Newsarama Note: This column expresses the opinion of the writer, and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Newsarama or anyone but the writer.

Living in Atlanta, there has always been one thing I look forward to more than anything to help me get my geek on: DragonCon. Each year it’s become more and more populated and the costumes and guests have gotten more extravagant. This year, like the past 8 years, I attended D*C for a weekend of fun, comic talk, friends and good times. There’s never a dull moment and with D*C stationed at hotels, you never know who you might run into. It’s not like any other convention that I’ve been to that just shuts down at a set time. It’s non-stop.

Yet, a recent blurb in Entertainment Weekly‘s “Bullseye” section had me slightly irked. Yes, I understand that the “Bullseye” is used to make fun of a lot of things going on in pop culture. Had they just made fun of the convention itself, I probably wouldn’t have minded it as much, yet the quote they used was “DragonCon: the convention for those who aren’t cool enough to get into Comic-Con.” That is where I have my problem. They actually went a little below the belt and insulted the attendees. That is completely different.

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The subject line kind of says it all, as the impeached former governor of Illinois and the Flash: Rebirth artist met Saturday at Wizard World Chicago Comic Con.

The photo’s from a post by Ethan Van Sciver over at the Bendis board, detailing the story of the meeting. Rod Blagojevich talked about his convention appearance this morning on Fox News Sunday.

In case it wasn’t clear that Wizard’s shows aren’t really “comic book conventions” any more, here’s the latest evidence: impeached former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has just been added to the lineup of this weekend’s Wizard World Chicago Comic Con.

Yes, the same Blagojevich who just three days ago was convicted in federal court on one count of lying to investigators — a mistrial was declared on the other 23 counts, and a retrial is expected. Wizard took the opportunity to playfully reference the decision, opening their press release with “Rod’s appeal” and later starting “The verdict is in!”

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So says C. B. Cebulski, freshly-appointed Senior Vice President, Creator & Content Development of Marvel Entertainment. So you know it’s no joking around. In the past, Cebulski has had some tart words for Wizard via his twitter account, most notably: “More shoddy, sensationalistic reporting in the new Wizard. Let them retweet that as it seems this is where they’re getting all their “news”.”

Ouch.

So what exactly happened here? This is an all too familiar scenario. Remember Wizard World Chicago last year or WW Philly where neither DC or Marvel had a booth? Though as of now, the WWC site still has Marvel people listed, including Cebulski himself.

So has Marvel severed ties, or are the wheels turning towards that direction? What do you readers think?

By Amanda McDonald

Check out Newsarama’s own Brian Andersen on Saturday at SDCC. Author of So Super Duper and Friend of Dorothy, Brian Andersen’s work has a distinct voice and a great message intertwined into the super-hero genre. Brian will be armed with the newest issue of So Super Duper and previous issues will be available as well.

Catch Brian Andersen at the Prism Comics booth (booth numbers 2049, 2146, 2148) on Saturday, July 24th for portfolio reviews at 11 am and signings from 1 to 2 pm.

If you’re (like me) sadly not at SDCC but interested in Andersen’s work, check out his web site at SoSuperDuper.com and more from Prism Comics at their site, as well.

Much has been made over the Westboro Baptist Church’s plans to picket outside of Comic-Con today. Sure enough, there was about four or five of them out there, but the real show were the couple dozen counter-protesters. The Bender with the “kill all humans” sign was a particular highlight.

The first “official” day of Comic-Con International: San Diego is starting as we type, but before diving into that chasm of comic book announcements and movie hype, let’s take a look back at all there was to be seen Wednesday night at preview night — like Odin’s massive throne at the Marvel booth.

More pics after the jump!

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Most of the Eisner Award nominees were announced back in April, but this past weekend the 20 finalists for the annual Will Eisner Spirit of Comics Retailer Award were named; thanks to ComicsPRO for the list.

This year’s crop includes comic book shops from around the country, as well as Israel, England and two from Canada. The award is based on the diversity of product offered, knowledge of the field, community involvement, quality of displays and design, and, this is of course important, “adherence to standard ethical business practices.” If you’ve won before — Tate’s Comics in Ft. Lauderdale took home the trophy last year — you’re not eligible to win again. This Eisners, an annual part of Comic-Con International, take place starting 8:30 p.m. this Friday night in the Indigo Room at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, nice and close to the convention center.

Full list of nominees after the jump.

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Here’s an addition to the already stellar lineup of events and activities at and around next week’s Comic-Con International in San Diego: legendary competitive eater Joey Chestnut, “fresh” off of his fourth consecutive victory at the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, will attempt to break the world record for “Most Chocolate Bars Consumed in One Minute.” And some people think Comic-Con isn’t about comic books anymore.

To add a degree of gravitas to the proceedings, we’re told “Guinness World Records’ Editor-in-Chief will be on hand to officiate.” Now, I’m not quite sure what the current record for “Most Chocolate Bars Consumed in One Minute” is, and a search on the official Guinness site was no help, but rest assured that Chestnut will no doubt eat a lot of candy bars within those sixty seconds.

The tie, tenuous as it might be, to a Comic-Con related activity is that it’s a promotional stunt for upcoming PS3/Xbox 360 video game Red Faction: Armageddon, which takes place on Mars — and, yeah, Chestnut’s gonna be eating Mars bars, which apparently were just reissued in America for the first time in eight years. (Thanks, Wikipedia!) It goes down Thursday, July 22 at 1:30 p.m. at the nearby Tin Fish Restaurant. (It’s not an official Comic-Con event, just meant to tie-in to the frenzy).

At Comic-Con International in San Diego, pretty much any old thing becomes a coveted prize; freebies that most would normally consider an annoyance — buttons, stickers, mini-posters — for four days are seen as objects of unparalleled desire. Some are actually useful, though, like bags. As weird as it is to see people line up for, um, bags, it’s definitely helpful to have as sturdy of a sack as possible to cart your new acquisitions around the exhibit floor. In the past, Manga publisher Viz attracted so many people with their freebie totes that they had to start rationing them out at scheduled increments, and recently the large Warner Bros. canvas numbers, distributed at their booth, have become popular enough that some attendees fashioned outfits out of them.

Well, you might wanna get ready to see a whole lot more bag muumuus, as Warner Bros. Entertainment announced today that everyone attending Comic-Con is going to get one of 11 Warner Bros. bags, each showing off one of their properties, at check-in.

And hey, look at that, one of them even is promoting a DC comic book, Brightest Day! The others? A Batman: The Brave and the Bold video game, the new Looney Tunes Show, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated, the DVD release of Clash of the Titans and the following live-action TV shows: The Big Bang Theory, Chuck, Fringe, Human Target, Nikita and The Vampire Diaries. Check ‘em all out after the jump, except for Human Target, which was mysteriously left off of DC’s official release — keeping that bag under wraps for now, I guess. (more…)

…and scene. The roll-out of this year’s Comic-Con International in San Diego programming is pretty much done, with the final day unleashed this morning. As is the usual case with Sunday, it’s a bit lighter than the other days, but still boasting plenty of worthwhile ways to spend your time. Full list here!

10:00-11:00 Smallville Screening and Q&A— Comic-Con favorite Smallville returns for its last visit to Comic-Con in advance of the show’s 10th and final season, as showrunners Kelly Souders and Brian Peterson join star/executive producer Tom Welling and series stars Erica Durance, Cassidy Freeman, and Justin Hartley to talk about the year ahead, answer fan questions, and give an exclusive sneak peek at clips from the final season. From Tollin/Robbins Productions, Millar/Gough Ink in association with Warner Bros. Television, Smallville airs Fridays at 8pm ET/PT on The CW. Smallville: The Complete Ninth Season will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on September 7. Ballroom 20

This panel is doubly bittersweet for Smallville devotees: it’s for the last season and Allison Mack (who plays fan favorite Chloe Sullivan), isn’t scheduled to be there.

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The “Marvel Comics Writers Unite!” panel Saturday at Comic-Con would have been interesting anyway, given the mix of high-profile industry names sharing the dais: Brian Michael Bendis, Matt Fraction, Mark Waid, pictured, and Chris Claremont. But things got a little more interesting late Friday, when Waid tweeted that, as of that day, he had “stopped reading super-hero comics.” He soon elaborated: “there is a new, recent cynicism to many of them that I find exhausting and mean-spirited and uninspiring and life-denying,” though he did give props to the work of Grant Morrison and Ed Brubaker, as well as Matt Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man. (more…)

Saturday is traditionally the biggest day at Comic-Con International in San Diego attendance-wise (though they’re all pretty much equally big at this point), where walking around the convention center floor goes from “a struggle” to “nigh-impossible.” So it makes sense that Saturday is also the biggest day, programming-wise. And this year is as much of a doozy as you might expect. Yep, full schedule here, somewhat randomly selected highlights below. As is the trend this year, a lot of the bigger panels aren’t actually at the convention center, but at the nearby Hilton. Woop!

10:00-11:00 Marvel Comics Writers Unite!— The third in Comic-Con’s series of “Year of the Writer/Comics Writers Unite!” panels focuses on Marvel Comics and includes Comic-Con special guests Brian Michael Bendis (Avengers, New Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man), Matt Fraction (Invincible Iron Man, Thor), and Chris Claremont (X-Men Forever, X-Women) in a discussion with writer Mark Waid (Amazing Spider-Man, Irredeemable). Room 6DE

Pretty interesting mix of folks there, given the different eras of Marvel they represent, especially having current Uncanny X-Men Fraction writer up there with Claremont. (PS, what’s up with the “this is what you might know them from” things in parentheses? Is X-Women, released this week, really one of only two things that should be listed in Chris Claremont’s credits?)

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It just keeps coming! Friday is always a busy day for programming at Comic-Con International in San Diego (hint: they’re all busy days), with the Eisner Awards at night, and a bunch of stuff during the day. The schedule for July 23 is right here in full — including all of the juicy, announcement-laden comic book panels we’ll be covering live — and some highlights of especially unique and/or noteworthy panels follow. Two weeks away!

10:30-11:30 Neal Adams and Stan Lee: They Spoke Out—Against the Holocaust— Neal Adams (Batman, Green Lantern/Green Arrow) and Holocaust historian Dr. Rafael Medoff unveil the new series of educational “motion comics” they are creating with ABC News about Americans who spoke out for the rescue of Jews from the Holocaust. They will be joined on the panel by Stan Lee (co-creator of Spider-Man, X-Men) and will screen an episode from the upcoming series, illustrated by Neal Adams and narrated by Stan Lee. Room 9

Sometimes Comic-Con panels get pretty serious — I remember covering a panel about a graphic adaptation of the 9/11 report a few years ago. This certainly sounds like the type of project that showcases the power and flexibility of the medium, and the involvement of two industry legends certainly doesn’t hurt. (more…)

Yep, it’s here — the first round of Comic-Con International: San Diego 2010 programming, all of Thursday’s events, both day and night. Read the whole, enormous list here, and we’ve just started to dive in and find a few highlights, all happening on July 22.

11:30-12:30 Iron Man and Rocket Men: Is Stark Industries an Appropriate Model for Private-Industry Space Exploration?— Leading New Space entrepreneurs Mark Street (XCOR Aerospace) and John Hunter (Quicklaunch) discuss realistic options for future space exploration. Presented by the San Diego Space Society (SD Space), the panel also includes Chris Radcliff (SD Space) and Dave Rankin (The Mars Society – San Diego cofounder). Jeff Berkwits (former Amazing Stories editor and two-time Hugo Award nominee) moderates. Room 24ABC

Well, that’s definitely different. I don’t know if Tony Stark would approve of this, he was awfully concerned about people stealing his ideas at the beginning of Iron Man 2 (and the first issue of Avengers: Prime).

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This year’s installment of Comic-Con International in San Diego is officially two weeks away, poised to hit Southern California with an impact rivaling today’s 5.4 quake. Preview night commences in 14 days, and the massive programming schedule will start to be unveiled tomorrow morning at 9 a.m. PDT. Oh yeah.

