Comic Book Resources

SDCC '09 | Charity auctions, panels, hookups, scalping and more

Comic-Con

The 2009 San Diego Comic-Con kicks off with preview night on Wednesday, July 22 and runs through Sunday, July 26. If you are a publisher, creator, retailer or any other kind of exhibitor who would like to let folks know about any special plans you have for the show (panels, signing schedules, exclusives, debuts, etc.) drop me an email and I'll run it here.

Organizations | The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund and Things From Another World have teamed up to create a set of limited edition cards by various comic creators that will be handed out by various publishers, the CBLDF and TFAW. The original artwork for the cards will be auctioned off at the con, with proceeds going to the fund. Contributors include Mike Mignola, Phil Hester, Eric Powell, Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, Steve Lieber and many more.

Panels | Although the official programming schedule hasn't been released yet, a few companies have started sharing their panels via press releases and such. Thursday at the con brings a panel on Disney animator Walt Stanchfield, who is profiled in a new book called Drawn to Life: 20 Golden Years of Disney Master Classes.

Also, FOX TV has released their schedule. They'll have panels dedicated to the Simpsons, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show (a Family Guy spinoff), 24, Futurama and Bones. They'll also have Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku on hand to introduce a never before seen episode of Dollhouse. And they'll have a panel dedicated to their new show Glee, where they'll show another episode. You can watch the first one on Hulu; it is hilarious.

Interestingly enough, the release doesn't mention Fringe, but there will be a panel with several members of the cast.

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Unbound: Reconsidering the Eisners

Bodyworld

Half the fun in awards like the Eisners is second-guessing the judges—everyone loves to discuss what should have been put on the list and what should have been left off. Reading through the nominees for Best Digital Comics, though, raised a bigger question for me: What comics really belong in this category?

All this year's nominees are good, but as I read them, I kept thinking “This isn’t really a webcomic.” At first I attributed this to the lack of gamer jokes, Project Wonderful ads, and “about” pages. As I kept going, though, I realized that most of them would work just as well on paper as on the web, and their presence side by side in the same category was simply an accident of distribution.

What's in a webcomic? A creator named KEZ recently articulated this very well:

My comic, The War of Winds, is a webcomic. It exists primarily in the digital format, and uses the internet as a vehicle for promotion and advertisement. It is read on a live connection to the world wide web. It has a site full of extra information that heightens the reading experience. It was created expressly for online distribution, not for print. It is free, and I’m there a lot communicating with the people who read my work. My comic would NOT exist without the internet due to logistical problems and the need for print publication.

Looked at in this light, only one of the Eisner nominees really fits the bill. The others would work as well on paper. Already we have seen Brian Fies win an Eisner in the Best Digital Comics category for Mom’s Cancer and then, two years later, get two nominations for the print version. This year’s nominations include not only the print version of Fishtown but also the MySpace Dark Horse Presents anthology.

As the landscape shifts, I think it makes more and more sense to nominate online comics in the appropriate categories—best writer, best short story—and reserve the Best Digital category for comics that could only exist on the web.

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