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Countdown to Comic-Con

Jerry Stratton, July 14, 2004

It is now one week to comic-con, the comic book convention so large you only have to call it the comic-con and fellow geeks will understand.

Comic-con has long been more than just comic books, of course. Science fiction movies, fantasy movies, anime, and more “popular entertainment” has been a big draw almost since its inception, and this was made official several years ago.

The big draw (besides comics, of course) in our little corner of geekdom is the gaming side of comic-con.

Last year I picked up a copy of the Judges Guild adventure “Corsairs of Talibar”. The year before that, I found a fascinating read in a $5 boxed set of “Everway”. It was a faceless dealer at comic-con who introduced me to “Knights of the Dinner Table”.

The floor just gets bigger and bigger. It now exceeds the size of the town I grew up in. (The population of the con has exceeded the size of the town I grew up in since its second year.)

This year, the daily programming appears to go later into the evening than in past years, and there is some pretty cool stuff happening, although unfortunately no Oddball Comics this time around. Scott Shaw! suggests next year.

Comic Arts Conference

Comic-Con is also the home of the Comic Arts Conference, a series of scholarly presentations intermingled with the rest of the con. Check it out-- barring conflicts, I expect to see most of them. Of course, at comic-con there are usually tons of conflicts, but I do intend to be at the literary archaeology session on Thursday. If you haven’t heard of it, I recommend it. As a gamer, you’ll love literary archaeology. It is, basically, how to create a cool world based on other cool worlds.

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund

On Saturday, you will find me at the CBLDF’s annual benefit auction. This is always a lot of fun. And on Sunday they will recap the ongoing fight against censorship. Look in Room 8 and Room 7B respectively, according to the current schedule.

Comics Pro/Fan Trivia Challenge

Led by the indefatigable, if that is a word, Tom Galloway--better known online (and, frankly, offline) as Tyg, the fans take on comic book pros in a trivia contest that is always a blast. (Well, except for that one year they kicked the Black Ink Irregulars out.) San Diego’s own Jim Hay will continue as evil mastermind controlling it all. Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid will display their incredible waste of mental storage space, I mean, knowledge of all things trivial about Marvel and DC comics.

It hasn’t been quite the same since they moved it to the daytime and away from the awards ceremony (where, generally, at least one of the pros was on target for an award). I sometimes think that the amazing string of wins on the pro side since the day move is the sole result of them not coming in wasted off of the ceremony’s alcohol.

Did I say that out loud?

  1. <- NAGEE
  2. GenCon SoCal 2004 ->