We all know that HeroesCon is a great annual event–But did you know there is much more to HeroesCon than the Comic Vendors and the Artist Alley?  Just above the convention floor there is additional world of fun, excitement and informative discussion.  Each year we offer over 50 Panel events up in the 2^nd floor Meeting Rooms.

The 2^nd Floor is a great place to take a short break from the hustle and bustle. It is an oasis where a weary conventioneer can have a seat, lay down those bulging shopping bags down for an hour or two, rest those weary feet & shoulders and sample some great comics’ conversations.

The majority of these Panel Events fall into four categories: Contests, The SCAD Workshops, Presentations and Panels .

Contests: Have you been to the QuickDraw?  If so, you know what all the fuss is about.  If not, boy, are you missing out.  Amateur artists are given pencil, Bristol board and exactly 20 minutes to create their masterpiece.  The submissions are reviewed and judged by the Faculty of SCAD and the winners receive art supplies! You can actually feel the excitement in the room.  And here is the best part—we have a Quick Draw every day of the convention and anyone of any age can participate!!

SCAD Workshops: Each year, the faculty from SCAD hosts 3 classrooms per day where any HeroesCon Convention goer is welcome to sit in and see what kind of curriculum SCAD offers. They have held classes in Storytelling, Animation, Inking, Comic Sculpture and Coloring.  Every year SCAD provides an exciting mix of instruction and enlightenment (and they’re a lot of fun too!).

Presentations: HeroesCon hosts The Annual Inkblot Awards for excellence in the art of Inking.  We have an annual Cosplay Costume Show.  We’ve shown short films—The Irwin Hasen Documentary and The Joe Simon Story. We’ve had Frank Cho Draws Sexy Women, How to Create a Comic with Adam Withers and Comfort Love, Laura Martin’s Coloring Forum.  We’ve had Live Podcasts.  Mark Waid and George Perez discussed Brave and The Bold—Panel by Panel. (We didn’t get very far, but it was great!) The variety is endless, a few years ago, we had a band called Kirby Krackle perform their music live!!

Panel Discussions and Interviews:  When it comes to the Panels, our goal is to provide something for everyone regardless of their taste in comics.  The All-ages Panel, The Humor in Comics Panel and The Newspaper Strip Panel are annual main-stays.  Each year we have an Inking Panel featuring some of the top inkers in the field.  We’ve also had numerous group interviews that focused on The Art of the Comic Book Cover. We’ve had one-on-one interviews with Stan Lee, Warren Ellis, Mike Mignola and Matt Fraction. We’ve had Comic Discussion Groups where we’ve sat down with a creator to discuss—in detail—their favorite books: Bill Willingham on Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall, Darwyn Cooke on Parker: The Outfit.  Jaime Hernandez on Love and Rockets: New Stories, Scott Snyder on Batman: Dark Mirror, Skottie Young on OZ and many others including a panel of nine (9!!!) of the creators from Wednesday Comics together for one epic talk.

So what it comes down to is this–What do you want to see? Take a look at the list of Scheduled Artists and let us know whom you’d like to see interviewed.  What books would you like to discuss?  What Panels would you like to see? This is YOUR convention.  We want you to get as much out of it as possible!!

Feel free to respond on this site.  As the weeks fly by and additions to the guest-list are announced, don’t hesitate to make a suggestion or two to me, Andy Mansell.  I can be reached at [email protected].  We can’t make any guarantees, but every suggestion will be considered.

And thanks again for being part of HeroesCon 2013—I can’t wait!!!!

SETH’S PICK :: EAST OF WEST #2: Alongside the excellent new book Five Ghosts: The Haunting of Fabian Gray, East of West is reminding readers that Image is producing some truly interesting books these days.  It’s something of a post apocalyptic tale, though I feel like that limits it in some way.  When I read the first issue my initial thought was that this is an idea Jonathan Hickman must have been saving for a creator owned book.  It’s got all the scope and intrigue of his Marvel work, but like his other Image title, Manhattan Projects, this one seems like he’s able to stretch out a little more.  Hickman’s scripts are brought to life by Nick Dragotta, and while they’ve collaborated before this project, they seem to be working even more to each other’s strengths this time around.  And don’t feel bad if you missed the sold out first issue – a second print of it will also be available this week.  There are plenty of reasons why so many of us on this blog and other sites are talking about East of West.  Pick up both copies and see why.

SETH’S PICK :: NOVA #3:  Like many of us who grew up reading comics, I freely admit that I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for the characters I loved when I was a kid.  You might have even heard me in the store extolling the virtues of the nineties comic, New Warriors, which was one of those books I loved.  I say all that to say that even though this new Nova isn’t the same one I grew up with, I knew I’d give it a shot.  What has surprised me about this new book is how much it reminds me of the innocence of old Marvel Comics.  I’ve never been a diehard fan of Jeph Loeb, and while I’m not blown away by everything he’s doing on this series, it seems to me that he achieved exactly what he set out to this time.  It’s all about recapturing that innocent young hero for new readers.  It’s made all the better by the art team of Ed McGuinness and Dexter Vines, who are as reliable as ever.  It’s old school Marvel cosmic characters for a new age, and it’s actually quite fun.

MATT’S PICK :: ALIEN ILLUSTRATED STORY TP: Ohmanohmanohman! What an AWESOME week the comic shops have in store for us fan-boys AND girls!  Its not every week we get hit with TWO Frederator Studio comic books. Boom Studios produces the finest all-ages books on the shelves. (The Mouse should have maintained his relationship with them.) The Adventure Time: Fiona and Cake mini-series is produced by the the same people who came up with the concept for the original F&C episode. Excellent reading. The other title, Bravest Warriors adds a lot of depth to this web-based Frederator cartoon. You can enjoy the comic or cartoon on their own, or get the full effect by enjoying them in tandem!

