Well, if you haven’t got enough of this year’s SDCC yet or need to catch up, the LA Times is here to help you out with a huge wrap-up of the event that oddly begins by being a tad wistful.

This is the year they tried to take the comic out of Comic-Con.

The Comic-Con International in San Diego, which came to a close Sunday, has become a frenetic Super Bowl of pop culture, but the home team has mixed feelings when it looks at the scoreboard.

“I think Comic-Con is in danger of having Hollywood co-opt its soul,” said Michael Uslan, who attended the first comic-book convention in summer 1964 in New York. “It’s turning into something new, and you could really see it this year. There’s some worry about that.”

Didn’t this happen a few years ago?

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I don’t know exactly what it says about either the comics industry or the marketing department at Warner Bros that the biggest story out of this year’s San Diego Comic Con — the biggest nerd convention in the world, which is supposed to be the launching point for all the comic industry’s (and much of Hollywood’s) biggest fan-tastic new newsy news — was Watchmen, an already well-known, always-in-print, 20-year-old graphic novel by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. To put it into some sort of context, this is kind of like having a sudden run on aspirin in a pharmacy, but hey, here we are.

-here’s PW talking about it

-CBR claims it was the con’s “buzz book”

-even the NY Times had something to say

-so did USA Today??

-an interview with Alan Moore in Entertainment Weekly that randomly enough quotes Pop Will Eat Itself…

That said, this is easily one of the greatest graphic novels were talking about here, and, I would argue, one of the greatest novels of the 20th century. So, the more exposure the better.

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Watch this before it gets deleted. Ok it was. Try this new one above.

This is what is great about Comic-Con International - this trailer for Tron 2 was snuck into the Disney panel, no hype, no stars, just the good old fashioned surprise and the best thing: the reaction - when Jeff Bridges comes on screen the crowd goes wild. And that is one of the best reasons to be there - to bask in the glory with your fellow geeks - 6000 people who know exactly why Jeff Bridges is in this trailer and showing their appreciation - the Disney people must be ecstatic.

Lots of press missed this because of the non-announce - and that is the thing about Comic-Con everyone is on alert so as not to miss anything, and its funny because Chris Butcher also feels the same way:

The worst part about Comicon is that everyone here is afraid to leave the building for any reason. The idea that you might miss something is both omnipresent and terrifying. Because, why would you come all this way and not squeeze every last dollar out of your convention badge? Why waste time at a pool or having a really good lunch 10 minutes walk away when you can pay 10 bucks for crappy con pizza and Still Be In The Building. Why take time to enjoy yourself at all? When you can wait in a line for 4 hours to catch a panel…

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Well I scanned most of my fave sites just now looking at what was announced. I heard a pretty big “meh!” from my inner child. Marvel and DC panels sounded like the same old stuff - my favorite overzealous quote from Greg Pak, a writer who has yet to display to me that he can ‘bring it,’ when talking about a new War Machine comic: “The book’s going to be hard, period, core, period.” Marvel should put that at the top of all of Pak’s books. Period.

Some of the more interesting things:

- CBR has a boat (very, very tastefully decorated) and they are interviewing comic people on it…wow just like Cannes but for nerds. I love it.

- Stan Lee meets Grant Morrisson for the first time - while touching and neat, Grant works for DC mostly and his DC work is a bit more cool outside of the Stan Lee created X-Men run he worked on (Marvel Boy and Skrull Kill Krew were the other 2 cool things Grant made at Marvel)

- Wolverine shows up and everyone pee’s their pants.

- The rest sounded more like cool MOVIE news instead of comics - Darren Aronofsky on a ROBOCOP movie???!!! I don’t know if that is the greatest thing ever or the weirdest thing ever…either way that will be one freaking super-tracked movie and so will the TRON 2 movie. Red Sonja? OK whatever. The Torchwood dude as Steve Rogers, maybe. New Punisher War Zone movie poster…blah blah blah I don’t need to smell that hall to see those. Ooh Larry Hama has a cameo in the G.I. Joe movie and it has a bigger budget than Transformers 1.

I loved the title to Heidi’s post - because I thought it meant something else - but nonetheless when Kim Khardasian (sic) and her ass is at Comic-Con I think that something is wrong. It just seems like how the hot girl in grade school tricked me (the class nerd) out of my lunch money everyday.

I’m sure the main stuff will happen on the weekend. Thursday is usually the warm-up day.

If you saw something I missed that was cool please post it in the comments.

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