This year’s Comic-Con was a more manageable beast than last year’s. I don’t know if it was the absence of the “Twi-hards” or just better management on the part of the con staff, but the crowds were less beastly than they were last year. In addition to seeing panels with great and legendary creators like Moto Hagio, Neal Adams, Brian Michael Bendis and Sean Phillips, my zeal to get to each panel with enough time also led me to hear creators like Keith Knight, Kurt Busiek, Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba talk about their work as well. Then there were the three panels I attended where Jason Thompson (author of “Manga: The Complete Guide” and “King of RPGs”) was a feature or main speaker and those were very entertaining as well.
Still, the main reason I go each year is for the comics. Even though I’ve heard lots of people gripe about how comics are getting crowded out of Comic-Con by Hollywood (which is basically true), it’s still the best place around to find good deals on lots of graphic novels. While I plan to talk about all of these eventually, here’s the full list of what I got at the con (in the order I pulled them out of my bag):
