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We couldn’t make it to HeroesCon this weekend, but it sounds like everyone else did — our reporters on the floor say the show is packed and word on the streets is that tickets presale was up significantly. Guests include everyone from Stan Lee to Babs Tarr and the show blog has all the updates and exclusive goodies.

Follow our @comicsbeatlive in Twitter for buzz from the floor and hot scoops, and @comicsbeat on Instagram for pictures. Our Davey Nieves has been slaying it with the E3 visuals but there’s more to come as always. Kyle, Hannah and Harper are all at HeroesCon so if you see them say hi and give them some news!

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FINALLY if you are at HeroesCon tomorrow, we urge you to go to this CCS megapanel, organized by Craig Fisher and Ben Towle on the 10th anniversary of the Center for Cartoon Studies, surely one of the most influential institutions in comics right now. I call it the Navy Seals training of comics: cartoonists come out whipped into storytelling shape and the proof is on the page.

At the Junction of Words and Pictures: the Tenth Anniversary of the Center for Cartoon Studies
 
For this year’s mega-panel, cartoonist Ben Towle and critic Craig Fischer celebrate the first decade of the Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), the influential school for comics artists located in White River Junction, Vermont. Ben will begin with a slide show/talk about the history of “how-to” cartooning guides, including How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, Understanding Comics, and the CCS-sponsored Adventures in Cartooning books by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost. Ben’s presentation will be followed by a screening of Cartoon College (Josh Melrod and Tara Wray, 2012, 75 minutes), a lively documentary that chronicles CCS’s history while focusing on a group of students furiously working on long-form comics for their graduation projects. One added attraction of Cartoon College: interviews with such luminaries as Scott McCloud, Art Spiegelman, Françoise Mouly, and Steve Bissette.
 
To explore the issues and situations brought up in Cartoon College, we’ll then move into a panel featuring CCS alumni and students. Our guests will be Chuck Forsman, Oily Comics publisher and creator of such recent graphic novels and comics as TEOTFW, Celebrated Summer, and Revenger; Sophie Goldstein, writer/artist of the Ignatz-winning House of Women and AdHouse’s graphic novel The Oven; and current CCS student Andy Shuping. Come get the inside story on CCS from those in the know! The panel will end with a display of original art to be included in a major CCS art exhibit at Appalachian State University in fall 2015. 


Be there!