About Mark Waid from the SWF website:

Mark Waid (United States)

Mark Waid is a comic book writer and editor who has written some of the best-selling graphic novels of all time, including Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright. Currently editor-in-chief of independent comic book company BOOM! Studios, he is the writer behind The Incredibles, which is based on the 2004 Disney-Pixar film of the same name, and a variety of his self-created works.

I was extra-excited to see him because I had a special centerfold from the SWF 07 programme that Gail Simone and Kurt Busiek signed – I just needed his autograph to complete my centerfold.

His panel was a really interesting one to listen to. He talked about how he went from fanboy to pro comics writer thanks to an opportunity from legendary editor Julie Schwartz, his influential eight-year run on The Flash, how Kingdom Come came about, what it was like to work with three other superstar writers on weekly series 52 for DC, and his thoughts on some of the recent trends in comics. I’m glad to see at least one creator isn’t for big event comics.

Mark Waid talks about his career with moderator Terence Chua

There were quite a few questions, and eventually we went outside for autographs! Unfortunately we ran out of time, because he had to be another panel at 3pm. But that was okay! I went for lunch with Sarah, Nerwen and Raven; we returned before the end of the 3pm panel, and I was first in line.

Fully signed at last!

This year they doubled the space, with wider aisles and better positioning of high-traffic areas so that the snaking queues wouldn’t jam up the whole hall.

It was special for me too, because I cosplayed for the first time!

I arrived early because I thought it was going to be crazy crowded, but it wasn’t! The crowd at 9.35am was positively microscopic compared to last year’s, where it stretched across two floors.

Of course, this was probably because the doors opened at 11am – it was only about an hour before that, that the place really started to fill up.

Entry was free, so there were two lines: one for buying the event guide, and one for entry. The first 100 people to buy the event guide for SGD 4 got some freebies, which is always nice. There wasn’t any pre-registration, which was the main cause of last year’s issues.

I was in the first 15 people or so, but I was kinda peeved that people were buying five (!) guides at a time to get the freebies. Hello, people! What about the poor schlubs waiting at the back?

Anyway. I got my guide (I only bought one, so don’t yell at me!) just before 11am, so I headed to the back of the second queue. My semi-famous friend Seriously Sarah had just arrived, so I joined her in line. Then the doors opened, and hello gorgeous!

Nintendo retain their prime spot at the very front of the hall, so the first thing we saw was Wii demos! They hadn’t really started yet though, but that was fine.

Sarah and I went about; she’d been there the day before so she was a lot more familiar with the place than I was. Neither of us had suited up yet, being supahsikrit and all, and we managed to get some freebies (:

We got to see the 501st Legion opening up the day on stage!

501st Legion, Singapore Garrison - can you see Vader?

There was the Imperial March as they did a short loop of the hall, and then they had a short talk about what the 501st Legion does and why you should join Lord Vader and the dark side the Legion. They’re basically a community service organisation with a heavy Star Wars theme, and some of the awesomest cosplayers I’ve ever seen.

And then I met my friend Hafiz, who popped by for a bit before an event of his own, and then we made the poor boy wait while we suited up XD

The result:

Sarah as Harlequin (DC) and me as Mario (Nintendo)!

That was awesome fun. That’s a 1-Up mushroom I’m carrying, btw – it gives Mario an extra life in the games.

Quick mushroom primer!

Red (Super Mario) – makes little Mario grow into big Mario aka Super Mario!

Green (1-Up) – gives you an extra life!

Yellow (Mega Mushroom) – makes Mario into a giant Mega Mario who can crush everything – blocks, pipes, enemies, platforms, anything – for a limited time. Only in New Super Mario Bros, I think.

/quick mushroom primer

And we walked around a bit before splitting up – Sarah to join the folks at Movie Mania, and me with Hafiz to try out the Wiis! He didn’t really get the hang of it, but that’s normal for when you first try the Wii.

Hafiz tries out Virtua Tennis 2009 on the Wii

I got to try archery Wii Sports Resort, and I must say that MotionPlus is pretty cool. Looking forward to seeing more games that make use of MotionPlus.

