Via Colleen Coover the “Comics are not literature” panel from San Diego that was practically the only provocative one, as far as we can tell, is up. We haven’t listened yet, but it’s very high on our catch up list.

Image of Douglas Wolk, Dan Nadel, and Sara Ryan stolen from Coover. Who just got married this weekend to panelist on the above Paul Tobin so big congrats to the happy couple, and here’s a picture of that, taken by Paul Guinan.

This is it! The trilogy ends! SD07 Report III starring Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, Mike Myers, Tobey Maguire and Johnny Depp. Third time the charm! Third time bloated and off the track Third time not as good as it used to be. Third time looking old and fat.

Friday night was another madhouse. There was the big 300/Blade Runner thing going on at Petco Park, and even though I had an invite to the party, the sight of young men roaming the streets with their 300 shields made me think I would rather go the other way. I’m sure it was quite the event, and I later got to hear Peter Kuper tell me his story of hanging out with Sean Young (he went to school with her) which was almost as good as being there. Instead I headed to the Zuda party, a smallish affair which included snackables…not having eaten anything substantial all day, that was enough of a lure for me.
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SUNDAY! And we’re outta here… Above, some times the wrong side of photos are the best.

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San Diego Comic-Con spokesperson David Glanzer sent a response to my epic post yesterday. I’m happy to post the whole thing — I think it is very informative and some of it clarified some things I’d long wondered about. In fact on one very important point, it directly contradicts what I wrote yesterday — and I’ve removed that part of my post. I’m not going to rebut any of it…it doesn’t really need any rebuttal. I hope I made it clear that I am well aware that no one is actively trying to keep people out of panel rooms…it is the way it is, but some changes in procedures may need to be made. Glanzer writes:

I’m sorry to say that there were, indeed, some issues with registration this year. Not just with Professionals, but Attendee Registration and Press as well. Obviously, no one should have to wait in a line for two hours and we honestly do take great strides in trying to avoid scenarios like that. My understanding is the issues that caused those problems were addressed and should not arise next year.

Regarding the “one person out, one person in” scenario. That was implemented because the room had reached capacity and the Fire Marshall closed the room.

As you know safety is one of the primary issues of concern for us, and we work very closely with city officials and particularly the Fire Marshal on site. Once the Fire Marshal makes the call to close a room, it is closed. It is up to her when, or whether or not, to allow people to begin entering again.

With regard to a press list, there actually is no press list. Each studio is given an allotment of seats for use ONLY during their presentation. Those seats can be given to family members of those on the panel, executives, or press. But there is no press list at the front of the hall for special access.

And because of this the studio certainly does NOT have control over who enters Hall H. As mentioned above, the presenting studio is given an allotment of tickets for specified seating and it is up to them how they disburse them.

I certainly agree that something must be done to address the issue of press for those big rooms. And it is something we are discussing now, and as you can imagine with close to 3,000 press in attendance it is a daunting task. I might also point out that for us “legitimate” press includes online bloggers and such.

We know that the bigger publications and news outlets will write about our show once a year, but it is online press who write about us throughout the year, and they pay particular attention to our gusts. Guests like; Sergio Aragonés, Kyle Baker, Alison Bechdel, Allen Bellman, Ray Bradbury, Dan Brereton, Daryl Cagle, Cecil Castellucci, Darwyn Cooke, Guy Delisle, Paul Dini, Roman Dirge, Cory Doctorow, Ann Eisner, Warren Ellis, Mark Evanier, Renée French, Gary Friedrich, Christos N. Gage, Neil Gaiman, Rick Geary, George Gladir, Laurell K. Hamilton, Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Adam Hughes, Joe Jusko, Miriam Katin, Mel Keefer, Scott Kurtz, Joseph Michael Linsner, Joe Matt, David Morrell, Karen Palinko, Lily Renee Phillips, Mike Ploog, Paul Pope, George A. Romero, Rowena, Dave Stevens, J. Michael Straczynski, Ben Templesmith, Roy Thomas, Morrie Turner, Mark Verheiden, Matt Wagner, J. H. Williams III, Kent Williams, F. Paul Wilson, and Brian Wood.

I should point out that no one wants to deny anyone entrance to a panel. We really don’t. And something must be done to address the issues raised this year with press. And I promise you, this is something we’re working on currently.

Your suggestion that more than one person may be needed to cover the show is a good one. Just in terms of specific panels, we had over 350 hours of programming, and I would imagine it is nearly impossible for one person to cover it all by themselves.

