From the editorial submissions:

Davide De Cubellis is an italian comic book artist and illustrator, since 1999. See more of his graphic work on flickr, his blog (FYI: there is music. Might want to turn speakers down), and his illustration site.

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Society of Illustrators Lecture Series presents Drawing the Line: An Evening with Comic Luminaries tomorrow night in NYC from 7pm to 9pm.

Drawing the Line: An Evening with Comic Luminaries
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
7:00 – 9:00pm
Join Joe Quesada (Daredevil, Ash), Walt Simonson (Thor, Starslammer) and Jim Steranko (Nick Fury, Chandler) as they discuss the art of drawing as it pertains to sequential storytelling.  Moderated by artist Dennis Calero.

TICKETS $15 non-members, $10 members, $7 students RSVP@societyillustrators.org
The Society of Illustrators is located at: 128 East 63rd Street
(between Park and Lexington Avenues)
New York, NY 10065

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Tiny Art Director - Bill Zeman documents the process of taking art direction from his four year old daughter. The book of their collaborations will be published in April by Chronicle Books.

AxeCop! Five year old Malachi writes the stories, and his big brother Ethan draws them. Their site is currently a bit shaky from all the attention, but AxeCop’s Twitter Feed is still supplying the fun.

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How to Toon: Kids Cartooning Class Sunday, July 26th, 3:00-4:00— Joe Wos, a resident cartoonist of the Charles M. Schulz Museum and executive director of the ToonSeum in Pittsburgh, PA, offers a hands-on cartooning basics workshop for children of all ages. Room 30CDE.

Fortunately for us Comic-Clone participants, I teach a Cartooning class for kids every Sunday at Art Center. And I drew this comic strip to synopsize the syllabus for my students.

You can use this strip as your own mini-workshop and, if you need a little inspiration, you can find a selection of my students’ comics in my Sunday Funnies set on flickr.

It’s worth advertising that most art schools offer wonderful workshops to their communities. Art Center for Kids (in Pasadena) even welcomes parents for free when their children enroll. It’s a nice reversal of the usual “Kids ride free” deal!

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Marvel Then and Now: A Night with Stan Lee and Joe Quesada
In December 2006, Stan Lee, Joe Quesada, and Kevin Smith got together on stage at UCLA to reflect, tell stories, wax philosophic and otherwise act silly in front of 1,000 comic fans to benefit The Hero Initiative, the only federally chartered not-for-profit charity that delivers assistance to comic creators in need. So we could blackmail them all with it later, we taped it all for you: Backstage, behind the scenes, the VIP room an even 2 1/2 hours of three grown men sitting on very expensive couches talking about comic books.

You can also find previous Comic-Con panels online. My favorite so far was The Soul of a Superhero with Grant Morrison and Deepak Chopra.

Of course, Comic-Con offers dozens of cartoon and movie screenings too. If you want to treat yourself to the experience, pick an anime you’ve never seen – maybe never even heard of – and set up a few folding chairs in your living room. I recommend the 2006 hit that Christine and I just discovered this weekend.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Something strange has happened to Makoto Konno. Time has suddenly stopped and moved her backwards. With her newly discovered ability to literally leap backwards in time Makoto finds that tests become a piece of cake, embarrassing situations are corrected and she can have her favorite food anytime she wants. Unfortunately her carefree time traveling has adverse effects on the people she cares for. With every successful leap Makoto somehow alters the fate of those around her. This was not supposed to happen and as she races back in time to fix everything, she notices that her abilities are not limitless but with every successful jump she is one step closer to discovering the most wonderful secret in her young adult life.

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Quick Draw! Saturday, July 25th, 11:15-12:30 — We say it each and every year, but it’s true: Quick Draw is the most fun panel you can visit at Comic-Con. Mark Evanier puts Sergio Aragonés, Scott Shaw!, and this year’s guest artist, Disney Legend Floyd Norman, through their paces as they draw on the big screen. If you haven’t seen this amazing display of cartooning magic, this is the year for you: join the fun! Room 6BCF

Of course, you don’t need a comic convention or even celebrity artists to play Quick Draw. Just gather some friends and compete with pens and paper to do the fastest, most clever drawings. It’s like Mental Floss for your drawing hand.

Comic-Con always generates some concomitant events too. HBO, for example. invited us all to attend their happy hours at Rock Bottom and Prohibition from 7:00-9:00 on Thursday and Friday. Tomorrow’s festivity promises Comic-Con giveaways and a “special reveal” regarding their vampiric series, True Blood. Let us know how it goes if you make it!

Since Christine and I couldn’t be there, we retreated to our home theatre for a Comic-Clone screening of True Blood season 1 on DVD.

Alan Ball’s True Blood series works well for television, as it has enough sensationalism to tantalize and enough story girth to make the viewer care about the characters. That one can finally invest emotion into monsters, including an undead Civil War victim, a transformer who can shapeshift into various animals, and a female mind reader, speaks volumes about America’s willingness to accept fantasy. Of course, television has always produced good fantasy shows (I Dream of Jeannie), but True Blood’s Southern Goth brand of fun horror is more macabre and more perverse, not to mention gorier, than most shows of its kind to date. Adapted from Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, True Blood thrills because of its equal blend in each episode of erotica, humor, tragedy, mystery, and fantasy.

