More than a hundred eager fans of Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender turned up at the New York Anime Festival, which was held last weekend at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.  Among the many festivities, the hour-long Avatar panel hosted by Nick Magazine's Dave Roman delightfully satisfied fans' curiosity.

The program kicked off with a review of the promotional video clip for the Avatar: The Burning Earth video game and a "trivia bending battle," which gave audience members the opportunity to compete, have fun and win a bunch of prizes such as Avatar video games, DVDs, and copies of the second Avatar magazine signed by series creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.

During the discussion, the panel talked about some of the highlights of the second Avatar magazine.  They revealed that the creators liked the idea of using the second installment to fill in the gap between the second and third season of the animated series and that they came up with tons of material that could be used for the magazine.

Following the magazine tour, some preview clips from the next mini comic that is expected to appear with the second volume DVD for season 3, which will be released in January, were shown. Also featured were several background shots from some unaired season 3 episodes, in which most of the frames were from the 12th episode “The Western Air Temple.”

Last but not the least, the panel entertained the crowd with a series of funny “what if” sketches made by Avatar storyboarder and Avatar mag writer/artist, Johane Matte.  Part of the “would-be epilogue” included sketches of Momo punching Zuko as he tries to join the Gaang, and older versions of the cast, including a shot of Zuko and Mai with a child of their own.


-Kris De Leon, BuddyTV Staff Columnist
Source: AvatarSpirit.net
(Image courtesy of AvatarSpirit.net)