Comic-Con International
Reminder: Comic-Con badges go on sale Saturday
If you’re planning to make the pilgrimage to San Diego in July for Comic-Con International, there’s probably no use asking what you’re doing Saturday morning. That’s because badges for this year’s event go on sale at 9 a.m., which means by, oh, 9:10 or 9:15 you’ll either be shouting for joy or out of frustration.
As we noted earlier this month, you have to have a Comic-Con Member ID to be able to be buy a badge. And if you don’t already have one, then you’re out of luck for Saturday: Organizers closed the website to new registrations on Tuesday and won’t reopen until early next week. (Go ahead and scream now, it’s OK.)
Also, if you purchased a four-day badge with Preview Night during pre-registration in August, or if you are a professional or guest of professional who has registered for a Comic-Con 2013 professional badge, you are not eligible to participate in open online registration and can’t buy a badge on Saturday.
If you want to make sure you’re ready when that starting pistol fires in the morning, you can find a guide to badge purchase on the Comic-Con website. There’s also a video, which you can find below, along with pricing. Comic-Con International is July 18-21.
Goodbye G4 TV, hello Esquire Network
G4 TV, the cable channel that until recently aired the comics-friendly Attack of the Show!, will be rebranded April 22 as Esquire Network.
Today’s official announcement comes less than two months after NBCUniversal and Esquire magazine owner Hearst Corporation closed a deal to move the focus of the network away from young male gamers to “today’s modern men.” G4 pulled the plug in December on its flagship series Attack of the Show! and X-Play, leaving the channel without any original studio programming.
Debuting with the launch of G4 in 2005, Attack of the Show! featured Blair Butler’s “Fresh Ink” segments, which featured comic reviews and occasional publishing announcements from Marvel. The series also broadcast live each year from Comic-Con International.
According to this morning’s announcement, “Esquire Network will expand on G4’s foundation of games, gear and gadgets to reflect the broad range of interests, passions and aspirations that define men today.” While the new channel will tackle gaming and technology, like its namesake magazine, program categories also will include entertainment, travel, food, fashion, women and more with a mixture of scripted and unscripted series, and movies and specials.
Among the shows on the lineup are original series Knife Fight, hosted by Top Chef winner Ilan Hall and executive produced by Drew Barrymore, and The Getaway, executive produced by Anthony Bordain, the return of American Ninja Warrior, and syndicated runs of NBC’s Parks and Recreation and Starz’s Party Down.
Spain Rodriguez and Mort Meskin chosen for Eisner Hall of Fame
Spain Rodriguez
As online voting opens for the 2013 Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame, the judges have selected late Golden Age artist Mort Meskin (Vigilante, Wildcat) and late underground cartoonist Spain Rodriguez (Trashman) for automatic induction.
In addition, they’ve named 13 nominees, from which voters will select four to be inducted in July during Comic-Con International. The nominees are:
- Marjorie Henderson Buell (aka Marge), late creator of Little Lulu
- Howard Cruse, creator of the acclaimed Stuck Rubber Baby
- Lee Falk, late creator of The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician
- Bud Fisher, late creator of the pioneering daily strip Mutt and Jeff
- Bill Griffth, creator of Zippy
- Al Jaffee, longtime Mad Magazine contributor famed for the “Mad Fold-in”
- Jesse Marsh,late Golden Age artist known for his work on the Tarzan and Gene Autry comic books
- Tarpé Mills (aka June Mills), late Golden Age artist best known for Miss Fury, the first female action hero created by a woman
- Thomas Nast, 19th-century caricaturist and editorial cartoonist known as “the Father of the American Cartoon”
- Gary Panter, acclaimed illustrator, painter and creator of Jimbo
- Trina Robbins, influential underground comics writer/artist and co-creator of Vampirella
- Joe Sinnott, veteran inker who worked on virtually every Marvel title during his 60 years working for the publisher
- Jacques Tardi, acclaimed writer and artist, and creator of Adèle Blanc-Sec
To vote, you must be a professional working gin the comics or related industries as a creator, a publisher, an editor, a comics store owner or manager, a graphic novels librarian, or a comics historian/educator. Eligible voters can visit EisnerVote.com to select up to four names for the Hall of Fame. The voting deadline is March 4.
2013 Comic-Con International badges go on sale Feb. 16
Badges for the 2013 Comic-Con International in San Diego will go on sale to the general public at 9 a.m. Pacific on Feb. 16. And they’ll probably sell out by, what, 9:10? 9:15? There’s no telling, so if you want one, plan ahead and move quickly.
Buying a badge requires a Comic-Con Member I.D., as CCI will email the registration link to folks with IDs two days before they go on sale. If you don’t already have a Member I.D., you’ll need to get one by Feb. 11, as the site will close to new registrations and changes on Feb. 12 and will not reopen before badge sales begin.