The two books I mentioned above are nice and all, but I had to save this week’s best title for last. Sorry if I’m hoggin’ the bloggin’ – I did say it was an AWESOME week! Anyway, you need to buy yourself a copy of Alien: Illustrated Story TP Facsimile Edition. Don’t even think twice. There is no excuse for any self-respecting comic book fan missing this book in their collection. Alien is the type of film that has near-universal appeal to comic book and sci-fi fans. Archie Goodwin and Walt Simonson deliver the goods. Walt restored the artwork and added extra art to this edition. I’ll be the guy at the register clutching his copy tighter than a face-hugger!

JUSTIN’S PICK :: EC JACK DAVIS HC TAINT MEAT IT’S HUMANITY: Jack Davis is the cartoonist’s cartoonist, a man whose sheer command of his craft is universally praised. His style is at once elastic and iconoclastic; whether it’s horror or humor (or somewhere in between), Davis’ inimitable work is instantly recognizable. As a youngster, he was one of the first cartoonists I knew by name. And here’s a book to treasure: a lovely volume collecting all of Davis’ seminal work from EC Comics’ Tales From the Crypt. These are the comics that set an incredibly high bar for sequential art, and also caused a national uproar for their daring and graphic content. By modern standards they may seem tame, but make no mistake: this was heady stuff for its time. Davis was at the epicenter of that controversy, turning out highly detailed, expressive work that is matchless in its quality. Pick up this book (or IDW’s MAD Artist’s Edition, or Fantagraphics’ Jack Davis Drawing American Pop Culture, et al.) to find out why.

The most important aesthetic breakthrough in comics in the 21^st century is the increased attention (by both artists and critics) to the picture plane, the exploration of comics as a rapturous visual experience as well as a vehicle for narrative. The book most responsible for this shift is the anthology Kramers Ergot #4 (2003), which juxtaposed the deliberately crude, resolutely non-narrative aesthetics of Fort Thunder cartoonists like Mat Brinkman and Leif Goldberg with such story-based work as Jeffrey Brown’s autobio strips, Sammy Harkham’s Poor Sailor, and early excerpts from Frank M. Young and David Lasky’s Carter Family graphic novel. This mix of approaches made reading Kramers #4 a disorienting experience, a book that, in critic Bill Kartalopoulos’ words,

was clearly packed with a range of comics and art that included things I was comfortable with, things I was uncomfortable with, and things that I didn’t really know how to categorize. I bought it, without much equivocation. It seemed like I had to if I really wanted to know what was going on in comics.

Part of “what was going on” was a generation following Gary Panter’s example, dedicated to elaborate margins, psychedelic colors, ironic appropriations of mass cult logos and symbols, and mark-making independent of a line’s narrative function. It was suddenly OK to draw rough and be bold.

The Fort Thunder/Kramers paradigm shift has cross-pollinated comics culture in various ways. The newfound emphasis on design and decoration has snuck into some more mainstream direct-market books—I’m thinking of the Fort Thunder-meets-Heavy Metal success of Brandon Graham over at Image—even while Kramers #5 (2004) published my favorite narrative comic novella of the last decade, Kevin Huizenga’s “Jeepers Jacobs.” And then there’s Jim Rugg, an artist uncannily able to toggle between straight-forward storytelling and wild explorations of what Rugg himself, in the introduction to his new Supermag, calls “the narrative collapse.” (more…)

SETH’S PICK :: BATMAN LI’L GOTHAM #1 ::  On paper, it looks like a standout week for new books.  There are sure things like Hawkeye #9, Saga #12, a new Marvel Oz hardcover, and books you should be reading if you aren’t already, like Sledgehammer 44 #2 and Rocketeer: Hollywood Horror #3.  I’ll pick all of these up, but have chosen as my official staff pick, this delightful new series from Dustin Nguyen.  At first glance it might look like DC is trying to jump on the ‘baby variant’ bandwagon, but for those who don’t know, Nguyen started producing these stories as digital only releases last year.  Having read many of the stories online, I’m excited to see them enter our glorious realm of print.  These are fun all ages comics that feature diminutive versions of Batman and his extended family of heroes and foes on holiday themed adventures.  They’re perfect for young readers or any adult fans who appreciate lighthearted palate cleansers. Bonus Pick of the Week:  Most of you know that the majority of the Heroes staff is comprised of creative people.  Several of us are in various stages of developing our comic work.  Rico, of course, colors world class comics all the time, and others like Bridgit are quickly developing into creators on the rise.  Add to that list our own Justin Crouse, who contributed art to three stories in a new book on the shelves this week.  Pick up Center of Gravity from Low Key Comics and see what Justin works on outside of Heroes.  I’m particularly fond of the first story “Monkey Bars.”  There are some nice, quiet moments in it that remind you of  Justin’s skill as a visual storyteller.

RICO’S PICK :: GODZILLA: HALF CENTURY WAR #5: This concludes James Stokoe’s Godzilla opus. If you haven’t been along for the ride I’d recommend picking up the trade when it comes out. Before this series, only the great and powerful Arthur Adams could make me this excited about Godzilla in comic book  form! You know the Big G is gonna wreck shop in this finale issue! SKREEEEEEEEEOOONGK!