool. For something else.” After a while, Snyder told us, his collaborators got the idea.

In other words, the 300 movie is following the same strategy as the Sin City movie: directly recreating the look of the comics onscreen. In announcing Warners Animation’s forthcoming direct-to-video animated films of stories from DC Comics, like the “Death of Superman” arc, DC’s Paul Levitz indicated at Comic-Con that the videos would be based on the look of the original comics. Later that day there was a panel in Hall H about the projected movie adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, at which Miler was officially announced as its director. Although I had to miss it due to other commitments, I have since read that during the panel Miller asserted that he intended to present Eisner’s vision onscreen. Moreover, in stating that he would create the backgrounds via CGI, as in the Sin City movie, Miller explained that he wanted it to look as if “Eisner’s hand is drawing the movie.”

So this is a new trend, and (despite my qualms about no longer seeing Bruce Timm character designs onscreen) a welcome one, I think, demonstrating unusual respect for the original source material. Why shouldn’t a Fantastic Four movie, whether live action or animated, try to translate the look of Jack Kirby’s artwork to the screen?

Alluding on the scanty garb the cast wore in the 300 trailer, an audience member asked the actors about their reaction to the costumes or “lack of costumes you have to wear.” Again there were appreciative female shrieks.

Butler responded that initially “I never felt so stupid in my life.” When he first donned “that leather codpiece,” “I thought, how am I going to get through this?” He added, “But then you’re surrounded by sixty guys wearing the same thing.” By the end of shooting, Butler said, “You just want to look bigger than the other guys.”

“You win, Gerry,” said Wenham; “you’re the biggest.” (I just report what they actually said, folks.)

Wenham reported that after he was cast in the film, “I bought Frank’s book” and saw the first appearance of the character he plays: “He’s naked. All he basically wears in the book is a leather codpiece.” But Wenham assured the audience, “I did some training and it was okay.”

Miller addressed more cerebral aspects of 300. “I researched the hell out of this thing,” he told us. “I wanted to do the story since I was six years old.” Miller asserted that “The story is so compelling that I think each generation has to retell it.”

Another audience member asked Butler what he has in common with his character. Butler answered, “Being extremely intelligent. . . powerful. . .insane. . .charismatic–were all things I found I didn’t have.” Then he added, “I have no idea what I’m talking about.”

But there was a point behind Butler’s joking. “Seriously,” he continued, “you see things like honor and nobility [in 300]” that, he said, do not exist in “today’s society” and you “don’t have enough [of these qualities] in yourself,” but, Butler said, he “wants to have” them. Therefore, to act the role involved “getting in touch with what you gave yourself and then get in touch with what you don’t have.”

As for the story of 300, Butler commented, “Frank makes it so dark.” “Moi?” replied Miller in mock innocence.

Though the Hall H audience had earlier been warned what kind of questions would be inappropriate, there are invariably people who think the rules do not apply to them. The audience, however, polices its ranks. So it was that a female fan asked the actors for hugs; instead she got booed by the audience. Obliviously persisting in her stupidity, the female fan then asked the actors, “What’s your favorite color?” More booing ensued. But the actors played along. Wenham replied that today his favorite color was red. Butler said, “My favorite color is green.” Then he turned to Miller and admitted, “Nobody cares, I know.”

Another questioner, commenting on the sex scenes in the trailer, observed that the moviemakers “show the relationship between Greek men and Greek women, but will you show the relationship between the Greek men and men?” This, of course, alludes to ancient Greek openness towards homosexuality. Miller responded, “No. We call this fiction.”

Though she was not mentioned, it appears that Gerard Butler shares the attitude of The Incredibles‘ fashion designer Edna Mode towards capes. “Capes were a problem,” he complained. “After fifteen hours your shoulder was willing to fall off.”

“Spoken like a real Spartan,” commented Miller.

“It hurt,” Butler said emphatically. “And I got a little scrape on my shoulder sometimes.” (Whether Butler’s female fans in Hall H found this endearing or disillusioning, I have no idea.)

Wenham said the “hardest part [of making the movie] was the training,” claiming that “My normal day training is three minutes long.” Wenham added, “The capes were a cinch. I didn’t have difficulty at all.” Later during the panel, Miller referred to Butler as “Mr. My Cape’s Heavy.” Yes, amid all the jesting one-upmanship, the testosterone was thick enough to cut with the proverbial knife.

A fan from Greece asked Miller about going to Greece to research 300. “I did go to Greece,” Miller replied, stating that he had spent weeks there on a National Trust tour. He took “a side trip” to “the actual Hot Gates,” the site of the Battle of Thermopylae, but discovered it’s “not what it used to be.” The site “used to be a cliff over the sea.” The sea has moved over the years, and “now there’s a freeway” there. But Miller said he did visit “the mountain where the Spartans actually died,.” Miller concluded, “If I hadn’t sailed the Aegean and seen the cliffs, I don’t know how I could have done the story.” Butler interjected that “Six Spartans were killed crossing the freeway.”

As with the Stardust panel, I was struck by how much respect the panelists showed the creator of the original source material, an attitude one does not expect in Hollywood. Wenham referred to “a true legend, Mr. Frank Miller!” Butler chimed in, “Frank Miller, the man himself!” And thus arrives that new phenomenon: the cartoonist as alpha male.

Praising the movie, Miller asserted that “In seeing an early cut of the movie, everything looks timeless but very contemporary.” He pointed out that sometimes Snyder changed the speed of the cameras to make the Spartans look “superhuman” during the fighting. Miller summed up, “This feels like a very contemporary movie. It doesn’t feel like a stiff old relic. Zach did a terrific job.”

And then they showed the trailer for a third time, whereupon I headed out of Hall H to make certain I got to the next panel on my list in time. This was important since I was scheduled to be on this particular panel.

SATURDAY 11:30 AM
This was session eight of the Comic Arts Conference, the annual academic conference on comics, being held in Room 7B: “The Supervillain: from Antagonist to Protagonist: Celebrating the Supervillain in Today’s Comics.”

This panel was designed to publicize The Supervillain Book, an encyclopedia of supervillains in comics and other media, which made its debut at this year’s Comic-Con and will be officially published this fall by Visible Ink. The panelist included the book’s editors and principal writers Gina Misiroglu and Michael Eury, and CAC co-chairman Peter Coogan, scholar Alex Boney and myself as contributing writers to the book.

We had done a similar panel for CAC last year, during which, unexpectedly, a man in a Star Wars Sith costume sat in the audience; since Darth Vader was mentioned in our presentation, we acknowledged the Sith from the stage. When Gina, Alex, contributing writer Heidi MacDonald (alias the Beat) and I did a panel for The Supervillain Book at this year’s New York Comic Con, the Trickster from The Flash turned up in the audience. At this year’s Comic-Con Gina arranged for Lex Luthor (in an unconvincing bald cap) and Dark Phoenix (with a very convincing costume and admirably voluptuous figure) to interrupt Michael Eury’s presentation. He knew they’d be showing up, but I was as surprised as anyone there. I’m glad they didn’t interrupt my presentation, which more serious, in keeping with an academic conference, but they were still fun. (And if having villains show up during the panel seems over the top, consider that, as I later learned, during the Lost panel, which overlapped with ours, there was a “plant” in the audience who purported to be a character from a Lost website.)

My presentation was about how supervillains are used to dramatize the concept that the human psyche is split between good and evil. There are characters who embody this division through their multiple personalities, such as Two-Face in Batman, DC’s Eclipso, and the Incredible Hulk. Then there are supervillains who make the transition to becoming superheroes, such as Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch in the 1960s Avengers and Spike in Joss Whedon’s Buffy, or superheroes who journey in the opposite direction, like X-Men‘s Phoenix and Star Wars’ Anakin Skywalker. And then there are characters who walk an ambiguous path between good and evil. Do we see Marvel’s Punisher, a vigilante who kills criminals, as a hero or condemn him as a criminal? I offered as my concluding example Namor the Sub-Mariner, who was created by Bill Everett in 1939, and who now seems to me to be ahead of his time: Originally Namor was depicted as what we would now call a terrorist conducting a one-man war against New York City, and yet Everett and later writers have allowed us to see and understand Namor’s own point of view.

SATURDAY 1:00 PM
At the conclusion of the panel, we participants went down to the main convention floor to do a signing of The Supervillain Book at the booth area for Rory Root’s Comic Relief. We were joined by the Beat, and you can see a photo of her, Michael Eury and myself during the signing here (http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2006/07/26/sdcc-06-photo-paradeum-saturday/#more-239): it’s a fuzzy photo, but the Beat looks particularly pretty in it.

Unfortunately, the signing was at the same time that Kevin Smith, benevolent monarch of Quick Stop Entertainment, was scheduled to appear in Hall H. But I felt it was my duty to Gina to do this signing. I’ve never met Kevin Smith; I wonder what he’s like?

If one must venture onto the main floor on Saturday afternoon, at the height of the Comic-Con crowds, sitting at a booth is probably the best thing to do. Instead of trying to make your way through the hordes of attendees filling the aisles, trying to locate people you know, you can relax and watch the sea of humanity drift past. You can even find people as they go by. (Look! There goes George Perez!) So when Mister Freeze wandered by, complete with a Schwarzeneggerian accent, I called to Gina to have her get his attention. So Mister Freeze ended up posing in front of our booth, as did the Riddler, whom Gina stopped as he was going past.

Group signings of a book work like assembly lines: one writer signs his or her name on the book and passes it down to the next writer, and so forth.

SATURDAY 3:00 PM
Now I was over at the DK (Dorling Kindersley) Publishing booth, next to one of the entrances to the main floor of the convention, to do a solo signing for the new expanded third edition of X-Men: The Ultimate Guide. Here I was reunited with Bess Braswell and Rachel Kempster of DK’s New York office and Alex Allan from the main office in London, all of whom are friendly and supportive.

Since another DK writer was still signing at the front of the booth, I was seated on the side, so people walking through the doors to the convention floor passed right in front of me. This proved to be fortuitous, since, as I said, if you sit long enough at a good location at Comic-Con, people you want to see will pass by. Thus, within the hour, I was visited by my old friend, comics artist Bill Sienkiewicz and by my new acquaintance, Stuart Vandal, the British writer for the current Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and for the first time met comics artist Phil Jimenez, who, I was happy to discover, recognized my name.

I signed a number of autographs, but wondered about a long line of people in front of the DK booth, heading somewhere else. I asked one of the DK ladies, and she told me these people were lined up to get autographs from Carrie Fisher in the next booth over. I looked 180 degrees behind me, and, yes, indeed, there she was in the booth right next to ours, signing away at Star Wars memorabilia; she even felt comfortable enough at one point to remove her shoes and put her feet up. I was signing autographs next to Carrie Fisher: now there’s something I would never have imagined.

SATURDAY 4:00 PM
I was feeling a little guilty since I spent part of the previous hour chatting with the aforementioned comics pros who stopped by the DK booth, and besides, I found I enjoyed doing signings. The next panel I intended to attend didn’t start till 5, so I volunteered to continue signing for a little while longer.

After all, I’d had no trouble whatsoever getting into Hall H either on this trip or on last year’s trip, right?

This was a mistake.

SATURDAY 4:20 PM
There was now a line waiting to get into Hall H. This was an understatement. The queue extended through the section of the lobby outside Hall H, out the door, down the sidewalk, past the Convention Center down to the end of the block, then turned at a ninety degree angle and ran along the sidewalk for the width of the Convention Center, then looped back towards the front of the Convention Center, went up the sidewalk and finally ended in front of the Convention Center doors through which I exited upon leaving the DK booth. This was no mere line: it was a labyrinth.

Everyone in line was waiting to see the final Hall H presentation of the day, “Sony Presents,” which would preview the upcoming Ghost Rider movie and Spider-Man 3. Nicolas Cage, who plays Marvel’s Ghost Rider, was scheduled to be there, as well as Sam Raimi, director of all three Spider-Man movies, and, according to rumor, the lead actors of Spider-Man 3 too.

Well, I had no trouble getting through the line for last year’s King Kong presentation. Sure, the line was much longer this afternoon, but at least I was practical enough to get in line forty minutes early.

SATURDAY 5:00 PM
Still in line. But Hall H panels don’t always start on time, right? And I saw last year’s Ghost Rider preview in Hall H (although Cage didn’t appear at that one), so I didn’t care about missing that part of the presentation. It was Raimi I wanted to see. (Kirsten Dunst would make a nice bonus.)

SATURDAY 5:30 PM
This guy who worked for Comic-Con kept walking up and down along the line, telling us that we had no hope of getting into the Sony presentation. Everybody around me found this guy annoying, and so did I. Virtually no one left: Southern California fans are clearly as stubborn as New Yorkers about queues.

Besides, we had reason for hope: the line kept moving forward. It was like my experience waiting to get into New York’s Symphony Space to see Stephen Sondheim and Joss Whedon (see “Comics in Context” #77). In that case, the line moved to close up space when people gave up and stopped waiting. But this was not the case with this Comic-Con line: it kept on moving relatively quickly, and i saw few people leave.

Besides, it was so chilly waiting in line outside Symphony Space in March. It was pleasantly warm in the line outside Hall H, even considering I was wearing a jacket.

The annoying guy also kept telling us that there were “only 6500 seats” inside Hall H. What did he mean, “only” 6500? Hall H is considerably larger than any panel room that Comic-Con had only three years ago. The Metropolitan Opera House has 3800 seats; Radio City Music Hall has 6000. These are famously vast venues, and Hall H is more colossal still. Could it be that the ever-increasing audience for Comic-Con has already outgrown even the enormity of Hall H? Had the “campers” filled it up?

SATURDAY 5:45 PM
By now I had moved all the way through the line to a point roughly only nine feet from the door to the Hall H lobby. And here the line lost all forward momentum. I realized that had I left the DK booth at 4 PM, I probably would have gotten inside Hall H by now. As the saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.

My fellow Quick Stop columnist Fred Hembeck is doubtless reading this and thinking: I can stand around doing nothing just as easily at home (and often do) without going to all the trouble and expense of flying cross-country. Point taken.

SATURDAY 6:40 PM
Finally I was inside Hall H, and the last panel of the day was about to begin! Could it be? Was I going to hear Sam Raimi speak? He was the last person on the Saturday schedule for Hall H, after all.

Gary Sassaman brought onstage the next speaker, who didn’t fit my image of Sam Raimi. This guy looked sort of like that Silent Bob character in those movies, except that (A) this guy didn’t wear a cap, and (B) this guy talked a lot, and so fast that I often couldn’t take notes quickly enough to keep up with him. Who is this guy?

Then this guy (for convenience’s sake, let’s give him an anonymous-sounding name, like Mr. Smith) started taking questions from the audience.

The first inquiry was about the status of the Green Hornet movie that “Smith” once planned to make. Smith said this wasn’t going to happen, because he is “not good at action” and instead “make[s] movies where people talk to each other.” He said that if he did a Green Hornet movie, the characters would “stand around talking about. . .pussy.”

The next fan said, “Thanks for all the trouble you took to get here.” Modestly, Smith replied, “All I did was sit in the car.” It seems that he was stuck in traffic, just as Snoop Dogg had been yesterday on the way to Comic-Con. Quick Stop editor Ken Plume has informed me that Saturday traffic between Los Angeles and San Diego is not usually this bad. It appears that Comic-Con is now so huge that it creates traffic jams between major cities.

