Category: Comics

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Comic-Con seems to have learned from last year’s line debacles. They’ve worked out a traffic system where halls are one-way, lines are clearly labeled, and breaks are clearly marked, with staff directing foot traffic. At least for the small-to-medium rooms. I haven’t messed with the large ones, like Ballroom 20 or Hall H.

I’ve found that my shoulders are screaming in pain whenever I put my backpack on, but they get used to it after a while. And I’m losing my voice from trying to talk above the background noise.

I caught the Mark & Sergio panel after lunch, which was (as always) fun. Found the S*P booth, talked to Randy Milholland, and picked up a copy of Super Stupor with a sketch of Aubrey. (Thankfully, I don’t seem to be the inspiration for this strip.) Made my way back to Studio Foglio to get two more volumes of Girl Genius signed by Kaja Foglio. Got to the TwoMorrows panel and booth, where I finally met Keith Dallas, the primary author of The Flash Companion.

Managed to liveblog DC nation, which I started posting as soon as Dan Didio introduced Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver as the team on Barry Allen: Rebirth. This woman dressed as Batwoman was about 10-15 feet behind me in line, and got to go up on stage and…well…look like Batwoman.

Getting out of the panel was slow, since they were funneling everyone through one set of double doors and handing out little Batman pins. Once I was free of the crowd, I raced back to the hotel to meet Katie (fortunately we’d already planned to just meet back at the hotel, because my cell phone’s battery died right before DC Nation), and we went out to dinner at Dakota.

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Interesting if true: the rumor column Lying in the Gutters reports that one of the bones of contention at the Warner Bros/DC Comics film summit was not just the “I’m a Marvel, and I’m a DC” comparison of movie slates, but Elfquest.

Wendy and Richard Pini made their deal with DC not just to hand publishing duties over to someone else, but to expand into other media — like the long-discussed Elfquest movie that never got off the ground. And what happened just months after the Pinis ended their arrangement with DC? Warner Bros. bought the movie rights.

So while DC had those rights, it didn’t do anything with them…but their parent company wanted to. Rich Johnston points out that it would have been a lot cheaper for Warner Bros. to develop the film through DC.

(Hmm, that reminds me, I’d better check their CafePress store before it closes due to the movie deal. If it hasn’t already.)

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Somehow I’d missed this one, though I’d seen people toss the name around (and assumed they were joking). But it seems that yes, the Legion of Super-Heroes did in fact once reject Arm Fall-Off Boy:


Legion of Super-Heroes in the 31st Century #16, out next week.

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I’d been trying to decide whether to pre-order Comic Book Tattoo (the graphic novel anthology based on Tori Amos songs) or pick it up at San Diego Comic-Con next month. Now I know.

Colleen Doran reports that Tori Amos will be signing the book on Saturday. Tickets for the signing — just 200 of them — will be given to people who purchase the book at the con (limited each day, so that they don’t all go on Wednesday).

She’ll also be on a panel on Saturday from 11:30–12:30. Here’s hoping DC doesn’t schedule a “What’s really happening with the Flash” panel at the same time, ’cause if they do, I’m skipping the Flash news. Someone’ll post it online. (Oh, wait…)

I am so looking forward to this…

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It’s long been a mystery to comic fans why the city of San Diego seems so uncomfortable with Comic-Con International. After all, with upwards of 100,000 people coming in for 4 days, renting hotel rooms, buying meals and drinks, and so on, we must be giving the city an annual boost of extra income, right?

Okay, there’s the usual love-hate relationship between any tourist destination and its clientele. Plus some people get freaked out by anyone in a costume. And sure, some attendees don’t understand basic concepts of hygiene, or bear an uncanny resemblance to the Comic Book Guy. But most of us are normal people (and shower every day). And besides, we’re bringing in all this business, right?

Well, maybe not. The New York Times writes, in an article about Hollywood’s uneasy relationship with the con, that the con is “decidedly low-rent.”

No. 33 on the official tip sheet* lists the grocery chain Ralph’s Market as an alternative to dining out. The Bio International Convention in San Diego, a gathering of the biotechnology industry, with one-sixth as many attendees, produces about double Comic-Con’s $41.5 million in economic impact on the city.

Yes, that’s right. A biotech conference brings the city 12 times as much per attendee as Comic-Con. The city puts up with 6 times the strain on their roads, public transportation, and other infrastructure, for only half the reward?

No wonder they don’t like us.

So here’s a mission for those of you going to San Diego this year: Head down to the reservations pavilion in the convention center lobby at least once, and make a reservation at a nearby restaurant. The Gaslamp District is right across the street from the convention center, so there’s plenty of good food to choose from. Be clean. Be polite. Don’t order the cheapest thing on the menu with a glass of water. Tip appropriately. Overall: make a good impression.

(via Comics Worth Reading)

*Not that I can find this “official” tip sheet anywhere. Plenty of unofficial tip sheets — heck, we wrote our own a few years ago — but no sign of an official one.

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Warren Ellis just posted to his Bad Signal mailing list that John Cassiday has started drawing Planetary #27! It’s been something like a year since Ellis finished writing the issue, and closer to two years since the last issue shipped.

9 years is a bit long for a 27-issue comic book series, but Planetary has been consistently worth the wait.