Hard to believe but the formal opening of Comic-Con 2010 is but 33 days from today, which means 32 days to those of you attending Preview Night. The time between Comic-Cons gets briefer and briefer as I get older. Before long, some of us won't even bother leaving San Diego. When one Comic-Con ends, we'll just hang around in the hotel lobby until the next one starts.
I will be found, as usual, at a mess of panels and events there. At the moment, I'm hosting or co-hosting 11 and I'm on at least two more. The full list will be up in a week or two but it's a lot like previous years. I'll be doing a panel with Sergio and the Groo Crew on Thursday afternoon, running Quick Draw! on Saturday morning, presiding over a Jack Kirby tribute panel on Sunday morning and Cover Story on Sunday afternoon. Earl Kress and I will be moderating a number of panels about cartoon voices. I'll be interviewing Paul Levitz on one panel about his career and on another, Denny O'Neil, Neal Adams and Paul (again) will discuss the revamp of Batman in the early seventies. There'll be a "spotlight" on Stan and Hunter Freberg on Thursday which will pick up where last year's left off covering Stan's amazing career. The con will also have a number of memorial-type panels for friends who've left us in the last year and I'll be emceeing one remembering Dick Giordano.
So is that everything? Well, some of you will notice something missing. Unlike the past nineteen years at the con, there will be no Golden Age Panel. Sad to say, we just won't have enough folks at the convention to have a proper one.
This was my decision as much as anyone's. We've had some great gatherings in this category — and there are still a lot of writers and artists around who worked in the forties and fifties, more than some people think. But most of them have elected not to attend the Comic-Con this year…and yes, many were invited. So it just seems more appropriate to interview those people on individual panels and not try to assemble a group chat when we really don't have the personnel. Perhaps the Golden Age Panel will be back next year. I hope so. In its absence this year though, there'll be plenty of others covering the early days of comics so no one should be too disappointed.