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Through never-before exhibited art and objects culled from private and institutional collections, ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938-1950 explores the genesis of cultural icons such as Superman, Batman, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman. In the midst of the economic and political turmoil of the 1930s and 1940s, comic books offered America champions who shaped the values of an entire generation. ZAP! POW! BAM! examines the creative processes and influences that drove young Jewish artists to express their talents through the storylines and art of comic books. The exhibition features rare vintage artwork and books, 1940s Hollywood movie serials, and colorful interactive displays including a drawing studio, a newsstand, a vintage Batmobile ride, and stations that allow children to dress up as Superheroes or transform themselves via a quick costume change in a telephone booth. Guest curator Jerry Robinson brings a long history as a comic book industry insider to the exhibition. Working with Batman co-creators Bob Kane and Bill Finger, Robinson named Robin, Batman’s young protégé. Robinson also co-created The Joker, Batman’s nemesis and one of the first Super-Villains.

LA Weekly called it “A Mind-Blowing Collection” and offers this wonderful slideshow of the exhibit.

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Spotlight on Mike Allred Friday, July 23rd, 10:00-11:00 – Comic-Con special guest Mike Allred (Madman) makes a rare San Diego Comic-Con appearance to discuss his entire body of work, from Dead Air to Madman, Red Rocket 7 to X-Statix and his recent Image Comics series, Madman Atomic Comics. The discussion will give fans a rare look into Allred’s creative process, including never-before-seen art and a unique chance to pick the brain of one of comics’ most creative minds! Moderated by Stardust the Super Wizard collaborator Joe Keatinge (PopGun) and featuring a number of surprise guests! Room 8

Since I can’t be there though, I’ll be heading to my local comic book store for one of these little gems:

The Vault of Michael Allred “Part scrapbook, part autobiography, this encyclopedia of all-things Allred has a great amount of hard-to-read text from interviews and letters. The casual fan will most likely skim those parts, but hard core fans will delight in his personal revelations.” from a synopsis by George Haberberger

Friday also happens to be Star Wars day at Comic-Con. So, click over to Cartoon Network on Friday night to see the CGI Clone Wars cartoon that everyone will be debating in San Diego.

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Secret Origins of Comic-Con Thursday, July 23rd, 11:00-12:30 — How did it all begin? Those who were there in 1969 (most of them teenagers at the time!) have the behind-the-scenes story of the very first meetings, the first mini-con, and the first Golden State Comic-Con at the U.S. Grant in 1970. Panelist include Richard Alf, Barry Alfonso, Greg Bear, Dave Clark, Roger Freedman, Ken Krueger, Scott Shaw!, and Mike Towry, with William R. Lund as moderator. Room 2 Convention began in 1969 exactly 40 years ago!

Since I couldn’t be there in person though, I’m grabbing a copy of this book:

Comic-Con: 40 Years of Artists, Writers, Fans, and Friends is a massive art and photo collection, showcasing over 620 images from the 40-year history of Comic-Con. Most of the art has not been seen since its initial publication in Comic-Con’s program and souvenir books, and the majority of the photos have never been seen outside of the Comic-Con archives.

In addition to the treasure trove of art and photos, this 208-page, 9 x 12 full-color hardbound pictorial history contains a decade-by-decade look at the show. Numerous special articles explore the Masquerade, the Comic Book Expo, WonderCon, the Alternative Press Expo, Comic-Con’s T-shirts, the Eisner Awards, and much more. Sprinkled throughout the book are quotes and observations from leading professionals in comics, movies, and television, commenting on their own experiences at the show.

The whole package is capped off with an amazing new full-color wraparound cover by one of Comic-Con’s favorite special guests: Sergio Aragonés. Masterfully colored by Tom Luth, the cover alone will provide hours of viewing pleasure!

I also wish that I could attend the Comic-Con debut of Richard Thompson.

Spotlight on Richard Thompson Thursday, July 23rd, 4:00-5:00 — Comic-Con special guest Richard Thompson (Cul de Sac, Richard’s Poor Almanac) has been doing the syndicated daily comic strip Cul de Sac for less than two years and it’s already gotten raves from Bill Watterson, Art Spiegelman, and comics fans just about everywhere. Join him as he shows his work, answers questions and proves he never sang with Fairport Convention. Room 2

Luckily, there are plenty of consolations for those of us who can’t be there. You can buy Richard’s books, visit his blog, read his daily comic strip, and enjoy his interview in the Winter 2009 issue of Comic-Con Magazine.

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Every year for the past six years, my wife (snogging a Biskup monster above) has taken me to Comic-Con, the annual comic book convention in San Diego. This year though -because she is pregnant with our little superboy- we’ll be skipping it. The bad news is that I won’t be able to give you a report on the festivities. The good news is that I planned an alternative to Comic-Con: Comic-Clone.

What’s geekier than watching a Dr. Who marathon when you could have gone to prom? COMIC-CLONE! What’s nerdier than correcting your grandma when she mispronounces “Kobayashi Maru”? COMIC-CLONE! What’s cooler than sulking all week because you couldn’t attend this year’s Comic-Con? COMIC-CLONE! And you are welcome to participate. I’ve thought of plenty of ways to recreate comic convention shenanigans without the convention itself. You can expect new ideas every day that you might have spent in San Diego, beginning with this one.

What is a comic convention without comics? Draw your own comic convention comic strip. I’ve done it (above). So has James Kochalka, Bob Burden, Sergio Aragones, and Keith Knight (below). If you could go to Comic-Con, who would you want to meet? What would you talk about? How much wilder would it be if you could meet the real comic book characters, not just their creators and fans? If you can get some friends together (or you have a lot of ideas), you can even bind the strips together into a short-run mini-comic. Your first souvenir of our baloney bonanza!

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