Also, if you purchased a four-day badge with Preview Night during pre-registration in August 2012, or if you are a professional or guest of professional who has registered for a Comic-Con 2013 professional badge, you are not eligible to participate in open online registration and can’t buy a badge on the 16th.
Prices for badges are:
Dan DiDio, Jim Lee and DC artists to appear on Syfy’s Face Off
DC Entertainment Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee will appear with a half-dozen DC creators on the Jan. 22 episode of Face Off, the Syfy competition series that pits special-effects makeup artists against each other.
The episode, shot in July at Comic-Con International, challenges the competitors to create their own superheroes with assistance and advice from Lee, Mark Buckingham, Cliff Chiang, Tony S. Daniel, David Finch, Nicola Scott and J.H. Williams III. The winning design will be featured in Justice League Dark #16, which goes on sale Jan. 30.
The Will Eisner Hall of Fame is now online
Comic-Con International has announced the Will Eisner Hall of Fame is now online, with a browsable catalog of the more than 120 creators — from Neal Adams to Wally Wood — who have been inducted since 1987. Each entry, arranged in alphabetical order, includes a brief biography of the creator, the date of induction and, in many case, a photograph or illustration.
2013 Eisner Awards judges announced
Being an Eisner Awards judge has to be one of the coolest gigs in comics—I know this because I was one last year. Comic-Con International has just announced the names of the 2013 judges, and as always, they represent a mix of the different sectors of the business — creation, criticism, retailing, journalism, and of course, Comic-Con itself. Here’s the lineup:
Michael Cavna, a writer, editor and artist for The Washington Post and the man behind the newspaper’s Comic Riffs blog, which is an important part of my daily reading.
Charles Hatfield, professor of English at California State University, Northridge and the author of Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby, which won an Eisner Award last year, and Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, as well as a contributor to The Comics Journal and a member of the Modern Language Association’s Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives.
Adam Healy, co-owner of Cosmic Monkey Comics in Portland, Oregon.
Comic-Con to stay in San Diego through 2016
U-T San Diego reports Comic-Con International organizers and San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders have announced a one-year extension to their contract, ensuring the convention will remain in the city through 2016.
Why not forever? The limited capacity of the San Diego Convention Center has been a issue as Comic-Con gets bigger every year. By moving some events out of the center and into nearby plazas and other facilities, organizers were able to loosen things up a bit and offer an additional 5,000 badges this year.
Sanders has been advocating for a $520 million expansion of the building, but a tax on hotel rooms that would fund it is tied up in court, and the project also must be approved by the California Coastal Commission. There are other obstacles as well, but the bald fact is, as CCI spokesman David Glanzer said, “If by next year and the following year, we have such an influx of people that the added space we use doesn’t work and there’s no expansion, then it could be an issue.”
But with Comic-Con bringing $68 million into the city every July, Sanders and his administration have pretty good incentive to make it happen — and nearby Los Angeles and Anaheim have equally good incentives to try to lure Comic-Con away.
Comics A.M. | New York vs. San Diego; guilty plea in comics obscenity case
New York Comic Con
Conventions | John Giuffo does a compare-and-contrast between Comic-Con International and New York Comic Con. While San Diego has more Hollywood presence, NYCC has grown with stunning rapidity — it’s hard to believe that first event had just 25,000 people and shared the Javits Center with a travel convention; this year attendance was 116,000, gaining hard on San Diego’s 125,000. One key difference is that CCI spills out of the San Diego Convention Center into the surrounding neighborhood, which has restaurants and bars and parks, while the area around the Javits is pretty barren, limiting opportunities for parties or even a decent lunch, let alone the sort of outside activities that have sprung up in San Diego. [Forbes]
Legal | A Missouri man has pleaded guilty to federal obscenity charges stemming from comics depicting minors having sex with adults and other minors. The prosecutor has asked that he be sentenced to three years in federal prison without parole. [Anime News Network]
Comics A.M. | Penguin Group to launch kids’ graphic novel line
Penguin Group
Publishing | The Penguin Group plans to wade into the market for children’s graphic novels with a new line aimed at middle-grade and young-adult readers. “Clearly it’s a huge, growing market, the kid’s graphic novel market,” Penguin’s Rich Johnson told ICv2 at New York Comic Con. “You see those titles making the bestsellers list all the time. So we are looking to do work in that area to get more kids reading comics.” [ICv2]
Creators | Feisty as ever, Stan Lee talks about his World of Heroes YouTube channel and breaks up the camera crew a couple of times in an interview shot New York Comic Con. [MTV Geek]
Comics A.M. | Captain Marvel artist Marc Swayze passes away
Marc Swayze
Passings | Golden Age creators Marcus “Marc” Swayze, best known for writing and drawing Fawcett’s Captain Marvel comics in the early 1940s, died Sunday in Monroe, Louisiana. He was 99. Swayze, who created Mary Marvel with writer Otto Binder, employed a simple style of illustration. “My personal philosophy was to use the art in storytelling so that even a child who couldn’t yet read could get a story out of it,” he told the Monroe News-Star in 2000. [The News-Star]
