There were a few cosplayers out on Friday, but today they came out in droves! Lots of amazing costumes! I noticed a few trends this year. First, lots of gender-bending. Especially a lot of female Captain Americas. Second, lots of race/ethinicity bending. This is awesome because something as silly as skin color should never stop you from cosplaying as your favorite character. Finally, lots of victorian, steam punk, and other types of time-bending with the costumes. ...

I am extremely against censorship, I speak about that more often on my personal blog, but it is can sometimes be a real issue with comic books. Within this interview I mention the panel about the Comics Code and it certainly was harmful to the industry. It is at least partially responsible for the fact that we’re just now getting back to where we were in the 50s in terms of comic book genres. But I wondered, with the Internet around and (in the USA) unregulated, what does the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund need to do? So I spoke with Charles Bronstein about it. ...

Just like when I spoke with Mark Waid two years ago, he is a VERY busy man at this convention. He is on nearly every panel and is incredibly popular with attendees seeking to speak with him and get his signature. So, first of all, a huge thanks to Mark for taking 5 minutes to talk with me. The conversation focused on the present and future of digital comics this time: ...

Comic Book Legal Defense Fund: Tales from the Code There are lots of great books to read about the comics code and why it came into being. I recommend The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. The neat thing about this panel was having Jim Starlin talk about how it did or, often, didn’t affect his writing. It appears that he took the stance that he’d write what he wanted to write and it was up to the editors to tell him to change something because of the comics code.

I’ll be live-blogging from the floor again today. The LTE/3G on the floor can be spotty, making it hard for me to update more often than I did yesterday, but I’ll do what I can. [liveblog]

It was great to be back after missing out on last year’s Baltimore Comic-Con. The first day was great! It was nice to have it start on a Friday because it wasn’t too crowded. I met an indie comic creator, an indie manga creator, saw some cosplay, spoke with a commission artist, and saw some panels. I also interviewed two others that I’ll be returning to later - hopefully tomorrow. Below are some more images from Day 1. ...

I attended three great panels on the first day and brought back some not-so-great audio. At least on the first two, I forgot to change the settings from “They’re right here” to “They’re over there” so I had to amplify it and, in the process, amplify noise of anything around like me fidgeting. Still, I think there was a lot of good info in these panels. Thrillbent Thrillbent Panel ...

When you come to Baltimore Comic-Con, one thing you see a lot of in Artists Alley is the commission artist. But Robert Quill was a little different than the others. For one thing, his booth wasn’t full of images of the usual characters. For another, he looked somewhat like the Dread Pirate Roberts and watching him interact with convention-goers was its own form of entertainment. Without looking at any of his sketches, what drew me to want to talk to him was the following form: ...

What’s the best part of any comic convention? Cosplay! Here’s the cosplay I saw on day 1! Quentin Quire Dorothy of Oz Moogle in a Tutu Psylocke Nightwing and Wonder Woman Female Victorian-Era Captain America Court of Owls Huntress Teen Titans Cosplay

I have a huge soft spot for manga. There was a time where I’d grown tired of the usual Super Hero output from the Big Two, but we didn’t have an easy outlet for indie publishers like we do now. Manga provided all those genres that used to exist in the USA in the 1950s, but disappeared as the decades passed and the market consolidated. Sure, now we’re starting to have more high school-based western comics like Morning Glories, In the Woods, and Deadly Class, but it was manga, particularly Shoujo that showed us it could be done. (There are some high school Shonen, but the drama of high school seems to be best captured by Shoujo).