Obviously someone of the stature of Trina not being able to get into a panel is troubling for us. And I trust that we will have a solution to this very soon. Again, we’re still in the process of unpacking and trying to answer loads of emails, but we’ve already begun the process of discussing what went wrong and trying to come up with solutions to ensure that things like this don’t occur again.

Thanks for the kind words about the Comic-Con staff, and I would agree, you should not have to call for something as simple as getting into a panel. And I honestly believe we will have a solution to this issue for the next show. We just have to kick it around a bit and make sure it works.

I might point out that wrist bands were NOT for special entrance to Hall H. I’m not sure how that got around, but many people were under that assumption and that assumption was incorrect.

As for people not being able to enter Hall H. Again, when the Fire Marshall closes a room, there is no way for anyone to get in, it becomes an issue of safety and we must defer to her completely.

Our press room is very spartan. Hopefully we can get a sponsor for this room in the future.

Thanks for the opportunity to comment on your post.

Where was I? Thursday dawned bright and sunny. I blogged a bit and then sat down in a cafe for a healthy, nutritious breakfast with Laurenn McCubbin. It was to be my only vaguely healthy, nutritious breakfast for many days. As I walked to that most excellent breakfast place on Island, everyone else was heading towards the show, and many people I knew on the street told me I was going the wrong way. Little did they know I had breakfast on my mind.

Once I got to the show I experienced LESSON LEARNED #4: Even if you have a schedule. no one else does. I have no idea what I did all day. Everything got behind schedule and nothing ever turned out quite the way I expected. I stopped by the Fox Atomic booth for a while, but its locale at the nexus of Paramount and the Warner Bros. Smallville bag giveaway corner made it only slightly less insane than the fall of Saigon. While I was hanging out there I was interviewed by a writer for the local paper and got quoted the next day, which someone even texted me to alert me to.

Then some friends of mine who are “not in the business” as they say needed help getting into the show, so I had to do that. I had planned to do some video blogging, but I didn’t make it over to that side of the hall in time. I did make it to a meeting or two, and managed to get outside for a bit.

Thursday was — and here’s the mind boggling thing — the only day on which you could walk up to the show and get in if you didn’t already have a ticket. It was already mad crowded. To tell the truth, I couldn’t see any difference between this day and any other, crowd-wise. Every time I walked by the WB booth I heard announcements that there would be more bags and more shields LATER. Despite their scarcity those bags were everywhere. Some people would drag their bag behind them, filled with swag, the way a lion drags a wildebeest carcass.
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Of all the panels at San Diego the one we most wanted to see podcast or transcribed or whatever was COMICS ARE NOT LITERATURE and now Newsarama has a report by Zack Smith, although two of the participants have already said it isn’t entirely accurate. Dammit, we should have been there.

Wolk criticized comics written by Joss Whedon, saying that, “the artists can’t create great actors on the page,” that is, people who bring extra layers to the characters the way a flesh-and-blood actor could. “You’re just reading a script with a bunch of crappy pictures on it – but it’s a great script,” Wolk said.

Wolk asked Grossman, who had brought some prepared statements, about whether there was anything in the definition of “sophistication” that could be useful to comics.

“One of the downsides of thinking of comics as a ‘low art,’ is that it makes you lazy,” Grossman said. “Let’s raise the game.”

Castellucci and Ryan agreed. “It’s about having a set of critical tools, and what you use the tools on is wherever people are making good stories,” Ryan said.

“Why don’t we just call it art?” Nadel said. “Sometimes cinema is art, sometimes it’s not. Sometimes a Bjork record is art, sometimes it’s not…” Castellucci and Ryan interjected that a Bjork album is always art.

Nadel went on to propose that he didn’t consider comics reading. “Why is that a big deal?” he asked. “Comics is about looking and reading. It’s not just about reading – it’s a dual process. It’s different from reading a novel, and it’s different from watching a movie.”

Douglas tells us he didn’t mention Joss Whedon specifically, and Cecil has her own footnotes.

BONUS: DO NOT MISS COMMENTS AFTER REPORT!

Just a few more…we’ve made it all the way to Saturday and we’re still alive! Here are two of the many Blade Runner characters running around the show. Apparently they were hired by WB home video to promote the new DVD set which we are getting the second it comes out.

