Ever since Marvel Entertainment confirmed that Joss Whedon had been chosen to direct their big budget Avengers film, the fan community has vocalized their support or distaste of the decision.

The point being? There is a renewed interest in all things Avengers.

For proof, one need only look to the attendees of Dragon*Con 2010, who showed off a plethora of well crafted costumes this year that featured Avengers both new and old.

We’ve attempted to capture a handful of what we saw while covering the event this past weekend in the photo gallery embedded below.

It’s also worth noting that Geeks of Doom photographer Derek Deweese let his fanboyism run wild in some of these photos by attempting to mirror popular comic book covers. (Neither of us remember the issue of The Ultimates where Captain America points to the “A” on his helmet. If you know the cover we’re talking about then by all means educate us in the Comments section below.) [...]

In terms of cosplay at fan conventions, Dragon*Con is by far the cream of the crop — so much so that I barely pay attention to those who dress up at San Diego Comic-Con and San Francisco’s WonderCon. For instance, the guy decked out as Kratos from God of War stood a good 6 1/2 feet tall and painted every inch of his exposed skin.

Unfortunately for those who prefer the masculine of the sexes, Kratos is not the norm among men. Most male geeks who dress up opt for costumes that don’t celebrate their gender in the same way that their female counterparts do. Still, Geeks of Doom photographer Derek Deweese staked out the entire convention area to find some of the best at this year’s event.

Check out the thumbnails below for 20 Men of Dragon*Con. Also, check out our earlier posts featuring this year’s Cosplay Babes of Dragon*Con: Part 1 & Part 2 [...]

Just as promised, here is the second part of our ladies of Dragon*Con 2010 photo feature. Saturday at the convention seemed twice as packed as the previous day. Seriously, Atlanta’s four largest hotel rooms were filled to capacity with costumed craziness and a handful of extremely puzzled out of towners that came in to watch college football.

On a side note: what you’re not seeing is the large amount of ladies dressed as Merlotte’s Bar & Grill waitresses from HBO’s hit vampire drama True Blood. We haven’t featured any of them in these posts because the costume is pretty basic: white tee shirt with the Merlotte’s logo, a short skirt, and a green apron.

Anyways, below are 20 more ladies we saw at the con that we *don’t* want you to miss. Also, don’t forget to check out part 1 for more photos if you haven’t already done so. [...]

Last year, Geeks of Doom photographer Derek Deweese and I did a post featuring 25 costumed ladies of Dragon*Con that was quite popular with most people on the Internets, which caught us by *complete* surprise. I mean, who knew that sexy women dressed in geeky costumes at a giant fan convention would be such a huge hit right?

Anyways, we’re back again this year and plan to do multiple posts since this is Dragon*Con — an event with more costumed people per square yard than anywhere in the world that I know of, including Halloween. Basically, more costumes equals more posts.

Also, we took some flack for not doing a “Men of Dragon*Con” photo feature. This year we’ll have one as well as a ‘best of’ and probably a few others.

So without further ado, check out part one of our cosplay women of Dragon*Con coverage [...]

Some of the cast of True Blood made their way to Dragon*Con 2010 to chat about their characters on the show and a little bit about the season finale.

“There’ll be blood,” said Nelsan Ellis who plays Lafayette jokingly on the panel that also featured Sam Trammell (Sam Merlotte) and Kristin Bauer (Pam). “You will definitely find something out about my dude [Jesus].”

Ellis spoke about how he wasn’t crazy about the idea of Lafayette having a serious love interest, but said he changed his mind upon seeing the episodes because it showed whole new “tender” dimension to the character.

In reference to the finale, Trammell mentioned something about “death,” but quickly retracted the statement and changed the topic to the subject of nudity on set. He couldn’t recall whether his character is naked in the season 3 finale episode and as anyone who watches the show knows, it tends to happen often [...]

At Dragon*Con, the 4-day geek convention held in Atlanta, GA, every Labor Day weekend, people in costumes greatly out number those in plain clothes, panelists often attend the fan parties and the droids serve you alcohol.

OK, actually only one droid: the appropriately named BAR2D2.

The droid has a 15-beer capacity that’s proudly displayed around a neon-lit carousel and features a “beer” elevator that pushes the bottles up to the top for consumption. Just above that is the hard liquor mixing stack — a 6-bottle shot station that can serve about 100 drinks without stopping to refill the booze. Using the LazyDrinker software, BAR2 can mix about 5,000 drink combinations on demand with access to a laptop computer (and soon an iPhone), according to creator Jamie Price.

And of course, there’s a remote controlled Ice, Garnish & Juice drawer to make your alcoholic beverages served exactly like they are from boring humans behind a counter.

