I’d say the biggest presence here at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con has to be the Watchmen movie.

The Watchmen logo is everywhere on bags, buttons, flyers, etc, and the action figures and other collectibles are on display — as is the Owl Ship from the movie (and we’ll have a bunch of photos of that soon).

The first panel here at Hall H this morning was for Watchmen and not only did director Zack Snyder and Watchmen graphic novel artist and co-creator Dave Gibbons appear, but so did the entire cast: Malin Ackerman (Silk Spectre II), Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan), Matthew Goode (Ozymandias), Carla Gugino (Silk Spectre I), Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach), jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian), and Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl).

One clip was shown that contained extended, more graphic scenes of the ones that were in the previously released trailer.

Here’s a rundown of what was in the clip.

It opens on the face of Rorschach and goes right into Dr. Manhattan blowing vaporizing people in Vietnam. This is more graphic than in the trailer and we see organs exploding and blood. Flash to the iconic Watchmen smiley face button with blood on it. Rorschach looks over a costume, then over to guns, one of which has the bloody smiley face on it and on the side is a picture of Laurie. We see the ink spots on Rorschach’s mask changing. Switch to the newspaper article with the headline “The Comedian Gets The Last Laugh.” Nite Owl sits sadly next to his costume. A flashbulb goes off to a flashback of Sally Jupiter (Silk Spectre II) getting her photo taken and laughing along with The Comedian, and later we see a knife being through into the framed pin-up painting of Sally. Next we see the beautifully created scene of Laurie and Dr. Manhattan on Mars. Then there are a few scenes of Jon Osterman before and during his graphic transformation into Dr. Manhattan (this was also more graphic). Laurie pulls the covering off The Owl Ship and later we see Laurie and Nite Owl kissing against the setting of a mushroom cloud; and later Laura pulling exposing her chest. There’s also a scene of the Owl Ship coming up out of a frozen area. We also see a clock on 12 a few times as well as the pieces of a clock spread out and then being assembled. There’s also one shot of President Nixon with an exaggerated Pinocchio nose. Then there’s the dead superhero sitting up on the group, then the Comedian gets slashed and we later see him getting shot out the window, which ended with the bloody smiley falls button falling down out the window behind him.

The cast all talked about what it was like to bring their characters to life out of the pages of the graphic novel by Gibbons and writer Alan Moore. What they all said helped them was the fact that they got to play against actually sets built to look like the scenes from the graphic novel. There was minimal green screen, except for the scenes on Mars by Ackerman and Crudup.

The panel mainly consisted of Snyder talking about what made him agree to do the adaptation and how he set about making sure it was faithful to the source material. The cast all talked about how they felt about their characters and what type of preparation they for the role.

When asked if there was any material added to or omitted from the graphic novel, Snyder replied, “Yes and yes.” That was all he would say. Nothing new was really revealed at the panel, but everyone was enthusiastic about the film.

We’ll have more on this panel as soon as we can listen to the audio recording of it (lots and lots of talking in this panel!).