Wii Sports Resort demo booth - there are other Wii and DS titles to try too

And then we camwhored a bit, because it was too fun not to.

A rare camwhore moment

And then the real Mario & Luigi mascots showed up! That was pretty awesome – whenever they came out, everybody wanted to take photos of them.

Mario, Luigi and Mario

They were demoing Guitar Hero on stage, so that was pretty cool to watch – especially since one of them was a classmate.

Guitar Hero: Legends of Rock

We went to the stage to watch the noon-time show put on by the folks of Movie Mania – Snake Eyes vs Storm Shadow from GI Joe! But we did get some pictures of the Movie Mania folks, whose costumes always amaze.

Storm Shadow, Darth Maul unmasked, Snake Eyes, Qui-Gon Jin (I think)

Storm Shadow, random army man, Reno of Movie Mania, random army man #2, Snake Eyes

And, perhaps my favorite picture that I took:

Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow

And then we met up with Nerwen but Hafiz had to go for a talk of his own. We wandered around a bit before going to stage at 12pm to watch a little show by the MM folks.

That was pretty damn cool. It started out with Storm Shadow chasing a poor lady, and Snake Eyes coming to her rescue. After a pretty awesome stunt fight, Storm Shadow won – but the lady called in reinforcements: Chicken Little Jedi!

Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow duke it out

That was really kind of weird, and after that I couldn’t see anything because (like Mario) I was too short. I do know that Chicken Little Jedi won in the end, probably through sheer weirdness.

We went to the G&B Comics booth to get the giveaways and buy some comics, but we got split up. We eventually found each other at the queue for Brian Bolland’s autograph. We joined it quite early, but I do know it eventually stretched so far that I couldn’t see the end of it.

And because Mr Bolland is famous for illustrating the Batman classic The Killing Joke, it was only fitting that a certain someone show up in-character…

The Joker, comics version

I didn’t get to see him after that, but I was told that the same cosplayer eventually changed into the version seen in The Dark Knight. (EDIT: It was a different person as The Dark Knight‘s version.) I did see a flash of purple coat and green hair though.

It was a pretty long wait, so when he came everyone was quite eager for autographs.

Mr Bolland prepares to sign a gazillion autographs

Poison Ivy and Harlequin walked past, so Mr Bolland took a picture of Mario, Ivy and Harlequin – that was pretty awesome, and probably one of my personal highlights of the day.

Poison Ivy and Harlequin

And after the signing, we were just in time to watch the Coscon on the competition! STGCC hosts the Coscon cosplay competition, so the announcer had the unenviable task of saying “Could the Coscon cosplay competition competitiors please gather” several times. Nerwen and I managed to get seats in front of the stage, so we watched the entire show.

Today’s theme was movies, which is basically all Western-based entertainment – the anime/Japanese category is tomorrow, which probably explains why it wasn’t so crowded today. The judges were Reno and another guy from Movie Mania (he had a camera), and there was a guest judge all the way from Gotham City  – Batman!

Batman sweeps onto the stage

The individual contestants were quite awesome, and the group ones were quite funny. There were three groups: a Star Trek contingent of Data, Neelix and a possibly Spock (I can’t remember) attempting to fight off a Borg called Seven of Eleven. They were assimilated in the end, though; resistance is futile, after all.

Another group was the two Jedi we’d seen above, except one was Darth Mual ‘unmasked’ aka without makeup. A lot of people weren’t impressed by that, but the resulting stunt fight was what won them the competition – that was a really serious fight, with falling off the stage and all that. Seriously cool, and everyone was pretty impressed after that.

But my favorite – and, arguably, the favorite of a lot of the guys – was Harlequin and Poison Ivy, because Ivy was hot and she flirted with Batman. That was pretty funny; she sat on the table and went “So, Batman, I think we can cancel the competition, hm?” and he was like “I’m not affected by your charms!”. And then she got miffed and threw her rose at him. Harlequin had her awesome rubber chicken that was really funny whenever it squawked.

