Spaceballs Troopers, July 30 -- The hall had been swept three times before anyone admitted finding him.

"Rick. Rick. Rick."

Rick Moranis stood up.

Twenty-nine years after his last live-action film appearance, and after a string of politely declined comeback offers that became something of an industry legend, the man who gave Dark Helmet to the world walked to the front of Hall H to a standing ovation he appeared genuinely unprepared for. "I really wasn't retired," he told the crowd once he could be heard. "I was just negotiating."

That line landed because it was precisely the right joke for the moment, and because the room understood what it cost. Moranis withdrew from Hollywood in 1997 following the death of his wife, Ann Belsky, fro...