Celebrity appearances and sightings common at Comic Con day 2
SAN DIEGO — Day 2 of Comic-Con featured Seth Rogen, random sightings of most of Netflix’s “Defenders” and a missing Mike Tyson.
‘Preacher’
After a slow start in Season 1, AMC’s “Preacher” — a drama focusing on a criminal-turned-preacher with otherworldly powers (Dominic Cooper), his true love (Oscar nominee Ruth Negga) and a 119-year-old vampire (Joseph Gilgun) all searching for God — really has found its voice in Season 2.
There’s a good reason for the improvement between seasons, co-creator Seth Rogen said during a press conference Friday.
Rogen told me that he and Evan Goldberg, his writing and directing partner, said throughout the first season, “there were maybe, like, a dozen moments where when you look at them, you’re, like, ‘Wow, that (stuff) can only happen on one thing on Earth, and that is the TV show ‘Preacher.’ And then me and Evan were like, ‘What if there was 200 things like that instead of just a dozen?’ And that was something we really encouraged the writers to try to do, is take big, crazy swings.”
Celebrity encounters
Cosplayers have gotten really good. So much so that I couldn’t believe how impressive the guy in the Hard Rock lobby looked as Danny Rand from Netflix’s “Iron Fist.”
Then he was followed by look-alikes of Karen Page from “Daredevil” and Frank Castle from “The Punisher.” It was amazing. It finally took seeing an impossibly buff Luke Cage to realize they weren’t cosplayers but the actual actors from the Netflix dramas. My “Defenders” experience was completed later Friday afternoon when I saw Krysten Ritter, who portrays my current Twitter crush, Jessica Jones.
Random celebrity encounters are a big part of Comic-Con. I’ve seen Nolan Gould (“Modern Family”) just being a fanboy, Yvette Nicole Brown (“Community”) strolling the convention floor, and I’ve run into Michael Rooker (“Guardians of the Galaxy”) on opposite sides of downtown.
‘Mike Tyson Mysteries’
Hundreds of fans of Adult Swim’s absurd Las Vegas-based cartoon “Mike Tyson Mysteries” packed the Indigo Ballroom at the Hilton Bayfront. They happily sat through two episodes of the series and cheered when they ended. Then, when it was announced that Tyson, a scheduled panelist, wasn’t able to attend, they streamed for the exits. Any true fan would have stayed around to try to solve that mystery.
Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4567. Follow @life_onthecouch on Twitter.