News & Notes From The San Diego Convention Floor



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Here are some thoughts and links as to things I've seen or discussed on the convention floor and in the barrooms of Comic-Con International.

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* okay, I'm not down there yet, so clearly this is a case of a mis-post. I'm working in a hotel room in Burbank until 1 PM and then seeing family and catching up on family business like who gets to pay for what on that one thing and goddamn you to hell and you've always been like this. See you tomorrow, my fellow convention-goers.

* Preview Night is a huge night not just for what it adds to the Comic-Con schedule but for what it does distinct from the rest of what goes on: provides the jolt of energy that comes from a mad consumer rush concerning exclusive toys. I think it's that show's era of exclusive toys and merchandise the same way that the Twilight years were the show's era of Hollywood participation and anticipatory pop-culture madness. For some key attendees and their dreams for the show, San Diego Con is basically over 30 minutes in.

* what's out there...? the IDW/Marvel deal is interesting in a lot of foundational shift-your-perspective ways, especially for olds. For many older comics readers, the core Marvel Comics themselves were perfect reading for their years eight to twelve: they were complex without being complicated, had some degree of moral gravity without being mature in specific focus, and featured cool art depicting exciting things. It's also going to be interesting to some just in general that Marvel signed a licensing deal within publishing to match some of the quality licensing partnerships outside of comics that have been as much a part of Marvel's rise in general entertainment as any movie casting decision.

The cheeky question for a few of the think-about-comics crowd will be if IDW does this well, would Marvel consider abandoning the expensive infrastructure of a publishing company and do this with the supposedly adult definitely soap opera main line? I don't mean that as a prediction, because it is super-unlikely, but I think it may become a factor in measuring how effectively that traditional set-up performs moving forward. Marvel declaring that it needs to have an entirely different company put its characters into kids hands might even change how critics engage with the homegrown product.

* next year in Hellboy.

photos and additional reporting by Whit Spurgeon

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posted 5:25 pm PST | Permalink
 

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