San Diego Serenade
Producers, film studios, publishers, comic houses, toy makers, sculptors, and independents are all singing their song to fans and audiences this weekend in San Diego. For all the cacophony and crowds at the con I wish I were there. Here is how I am coping:
Follow the right people on the social networking tool and you get a chance to live vicarious through the chaotic schedule of various folks attached to comics, anecdotes from ground zero and signing locations if you are actually at the convention. Plus my following list has grown with all the additional mentions made during tweets. Here are my top five faves as I sit and monitor the madness in cube world:
@amandapalmer: Though she’s not in the industry per se, her boyfriend Neil Gaiman is, thus she’s at the Con too. Her tweeting habits usually include lots of pics of where ever she is and in true form she’s posted a large number of images of her with folks on the convention floor. She also tends to give away some cool stuff to events (like giving away tickets to her performance for the CBLDF). Well played Ms. Palmer.
@perazza: If there is one thing Ron Perazza, overseer of Zuda Comics, has shown through his tweets it’s that online comic creators know how to party. Perazza’s tweets have usually been the latest into the evening. He does a great job of reporting what he’s heard on the convention floor (“high five for sluts!” being one of my favorites) and offers a host of other folks on twitter to follow as he lets you know what he’s doing on the floor every step of the way.
@CBCebulski: Been following C.B. Cebulski before Con started. The talent scout for Marvel Comics is awesome simply for the fact he’s freely dispersed advice to artists wanting to break into the industry for days and puts no bull into his feedback. At con he’s been fun to follow just because of where he’s been and who he’s met. So far he’s brushed up against Megan Fox and mused on smelling of gin and sweet perfume by nights end. Come on, who can’t be jealous of that?
@neilkleid: Writer and artist Neil Kleid is a funny guy on twitter, no doubt about it. The author of the upcoming Big Kahn graphic novel does not seem to be having the best of times on the convention floor. I’d imagine the agonizing pain of being at the center of all that chaos must feel as tragic and definitely reads as funny as Kleid depicts it. Buy that man a beer.
@jamessime: The owner of Isotope Comics in San Fransisco scours the floor of the convention in his custom suits and rather tall hair snapping pics and sharing his enthusiasm for ray guns and golden lasso martinis.
Online
The plethora of sites covering Comic-Con is too large in scope to even begin to cover here. Here are a few usual suspects.
Youtube: A smattering of videos are already starting to crop up on Youtube via official interviews and releases such as FUNimation. Other publishers and reporters are there too, along with some of the pirated video footage from panels, that honestly are never that great or cool.
Newsarama: The popular culture and comic book site has thrown together a page of all of their coverage. The panel blogging and live feeds are great for those of us not there. With the torrent of news and announcements made at SDCC the staff here does a pretty decent fantastic job at keeping up with a lot of it and picking their panel coverage well.
Marvel: And props to Marvel for the great coverage of their own events and panels at SDCC. Their page is pretty well layed out, highlights their products and provides us voyeurs with videos of daily events. DC could learn something from them. I mean there schedules are there on the website, buried, but I wonder if they considered the popularity of the con on the home pae and us fans who aren’t there?
and finally:
Pop Candy: And finally I can’t leave out Whitney Matheson’s USA Today Pop Candy blog. Though Whitney is doing the majority of her day-in-day-out reporting via a video diary and twitter this site does extremely well in introducing a wide variety of people to comics whom might not otherwise be exposed. And yes, this is the site whose coverage ignited my passion for Con. Hopefully Whitney survives her grueling coverage schedule and all the additional writing duties I’m sure she is pulling. It was lovely attending her meet up last year and I know the one this year will be as fun (hopefully with follow-up for all of those not there). Though I never really engaged fully in the following and community all the people that were there were super-nice.
Of course, what I’m missing in my follow are some sites and people on tweet more focused on the independent publisher/small publishing company sites and events. Please feel free to add to the list of my vicarious observing sources in comments.
