Magical Realism
Air
What It's About: At its heart, Air is a love story between Blythe - a flight attendant who's afraid of flying - and Zayn, who is as much a mystery to himself as everyone else. But Air is much, much weirder, and more interesting, than that: For one thing, Blythe is a natural hyperpraxis pilot, which means that she can travel to places, times and ideas that don't, theoretically, exist... a skill she's honing with the help of Amelia Earhart, who by the way is still alive. For another, there's a war brewing between terrorists over control of the skies, and for a third, certain people may be very interested in that whole "hyperpraxis" thing. A series that's gentle, human, full of wonder and emotion, and at times just beautiful, Air is unlike most comics - and television shows and movies, for that matter - out there.
Where To Start: Two collections are available, Letters From Lost Countries and Flying Machine. Pick both up; the series is great, but the first collection (Letters) stops at a frustratingly bad point, and you need to read the second to fully appreciate what's going on.
Click here for a preview of Air.

Post-Invasion SF
Resurrection
What It's About: We've all seen stories about aliens invading Earth, but what happens after they leave? FlashForward producer and Green Lantern movie scriptwriter Marc Guggenheim's series starts with that idea and spins out a series that's part Y: The Last Man, part Lost and all-over fascinating. Why did the aliens invade? Where did they go? No-one knows yet, but considering they've left behind technology and even one of their own, you can sure that we'll probably find out somewhere down the line... but along the way, you can get sucked into the more down to earth stories of the humans left behind. Even if one of them is former president Bill Clinton, who was revealed to be more alive than everyone thought at the end of the most recent issue.
Where To Start: There's already a collection of the first black and white series out there, but we'd actually recommend waiting until the start of next year, when the 368 page Resurrection Vol 1: Deluxe Edition, featuring the complete first series and the first seven issues of the current series, hits the shelves.
Click here for a preview of Resurrection.

Urban Fantasy
Locke & Key
What It's About: Ignore the punniness of the premise - The Locke family move to the family estate of Keyhouse, wherein there are magic keys that can do various weird and wonderful things, which puts them right in the middle of some bad things that're about to happen - and instead, embrace and enjoy those weird and wonderful things that the keys can do: like open doors that turn people into ghosts or even open their own heads so that you can reach in and take out unpleasant memories. Mixing horror, fantasy, comedy and family drama and featuring moments that are genuinely unsettling, Locke & Key deserves all the praise it's gotten, and a lot more.
Where To Start: There're two collections out already; Welcome To Lovecraft and Head Games. Start at the beginning (Lovecraft), bearing in mind that Head Games is the better, and also the more freaky.
Click here for a preview of Locke & Key.

Nostalgia Done Right
Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka
What It's About: A reimagining of Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy (with some nods to his other work thrown in), Naoki Urasawa's Pluto is inventive, dramatic and in almost every single way, a lesson in how to take reboot and update an old concept the right way. Instead of retreading the old status quo, the series centers around robot detective Gesicht, who's investigating the murder of various high profile robots around the world... Murders that may have been committed by another robot. Even if you don't get sucked in by the economy and subtlety of the writing, there's no way you could fail to admire Urasawa's amazing artwork.
Where To Start: Unsurprisingly, Vol. 1. The seventh volume of the series is due in January, but that's still too far away; when you finish the first volume, you'll be hooked and get through the other five in days.
(No preview available, due to licensing issues. Sorry.)

Crime/Romance/SF/Everything
King City
What It's About: I've written before about Brandon Graham's stunning future crime book, but now that it's being re-released in an easier-to-find serialization by Image Comics, I'll use the opportunity to gush again; the bastard child of an orgy that included Moebius, Vaughn Bode, Jamie Hewlett and Osamu Tezuka (and maybe a little Alex Toth, come to think of it), King City is the tale of one thief, his broken heart, his cat that can literally do anything if given the right drugs, werewolves with war trauma, stolen organs, sidekicks in wrestling masks and pretty much all that's good in the world, all wrapped in something that takes noir's cliches and gives them a makeover laced with enough absurdity and love that it all seems new again. The whole thing manages to be both laid back and electrifyingly kinetic, and your heart will break for multiple reasons while reading it. Really, really worth tracking down.
Where To Start: The serialized reissue is on #2, so picking up back issues from the start really shouldn't be a problem. The original Tokyopop release may offer more story in one sitting, but the Image re-release comes with bigger pages and brand new material to accompany the serialized reprint.
Click here for a preview of King City.

Brooks, who came to prominence with the Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z, will be abandoning the undead for his GI Joe series from the San Diego-based publisher. Editor Andy Schmidt explained the origin of the project:

Both Chris Ryall (IDW Editor-in-chief) and I read World War Z and we knew we had to try to get Max to write something for us. What we didn't know is that Max is a huge G.I. JOE fan and had expressed interest in writhing G.I. Joe to (Cobra writer) Christos Gage... Synchronicity ensued and [the series] has never looked or read so well.

