Welcome to the Best (or Worst) Con Ever, depending on your perspective. All images courtesy of Rick DeMott, unless otherwise noted.

Movies, TV, animation, videogames, collectibles, costuming... and oh yeah, comics: in July, all pop-culture roads lead to San Diego. Every year Comic-Con International manages to squeeze a few thousand more geeks, fans and pros into the city's bursting-at-the-seams convention center than the last time around. 2007 was no exception, with 125,000 folks turning the event into a full-fledged sellout. (For the first time ever Saturday tickets sold out in advance of the Con's opening.) Lines for higher-profile panels snaked from one end of the multi block-long building to the other (and back again), while red-shirted security personnel struggled to keep hallways passable and fire marshals happy.

The Thursday-Sunday event actually began with a Wednesday night sneak preview of the Exhibit (i.e., sales) Hall, but Warner Bros. treated early arrivals to a sizeable chunk of Beowulf, Robert Zemeckis' latest adventure in motion capture at a local mall multiplex. The film was introduced by co-writers Neil Gaiman (who referred to the poem it's based on as 'the oldest story in the English language") and Roger Avary (who added "filmed with the most modern technology available"). "I had to labor over this in high school English," Avary told the crowd. "I wanted to make it easier for future generations."

Fans of motion capture will be impressed with the seeming reality of the mo-capped characters and the hallucinatory camera moves and imagery the technique makes possible. Its detractors will likely remain unconvinced, put off by those same characters' somewhat uncanny, not-really-real quality. Then again, the sight of a computer-rendered Angelina Jolie, striding atop a lake with spike heels growing from the back of her bare feet, a yards-long braided pony tail undulating behind her like a reptilian appendage may persuade a few mocap skeptics to put aside their doubts. As the monster Grendel, Crispin Glover is nowhere as attractive, instead resembling a human-shaped mass of scar tissue and open wounds.

Gaiman extolled the film's use of mocap -- "you're seeing the performance down to every tiny little muscle" -- and described the cast (which includes Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovich) "wearing their suits with all the little dots on... they looked like the cast of Tron." According to Avary, motion capture solved the problem of depicting the actors at different, decades-apart ages of their lives, and made possible "the cheapest dragon fight ever filmed." "Bob told us to go wild," Gaiman said, quoting Zemeckis: 'nothing you could possibly write could cost me more than $1 million a minute to film.'"

Beowulf will be released in Real D, IMAX 3D and flat versions. At one point Ray Winstone angled his sword out towards the audience (wearing, as Gaiman described them, their "magic Clark Kent glasses"), bringing back memories of 3D's 1950s glory days.

Neil Gaiman (right), who was the special guest of Comic-Con 2007, also promoted LAIKA's stop-motion feature, Coraline, with director Henry Selick.

The following afternoon Paramount had first dubs on the convention center's massive Hall H to tease their upcoming slate. Gaiman, one of the convention's guests of honor and seemingly everywhere that weekend, introduced the about-to-open Stardust, based on his graphic novel. Asked about the possibility of his signature character Sandman being adapted to film, Gaiman responded, "I'd rather no Sandman movie be made than a bad Sandman movie," but then allowed that "the time for one is getting closer," although a film based on his comicbook mini-series, Death: The High Cost of Living (to be directed by Gaiman himself) is up first.

J.J. Abrams presented his mysterious, pseudo-home video "Statue of Liberty" trailer (with the statue's head landing in downtown Manhattan like a football kicked for a field goal) for his still unnamed monster movie. Abrams refused to divulge any more info to the frustrated audience, only saying, "I've wanted to make a great monster movie for so long." (Audiences will have to wait until year's end to see who or what sent Lady Liberty's head flying.)

Writers Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi, along with special effects legend Phil Tippett, introduced footage from The Spiderwick Chronicles, based on their popular series of children's novels. Paramount's entry into the Harry Potter/Narnia world of magical beasties will premiere next February. "I love Brian Froud and Jim Henson," DiTerlizzi enthused. "I want to do for faeries what Jurassic Park did for dinosaurs." Tippett (introduced by DiTerlizzi as "the Ray Harryhausen of our generation") showed concept art and test footage of the creatures populating the film, led by "Redcap," a "bull goblin."