Why should San Diego have all the fun? This weekend, the East Coast gets its turn at a mega comic con, when New York Comic Con takes over the Javits Center. This is the last big comics convention of the year, so publishers are hustling. Here’s some of what we’re seeing.
Guests: New York is still the headquarters of the Big Two, Marvel and DC, as well as a host of smaller publishers, so there will be plenty of writers, artists, editors, and industry honchos on hand. The comics guests include some top-notch talent: Scott Snyder (writer of Batman and American Vampire), Darwyn Cooke (the Parker graphic novels), Dan Slott (Amazing Spider-Man), and of course Stan Lee, who despite being 90 never seems to miss a comics convention.
News: Comics publishers roll out their big announcements at the con, or often just before it, so stay tuned for all the latest news. One of the early reports has a digital side to it: Dynamite Entertainment and Dark Horse Comics announced a crossover between two of their characters with The Shadow vs. Grendel. The digital angle is that Dynamite sells its comics on the Dark Horse platform (as well as comiXology and the usual places—but they are the only other publisher on Dark Horse Digital). When I spoke to them last spring, Dark Horse president Mike Richardson and Dynamite publisher Nick Barrucci talked about how their lines complemented each other, and it looks from here like that digital collaboration got everyone thinking. Another breaking story: Marvel, which is owned by Disney, will publish a new series, Disney Kingdoms: Secrets of the Weird, launching in January of next year. Marvel staff and the Disney Imagineers are working together on this comic, and Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada will have more to say about it during his panel.
Digital Comics: They will be everywhere. ComiXology will have two panels, on making comics the comiXology way and their ComiXology Submit indy-comics program, as well as My Little Pony artist Katie Cook, The Bunker creators Joshua Hale Fialkov and Joe Infurnari, and other creators at their booth signing special art cards. V for Vendetta artist David Lloyd will be talking about his Aces Weekly digital-comics site, and the motion-comics publisher Madefire will have a booth on the floor. At this point, almost every comics publisher has some sort of digital component, so it almost doesn’t make sense to separate out digital comics, but every con can be counted on to have a few pioneering digital-first comics and apps, and hopefully there will be some boasting about sales numbers as well. Stay tuned!
A former book editor and newspaper reporter, Brigid Alverson started MangaBlog to keep track of her daughters¹ reading habits and now covers comics and graphic novels for Comic Book Resources , School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly Comics World, Robot 6, and MTV Geek. She also edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. Brigid was a judge for the 2012 Eisner Awards. Send her an email to wordballoons@gmail.com
