“Let’s go to Comic Con!”

Ahhh the words we all long to utter. The pinnacle of any geek’s existence, we dream to one day gaze upon the holy grail of all things comic and entertainment related. Make no mistake, to do so is quite an honor. Those who wield this responsibility (cough cough Brett) must do so wisely.

We open up the show with an homage to the Mad Max films with Conan playing a flaming guitar and Andy riding a hellacious rig towards San Diego creating some hijinks along the way. Solid opener and shows that the writing staff know their stuff well. It’s flashy, funny, corny and just a bit of everything.

We get to Comic Con for the show and the set is just EPIC. I can’t say enough about it. This guy gets it.

After a booming ovation, he dives right into the typical Conan opening monologue with some pretty funny  observations and jokes. The one that definitely stuck out to me was a jab at George Lucas selling out to Disney. (Ouch) I’m sure George is wiping his eyes with a couple of billions. Tragic I know.

Conan proceeds to thank the audience for being amazing (Who doesn’t like praise?) and asks if he can take a selfie with them but he is having a slight problem fitting them all into frame with him. So he wisely enlists the help of a Cosplay Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) in which I thought was a really cool bit. (Better than having Michael B. Jordan set off the sprinklers, face it the blogs burned intensely enough this season. Flame off please.)

Next he provides us with a little bit of slapstick by announcing that a whale has escaped his near by Sea World enclosure and all of a sudden a very suspicious looking Yoda arrives that is well over 15 feet tall. (Hey we are not Airboy, we have no room for discrimination here, not even giant creepy costumed mammals.) Following the tail end (swear I didn’t mean to) of this bit we are announced the guests for this evening: Elijah Wood (Frodo! Frodo!) and Chris Hardwick (Nerdist and Talking Dead). Also we are told in the days to follow we indeed will see the stars of franchise super giants: The Hunger Games and The Walking Dead as well as the cast of an unrevealed movie. Since I am a betting man I’m going to go with either the cast of Marvel’s Ant-Man or Warner Bros: Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice. Either or I’m sure my  big screen LED TV screen will go Boom.

After the previous announcement, we dive right in with confirmation that after the next installment of the Wolverine movie franchise Hugh Jackman will be stepping down (Not a sharp decision per my point of view) so we are shown auditionees that attempt to fill Hugh’s mutant mutton chops. Among the celebrity cast of caring citizens are Patton Oswalt, Larry King, Michael Sheen and Betty White. My opinion? Take Larry. Out of all the rest at least you know you will get like ten movies for the franchise out of him.

After a quick product shill for the Conan 360 cam, the curtain calls upon its first guest hailing from the Shire himself: Frodo (Elijah Wood) Elijah gives us some insight on how hard it is to be a pop icon at Comic Con, even telling us that he needs to don a mask to avoid notoriety. A celeb being one of us. How Cool. He even goes so far to say that other members of the cast including Peter Jackson must resort to this same tactic sometimes to get to enjoy the festivities properly. (I wonder if GP press staff have the same issue?) Then in a very cool moment, Elijah whips out one of the replica prop rings from The Lord of the Rings movies to a frenzy of crowd approval. I couldn’t help but be recalled to the episode of The Big Bang Theory when they are all fighting over who gets custody of one of Peter Jackson’s fabled pieces of memorabilia. As we are drooling over the tiny golden circle, an unlikely tall Sméagol snatches the ring from our hero Hobbit and exits stage left.

A quick commercial break and we are back with Elijah explaining what it was like to revisit the character of Frodo Baggins for the Hobbit Trilogy. He states it was “A combination of going back in time, and no time passing at all.” (A perfectly good convoluted answer for a comic book crowd) Before he leaves the set he informs us that his show Wilfred on FXX has come to a close and Conan shows a clip of the new movie Cooties. It’s a movie about a zombie like plague spreading via tainted chicken nuggets (for those who thought Super Size Me, was a deterrent) through children. It also stars Rainn Wilson. Might be worth a look when it hits on Demand on September 18th.

We take another quick break, and return with a promotion for Funko POP Conan SDCC 2015 figurines. One version of the figurine will be given away over the course of all four shows at San Diego. We have Regular Conan, Batman Conan, Zombie Conan and Conan Monster. These are all pretty cool and you can enter to win at teamcoco.com/pop (I’ve already entered mine. Fingers crossed for the Batman one)

Finally we are greated by a familiar face, Chris Hardwick in a very traditional Spider-Man costume. He informs us of some little known fopauxs when cosplaying, such as room temperature and “dong placement.” (I’m certainly choosing my spandex wisely now)

Chris then proceeds to give Conan the “Comic Con Citizens Test” which contains a speed round of questions to prove his geek mettle. I found this entertaining besides the obvious questions like “What metal is Wolverine’s bones made out of?” (Adamantium) There was some funny ones like “If Caitlyn Jenner was on a Superhero team, what would it be called?” (The X-Men) “Who shot first? Han or Greedo?” (He said neither, it was a Jawa on the Grassy Knoll) and word association “Cosplay is not..” (Drinks with Bill Cosby, never too soon I guess) Finally he asks “What would you do if Seth Green was on the show and he attacked you with a toy lightsaber?” So of course, ask and you shall receive…

This should happen more on talk shows, (imho) it would truly make for “Must See TV”.

We close out the final moments of the show with Chris and Conan pontificating about how there is such hatred these days when it comes to spoilers. I couldn’t agree more with their points. We are all nerds, we will see it either way. So true. So true.

Overall: This was a whole hour of network tv that whisked by quicker than a coffee travelling in Barry Allen’s digestive system. I thoroughly enjoyed it. You can tell that Conan doesn’t just pay lip service and he respects the source material. In a world where it’s cool to like anything that’s Pop Culture or trendy, it’s refreshing to see someone not afraid to wear their underwear outside their clothes to support the cause.

Till tomorrow night. Same Conan time, can’t wait to see what’s on the channel.