Conventions

The looooong convention schedule is just about set to wrap up with the last big regional show of the year, the Long Beach Comic Com, in balmy downtown Long Beach this weekend. Guests include Marv Wolfman, Jimmy Palmiotti, Jeph Loeb, Stan Lee, Thomas Jane, and more. One last chance to frolic! Programming is here in a form you can import right into your social media. It's going to be a fun, Halloween themed weekend with lots of Walking Dead-related activities.

Some announcements about the 2011 Comic-Con International San Diego: mostly a reminder that four-day passes and single-day tickets go on sale on November 1 at 9 am PST. (Preview Night has been sold out since this year's show.) The fact that this is all being announced to the minute -- very much like Hoteloween -- suggests that there will be a ticket rush of Bieber-like proportions. How quickly will passes sell out? The Beat will be hitting refresh quite often! What's the over/under on a one-day four-day pass sellout? Ticket prices have been raised slightly this year -- a four-day pass is $105 and a one-day pass is $37. Last year they were $100 and $35, respectively.

By Matthew Murray This weekend the ExCel Centre in London will be taken over by the London MCM (Movies Comics Media) Expo. For three days the convention centre is playing host to probably the biggest comic related event in the UK, and there will be plenty of fans and guests on hand. Comic book guests include Sean Phillips (Criminal, Incognito), Chris Claremont (Uncanny X-Men, X-Men Forever), Jamie McKelvie (Phonogram, Suburban Glamour), Antony Johnston (Wasteland, Daredevil), Paul Cornell (Captain Britain and the MI: 13, Action Comics), Jock (The Losers, Detective Comics), Kieron Gillen (Phonogram, Uncanny X-Men), Andy Diggle (The Losers, Daredevil), and a gaggle of other artists and writers less well known outside of the UK. They'll be there selling their wares and participating in panels, or maybe just sitting in the pub. MCM is also the new home of the Eagle Awards, and those will be presented over the weekend.

Repaneled is a newish blog that recreates classic comics panels in new art styles. Up today: Anthony Vukojevich's reimagination of a key panel from Gabrielle Bell's San Diego Comic-Con Comicumentary.

Looking at the Wizard World schedule appended to the New Orleans announcement we just posted, it looks like a truce of sorts has been posted for Con Wars! -- at least on the New York City battlefront.

Via PR, we haven't had a Wizard World tour expansion announcement in a while -- and several shows, as you will see, have yet to be scheduled -- but they've just started growing again with the announcement of a show in New Orleans, set for January 29-30, 2011. Unlike several previous WW expansions, this does not seem to be an acquisition of an existing show.

It's taken a few days to recover from this year's New York Comic Con, and recovery has been slowed by the vast number of out-of-towners who have stayed on to hang out and make merry with New York friends. It is a real thrill to know your hometown show has become an attraction for colleagues around the world, and it definitely inspires one get gussied up and make everyone feel welcomed and well lubricated with social beverages. The time has given me a bit more perspective and enabled me to read and listen to more experiences from the show, and I have to say that when I pegged it as "a complete success" the other day, I was incorrect. NYCC '10 was a SUCCESS, no question, and from talking to comics exhibitors and New York-loving visitors you might conclude that it was a "complete" success as far as their goals went -- exposing their wares to as many potential customers as possible, and drinking as much free alcohol as possible, respectively. I would not gainsay that these are worthy goals, and their accomplishment is praiseworthy, but there were so many other logistical and conceptual problems with the show that its success is almost baffling.

Courtesy of Milton Griepp, we're happy to present audio of ALL the panels from the ICv2 Conference on Comics and Digital which was held on October 7, 2010. The first part is Griepp's White Paper: The ICv2 2010 White Paper Preview This year's presentation will be a preview of the 2010 market overview planned for early next year, looking at first-half 2010 trends in sales of graphic novels and comics, along with info on digital trends. This would work better with the accompanying slideshow, but we're not there with the technology yet. If you listen through however you'll get analysis on the status of the direct market, bookstores, manga, and digital comics sales. Griepp's analysis is the industry standard and we think you number crunchers will enjoy this.

No, that’s not a reference to what I felt like the Sunday after fighting my way across last weekend's uber-crowded, nerd sweat fueled NYCC convention floor.  Of...

Don't worry, we're not going to spend the next five weeks going over reactions to New York Comic Con...probably just this post, our own wrap-up and whatever news fallout emerges. Fun Fact #1: This year, it's been hard to find personal blog accounts of the show. Like San Diego, NYCC has become the province of a lot of professional bloggers and journos, so even a Google blog search comes up with lots of variations on "Marvel vs Capcom!". Fun Fact #2: Even though our own immediate reaction to the show was that it worked for what it was supposed to be, there have been a lot of complaints. This isn't really surprising -- there were a lot of rough patches in security, crowding, scheduling and more -- but it shows that the crowd had high expectations for the kind of experience they were going to get, and when it fell short, they felt it.

The definitive account of SD10, just as great as it began. Can't wait for the Uncivilized Books version of this epic of epicness.

While we consider NYCC a complete success from where we stand, it wasn't without problems -- mostly in security and crowd control. While we're working on our full write-up, Evan Dorkin has some comments that give the other side: