The Eisner Awards were presented at the San Diego Comic-Con last night; it looks like Paul Pope, Ed Brubaker, Bob Burden and Darwyn Cooke had an especially good night.

Congratulations to all the winners.

Best Single Issue (or One-Shot)
Batman/The Spirit #1: “Crime Convention,” by Jeph Loeb and Darwyn Cooke (DC)

Best Continuing Series
All Star Superman, by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (DC)

Best Limited Series
Batman: Year 100, by Paul Pope (DC)

Best New Series
Criminal, by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips (Marvel Icon)

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Adam Hughes celebrated 20 years of working in the industry at this year’s San Diego Comic Con with his very own spotlight panel. Since 1987, Hughes has been working non-stop, from his years at Comico to his immense involvement with the Star Wars Celebration this year and the upcoming All Star Wonder Woman. Having started in the industry when “anyone who could draw a straight line could get a book”, Hughes has only been unemployed for 15 minutes (between Comico and DC Comics) and admittedly gained a sort of ‘tenure’ respect that he’s still getting used to.

Fans asked the obvious question regarding the new All Star Wonder Woman book, but Hughes was tight-lipped on his answers. Fond of the “Salad Bar Batman” approach to the Batman animated series, he plans on similarly taking as much from the different interpretations of Wonder Woman, from her Golden age origins to the work done when George Perez was on the book, plus his own personal touches. Hughes expressed a belief that both villains and supporting characters should be interesting enough to “float their own book”, so expect compelling interpretations of Steve Trevor (who will be appearing as a love interest) and Wonder Woman’s admittedly small Rogues Gallery. No redesigns of the costume, he wants Wonder Woman herself as iconic as possible, but Hughes mentioned how well costume changes worked on his Lara Croft covers, so look out for something similar for the Amazon Princess. Also look for the invisible jet to make at least an appearance despite not being a fan of the idea; he doesn’t want to be judgmental, but to use the opportunity to do something “cool”. Among the things he can’t say related to the appearance of the greek gods (“They will be invoked.”) and whether the book will have any elements from the World War II era Wonder Woman (” “lots of war in it, perhaps nazis”).

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The big publishing news of Day Two didn’t come from DC or Marvel, but from Boom! Studios, which announced that writer Mark Waid will join the publisher as editor-in-chief.

Waid, who until recently had been DC-exclusive, will continue to write The Flash and The Brave and the Bold.

“It’s no secret that I’ve been itching for years to step into more of an editorial role in the business and pass along twenty years of accumulated wisdom and creative experience culled both from my successes and my idiot blunders — all of which came with some gift of knowledge,” Waid told Comic Book Resources. “So when Ross [Richie, Boom! Studios Publisher] came to me, handed me the keys to a comic book company, and said, ‘Run it your way’ — there’s no way to pass up an offer like that. Especially because I know the slate of projects it has mapped out for the next year or two, and they’re really jaw-dropping.

The major announcements from Marvel and DC came in the form creative lineups and exclusive agreements.

At the “DC Nation” panel, Executive Editor Dan DiDio revealed that Grant Morrison and JG Jones will tackle the much-touted Final Crisis miniseries. Marvel, meanwhile, named Warren Ellis and Simone Bianchi to take over Astonishing X-Men, and Terry Moore and Humberto Ramos to pick up Runaways.

Marvel also announced that writer Marc Guggenheim and writer-artist Phil Jimenez have signed exclusive agreements.

Elsewhere, IDW Publishing announced it has secured the licenses to produce comics based on Doctor Who and Speed Racer, while Viz Media revealed it will release Takehiko Inoue’s popular basketball manga, Slam Dunk, beginning next year.

More Comic-Con coverage:

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There’s still more Watchmen news to report, as Warner Bros. has launched a barebones website for the film.

At The Los Angeles Times Comic-Con Watch blog, Sheigh Crabtree has the list of the next wave of books from DC’s Minx imprint — and word that Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg are working on a sequel to The PLAIN Janes called Janes in Love.