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Yet more very late photos. This was …. Friday? Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray sign THE HILLS HAVE EYES: THE BEGINNING at the Fox Atomic booth.
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From the moment I walked into the convention center I knew I was outmoded, outmatched, outclassed. Although I had always mocked the idea of a Blackberry (working on the web, the idea of being web free is like the idea of having some time off) as I found myself pinned down under attack by an army of Slave Leias in the northern part of Hall E, I came to the realization that it was the only way to get a message through to the outside world. For the next few days I’d be an unarmed refugee in a war of twitter and webcams. And I was wrong about Twitter, too – the experience of SD07 was so numbing and overwhelming that it could only be covered in semi- coherent thoughts of less than 20 words.

While the punditocracy of San Diego was wondering if it should be renamed “MovieCon” we all know the movie war was lost long ago. Money talks. Give up on that front and move over to the new battlefronts of the platform and the pipeline. As I walked the floor in the first few hours, everything was about mobile content and online IP. The online barrage of info about the show is already almost as overwhelming as being there. It’s taken me days to get through even my most trusted sources – reading the 47,000 other blog postings about San Diego would be fruitless – why would anyone even want to do it? Signing up for your favorite Twitterer is the most time efficient way to follow the show.

Of course, the gatekeepers will always be the most popular destinations. MarkandRich’s San Diego Dreamingprovided high level snark that was easily the most entertaining coverage of the con. Whereas once you shared your one-liners about the show with a buddy at the end of the day in the hotel bar, now you can share it anonymously with your potential millions of buddies, and it will go around the world faster than the speed of sound. (Warning, when you Twitter and then say the same thing to people, you WILL be outed.)

While everyone else covered the show with a neat list of numbered bullet points, I’m taking the hard route on the North Face, with a narrative. Well I thought I would anyway. A week later, it’s all fading into a slurry, either the kind you make perfume from or the run-off from an abattoir.

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Pathetically late, we know, but we earned that vacation. Above, Charles Vess and one of his gorgeous sculptures. More in the jump.
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Who needs spending hours and hours writing deep thought when you can just blab? Cinematical’s James Rocchi interviews the Beat about movies, comics and comic-book movies.

Our final haggard and dazed video is up. . You can see all of Stage6’s excellent Comic-Con coverage here. including some very funny stuff from Mike Nelson of MST3K fame.

Even snooty NYT film Critic Manohla Dargis liked Comic-Con:

I thought a lot about that high school girl while I wandered around Comic-Con, which, despite the crushing crowds (more than 120,000 attendees) and the hard-sell commercialism, I found unexpectedly moving. Like many early adopters who get in on a movement or trend before the rest of us and taunt us for being so pathetically behind the curve, some longtime Comic-Con attendees complain that the convention isn’t what it used to be. It’s too Hollywood, too family friendly, too mobbed, all of which may be true, I suppose. I wouldn’t know. This was my first Comic-Con, and I had a blast. There is, I found, something soul satisfying about attending a panel titled “Gumby!”

feeling a xanax high give does

Today mobile payments ranging from mobile banking to mobile credit cards to mobile commerce are very widely used in Asia and Africa, and in selected European markets.

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Because of this difference in interpreting what is 3G, there is help car loan variety in subscriber counts.

Via NPR:

Diespite her hanging with the stars, Whitney has the right perspective:

It’s a shame Hollywood dominates the post-Comic-Con headlines, because there are so many more things going on than blockbusters and new TV shows. For one thing, this annual event is a gathering of some of the world’s greatest storytellers, and, if you know where to go, some of them will be willing to entertain you late into the evening.

And then she reports on the Sci-Fi/EW party with the paragraph that will most please our mother:

Hollywood folks there included Robert Downey Jr., J.J. Abrams, Jon Favreau, Edward Norton, Liv Tyler, Zach Quinto, Colin Ferguson, Sarah Silverman and Brian Posehn. Cool comics folks there included Stan Lee, Ed Brubaker, Gabriel Ba, Douglas Wolk and Heidi McDonald. After that party I headed to the Hyatt, where several of these folks (including Galifianakis, Duke and Seth Green) continued to enjoy the evening in the hotel’s two bars. During the night, several people asked me if I was Zooey Deschanel. Weird.

Pink Raygun has an anecdotal but interesting report on SD Mayor Jerry Sanders doing a local radio interview:

As we drove east on Interstate 8 yesterday morning, we heard Mayor Jerry Sanders of San Diego say something nasty about Comicon attendees on Cantore in the Morning on 91X. While talking about the end of Comicon weekend and American Idol’s descent on San Diego, he said,

“We’ve put up the superheroes and now we’re on to the people with actual talent.”

John swears he heard Sanders say, “We got rid of the superheroes,” but whether he said “got rid of” or “put up” or “put away”, the impression is that the mayor of San Diego barely tolerates our presence during Comicon weekend. 140,000 people spending money in his city is nothing to scoff at, despite the inconvenience of gridlock in front of the convention center and people walking around the Gaslamp in costume.

Sheigh Crabtree is there:

Despite a grim convention room backdrop, Friends of Lulu organizers did what they could to personalize the scene. A cold lemonade dispenser and a bowl of cubed ice with tongs sat next to a covered table chock-a-block with frosted brownies, trays decorated with tiny purple flowers. The sweet nothings were a 360-degree switch from Comic-Con’s standard grubby Mountain-Dew-and-cold-pizza affair.

Obviously, organizers of the Friends of Lulu Awards are not rolling in the rewards of porn-ish, breast-baring, Girls Gone Wild commercial success. Run as a nonprofit, Friends of Lulu is a national organization whose main purpose is to promote and encourage female readership and participation in the comic book industry. This year is the first time they opened voting to non-Lulu members, resulting in over 1,000 nominations and votes, their biggest response to the Lulu Awards to date.

We’ll be getting into this more when we write our big wrap-up, but the ironic lack of media access to panels at San Diego has gotten in just about everyone’s craw:
Blog@Newsarama’s JK Parkin:

1) There should be a designated number of seats for media who are there to cover the con, so that they can do their job and cover panels. Because if you’re covering multiple movie panels on Saturday that are in different rooms, chances are you’re gonna be screwed. When I was at the Neil Gaiman panel, there were three rows of seats marked “studio executive only” behind me … and hardly any of those seats were taken. Now, if you’re a studio, who do you want at your panel … your studio executives who probably already know what’s going to be presented because they approved it, or the media, who can take your message and spread it to the masses who couldn’t come to the con (or who couldn’t get to through the doors), which is why you’re at the con in the first place?

But it wasn’t just comics bloggers who felt left out!

Bags and Boards Tom McLean:

The other issue is one that specifically affects the large media contingent that attends the show. Namely, that for panel attendance, there is no way for media reporters to reliably gain access aside from standing in line like everyone else. Yes, there are press-only opportunities — lots of them — but there is a need to cover the actual event of the panel, to hear what is announced to fans and see what the fan reaction is. The con may need to consider setting aside a space in each panel room for the media. Make them first-come first-serve, and if by some reason all those slots aren’t taken – then give them to fans. But the job of covering the show this year became increasingly complicated by the need to plan and stand in line, often for long periods of time, in order to ensure access to these events.

Chris Ullrich at Cinematical:

These guys and gals (some of which don’t even get paid) work very hard so I just want to thank them for doing a great job controlling people I’m sure are very hard to control. Of course, if the Con had a designated area for the press to sit so we could cover the events that might make things easier. But that’s another story for another time.

Animator Harry McCracken has more general complaints:

The crowding would seem to have something to do with Comic-Con’s complete refusal to limit its scope or differentiate between the important, the worthwhile, and the abysmal. It certainly isn’t following its mission, which reads as follows:

Comic-Con International is a nonprofit educational organization dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular art forms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.

I have nothing against Sarah Silverman, but I fail to see how her TV show is relevant to that mission. I don’t understand why there are booths hawking swords and hard drives, or why it makes sense for Playboy Playmates to be signing photos on the show floor. It rankles me that the con’s program book celebrates every comic, TV show, and movie it mentions as a hit, a masterwork, or both.

Here’s some of what the best pundits and favored Beat pals were saying about the Very Big show. Interestingly, while creator blogs contain many of the juiciest bits, it’s the mainstream coverage — obvious comics moles who are blogging for newspapers and maagzines — that provides the most balanced coverage.

§ Chris Butcher takes the pulse of the indie world and it’s strong:

6. Still, in my rounds today at the show, more-or-less everyone I talked to said that the show was a sales success, and perhaps most importantly, everyone FELT really good. High spirits abounded in the small-press/indy-island, in the various comics publisher booths, and even in artist alley. Honestly and truly, I heard not even one negative feeling about the show as a whole.

BUT…not all is well.:

10. Chris Pitzer told me that he and Adhouse books were just… done… with San Diego. He said he was 40 and tired of sweating and lugging around boxes. This is a guy who had three outstanding debut books that all sold really well, and looked great. The show is going to be poorer for his absence, but as I’m in the midst of lugging a ton of heavy shit home with me myself, I totally understand where he’s coming from. With Mocca, APE, SPX, oh and TCAF, all much more focussed shows less interested in the established comics fan, I can see a number of legitimate art-comics publishers starting to pull back their appearances in the next couple of years… Of course… any publisher that’s trying to play the Hollywood Properties Game isn’t going anywhere.

