Tag: Conventions

By Shannon O'Leary, Entertainment Editor<P>

Last week I said I’d turn in a late True Blood Recap after I got back from Comic Con. Last week I hadn’t actually gone to Comic Con yet.   Going to Comic Con this year was not unlike attending The Fall of Saigon. It was a crowded combat zone littered with hundreds of thousands of nerds elbowing each other out of the way so they could get their pop culture freak on until one of them got stabbed in the face with a pen! <P>

I’m not saying it wasn’t fun. I had a blast! But after all that madness, chaos and immersive viral marketing I just don’t have it in me to properly recap the sixth episode of Season Three: I Got A Right To Sing The Blues. Sorry to not live up to my commitments to you, the fang faithful, but I’ve been to war and back and I’m going to save my recapping jujitsu for episode seven on Sunday. What I can do now is tell you a little war story.<P>

The ever-growing slate of Wizard-branded convention swelled by one today with the addition of a spring show in New York, Wizard World Comic Con NYC, set for May 6-8, 2011, at the home of the Big Apple Con, which this resembles, Penn Plaza Pavilion in New York. If you'll note, the name "Comic Con New York" is similar to another comics-themed event, held in the fall.

If you read ONE local paper story about a comic-con/nerdlerbrity fest/back issue bonanza, it should be this one by Micaela Hood in the Miami Herald on this weekend's Supercon, because it nicely captures the peaceful intermingling of the fans in their homemade costumes, the dealers selling stickers, and the aging stars with nowhere else to go. As "Comic-Con" has become a brand name for an entrainment event where you can expect all this and MORE, the various strata of con-world must learn to live with one another. Just what IS going through Richard "Shaft" Roundtree's mind, anyway?

This popped up somewhere in our RSS feed: The Unauthorized San Diego Comic-Con Survival Guideby Doug Kline from popculturegeek.com. This self published guide is a small pocket-sized book that sells for $7 plus shipping and includes info on surviving the ordeal of a lifetime, or at least the month. BUt if you ask us, you don't really need a book to figure out most of this stuff:

We didn't get a chance to cover Wizard World Philly this year, although Mike Manley promises his usual Babymen update, however as you can see from the above, as wrestler Lisa Marie Varon tweeted, it was a great chance for nerdlebrities to hang out.

Although we're probably the very last person to get our HeroesCon thoughts online, it was such a good time, it would be wrong not to enumerate a few of the ways it rocked. Although everyone knows that Shelton Drum, Dustin Harbin and the rest of the Heroes crew know how to extend Southern hospitality to convention guests in a relaxed, unassuming way, the show -- the largest HeroesCon yet by all signs -- also served as a near-perfect capsule of the comics industry, thanks to a wide ranging, well-deployed guest list showcased in diverse, entertaining programming. While Indie Island is Harbin's baby and remains a hotbed of amazing talent, the rest of the show showed off other elements of the cartooning world -- there was a wall of strip cartoonists, for instance, and the "mainstream mainland" included an amazing lineup of artists from Brian Bolland to Jill Thompson to Adam Hughes and Tony Harris.

Just a quickie from the lobby -- great show, great people, and also a fantastic mix of comics and genres, from comic strips to...

The internet and the floor at HeroesCon were both abuzz with the announcement of Marvel's first simultaneous print and digital release with INVINCIBLE IRON...

Using the lobby Wi-Fi, while everyone else is at the con, but everyone is having a great time. As Johanna Draper Carlson put...

As usual, southern hospitality is keeping HeroesCon at the Charlotte Convention center a laid-back relax-a-con as opposed to some of the more frantic offerings...

Things to do. People to see. Cool art by Scott Morse and Tom Fowler. In case you haven't figured it out yet...ALL the cool people are going to HeroesCon, and it's gonna be a good time. You know the drill.

Can you help identify these pioneers? At first we were amazed at the number of girls there but then remembered it was the 70s and everyone has long hair. Also, maybe it's just those 70s fashions, but nerds of the 70s would totally be Williamsburg hotties today. Finally, notice how slim they are, in a world where high fructose corn syrup didn't exist.