For his part, Brooks is managing to keep everything in perspective about the series:

I'm thrilled to be working on an icon of my youth, and after this, my next project will be Different Stokes 2.5.

The five-issue series is expected to be launched next year.

It's easy to think that this year's SDCC was a poorly-ran, over-attended mess if you've been paying attention to some of the press complaints that have leaked out from the show:

Anyway, we are posting this after midnight because there is no filing room. We were directed to an outlet in the hallway for all our computing needs. We promise to never bitch about the burnt gratis coffee in normal press rooms again.

Wait, sorry; that was just press whining. I meant press complaints:

[A]t Comic-Con, the press pass is essentially a complimentary pass that grants access to nothing that isn't covered by a regular four-day badge. This policy worked fine as recently as four or five years ago, before the crowds hit six figures and there was far less press covering far fewer mainstream events. But when folks from Variety, the L.A. Times and countless other legitimate press outlets who have busy schedules of events and panels to cover are told to stand in line for an hour or two with everyone else just to get in to a panel, it interferes with those outlets ability to cover the event and — by interfering with their ability to do their job — makes them testy, angry and overall unhappy with the show.

It wasn't just those waiting in line who found themselves unhappy with the show, however; con guests weren't so happy, either:

"It's really hard getting into the parties,” explained Colin Ferguson, who plays U.S. Marshal Jack Carter in the Sci Fi series “Eureka.”
Sedan-sized balloons promoting “Fringe” carried this come-on: “Imagine The Impossibilities.” OK, here's one: crossing the Gaslamp, by limo or cattle car, without becoming mired in gridlock. And once you reached party central, you had to run the name-checking, ID-inspecting gauntlet. The list keepers took no chances even, it turned out, if you were a guest of honor.
“With all the restrictions,” said Ferguson, who was due at the EW/SF shindig, “it takes 15, 20 minutes to get to the parties you are supposed to go to.”

While the Washington Post wasn't impressed with the sea of hype ("Comic-Con is all about the buzz. The kind of buzz you get when living in a vacuum," they wrote, despairingly), The Hollywood Reporter was just one of many places to openly wonder whether Comic-Con Jumped The, uh, Fridge?:

There is talk that despite the high numbers of conventiongoers, or maybe in spite of them, Comic-Con as a measure of geek cool may have reached a tipping point.

Critics are pointing to the scheduled appearances by tabloid mainstays Paris Hilton, who will join Thursday night's panel for Lionsgate's "Repo! The Genetic Opera" as well as host a party, and fellow party girl Kim Kardashian, who is supposed to hit DC Comics' party Friday night before appearing at a "Disaster Movie" panel Saturday. When Comic-Con becomes fodder for the Us Weekly crowd, has the event nuked the fridge? Folks wonder.

Sure enough, when Jaime King feels as if there's too much Hollywood hype, then something's definitely out of whack:

Slowly but surely the entertainment community is taking over to promote their projects here even though they have absolutely nothing to do with comics. What's next? A panel for 'Deal or No Deal'?

Comic book retailer Chuck Rozanski foresees disaster:

San Diego is about to lose its crown as the top comics show in America. With fewer than 100 real comics booths left in the entire show, this convention is now a primarily media event... The people on the San Diego committee have been so busy sucking up to Hollywood that they let their core group of comics dealer support wither and die. Is it any wonder that they took the comics characters off of the banners they traditionally place on the lampposts around Sand Diego, and instead have a new motto of “Celebrating the Popular Arts?”

That feeling was compounded by the news that IDW Publishing announcing midway through this year's convention that they won't be at next year's. Publisher Ted Adams explained:

The show has never been a profit center for us. It's a marketing cost. I think it's reasonable to expect that a comics publisher has to have a marketing cost associated with attending Comic-Con. I don't expect it's reasonable to expect that the show is going to be a break-even or a profit center.

(It's worth reading other comic pros' reactions to that news to see a much less downbeat assessment of comic publishers importance at the con.)

Comic-Con International's Director of Marketing David Glanzer tried to respond to some of the criticism in a recent interview:

You know companies sometimes think of our event as a marketing opportunity. And while that’s certainly understandable, we don’t look at our event as a marketing opportunity, we look at our event as much more than that. So if it's just somebody who wants to spend money and take X amount of booths, that isn’t something that we would entertain. We want to make sure we have a diversity of content on the floor and also in programming. This year we have even more programming than we have in the past, and we try to make sure it’s diverse... The decision to stay in San Diego was made knowing that we were going to have to forgo growth. A major part of that reason was because there has been talk of expansion of the convention center... We haven’t seen any movement on an expansion, and that has us very concerned. If nothing happens, as in a groundbreaking or some other solid movement, by 2010, we’re going to have to explore options.

