The Comic-Con International in San Diego commences Thursday, July 24…but it actually starts for some of us with Preview Night, which is July 23. July 23 is fifty days from today.
Four-day memberships are sold out. One-day memberships are still available. They will almost certainly sell out before the convention. If you're thinking of going, it's time to make that happen. And you might want to take a look at an excellent con-going guide maintained by Tom Spurgeon and the less-impressive one put up by me.
I will, as usual, be hosting more than a dozen panels at the convention and there'll be a list of them up here in a few weeks. I will, however, tease one in particular.
Each year on Saturday afternoon, we do a thing called Quick Draw!, which is one of the most popular events of the con. It takes place in a very big room and very few (if any) seats are not filled. In Quick Draw!, three cartoonists compete to see who can do the fastest, funniest drawings based on challenges that I hurl at them with the help of the audience. It's quite the crowd-pleaser.
One of the cartoonists each year is Sergio Aragonés, who has been drawing for Mad since they were doing parodies of buggy whip merchants. Sergio is hailed by many as The World's Fastest Cartoonist. Another cartoonist is always Scott Shaw!, who is also brilliantly quick with pen and idea. The third slot rotates from year to year.
Several years ago, I asked Sergio if there was anyone we could ever get for that third seat who he thought could mop the floor with him and Scott. Sergio mentioned the name of one living cartoonist who he feared could do just that. And this year, that cartoonist will be in the third seat.