Anime#36--Comic-Con

Comic-Con is not strictly anime, but it's so huge and so many anime industry announcements and events take place there, I thought it'd be worth mentioning. Every year since 1970, Comic Con International has been held in San Diego, California. (hence the nickname, San Diego Comic Con. SDCC is not affiliated with New York Comic Con which has only been running for a few years)

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/

Because so many people come to Comic Con, many anime studios save their announcements for it, instead of Anime Expo or some other large anime convention where people would actually care. I don't see how they benefit from announcing at Comic Con, because when half the attendees are there for the newest superhero flick or whatever Pixar's doing and don't care in the least what titles Viz acquired, it kind of defeats the purpose of it, don't you think? But then again, maybe this is a chance to expose themselves to the other geek-doms that are most likely to be converted to otaku.

ANN always has great coverage of the anime and manga side of Comic Con, like they do for Anime Expo, Otakon, and the various other conventions they cover. Check it out here.

Comic-Con is the biggest convention of its kind, with an expected 126,000 attendees this year--which is capacity! They've sold out all their passes! Their guests, according to wikipedia, which is probably according to the Comic-Con website, include:

Mike Allred, Kevin J. Anderson, Sergio Aragonés, John Barrowman, Ramón Valdiosera Berman, Gerald Brom, Tim Burton, Gerard Butler, James Cameron, Park Chan-Wook, Gene Colan, Nicola Cuti, Russell T Davies, Felicia Day, Johnny Depp, Omar Dogan, Kevin Eastman, Steve Epting, Mark Evanier, June Foray, Ramona Fradon, Hunter Freberg, Stan Freberg, Julie Gardner, Gary Gianni, Jimmy Gownley, Seth Green, Kevin Greutert, Michael C. Hall, Russ Heath, Brian Herbert, James Jean, Geoff Johns, Eric Jones, Kazu Kibuishi, Dennis Kitchen, Hope Larson, Nick Langley, John Lasseter, Taylor Lautner, Jim Lee, Steven Lisberger, Francis Manapul, Dwayne McDuffie, Hayao Miyazaki, Doug Moench, Sheldon Moldoff, Fabio Moon, Olivia Munn, Bryan Lee O'Malley, Patrick Oliphant, Amanda Palmer, Jim Parsons, Stephen Pastis, Robert Pattinson, Kevin Pereira, David Petersen, Danny Rosenblatt, Jerry Robinson, Mike Royer, Stan Sakai, Lew Sayre Schwartz, Seth, Bill Sienkiewicz, Gail Simone, Leonard Starr, Kristen Stewart, Jessica Mae Stover, J. Michael Straczynski, David Tennant, Richard Thompson, Natalie Tran, Lewis Trondheim, Michael Uslan, Jerry Vanderstelt, Charles Vess, Landry Walker, Adam West, Wil Wheaton, Bill Willingham, Gene Yang, Leinil Yu, Robert Zemeckis and more to be announced.

Everyone from RPattz to Hayao Miyazaki! It looks intimidating, but Comic-Con's just like any other convention. Only it's really, really (REALLY) big.