That means we're in for potentially two more years of sold-out passes and Hollywood taking over the con, right? Well, maybe not; movie industry eyes are undoubtedly going to trained on Paramount's big three geek-friendly 2009 releases (Star Trek, GI Joe and the second Transformers movie) to see whether the studio's lack of presence at this year's con affected both buzz and box office. After all, there wasn't a Watchmen-esque Dark Knight presence at last year's con, and that seemed to turn out alright... As comic artist Aaron Alexovich notes, there are other - potentially cheaper - ways to tell (more) people about your project:

The engine behind all this insane expansion is the big Hollywood machine that rattled and churned and got itself twisted around in the direction of “geek culture” a few years ago. Which is great; more attention for the comic world is a good thing. But I can’t help but wonder when the great Hollywood behemoth is going to realize you don’t need to hurl a million dollars into Hall H to sell Watchmen to nerds. Nerds, as it turns out, can occasionally be found on the internet.

Additionally, with so many media-noses out of joint after this year's con (Personally, I thought it was fun to post stories while sitting on the floor of the hallway, but then, I also secretly wanted a fedora with a card in it that said "press," so you can pretty much ignore my opinion), it's not impossible that next year may also see a smaller press turnout, as well. Will 2009 be the year that San Diego Comic-Con begins to move back towards some semblance of comprehensibility for everyone attending?

Ask us again this time next year.

Flickr images by Andy Castro (Signage) and ColorBlindPicasso (crowd).

IDW are planning a wide variety of Transformers titles leading up the release of next summer's Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen<.em> movie, amongst them Transformers: The Thirteen, a series written by longtime TF writer Simon Furman that promises to tell the secret origin of the thirteen original Transformers. Also on the schedule are Maximum Dinobots, Transformers: Revelation and, most importantly for movie fans, Transformers: Destiny, which bridges the first Shia LeBeouf vehicle with Revenge of The Fallen.

For toy fans, however, the big news of the panel was the introduction of new character Drift from the new All Hail Megatron series; not only is Drift - a robot that transforms into a tricked out Japanese drift car - going to crossover into the regular "G1" Transformers continuity, he will also become the first character created for the comics to be made into a toy by Hasbro. Hopefully, that'll make up for the fact that Megatron's writer, Shane McCarthy, is gleefully killing off fan-favorite Autobots throughout his dystopic What If? series, although even that bloodthirst - well, oilthirst, really - seems to meet with the approval of fans; IDW's Chris Ryall told the crowd that the first issue of All Hail Megatron was the first Transformers title from the publisher to completely sell-out from distributors. Hopefully Michael Bay is paying attention, and Revenge of The Fallen will end with a similar downbeat ending for the heroic Autobots. I mean, who doesn't want to see Bumblebee get his metal ass handed to him?

SDCC '08 - IDW's GI Joe/Transformers Panel [Newsarama]

IDW's Saturday panel at Comic-Con also included Editor-in-Chief Chris Ryall mentioning that the company was talking to various "big name" authors about a line of upcoming adaptations of classic science fiction novels. IDW's Ideas And Dreams [Comic Book Resources]

It's not just big budget summer blockbusters anymore; now cable television is looking to the world of comics for material. Cartoon Network announced today that it's adapting three indie comics into made-for-TV movies, making sure that the adults of the future will have fond memories of warrior mice, teenage dragons and time-traveling families to look back on in years to come.

Ramsey Naito, the network's VP of Long-Form, talked up the projects:

We’re thrilled to expand our movie slate with both cinematic quality CG and live action... As we bring these and other titles into development, we’ll be seeking out projects that combine distinct voices with striking, contemporary visual worlds.

Live action, you say? Well, only two of the three movies - Mice Templar and Firebreather, both from Image Comics - will be animated, with the third, The Vanishers (based on an IDW comic from 2004), being planned as a live-action project similar to the network's successful Ben 10 movies.

The channel is clearly trying to grapple with the idea of "family friendly TV", with each of these family-centric tales: Templar has rodent hero Karic trying to save his family by reassembling a long-broken order of warrior mice, while Firebreather's teenage half-dragon, half-human hero, Duncan Rosenblatt has to wait until he's finished his chores before fulfilling his inherited destiny to save the world. Vanishers' heroes, Andy and Arvis, on the other hand, have a much less noble goal: they're just traveling through time so that their family can escape a group of robot bad guys out to enslave humanity, and who hasn't had to deal with that at least once in their life?

All projects have just moved into development; expect them to air late 2009 at the earliest.

Beloved Comic Book Titles Coming To Cartoon Network [The Futon Critic]