So let’s get good and ready, k? We’ll take a look here at some of the most psyched-worthy panels, exclusives and events surrounding the festivities. What better place to start than the wonderful toys only available within the convention center walls (and eBay afterwards, and probably online retailers, and maybe at a comic book shop, but mostly at Comic-Con), with plenty of cool and unique (read as bizarre) offerings this year. Let’s start with Mattel — most of these will be available in limited amounts online after the convention through MattyCollector.com, though some of them have accessories that can only be had a Comic-Con. Even the exclusives have exclusives these days, y’know?

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On Monday, a limited amount of badges for the previously completely sold-out Comic-Con International — returned by poor, unfortunate souls who bought them but ended up unable to attend — went on sale to the public. Clearly, they were not destined to last long, and guess what? They’re all gone!

With the convention only three weeks away, it seems unlikely that more returned memberships will become available, so those still looking to get in might be out of luck, at least through conventional means. For those that all set to go, see you in San Diego.

There was once a time when attending Comic-Con International in San Diego could be a relatively impulsive decision; get time off work, make the trip, buy tickets at the door. Even though that was only a few years ago, it seems like some sort of quaint view of the distant past worthy of a DC Archive Edition.

But here’s some good news: Comic-Con International “memberships” (admission for this year’s San Diego convention) have been completely sold out for months, but a limited amount of additional badges went on sale at noon Pacific time today. No, they’re not jamming more people into the already suffocating San Diego Convention Center, it’s all folks who snatched up a spot early and ended up unable to go.

Better news: Even though that was more than three hours ago, at our last check (just a few minutes before writing this very sentence), there’s still memberships available, as utterly mind-boggling as that may seem. Adult, junior and senior/military four-day memberships inclusive of preview night are still gonezo, but 4-days without preview night are up for grabs, as well as individual Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday memberships.

This surely won’t last for long, though, so if you want to attend this year, act like, now, here. And “now” now, not “tonight when I’m watching The Bachelorette” now.

UPDATE, 3:36 P.M. PACIFIC TIME: Whoop. Re-checking after this blog went up, it looks like all the 4-days, preview night or no, are gone. Individuals are still available for all four days.

UPDATE, 7 P.M. PACIFIC TIME: Saturday is gone, daddy gone. Thursday, Friday and Sunday badges remain.

Despite being a proud Massachusettsian, I was busy working for the weekend and wasn’t able to hit the Boston Comic-Con this weekend, which featured comics creators ranging from Scott Wegener, Cliff Chiang, Walt Simonson, and many, many more.

But to make things a little bit better for those who weren’t able to go, Chiang has posted up some images of sketches he drew during this weekend’s Boston Con, ranging from Daredevil to Black Cat to Doctor Strange. But this one is my favorite:

Lois Lane, everybody. Talk about a beautiful image. Surprisingly, a look at the Comic Book Database shows that Chiang has never tackled the Man of Steel in an official capacity before — it’s too bad, because if this image is any indication, he’d hit that series more powerful than a locomotive.

[Hat tip to Kevin Church]

Readers of Warren Ellis’s Bad Signal Mailing List have given us a heads-up about a somewhat misleading ad from Wizard Entertainment about Wizard World Toronto Comic Con.

Ellis himself has put an image of the ad up on his web site, apparently from the latest issue of ToyFare:

Unfortunately, this ad is more than a little off the mark, as Ellis said that this is the first he’s heard of the convention, and that he isn’t sure he will be hitting ANY conventions in 2010, let alone Toronto.

“I’m presuming this is some kind of impossibly convoluted but innocent mistake, as opposed to ‘well, if we just SAY Warren Ellis is showing up, then he’ll HAVE to,’” Ellis said on his blog. “But I’ve had no contact from Wizard World about this or any other show, so, god knows what actually happened for this to have somehow gotten printed…”

Things obviously happen in the world of publishing, but no lie, it’s kind of a weird occurrence in any event. (Unless a tiny Warren Ellis has somehow joined the Astonishing X-Men team. That’s actually something I wouldn’t mind reading.)