Books: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 2: Bring out the Dead
There are few comics series I enjoy as much as Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead, a sparsely written and gutsy tale of life after the zombies take over. What I love about The Walking Dead is its...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 2: Berkeley Breathed brings much-needed joy...
The hardest thing to do at Comic-Con is remember what it is that YOU love, not what Comic-Con loves. Take, again, my favorite whipping boy: Tron. I have never, ever in my life seen Tron. I have never...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 3: Where the fans are
The idea, I guess, is that Comic-Con is for the "fans." You hear the word "fans" more than just about any other at Comic-Con. And for the most part, that's true. Most of the people here are hardcore...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 3: For the love of Community
Community creator Dan Harmon sits at the table in the green room for the Hilton's Indigo Ballroom, playing through worst case scenarios. Someone could ask just why Community, the show he created, is at...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 4: Artists' Alley
When Al Wiesner looked at the superhero landscape in the late '80s, he thought something was missing: Judaism. Naturally, he responded by creating his own superhero, a strange rock-turned-man called...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 4: Why cover Comic-Con?
Sons of Anarchy and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia: I plan to spend only an hour on the show floor, but I end up spending nearly three. Just walking around and talking to people - like the creator...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con 2011, Day 1: The many faces of Comic-Con
The most common misconception about Comic-Con, even from people who regularly attend, is that it’s one convention or even one kind of convention. If you read media portrayals of the event, they seem...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 2: Seven short films about Comic-Con
Phil Foglio is in high spirit. A young woman seeking a critique of her work has brought her portfolio to the venerable comics artist (best known at this juncture for his work on the Web comic Girl...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 3: Lines, lines, everywhere lines
A big part of Comic-Con culture is found standing in line. A big part of what aggravates just about everybody about Comic-Con is standing in line. There’s really no way to get the full experience of...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 4: Passion project
Everything started somewhere. When you dig down deep enough, you find the core, the DNA that keeps things ticking along. And Comic-Con, beneath all of the movie stars and TV fans in long lines and...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Another year at the Nerd State Fair
The San Diego Comic-Con has been dubbed the “nerd prom,” largely because the event is often the highlight of the year for those focused on geekier pursuits. Yet after three years here—and upon...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Where the ghosts of your childhood entertainments live
It’s when somebody dressed as Axe-Cop removes his mustache and hat to reveal that “he’s” actually True Blood star Deborah Ann Woll that I realize that everything about Comic-Con starts to sound like a...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: How to learn to stop standing in line and love the con...
The only way—the only way—to get through Comic-Con without wanting to slit your wrists is to decide just how much you care, then be comfortable with the fact that if you don’t care enough about...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: How the con's show floor is like finding a mystic portal...
If you listen to the media coverage, then the center of the Comic-Con experience is found somewhere in Hall H, where movie studios screen footage from their upcoming films, as Warner Bros. did today...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: On ball-jointed dolls and the dream of a geek supercontinent
So this is what a ball-jointed doll is. A ball-jointed doll is a doll that has balls in its joints. This may seem obvious at first, but the more you think about it, the more it seems absurd. How does...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 0: Apo-Comic-Con Now
“No!” the cabbie shouts at my friend Vlada Gelman (of TV Line) and me. “We are not going downtown! There is too much traffic! It is too crowded! I am not taking you down there!” He sounds like he’s...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 1: Portrait of the artist as a young fan
It was a girl named Katy who turned me onto The X-Files. She had a dry, raspy voice, and she was a cool kid from another town who was nice enough to let 14-year-old me call her my girlfriend because...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 2: Pop culture summer camp
For a lot of people, Comic-Con is completely incidental to why they come to Comic-Con. As a for instance, I ran into a guy while I was grabbing lunch today, and he and his friends had driven down from...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 3: San Diego vs. Comic-Con
Every year at Comic-Con, my friends Luke and Clara make the trek down from their house—less than two miles from the convention center—to have dinner with me, and every year, I wonder if they’re the...
View ArticleBooks: Comic-Con: Comic-Con, Day 4: So long, Comic-Con
I think I’m done with Comic-Con. Let me stress something here: If you’ve ever thought you should maybe go to Comic-Con, even if you’ve had that thought for only a fleeting moment before thinking the...
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