§ Tom is overall similarly chipper even while pressing for the survival of the ever-vanishing cartoonist:

7. Is it crazy to suggest that the shrinking and perhaps even endangered Artist’s Alley space go to people with more comics credits over those who are illustrators, those who are prepared to draw while at the show rather than using it as simply free booth space, and perhaps maybe those who pledge to do kids’ work at a certain discount or even just at all? How about lifetime banning anyone who doesn’t spend at least 2/3 of their time with that space manned? I think some of the traditional spaces can be made more vital with a higher entry point that emphasizes certain roles such spaces play at the con.

§ Comic Foundry’s A-to-Z.

§ Steven Grant looks at the big picture:

Obviously a sizable portion of the monstrous crowd - for at least three days, the San Diego Convention Center had a greater population than most towns in California - had only passing interest in comics. But they were at least exposed to a lot of comics, to the breadth and variety of them, and there’s no telling how many went and dipped their toes in the pool. The fact is that when people can see comics they buy more of them, something a lot of direct market retailers have either forgotten or don’t have the resources to accommodate, and San Diego presents an unparalleled possibility for getting people to see comics, as well as interact directly with creators or others motivated to sell those specific comics. Even if only 10% of the general San Diego audience could be convinced to buy your book, that’s, rule of thumb, 16,000 new sales - which would almost double the sales of many low end major comics and triple to quintuple the sales of most independent comics.

§ Kevin C blogging for Boston’s Fox outlet, has some nice casual photos from the Eisners. Above Ellen Forney and Whitney Matheson.

§ Shaenon Garrity shares “Ten Thoughts About Comic-Con” which is must reading as usual.

4. I got to moderate the Spotlight on Miriam Katin, which was wonderful. Not only was Miriam amazing, she brought her mother with her. Yes, an elderly Hungarian woman who once fled the Nazis flew to San Diego to see her daughter compete for attention with the Harry Potter/Spiderwick Chronicles Fan Group Meeting and a demonstration of the Robot Chicken: Star Wars Special toys.** That is one tough old lady. I’m 29 and I’ve fled very few Nazis to date, and I had serious misgivings about my ability to physically survive Comic-Con.

§ Always enthusiastic Cecil Castellucci comes as close as she ever does to complaining, which is not very.

The convention was very crowded. Like so crowded that it was unreal. The crowds were relentless. That said, I pinched myself hourly at how amazing it was that I was there signing me and jimrugg’s comic book. It was really great.

Laurell K. Hamilton was a little stunned:

Laurell here, at last. Why haven’t I posted? Because I think it’s taken me this long to recover from the shock that is Comic-Con. Why shock? This is a convention that dwarfs Dragoncon. Which I thought was pretty damn big. I have wandered around with Jon and Charles, trying to get my footing. I’ll be okay for awhile, then feel very at sea. Ironically, the day I finally get up and go okay we can do this, is Saturday.

People have been talking about Saturday in hushed or horrorified tones the whole time. They talk about surviving Saturday. Surviving? That doesn’t sound good. I’ve had two people recommend steel toed boots for today. I thought they were kidding, but they weren’t. We’ve had a fight to get through the crowd already, how much worse can it be? Do not answer that. You’ll scare me.

§ Ben Templesmith’s blog has a thoroughly nice report on what it’s like to be on the movie track and still be interested in Redneck Jedi.

§ Greg Rucka is a little more up and down:

Friday was Whiteout day, which was extraordinarily surreal. Jen, the kids, myself, and DHS were given an escort to the Very Special Place in Hall H, whereupon Jen and the kids went one way, and David and I went another. The “another” was, essentially, a con waiting room stuffed to the gills with Important People (and I recognize that, by saying such, it may appear that I am including myself in that number; I am not. Joel Silver was there. Sir Ridley Scott was there. James Hong was there (which may not mean much to you, but this is one of my all-time favorite films, warts and all). That kind of Important People, not the-guy-who-wrote-the-graphic-novel-the-movie-is-based-on important-with-a-small-”i”-people. Those were just the ones I recognized, mind you.

§ Steve Lieber contributes one of his much missed con reports

On my way onto the floor, I run into Jim Ottaviani and Carla Speed McNeil. In a better life I’d see them twice a week instead of twice a year. I can’t begin to say how much it means to just hang out with old friends for a few minutes, and I want to just grab them both by the arms and drag them away from the con. Just pull them away and away and take them somewhere quiet to talk, holding tight as if my hands could never tire, and ask a million questions and find out everything there is to know about their lives. I won’t of course, even with dinners and time after the show, the talk will be jokes, and rumors, and what’s the latest on the table, and how’s business, and how’s business, and how’s business.

§ Jeff Parker had a run in with the chicken train

For some reason an entire train decided to park itself between the Gaslamp District and the convention center, so I stood around for a long time with Tom Fowler who talked about the work he does for Mad Magazine. We were both being more safety-conscious and not hopping over the train hitches like some people were doing. The train finally did start moving right as one guy was standing on a link, and we feared we were about to watch a death occur right in front of us(which is an incredible omen of bad luck, by the way). Luckily the guy scrambled out of there in time.

§ Eric Reynolds’ Flickr set

§ Jah Furry’s Flickr set

§ CBR Photo Parade 1

§ CBR Photo Parade 2

…and probably about 20,000 more we will never get the chance to read…

Why wake up early when you know it will be on YouTube later! All seven Image Founders reunite for the first time EVER.
[Link via Colleen.]

LA Times writer Geoff Boucher was assaulted on the streets of San Diego:

I was walking alone to my hotel after late Saturday night interviews with Neal Adams and Darwyn Cook. I was also talking on my cell to Spencer Weiner, the photographer for The Times shooting Comic-Con. Spencer heard everything that happened next.

I (literally) bumped into a young guy walking with three friends in the Gaslamp Quarter. They were tattooed and wearing the street uniform of baggy pants, white T-shirts and shaved heads. The guy started mad-dogging me, rasping threats. I told him I was just walking by, no offense meant. He got in my face, and I told him it would be stupid for us to make something out of nothing.

“You calling me stupid?” “No, I’m not.” Then I stopped talking, because my mouth was bleeding. One of his buddies, standing off to my side, cold-cocked me, and the ring on his fist took a chunk out of my face. I never saw it coming. I was at the emergency room until dawn.

It’s extremely disturbing reading, and a reminder that as safe and friendly as San Diego’s lamplit streets may seem…they aren’t. I ALWAYS get a late night escort when I’m going home for the night, and this is why.

PW Comics Week con wrap ups:
Douglas Wolk looks at thebig picture:

If one word could describe this year’s San Diego Comic-Con International, held July 25-29, it would be “enormous”: big books, big buzz, big business. This was, by all estimations, the biggest Con ever; Friday, Saturday and Sunday were all completely sold out, hotel rooms were impossible to score, the aisles of the San Diego Convention Center were clogged with fans, every nightspot in the city was awash with after parties every night, and the lines for the biggest panels were so long that even some of the panelists couldn’t get in. Publishers sometimes seemed overwhelmed by the mobs of fans, but sales were great. As Diamond Book Distributor’s Kuo-Yu Liang put it, “Everybody is cranky but happy.” Comic-Con has become an event where Joss Whedon, Stan Lee, Jenna Jameson, Sarah Silverman, Cory Doctorow, Michael Cera and Katee Sackhoff can all be spotted at the same party. We are all nerds now.

Kai-Ming Cha looks at the manga beat:

This year’s San Diego Comic-con continued to be a platform for important news about manga. Dark Horse announced a groundbreaking deal with CLAMP, the all-female, superstar manga team, to produce an original series to be published simultaneously in the U.S., Japan and South Korea. Viz Media announced the acquisition of Japan’s all-time favorite manga, Takehiko Inoue’s teen crush, basketball manga, SlamDunk! Viz also had copies of the much-anticipated giant omnibus collection of Tekkonkinkreet: Black and White by Taiyo Matsumoto, which had sold out by the end of the convention.

The Beat looks at Studio City.

And Karen Holt ventures into Warren Ellis’s lair:

A minute later, I am shaking hands with Ellis in the doorway of his hotel room. He is a big man, tall and stout. His wiry hair is sparse on top and long in the back, his beard not overly groomed. We sit at a desk. “Mind if I smoke?” Ellis asks. From the smell of the room, and the five packs of Silk Cut cigarettes stacked on the desk, I guess that if I did mind the interview would be pretty short.

Yes we know the embed stills are particularly unflattering but what you gonna do?
Okay now embed fixed…click on pic or here.