Check out the pictures and video embedded below to get a closer look [...]

Try explaining midichlorians to someone unfamiliar with the Star Wars films and it may come off sounding like a sexually transmitted disease.

Building upon that logic, the folks who produce Dragon*Con TV decided to make an interstellar PSA for Jedi who want to live a normal life despite their “condition.” While there is apparently no cure for “Midichlorians,” prescription drugs do exist that can reduce the number of Dark Side flare-ups and curb symptoms.

According to the video, embedded here below, the prescription drug Vaderex can help.

“The first time he had a Dark Side flare-up, he only slew a few sand people. But then he moved on to killing younglings. And when he tried to murder his best friend, I knew he needed help. That’s when we found Vaderex.” [...]

What happens when you mesh mirror-like shards commonly found on disco balls with the finest soldiers this side of the Darth Vader’s Empire? Disco Trooper, who in this case decided to crash the Battlestar Galactica‘s Fleet party at Dragon*Con 2009.

I followed around the groove jivin’ man inside the Disco Trooper suit, Chris Lee. Interestingly, he was accompanied by an entourage of folks that flashed strobe lights on him whenever it looked as if a picture was being taken. Also, there was a guy dressed as a nun — well either it was a guy or a really convincing asexual lady of the cloth.

Either way, I brought the flipcam along. Video starts with me questioning the ethics of this gathering in the company of the Holy Sister and ends with Disco Trooper bustin’ moves to Lady Gaga…

Until the emergence of Adult Swim‘s Squidbillies, never had there been an animated program that so eloquently embodied the life of an alcoholic talking squid and his illegitimate son in the rural foothills of Georgia.

Such is true of the voice acting for Squidbillies‘s hillbilly squid Early Cuyler, who routinely provides a plethora of thought provoking philosophical quotes such as his dinner table prayer:

“Dear lord… please allow this dangerous combination of hair spray, bat slobber, and D.O.T. four automatic transmission fluid to excite my mind, occupy my spirits, and enrage my body, provoking me to kick any man or woman in the back of the head regardless of what he or she has or has not done unto me.”

Lines of dialog like that can only be delivered effectively by one man, Stuart Daniel Baker a.k.a. the legendary Unknown Hinson. And long before becoming the voice of Early Cuyler, Hinson made a name for himself as a Rockabilly musician who is still touring. His songs are exactly how you’d imagine them to be (ridiculous and offensive). Actually, the amount of ridiculous shit that comes out of this man’s mouth is pretty much exactly like his Squidbillies character.

For proof I’ve provided videos of Unknown Hinson’s performance at the Dragon*Con 2009 Squidbillies panel…

As you may have noticed, our video team on the scene (I just made that up — gold star for me), Doug E. Karate and Rob E. Danger did a fantastic job of finding interesting things and people at Dragon*Con ’09 and showcasing them for all who didn’t attend to see.

This time around we have three pretty epic videos for you to enjoy — two interviews, and even an in-depth lesson in the Gothic culture. The first chat is with a woman talks about how she fell in love with The Green Lantern while watching the cartoons in Spanish growing up, and who even attended the convention dressed as a Lantern herself. Next up, you’ll meet a real, live inventor who brought along one of his creations. I can’t honestly tell you what it is or what it does, but it does throws a bunch of random phrases at you. The contraption is rather big and hangs around our new friend’s neck as he strolls. It actually kind of looks like an ’80s computer and a calculator had a romantic romp inside Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly machine, and then was teleported via the ship from Galaxy Quest, resulting in some form of inside-out electronic device. [...]

The plus side to having everyone dress in elaborate costumes for an extended weekend is that it gives the fairer of the genders a reason to adopt the likenesses of their favorite fictional characters — even if that means causing them to go half naked and/or require the application of mass body paint. I’m not [...]

James Marsters gave details about the role his character will play in the upcoming Battlestar Galactica prequel Caprica in a fan panel at Dragon*Con 2009.

“I saw the pilot. All I have to say is I was disturbed and had to shut it off,” Marsters said, after explaining that he can’t go into too much detail since the show is months away from airing.

He did add that playing a role with darker, most serious tone was very exciting [...]

Dragon*Con 2009 has come and gone now, but the goodies may just never stop. We really spoil you kids.

Today comes another harvest of mini-interviews composed of course by Doug and Rob, and featuring some more of the convention’s best in show. As we all know, conventions like this one are mass gathering points for those who simply love to dress up as their most-favoritest of geeky characters and walk the floors proudly. So who better to have a little chat with, I ask thee? No one, that’s who!

