Conventions

While not as bloody an incident as the 2010 stabbing, this year the fever pitch of Hall H at Comic-Con was again marred by violence when Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, who plays the Lizard in the upcoming Spider-Man movie, got into a scuffle with a security guard, which resulted in a citizen's arrest by said guard. The incident was said to kick off when Ifans, who might have had a tiny bit to drink that afternoon, him being Welsh and all, went outside for a smoke with his entourage, and upon trying to get back in, found his entourage didn't have the proper credentials. After a shouting match with the guard, Ifans reportedly gave her a shove, went on stage looking pale and rattled, and upon getting offstage, was arrested.

Wizard World New Jersey...you were just not to be. Cincinnati Comic-Con -- I'll see you in my dreams. On its website, Wizard has removed many never-to-be-scheduled conventions -- and even its upcoming Los Angeles convention, in favor of a more modest, feasible list including proven shows. The current schedule calls for:

In a rather surprising turn of events, New York's MoCCA Festival has announced their 2012 dates -- and not only are they a change from previously announced dates, but it's the same weekend -- April 27-28 -- as Stumptown Festival, the alt-comix festival held each year in Portland. The Stumptown dates were announced months ago, so the change comes as a surprise. As one exhibitor who forwarded the letter told us, in previous years MoCCA and Stumptown were a week apart, which was hard enough, but now the already small pool of indie comics publishers and creators are going to have to skip one or the other.

Mr. Tony Lee, author of many Doctor Who and soon MacGyver stories, has posted some thoughts on guest behavior at cons, basically saying that if you are a paid-for guest, you should stay a guest after hours, and not just on the show floor.

Morgan Spurlock's documentary recapping the 2010 Comic-Con will premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, it's being reported. The film -- backed by a nerd pantheon of people like Stan Lee, Joss Whedon and Thomas Tull -- was show at last year's con and was expected to perhaps debut at this year's, but Spurlock is going for a bigger film venue in TIFF.

Well, after posting my initial analysis of Comic-Con programming, astute Beat readers suggested I consider the square footage and attendance of each panel. Using the color-coded programming grids found on the CCI website, and then using the occupancy data for the convention center and nearby hotels, I created a nice spreadsheet for each room or hall. Here are the totals...

Otakon, the anime/manga show held each year in Baltimore, drew a record 31,000 fans. Brigid Alverson runs down the announcements from Viz, Bandai, Funimation and Aniplex .

Another winner in TCJ's cartoonist diary series.

The Comics Journal is posting video tapes of several Comic-Con panels -- so avoiding those crowds was the right way to go after all! Here's one that we much desired to see 50 Years of Comic Book Fandom with Mark Evanier, Jean Bails, Paul Levitz, Dick and Pat Lupoff, Richard Kyle, Bill Schelly, Roy Thomas, and Maggie Thompson. This is where it all began, people.

But does media really dominate the programming at Comic-Con International? Let's find out!

One red-eye flight from Burbank later, and I've had the most uninterrupted sleep I've gotten in two weeks. It will take another 10 hours to really get normal, but for that I've got to hang on until the weekend. YOU CAN DO IT! I'll have more emblematic con thoughts tomorrow, but for now a few shout outs:

Okay we're not going to spend weeks and weeks rounding up San Diego memories, but we are going to share a few good ones. James Kochalka has started his sketchbook diaries account, and this is the comics equivalent of the MODERN FAMILY recap.