As I look over these old lists of Comic-Con panels I hosted, I keep being struck by how we would have someone wonderful on a panel like Will Eisner or Julius Schwartz or even younger folks like Dave Stevens…and then a year or three later, we'd be doing a memorial panel for them. And we didn't do memorial panels for a lot of folks because, with rare exceptions, those panels didn't get good turn-outs, no matter how beloved the subject.
I will share with you one thing I learned about them, just in case you ever have to moderate a panel at a convention for a deceased loved or respected person: Finish on time. Do not let attendees think that anyone who wants to can get up and speak and speak for as long as they want. Time is finite in any panel about anyone and there's another panel outside waiting to get into that room.
It does not honor the departed one to do a panel that runs so long that it has to be cut off and someone who wanted to say something for two minutes doesn't get on because someone else wanted to speak for twenty. That advice wasn't necessary this year but it was at other times…
Gene Colan, Sy Barry, Ramona Fradon, Nick Cardy, Arnold Drake, Murphy Anderson, Sergio Aragonés, Stan Sakai, Tom Luth, Heidi MacDonald, Tom Spurgeon, Peter David, Tom McLean, Augie DeBlieck Jr., Jerry Robinson, Jack Kirby, Steve Sherman, Scott Shaw!, Paul S. Levine, Robert Katz, Will Eisner, Murphy Anderson, Lee Ames, Bob Fujitani, E.G. Daily, Bob Bergen, Rob Paulsen, Wally Wingert, Bill Farmer, Kyle Baker, Jeff Smith, Dennis Kitchen, Paul Levitz, Jim Warren, Mike Richardson, Scott McCloud, Batton Lash, Michael Uslan, Ann Eisner, Gary Owens, Dave Stevens.