The new titles are: Token, by novelist Alisa Kwitney and artist Joelle Jones (12 Reasons Why I Love Her); Emiko Superstar, by performance artist and novelist Mariko Tamaki and artist Steve Rolston (Queen & Country); Burnout, by author Rebecca Donner and artist Inaki Miranda (Fables); The New York Four, by the Local team of Brian Wood and Ryan Kelly; the previously announced All Nighter, by David Hahn (Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane, Private Beach); Poseur, by journalist Deborah Vankin and artist Rick Mays (Kabuki); and Clubbing in Tokyo, the sequel to Clubbing, by Andi Watson and Josh Howard.

For descriptions of the books, just follow the link.

Mark Waid joins BOOM! Video is here. Or here:

Per Chip Mosher, “This is only the beginning.”

Via John Jakala comes news that Viz Media will begin serializing preview Takehiko Inoue’s popular basketball manga Slam Dunk in the December issue of Shonen Jump, and then release the paperbacks starting next year.

The announcement was made today at Comic-Con during Viz’s “Shonen Jump: SJ Evolution!” panel.

Voted the No. 1 manga of all time at last year’s Japanese Media Arts Festival, Slam Dunk originally was serialized from 1990 to 1996 in Weekly Shonen Jump, and then collected in 31 volumes.

It has sold more than 100 million copies in Japan.

Viz also confirmed it will serialize Tite Kubo’s Bleach beginning with the November issue of Shonen Jump.

Neil Gaiman announced in his spotlight panel at the San Diego Comic-Con today that P. Craig Russell will adapt the Sandman prose story Dream Hunters, which featured illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano, into comic form as part of Sandman’s 20th anniversary celebration.

Gaiman also discussed the Death movie and the Miracleman legal battle at the con … watch for a complete con report on the Newsarama main site later today.

Earlier in the week, shaky footage of The Dark Knight teaser that appears before The Simpsons Movie made its way onto YouTube, and then was removed. Now, thanks to the viral-marketing scavenger hunt going on at Comic-Con, an official version of the teaser can be found at whysoserious.com.

Unfortunately, the server seems to be experiencing overload. But luckily you can view the no-longer-shaky teaser at YouTube.

On Wednesday, the cast for Zack Snyder’s Watchmen adaptation was officially announced. Now the movie has an official release date: March 6, 2009.

Related: The official teaser poster

As Kevin just reported, Sunday at San Diego Comic-Con is now sold out. So basically if you don’t have any kind of pass, you can’t get any kind of pass and can’t get in. After yesterday, I guess I’m used to the crowds, because I didn’t mind fighting my way to the Heroes booth to get a comic.

I’ve got plenty of more pictures to transfer over, like Warren Ellis and the Monster Attack Network crew and lots of random stuff. The picture up above is from the LEGOS booth.

What I didn’t get a picture of was the construction workers at the Hard Rock Hotel (opening in the fall, I think?) hooting and yelling at all the booth babes that went over to Subway for lunch. They were impressed with a woman in a Wonder Woman costume. I now know where WW keeps her cell phone, BTW, and so do the awestruck construction workers. Also didn’t get a picture of Joe Quesada running down the street at 11:35 a.m., passing us on his way to his 11:45 Cup O’Joe panel (which Matt has on the home page).

Right now I’m sitting in the Spectacular Spider-Man panel, where Greg Weisman is answering Gargoyles questions. I want to give the lady who asked if he’d still have time to write the Gargoyles comic even though he’s doing the Spider-Man cartoon a cookie. Go comics! The cartoon looks nice, BTW; looks nothing like the MTV Spider-Man cartoon, which is a plus. The new cartoon isn’t about being young and hip, one of the panelists just said. “He’s everyone’s hero.” The new cartoon won’t be dark like that one. Expect something fun when it comes to WB.

Up next is Neil Gaiman, which is what I’m waiting for. And I need a power outlet.

More later …

Well, that’s it: Sunday admissions for Comic-Con have sold out.

Comic-Con spokesman David Glanzer says it’s the first time in the convention’s 38-year history that Friday, Saturday and Sunday have all sold out.

Stopped by the BOOM! table to talk to Chip Mosher earlier, and he asked if I could post something about an addition to their signing schedule … Saturday at 3 p.m. The Polish Brothers will join Sebastian Jones at the BOOM! table to sign copies of their comic Salvador. Mark and Michael Polish are also the duo behind the film The Astronaut Farmer.

I’ll be covering the BOOM! panel a little later today, so check the main site for more BOOM! updates.

Via IGN.com comes this new image of Heath Ledger as The Joker from The Dark Knight, snagged from the viral-marketing site, whysoserious.com.

Related: More Dark Knight viral marketing at Comic-Con

A collection of what some of the mainstream media are reporting from Comic-Con:

• The San Diego Union-Tribune has several articles, including this one, which looks at the diversity of the attendees. “It’s the United Nations of nerds!” Reginald Hudlin tells the newspaper. Also of note: “It’s now official – you cannot escape comic book culture.”

• At CNN.com’s The Marquee blog, producer Matt West was overwhelmed by Day One: “From the moment the convention center opened at 10:30 a.m. PT, it was sheer madness. From hard-core nerds, to average geeks, to the mildly amused people numbering in the tens of thousands had descended upon the San Diego Convention Center to … stand in line and fight the crowds to get a look at the same thing the rest of the world was getting to see online on the Internet.”

• Entertainment Weekly‘s PopWatch blog says that Paramount Pictures stole Day One — and possibly the entire convention — with the Iron Man trailer, Star Trek casting announcement, and the taped message from the set of Indiana Jones.

• At The Los Angeles Times’ Comic-Con Watch blog, Geoff Boucher has a video interview with DC Comics President and Publisher Paul Levitz about the company’s TV and movie properties.

Also, the Times’ Sheigh Crabtree covers last night’s Friends of Lulu awards.

• ABC News has a Comic-Con photo gallery on its website.

Variety Asia reports that the Chinese government is continuing its crackdown of the popular manga series Death Note by closing down a fan site that contained uploaded videos.

Chinese officials began targeting toy and school-supply stores in April, searching for Death Note-inspired stationery notebooks that had become popular with students. The scope of the confiscations widened in May to include ghost and horror stories, many of which are printed illegally.

As of last month, the government had seized nearly 6,000 copies of Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata’s manga series, which centers around a high school student who sets out to rid the world of evil using a supernatural notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it.

According to a circular issued by the agency tasked with fighting illegal publications, “Death Note stories contain elements of mystery, death and revenge, and are harmful to children’s psychological development.”

Death Note has inspired an anime series, two live-action films (with a third announced), a light novel and a video game.

Related: Salon.com looks at the Death Note phenomenon

I want you all to read this, and then read it again and imagine my voice (I’m an Alto with a slow Pennsylvania/Oklahoma accent). Then read it aloud to yourself, because you need to get this burned into your heads whether you are a fan or a creator.

When people criticize a sample of writing as sexist, they are not criticizing the writer personally. They are criticizing writing sample. More specifically, they are criticizing the idea espoused in that writing sample, and idea which is quite likely such an ingrained trope that the writer never thought twice about.
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The decline of DC’s sales figures as reported by Diamond has been a recent topic of interest lately both here at Blog@Newsarama and many other places.

Point:

Here at Blog@Newsarama, our own Chris Mautner’s got a lot of interesting responses catalogued in his post: How do you solve a problem like DC. He’s got a number of notable excerpts and links available there.

Counterpoint:

Dave Carter at Yet Another Comic Blog is much less pessimistic than most of the examples quoted in the previous post, asking instead What does it matter?

Excerpt:

What really should matter is profit. And that’s what’s missing from all the sales figures, because we have no idea how much it cost to produce any of these comics. Does Marvel make more profit from an issue of The Dark Tower than DC does from Justice League of America? We’ll never know.

Sure 52 was a huge seller for DC week after week, but how much did they have to pay Waid, Morrison, Johns, Rucka, Giffen and all the artists involved for each issue, not to mention all the editorial time necessary to push out a weekly series. (There are also opportunity costs involved; would DC’s relaunches of Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman et al. have floundered so badly if editorial’s attention hadn’t been distracted?)

Never mind the fact that the Diamond numbers are just one segment of the total comics market these days, and they present a very short term glimpse at that. I still maintain that one of the most successful comics of recent years must be Fables, given its strong trade sales in both the direct market and regular bookstores, and its seeming evergreen status.

He also has a point to make about who might really be in line to suffer:

When the big boys are playing market share games, they are likely to push out an enormous number of titles month after month, in the attempt to crowd each other off the shelves. This has two effects: One, Marvel or DC may keep a marginal selling title around a little longer just to keep shelf space (and I stress ‘may,’ as they are just as likely to cancel it and put something else in its place). Two, they potentially push titles from other publishers off the shelves, other publishers who do rely on profit (or at least breaking even) to survive.

The good news is that the trend–at least in dollar sales–is in growth. But in the direct market served by Diamond, most of the growth seems to be going to Marvel & DC, and there doesn’t seem to be much trickle-down. If everybody were playing the same game, “Let’s Make Profit,” then things might be different. But Marvel & DC aren’t playing for profit, they’re playing for visibility, operationalized as market share. It’s like a bunch of eight-year-olds playing tag on the same field that a bunch of junior high kids are playing tackle football.

So what do you think?

Writer Andy Diggle notes that, because of a production error, the speech balloons are missing from Page 21 of this week’s Hellblazer #234, “Which’ll probably make it, like, incredibly rare and collectible, or something.”

The corrected page can be read here. (NOTE: Spoiler alert.)

A collection of what creators, attendees and exhibitors are blogging from Comic-Con:

• Jennifer de Guzman, editor-in-chief of SLG Publishing, received the Woman of Distinction Award during last night’s Friends of Lulu awards ceremony. She reports that Roman Dirge, “got electrocuted by his microphone during his panel when he was telling a story about peeing. … Dirge is all right. Just another bizarre misfortune. Most of those involve registration problems in our premier comics for the Con, so I guess Dirge is lucky his magenta didn’t get all out of line with his yellow and cyan and black. If you know what I mean.”

(I’ve been searching for the list of Friends of Lulu winners, but I’ve yet to find it.)

The Beat has the full list of Friends of Lulu winners.

• USA Today’s Whitney Matheson provides some TV and movie panel roundups, a rundown of freebies, and photos.

• Bully, the book-selling bovine, captures the pulse from the convention floor, and posts plenty of photos — including a shot of Green Lantern’s butt: “Of course, it was a totally excellent day to spy some other folk on the Con floor, too: those illustrious, inventive attendees who come in costume! As I said last year, I’m filled with nothing but awe and admiration for these folks who are creative and bold enough to step out into the crowd in their inventive and illustrious outfits.”
• Letterer Todd Klein chronicles Day One and, of course, includes photos.

• Mark Evanier provides his own brief roundup of Preview Night and Day One: “A tip to the convention organizers: I know you’re concerned about crowds and also about safety. It would seem to me you could help both situations a bit if you barred Star Wars style light-sabres from the floor. In fact, I saw a lot of awkwardness and a few near-injuries because people toting around swords and staffs seemed oblivious to how much space their weaponry requires when they walk about the hall.”

• Irene Gallo, art director for Tor Books, has been posting photos from the get-go: Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5; and Part 6.

• I swiped the above photo from the Flickr set of “hellboarder,” who has been contributing to the growing Comic-Con pool.