In this installment, we’ll meet two interesting folks. First up is Loxida Delude, the fittingly geek-named hairdresser from Tennessee who’s all dolled up as a Night Elf Druid. She’ll share her convention experience and her gaming vices us. Next up will be a young man who is attending the convention with his mother and father, and claims to be dressed as a character from the game Kingdom Hearts 2, though I kind of think he’s a closet Twilighter and actually dressed up as Robert Pattinson. That hair puts wild to shame [...]

So this was the beginning of our weekend adventure at Dragon*Con 2009 in Atlanta. A weekend with many highs and just as many lows. Sure, some of the costumes Rob and I saw were nothing short of incredible. But for every group of “Time Travelers” (who had the most artistic costumes I’ve ever seen at one of these things) we encountered roaming the halls, there was some absurd things I should never have had to see under any circumstance, i.e the four-hundred pound woman wearing a leaf-shaped thong. Poison Ivy indeed.

Before you watch our videos, know that we had a great time. Overall, the panels were wonderful, and the convention was run brilliantly. I’m proud to say that I walked away from that Con with some pretty cool memories. I loved exchanging wits with Dirk Benedict (Face from The A-Team, Starbuck on the original BSG). That man is hilarious. And I will never forget Rob and I begging James Marsters to march across the hall with us so we could all beat up the kid from Twilight. Marsters and his manager both thought that was pretty hilarious. But all of those moments closely compete with the smell in some of the hallways (The Nerdmosphere if you will), as well as the horrific image of a quite plump and defeated woman wearing patent-leather Catwoman suit.

Check out the video here below of Rob and me roaming the halls at Dragon*Con 2009 [...]

Leave it up to the Mighty Tide of Justice guys, Doug and Rob, to contract the Swine Flu while down at in Atlanta this weekend at Dragon*Con 2009.

While roaming the convention floor, our guys on the prowl happened upon a teenage girl wearing a very clever costume of the H1N1 virus, known more commonly as the Swine Flu.

What’s even more curious is that they found a teenage girl that wasn’t into Twilight.

Check out the highly contagious video [...]

The Mighty Tide of Justice boys, Doug E. Karate and Rob E. Danger, were on the scene at Dragon*Con 2009 for Geeks of Doom this weekend with camera in hand and once they found out there was a Twilight panel, they went right for it.

Apparently, the line to get into the panel was quite long, so they decided to stick around and interview some of the fans to learn more about the Twilight phenomenon and how the fans feel the series compares to other vampire stories.

Check out some of the video interviews here below with some of the Twilight fans. Note, the first video interview has spoilers for the later Twilight books [...]

Ianto Jones will not return in future episodes of the Doctor Who spinoff Torchwood television show, should it return for a third season, according to actor Gareth David-Lloyd in a panel at Dragon*Con 2009.

“It looks very likely that they’ll get a full season, but all we know is that they’re in talks,” David-Lloyd said. “As far as Ianto is concerned, he won’t [be returning]…”

“But, there’s always a chance,” David-Lloyd said, perhaps giving fans a spark of hope. “I really don’t know.”

Ianto met his untimely demise in the Torchwood Children of Men special, which evoked outrage from fans of the series and several campaigns to rally the show’s writers to change their minds [...]

Sometimes a picture is worth… well, it’s own post. For instance, the shots captured below (done by geek photographer Derek Deweese) at Dragon*Con 2009 that depicts one very angry mutant. Of course this could have been inspired by the Penny Arcade web comic that shows how Marvel Comics’ new parent company Disney is dealing with an excess of characters.

I have to be honest though, I expected far more Marvel/Disney mashups from this group of creative costumers. News of the Disney-Marvel acquisition is still very fresh in the minds of fanboys, but as you can see from the disgruntled Hank McCoy pictures, a little effort goes along way.

[P. S. - If I've missed some Marvel/Disney mashups from Dragon*Con either add the URL to the comment section below or tweet @geeksofdoom. We'll make sure you get credit for the find.] [...]

Leonard Nimoy will not reprise his role as the Elder Spock in the planned sequel to the revamped Star Trek film directed by J.J Abrams, he said today at a panel discussion at Dragon*Con 2009.

“There are no plans for me to return for the second movie,” he said in response to a question asked by an attendee.

William Shatner, who has been absence from the convention scene for the past few years, joined Nimoy on stage for a discussion that began with a playful exchange about why Shatner wasn’t featured in the new movie.

Shatner admitted he’s never seen the movie, but not because of any sort of grudge.

“I think the Spock character is very well established as portrayed by Zachary Quinto. And I think if you saw the movie Bill, you’d say the same of Chris Pine,” Nimoy said [...]