Smith demonstrated a commendable paternal regard towards his fans. Observing that one questioner was accompanied by an attractive woman, Smith advised him, “You’re a comic book dude. Don’t dump the girlfriend. Very rarely,” he continues, would a male comics fan find a woman who would say, “I want to fuckin’ hang out while you fuckin’ talk to Spider-Man.” (Spider-Man just got mentioned, so I must be at the right panel, right?)

Then someone wanted to know about the dance number in Clerks II, which had just opened the previous day. Smith told disgruntled audience members to “Chill out. It’s a valid question.” Then he told us, “I’m the straightest gay filmmaker. Doing a musical is right up my alley.” He declared there was “a lot of gayness going in in the movie. I was going like Fosse!” (Well, actually Bob Fosse was very much straight but never mind.) “I always felt I was one cock in the mouth shy of being gay myself,” Smith informed us. Gosh, this is so different from the 300 panel.

Mr. Smith was like a skilled conductor and we in the audience were his orchestra. He told us he was going to bring out Clerks II actor Jason Mewes, and the audience got audibly excited. Then Smith told us, “I was just fuckin’ with you. He’s not here,” and the audience began to settle down again. Then, before emotions could die down, Smith broke into a big smile and said, “No! He is! Check it out!” And then out onstage came Jason Mewes, who looks like that Jay guy in those movies, but with short hair. And I thought: this isn’t Kirsten Dunst.

The next question returned to a previous theme: “Would you wear a kilt in public?” Smith responded, “The shorts I wear are practically a fuckin’ dress anyway.”

The next questioner was a deaf man who was accompanied by a sign language interpreter: the deaf guy wanted to know what Smith’s wife thought of the line in the Clerks II credits thanking her for “the pussy.” Smith observed, “Apparently even deaf dudes aren’t gentlemen anymore.” Pondering aloud, Smith said, “It’s so weird, cause you’re not looking at me.” Then he improvised an experiment, and got the interpreter to sign the following: “This isn’t Kevin talkin’ right now: For many years I’ve really wanted to suck your dick.”

Then Smith answered the “pussy” question seriously. “I think she realizes without me, who would fuck you?” I was beginning to detect this Smith guy’s inner melancholy. He lamented, “Why is it always, “˜Kevin, I respect you; Jason, I would fuck you?'”

The next questioner wanted to know how to get to work for Smith as an intern, inspiring him again to vent his inner pain: “All the interns I get are like, “˜I respect you.’ Mewes, on the other hand, takes interns all the time.” But then Smith confessed that there are no interns; “There’s like one dude who mans the phone, and it’s usually Mewes.”

I felt that Smith and I had something in common, until I remembered what his wife looks like. Okay, he’s way better off than me.

Speaking of his wife, another audience member wanted to know if it bothered Smith to have actor Brian O’Halloran kissing her in Clerks II. “No, it didn’t bother me,” Smith answered, though “if it was Affleck” it would have, because that would represent a “trade up.” Smith noted that “No woman wants to trade down. Why would she leave one fat bearded guy for another?”

Even so, Smith admitted being bothered that his wife ended up kissing O’Halloran for an hour while they were shooting the scene. “I can’t let O’Halloran have the record,” Smith asserted, so he tried to kiss her for even longer, but after twelve minutes, he gave up and said, “Fuck it, let’s fuck.” Smith then advised us that as far as he was concerned, “Kissing is a prelude to fucking.”

But I don’t want to give you the impression that this panel was just about sex. Smith also mused about the physical downside of growing older. “Honestly, it gets no better in your thirties,” he warned us. “Stuff starts falling apart.” Take this for example: “My shit was just too hard. I had hard core shit, like Jean-Claude Van Damme shit.” So Smith’s doctor advised him to start taking Metamucil, which had amazing results. “My shit has the consistency of Play-Doe now,” Smith reassured us. “It just flows out of me.” He counseled audience members in their twenties, “Start drinking Metamucil now. Protect your asshole.”

Now, really, do you get this sort of valuable advice about life at the DC and Marvel panels? I think not. Come back next week for my Comic-Con grand finale and you’ll learn still more from the mysterious Mr. Smith.

-Copyright 2006 Peter Sanderson