Legal | The Indian government has officially dropped sedition charges against cartoonist Aseem Trivedi, but he still faces up to three years in prison if found guilty on the remaining charges under the Prevention of Insult to National Honor Act of 1971. Trivedi was arrested last month and briefly jailed before being released on bail. In an odd twist, Trivedi is currently participating in the reality show Bigg Boss, the Indian counterpart of Big Brother. [UPI.com]
Comics A.M. | Council OKs San Diego Convention Center expansion
Comic-Con International
Conventions | San Diego City Council has given final approval to the planned $520 million expansion of the San Diego Convention Center, viewed as necessary to keeping Comic-Con International in the city past 2015. The project still faces a legal challenge to a financing scheme involving a hotel-room surtax, as well as state regulatory approval, leading the city attorney to caution that the targeted 2017 completion date is just “a goal.” Whether Comic-Con organizers can be convinced to sign another three-year extension to their contract remains a big question. [NBC San Diego]
Conventions | Most of Heidi MacDonald’s article about New York Comic Con is behind a paywall at Publishers Weekly, but she pulls out some stats at The Beat: Ticket sales are up 190 percent over this time last year. As the capacity of the Javits Center is somewhere south of 110,000 people, this means the ReedPOP folks won’t sell any more tickets than last year, but they are selling out faster. Three-day and four-day passes are already gone, only Friday tickets remain, and ReedPOP vice president Lance Fensterman expects everything to be sold out by the time the show begins. [The Beat]
Comics A.M. | Origins of Green Lantern Simon Baz; ‘Ultimate’ legacy
Green Lantern Simon Baz
Comics | Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns talks with The Wall Street Journal about the introduction this week of the newest member of the Green Lantern Corps Simon Baz, an Arab-American Muslim from Dearborn, Michigan: “As fantastic as the concept of Green Lantern is of an intergalactic police force, the comic has had a history of grounding in the now and dealing with modern characters and concepts and Simon Baz is that. I wanted to create a character that everyday Americans have to deal with. When 9/11 hit, he was 10-years-old. His family was devastated, just like every other American. He’s grown up in that world. It’s just part of the daily life, the new normal.” [Speakeasy]
Comics | The new Spider-Man, Miles Morales, reaches a key moment in Ultimate Comics: Spider-Man #14, when Aunt May gives him Peter Parker’s web-shooters and the formula for for his web fluid. Writer Brian Michael Bendis explains why he waited so long to pass along the iconic tools: “‘This is like Excalibur. This is it. This is like being bequeathed the sword,’ Bendis says. ‘But, young Miles and (his friend) Ganke trying to figure out how to make web fluid is going to be my favorite stuff to write ever in the history of writing of anything. Just because someone gives you a formula and says, “Here, cook this,” doesn’t mean you can.’” [USA Today]
Comics A.M. | Media scrutinize Marvel CEO’s role at Disney
Isaac Perlmutter, in his only known public photo
Publishing | Matthew Garrahan’s profile of reclusive Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter is somewhat sharper than the Los Angeles Times story linked last week, as it includes accusations that the 69-year-old billionaire threatened an employee, made a racially insensitive remark, and maneuvered Disney Consumer Products chairman Andy Mooney and three other executives (all African-American women who reportedly referred to themselves as “The Help”) out of their jobs. Nikki Finke follows up at Deadline with details of Disney and Marvel’s attempts at damage control, as well as the news that Disney has settled with the three former execs. [Financial Times]
Retailing | Comics shop veteran Amanda Emmert, executive director of the retailers’ association ComicsPRO and owner of Muse Comics in Colorado Springs, talks about retailing, the health of the industry, and the popular perception of comics shops as men’s clubs: “I have new customers who walk in and tell me how strange it is for a woman to work in a comic book store or a gaming store. Their experience comes more from watching The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory, as you pointed out, than from seeing a great number of stores, though. I am very lucky to work for ComicsPRO; I get to work with hundreds of stores around the country, a large percentage of which are owned or operated by women.” [Colorado Springs Gazette]
San Diego Comic-Con 2013 badges go on sale today for 2012 attendees [UPDATED]
The line for next year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego starts forming today. Preregistration for the 2013 convention starts at 8 a.m. Pacific today for those who attended the con this past July.
If you bought a four-day attendee or one-day attendee badge in 2012, you should have received an email with registration details for 2013–this doesn’t apply to press, pros and exhibitors (exhibitor information can be found here). Pricing for next year’s convention is available in this handy chart from the CCI site:
As noted in the con’s registration badge sale FAQ, you’ll need your Member ID account. You can buy passes for three other people besides yourself, as long as they also attended the con in 2012.
Open online registration will occur sometime in early 2013 for the general public. The 2013 SDCC will run July 18-21, with preview night on July 17.