Later, when the groups came back on-stage for the final judging, Batman offered her the rose but she very deliberately snubbed him. That was hilarious.

We didn’t stay to vote for the invidividual contestants, because by then it was past 4pm and we hadn’t had lunch yet. I was starving; I’d scarfed down something at 9am, so I was pretty much running on empty.

We ended up at McDonald’s, after much delay because everyone wanted photos with me/Mario ): I’m sorry, Nerwen!

As we left the con, we saw this:

Two Rorsachs chatting

I believe the wooden sign was the ‘The End is Nigh’ one, too.

When we got back to the con, it was 5.15pm and Hafiz was back, between appointments again. We did some shopping, and then Nerwen went home while I went to meet my parents for dinner. (I ate two meals in less than an hour. Guh.)

My parents wanted to see how the con was compared to last year’s, so I brought them back. I wanted to watch the scheduled Nintendo Showcase at 8pm, so before that I wandered around a bit to do a bit of shopping.

While I was at the capsule stations, wasting money contemplating the Mario-themed ones, I was approached by my Guitar Hero-playing classmate! L asked if she could do a short video interview with me for Nintendo HQ in Japan, since I was dressed up as Mario and all. She asked me a few questions and her videographer filmed it. Mostly it was about whether I thought MotionPlus was a good addition.

Then I went back to join my parents, but it turned out that the showcase was cancelled. I was disappointed, but things happen, I guess.

When we were leaving, Mario and Luigi were outside, so I managed to grab another picture with them – that was pretty cool.

So that was it! I won’t be going for tomorrow, but do check out the STGCC at Suntec Ciy, halls 401 and 402. It’s awesome fun and there’s lots of stuff to be had!

And there's always the swag.

EDIT: Now with video! This is the Snake Eyes vs Storm Shadow vs Chicken Little fight at noon, courtesy of Team SEJA.

FCBD is an annual event, held the first Saturday in May – today, in other words. G&B gave out free comic books, specially printed for this event, at their new shop at Rochor Centre! They’re not open at the new location yet, but they’ll be moving in June, so it was a way to introduce the new shop to their costumers.

So anyway, off it was to the new place to see the shop and to get free comics! Click through after the picture for more!

The new place is at Rochor Centre, which I’d never been to before – so it took some searching. I thought I was lost until I looked up…

And I knew I’d found it. It took a bit more searching to find stairs or a lift, since it’s on the second floor, but I found it. Their signboard isn’t ready yet, so in place of that they had a giant banner and lots of signs.

The new shop is fabulous. It’s much bigger than the old one, and they even have a little climate-controlled room for statues, busts and figurines. The picture only shows about 3/4 of the mini-room, because it was quite crowded so I couldn’t really get a wider view without walking into someone.

On the other side of the shop are the shelves for the trade paperbacks. They were having a sale, so it was quite popular!

Unfortunately, it was all Marvel, which isn’t my thing. But I did manage to get a book. There’s a half-wall separating the two halves of the shop; on one side is the rack for presumably the new release, while the other has pictures of the staff at various events and a big picture signed by the members who attended their Christmas party.

Then at the back was the little counter they’d set up for FCBD. They’re not totally set up, since they’re moving, so there was plenty of empty wall space.

Near the front of the shop is this really cool Marvel figurine tower. All sorts of Marvel characters were stacked up on a tiered stand, and you could literally spend an hour identifying each one (that’s Spiderman at the top):

Further inside the shop was the unfinished DC one:

There are quite a few other display cases. This one was in a corner, and held all sorts of DC action figures. Can you spot the Soviet Superman?

At the back of the store are some unhung posters, but they already had a GL one:

I also spotted a Zatanna one rolled-up in the corner. Members got an extra gift if they wore their member tee, which turned out to be the FCBD mini-mate!

All in all, it was a great introduction to the new shop. The various conversations I overheard were fascinating; in one corner, random strangers are talking about the demise of scans_daily, while in the other someone is explaining Final Crisis to another person.

Looking forward to the next FCBD!