SDCC '11

How many times can one man pact? Stan Lee is pushing the boundaries of human endurance with, interestingly, a story which involves "forces beyond comprehension." This time he's bringing along Todd McFarlane and the duo are teaming with Japanese musical/chat show star Yoshiki for a projects called Blood Red Dragon. Details of the project will be announced at, where else, San Diego. While we're not familiar with Yoshiki's career, based on the photos we found, it appears that Lee and McFarlane may be embarking on their first yaoi project. Which would be fantastic.

The Comic-Con film festival has become an increasingly important part of the show, with a variety of premieres in the fiction and non-fictin categories. Of note are screenings of comics-related documentaries Superheroes, Comic Books Go to War, My Comic Shop DocumentARy, and To Romero With Love. Complete list follows:

While badges are long sold out, there are still a few chances to get into this year's San Diego Comic-Con; about 1500 badges have been refunded and will go on sale via an announcement on Twitter, Facebook and RSS. In addition, a pricing change has been made to make buying tickets more equitable:

Was the giant SCOTT PILGRIM banner on the Bayside Hilton the shark jumping moment we've all been suspecting for the love affair between Comic-Con and Hollywood movie studios? Brooks Barnes and Michael Cieplyreport that the bloom is finally off the Comic-Con rose for some movie studios:

Is the San Diego Comic-Con only 6 weeks away? Why, yes! And so the avalanche of exclusives and announcements is well underway. Here's what Diamond is offering this year:

For several years, those who feel that the San Diego Comic-Con has lost the comics part of the equation (even though it isn't true at all ) have been wondering if an alternative event -- a "Slamdance*" to CCI:SD's Sundance -- would spring up. And artist/animators Scott Morse and Ted Mathot (who both have Pixar as a day job) are making this "Slamcomic" come true with TR!CKSTER, an alternative venue for comics events that will be open to the public and located right across the tracks from the SD Convention Center.

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."

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.

It didn't take that long for tickets to this year's San Diego Comic-Con to sell out after they went on sale yesterday -- but it did seem like an eternity for those who spent four+ hours hitting the F5 key in hopes of getting through. The ticket site -- run by indie ticketseller TicketLeap -- went live at 9 am PST and immediately slowed to an excruciating halt -- it never technically crashed. Those who persevered through fail screens eventually got tickets -- by about 6 pm EST, 3 pm PST, all tickets were gone. We've already reported some of the bitter reports on twitter, but this really does seem to have been a year of massive frustration. The TicketLeap site took more than 35,000,000 hits during the ticket buying process...allowing for 100,000 tickets sold (let's say), that's 350 refreshes per person, but who knows how many actually TRIED to get on. No wonder that Isotope responded with the "FailFrog:"

UPDATE: Four day passes sold out about 4 pm e.s.t. Single day tickets are still available. For now.

To the surprise of no one, when passes for this year's CCI:SD went on sale this morning at 9 am P.S.T., even the industrial-grade servers at TicketLeap were immediately hobbled. Sales have been going on all afternoon, with this the most seen screen:

As you may recall, this Saturday is the FOURTH attempt at Pass-oween for the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con, with tickets going on sale with a new, multi-phase system which is being handled by TicketLeap, which explains in a press release: