Okay… Thursday. The first day of actual full-bore, you-can-sleep-when-you’re-dead programming.
Since we’re on the East Coast, we have a 3-hour difference, so much of the early Hall H stuff doesn’t really hit the Internet until around Noon our time. Generally, I ignore all the celebrity stuff, although Bill Murray was cool to walk up the aisle, greeting fans along the way. (And, as an example of “you never may know”, Bruce Willis said Bill Murray and Gilda Radner were the only stars of Saturday Night Live to treat him nicely when he was a studio page at NBC many decades ago.)
David Glanzer is Comic-Con International’s Director of Marketing and Public Relations and a man who spends 365 days a year thinking about San Diego’s largest annual convention… now celebrating its 46th year.
Then (1970) vs. Now (2015): here are Glanzer’s top 5 changes over the last 4 ½ decades to Comic-Con.
(I tried to embed the video, but if that doesn’t work, click on the headline above.)
Supergirl Flies High as a Debutante at the Nerd Cotillion
RadioTimes has the Twitter reviews from last night’s premiere of the Supergirl pilot.
This Year’s Official Comic-Con Bags
Normally, I’d present this as a separate post… THIRTEEN different bags this year!
The design on the reverse of the bag.
For the record (since the original post might disappear):
The ingenuity–and speedy sewing skills–of our attendees is amazing! Here’s a dress made out of this year’s Comic-Con 2014 Warner Bros. bags! Photo by Kevin Green © 2014 SDCC
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Zagat’s + Cebulski = Con Food Guide
What’s the one restaurant you need to visit when you come to San Diego?
For me, it’s a tie between Hodad’s and Pizza Port.
Hodad’s is a San Diego classic first introduced to me by artist Jim Lee, who lives in the area. I always get the same thing, the Double Bacon Cheeseburger; it’s a monster, but it’s how I start every trip to San Diego. And for folks that don’t have wheels at the con, not to worry: Hodad’s opened a Downtown location within walking distance to the convention center.
As a big beer drinker, Pizza Port Ocean Beach is an oasis for me, brewing all kinds of eclectic beers right on the premises and baking great pizzas to pair with them. Last time I visited, their brewer, Nacho Cevantes, let me try this amazing tomato and basil beer he was working on. And do not miss their wings! Plus, Pizza Port embraces Comic-Con with theme nights and discounts for cosplayers, so it’s always an amazing time to visit them.
Why the “Future of Women in Comics” Thinks It Helps to Be Terrifying
Vanity Fair profiles Kelly Sue DeConnick and the new demographic shifts in comics:
DeConnick has been a comics reader since childhood, but she only came to the industry after earning a drama degree from U.T. Austin, writing copy for the nude photo spreads in dirty magazines (“I hate to break this to you, but that’s not actually the models talking”), and eventually posting her own stories on a message board for author Warren Ellis, of the Planetary series. Ellis then invited her to work on a new site, artbomb.net, where she wrote catalogue entries for comic-book issues. Later, she got a job re-writing Japanese manga comics for a small publisher. She worked alongside a translator, making sure dialogue and story arcs made sense in an English-speaking context. She did this for seven years, in which time she estimates she wrote more than 11,000 comic-book pages. “So when people say dialogue is the best part of my scripts, it’s because I had a lot of practice.”
How to write a strong female character? Be one.
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Photos from the Associated Press
(Links to their website, to avoid any copyright concerns.)
Members of the Chun family carry out bags of Mattel products purchased on Preview Night at the 2015 Comic-Con International held at the San Diego Convention Center Wednesday, July 8, 2015, in San Diego. The pop-culture event is held July 9-12. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Invision/AP)
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San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer shakes hands with people dressed as Stormtroopers from the “Star Wars” films at an event on the first day of the 2015 Comic-Con International at the San Diego Convention Center, Thursday, July 9, 2015 in San Diego. Comic-Con runs from July 9-12. (Photo by Denis Poroy/Invision/AP)
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The oldest Comic-Con photo in the AP archives:
Spacesuit wearing Scott Kind, left, and Alma Perez hand out complimentary editions of their comic book “Space Hustlers” at the 28th Comic-Con held at the San Diego Convention Center in San Diego Saturday July 19, 1997. The four day event attracts over 30,000 people interested in comics and popular culture. (AP Photo/Denis Poroy)
Space Hustlers, created by Steve Owen, was published by Slave Labor Graphics in 1997. You can read it at ComiXology. I wonder if Dan Vado can supply some backstory?
…and Getty Images.
They have lots of good “man on the street” photos, but as soon as Hall H opens, they and everyone else start flooding the pages with celebrity photos.
Here’s a great cosplayer:
You can tell this was taken on Wednesday… everyone’s still smiling. But from reading my Facebook feed, people aren’t grumbling about Comic-Con, and I know attendees are excited to be there, even with the online obstacle course people have to endure.
A team promoting the upcoming horror series took to the streets Thursday alongside the religious protestors usually camped out across the street from the San Diego Convention Center. However, instead of saying “Jesus saves” and “Jesus will rise,” posters and shirts for the series read “From flames, Damien will rise” and “the beast rises.”
Additionally, street teams are handing out stickers, pins with three sixes – a “mark of the beast” – and pamphlets directing convention goers to visit www.itsallforyou.com, a site warns visitors “He is the only way to deal with the coming end” – not a far cry from some of the other religious-themed materials handed at the Con every year.
If they were really on the ball, they would hand out mini-comics which spoofed Jack Chick tracts.
* We’ve won! Politicians officially open Comic-Con!
On Thursday, to mark the official opening of Comic-Con International 2014, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer and San Diego City Council President Todd Gloria harnessed their inner superheroes and flew through the air on a zip-line near the downtown Convention Center.
Gloria was the interim Mayor after the Filner scandal. Faulconer won the special election. Faulconer has strong ties to Comic-Con: he worked PR on the second convention center expansion before he ran for public office, and supports the expansion of the convention center. His hobbies: yachting and biking.
* Google Glass banned from Comic-Con screenings.
Not that surprising.
*For the wrestling fans out there… Sting appears at the WWE panel. [No, not the musician.]
Is this bigger than JR Jr. working for DC?
* SYNERGY!
Well, yes; corporate synergy is another explanation—ESPN, like Marvel, is owned by Disney. The three spots feature former SportsCenter anchor Kenny Mayne introducing Marvel’s latest super team as new ESPN employees brought in to ensure the safety of the new SportsCenter set.
How soon before we see “ESPN: The Sports Comic Magazine”? What? Sports fans are geeks, too! T-shirts, who-would-win fantasy leagues, arcane statistics and knowledge, objectified athletes and cheerleaders…
* This year’s economic profile of Comic-Con.
* We discover Stan Lee’s one weakness… Get well soon, Stan!
* OH NOES! Girls are ruining Peanuts too!
“With their youthful, ingenious, and fashion-savvy sensibility, Snoopy and Belle are a perfect fit with the We Heart It community, and we’re looking forward to a terrifically successful partnership,” said Dave Williams, President of We Heart It. “Peanuts has always offered a fresh and original world view, which is exactly what We Heart It fans crave. This will provide an outstanding opportunity for our fans to find inspiration and engagement with this legendary brand.”
It’s like an electronic greeting card. You can like and share pictures online.
* A Comic-Con Virgin, from Japan:
* The Boston Herald profiles how Wired used their “Wired Café” to best effect.
* Reed Elsevier, owner of NYCC, announces earnings.
* Some Star Wars VII tidbits.
Movie Wars
DC wins on a quiet day (so far, as of 7 PM EDT/4 PM PDT), getting great publicity for their “All Hat, No Battle” Batsuit reveal.
* MTV plots how DC can beat Marvel in Hall H.
Ammon Shea 
recently spent a year of his life reading the OED from start to finish. Over the next few months he will be posting weekly blogs about the insights, gems, and thoughts on language that came from this experience. His book, Reading the OED, has been published by Perigee, so go check it out in your local bookstore. In the post below Ammon reflects on Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson’s unusual editing actions.
A pair of purportedly well-intentioned young men who have an avowed interest in fixing our language have recently proved to me that the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions (or at least self-righteous ones), but also that this road has the capacity to be rather expensive.
According to a story last week that ran in the Associated Press, and several other gloating publications, Jeff Deck and Benjamin Herson ran afoul of the law after they had completed a several-week long quest, during which they crossed a wide part of the country, fixing many typographical and grammatical errors that they found on various signs. They appear to have mostly done so with the knowledge of those who owned the signs. But supposing you are a young man, brimming with vigor and the dissatisfaction that comes from overmuch reading of the Chicago Manual of Style, and you come across a sign that is positively reeking of poor grammar, with no visible owner in sight – what then do you do? Well, you take out your magic marker and fix it.
And then you brag about it on your blog.
Unfortunately for Deck and Herson, the sign in question happened to be hand-painted by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the architect who had designed that which the sign described – a 1930s watchtower in the Grand Canyon National Park. They have been ordered to pay a fine of $3,035, and are banned from fixing public signage or entering national parks for a year.
According to the Associated Press, “Authorities said a diary written by Deck reported that while visiting the watchtower, he and Herson “discovered a hand-rendered sign inside that, I regret to report, contained a few errors.”” Deck then proceeded to ‘fix’ these errors, which amounted to a misplaced pair of apostrophes and an added comma, but neglected to fix the far more egregious spelling of the word ‘emense’. Said Deck in his diary “I think I shall be haunted by that perversity, emense, in my train-whistle-blighted dreams tonight.”
Personally, I believe that Deck will be haunted by the absence of the several thousands of dollars more than he will be by the alternative spelling of this word, but maybe I’m wrong. In fact, I sincerely hope that I am wrong – I would love it if this self-righteous prig were haunted in his dreams, tonight and for many nights to come. Because I would like to point out to him that the sign he saw is hardly the only incidence of immense being written ‘emense’. It comes up in the OED - Caxton used it in Eneydos in 1490. And a quick perusal of Google Books shows that it was use in the Journal of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and also in Metrical Legends of Exalted Characters (by Joanna Baillie in 1821), and also in 476 other sources listed. If Mr. Deck has the courage of his convictions, and if his diary was telling the truth, it would be appropriate if he has ‘train-whistle-blighted dreams’ once for every one of those 478 emenses found in Google Books.
When I lived in Queens, there was a nail salon just down the street from me, with the wonderfully improbable title on its awning ‘Hannah And Her Sister’s Nail’. Every day I walked by this store on my way to the train. And every day as I did so I imagined that somewhere in the back of the store Hannah sat arguing with her sister’s nail, or perhaps asking the nail if it wanted a cup of tea. The misspelling gave a personality to the store that an ordinary nail salon could never have, and in being so in need of fixing it managed to make me smile every day.
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Sorry if I’m being dense — what is the misspelling in “Hannah and Her Sister’s Nail”? All I see I see is an ambiguous coordination ([[Hannah and her sister’s] [nail]] vs [[Hannah] and [her sister’s nail]]) that makes for a rather cutesy name — and from the context would seem to be the source of your amusement.
Lewis and/or Clark are also fond of the rather charming spelling “tremendious”.
As I worked with the unassuming and witty Jeff Deck at a scholarly publisher, I can say that he is as far from a prig as you are from even-handed journalism. If you had listened to the NPR piece and seen the ABC News piece on Deck’s journey, both of which occurred long before the AP piece, you would have seen and heard that Deck asked permission from those who owned such signs to make his corrections, and you would have gained a better sense of Deck’s character and background. The reaction in the editing community, weary of constant “it’s” for “its” and similar mistakes, has been a hearty “you go, Jeff.” I would suggest performing a little research on your subjects before you write about them so you can avoid jumping to erroneous conclusions.