Conventions

. The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo, also known as C2E2, is set to begin next weekend!  If you'll be attending, here are some helpful...

Austin's South By South West has long been hailed THE place to play your new Renaissance-powered noise band or screen your documentary on the failings of mankind. As a former Austinite myself, I know the activity of the town pulses as if the city itself is running a marathon. The University of Texas students are off on Spring Break allowing for a different sort of tourist to take their spaces at the taco carts, oddly-named bars (hello, Mooseknuckle) and marvel at the bats of Congress Bridge.

Well this time it took about 5 hours. About the same as the passes. Since noon, people have been reserving hotels for this year's San Diego Comic-Con. While the process itself was painless -- a quick entry to a website where the diligent who had planned their hotel picks could easily choose up to 20 and get out -- the waiting game has begun. Or as Crazy4ComicCon aptly put it on Twitter: "nerd rage has given way to nerd angst."

This morning's San Diego Comic-Con hotel registration process was, as opposed to past days, a quick 3 minute exercise during which I did not hit refresh even once. As you may recall, in the olden days, servers were usually swamped, resulting in endless refreshing, endless waiting, endless website crashes, endless agony. The upside was that you knew within an hour if you had your hotel.

This weekend's Emerald City Comicon seems to have been a raging success, if only from the amount of "highly refreshed" tweets we saw all weekend. The Seattle Times has a preview which notes that some 25,000 people were expected. Based on the number of pictures like this one from @alisonst showing packed crowds, it would seem that the first year going from a two- to a three-day show was a raging success.

The excitement has already begun at the Emerald City Comicon, but in case you need more info, here you go.

This is the first time the show has run three days, but it has definitely joined HeroesCon, Baltimore Comics Con, WonderCon, and a few others as one of the premier "regional" shows of the year. If things were different we'd be there slurping oysters right this minute, but hopefully next year.

Here's an interview with showrunner Jim Demonakos, and a guide to the show with ALL the info you need.

The Emerald City Comic-Con kicks off today and it sounds like a rockin' good time! We're GREEN with envy over everyone who gets to go. Lots of outside events too!

Nothing too notable...people went, wore costumes, made out with Elmo ,and got autographs.

The Wizard World Miami show kicks off this weekend at the Miami Airport Convention Center -- it's the first Wizard show in this venue so we'll see how it goes. Renee Witterstaetter announced some exclusives from the Eva Ink Artist Group:

If you were thinking of getting into the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con via volunteering, that window too passed a few weeks ago:

In the aftermath of Saturday's Comic-Con sellout, folks were kicking their server tires, expressing apologies, and planning to put the comics back in Comic-Con.

While lost in the SDCC ticket sellout hoopla, it's a curious fact that tickets for New York Comic Con in October went on sale Monday at noon, and here again there was a lot of demand, although nowhere near San Diego levels. As one potential attendee named @mightysquid tweeted: