blogadmin

Go to a convention, and there’s a better than average chance you’ll see a booth taller than the rest stocked to the ceiling with geek-oriented t-shirts, jackets, hats, belt buckles, patches, and other assorted nuttiness. That’s the booth for StylinOnline, It’s been a long time since I personally have been to a con and not seen them. So if anyone knows anything about a con, it’s president and CEO James Cucchiara. Go watch, it’s informative, if only so you know that StylinOnline is the one booth you do NOT want to wait until the end of the con to buy something at. Seriously, usually you can get discount prices by waiting until the last hours of the last day, but at StylinOnline, it just makes it more likely they ran out of your size. If you are going to buy something there, do it first thing, when they are guaranteed to have everything.

Not a ton of news today, so I’m going to get to business first. The four day passes Comic Con International was reissuing? They’re already all sold out. Single day passes will be sold at a later date.

The other news today would be the passing of legendary comic book penciler Gene Colan. If you don’t know who Gene is, you don’t know comics. Amongst other things, he created Blade in “Tomb of Dracula,” drew the first African American superhero with the Falcon, revolutionized  books like “Daredevil,” “Howard the Duck” and more. He even won an Eisner Award in his eighties for his work on “Captain America #601.”

I was lucky enough to have met Gene at Comic Con International a couple of years ago, working as his talent wrangler for the Hero Initiative. I had to get Gene across the San Diego Convention Center floor from his booth in Artist’s Alley to the Hero Initiative booth, which was at the other end of the show. Given that Gene was using a walker, and couldn’t see out of one eye, it wasn’t easy. But I never heard him complain once. He was just happy that people were still interested in his art work.

Goodbye, Gene. I’m still interested.

Guess what, kiddies? Around 1,500 4-day badges were returned to Comic Con International. You know what that means? That’s right, they’re going to be offered again! Although at a non-discounted rate. “A 4-day adult badge without Preview Night will be sold at the non-discounted rate of $137 that includes a $6 reprocessing fee. Junior, Senior, and Military 4-day badges without Preview Night will be sold at the non-discounted rate of $68 each. You may purchase up to TWO 4-day badges only.” Single day badges are going to get sold as well, but later. Good luck! Because you know they’re going to sell out fast.

• Looks like director, animator and voice actor Makoto Shinkai will appear at Otakon 2011.
• Want to see CONvergenceCon’s guide? Now you can.
• Dear god, this may be the best bullet point I’ve ever written. Going to GenCon? If you sign up in advance, you can get a discounted lunch box from Ruth’s Chris Steak House. I can’t even come up with a zinger for that. Every other con now officially sucks in comparison.