Comic-Con International, the biggest annual comic-book convention, was held last weekend and is apparently now big enough to take over the city of San Diego for four days. (I did not attend.) Douglas Wolk:
This was, by all estimations, the biggest Con ever; Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all completely sold out, hotel rooms were impossible to score, the aisles of the San Diego Convention Center were clogged with fans, every nightspot in the city was awash with after parties every night.... Comic-Con has become an event where Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Jenna Jameson, Sarah Silverman, Cory Doctorow, Michael Cera and Katee Sackhoff can all be spotted at the same party. We are all nerds now.Tom Spurgeon:
I'll probably always remember this year for the moment when my pal Jordan Raphael and I were walking in an upstairs hallway to take part in the comics media panel and some Hollywood-looking guy literally elbowed past us, bellowing in a gruff voice, "Sorry, fellas. I have a panel to be on."Shaenon K. Garrity:
There are people who are extreme obsessive fans of one, and only one, anime series, and these people will attend every single anime-, manga-, and random-Japanese-crap-related panel strictly so that they can get up at the end and ask a completely unrelated question about their one thing. I went to three panels on manga publishing, and this happened at every one, with a different person and different anime each time. All three questions were the same: "Are they ever going to make more episodes of ______?" All three answers: no.Big announcement: after two decades of false starts, the Watchmen movie is slated for March 2009. Look, there's a website and everything. I will probably go see it, in an instance of the triumph of hope over experience. Smaller but maybe more exciting announcement: Grant Morrison will be writing DC's 2008 crossover Final Crisis.
