Broken Frontier

Now that the dust has started to settle, it’s safe to say that this year’s San Diego Comic-Con didn’t seem to generate as much buzz or sport the high barrage of announcements that we’ve come to expect from the world’s most compelling comics get-together.

In hindsight, and in all fairness, it was to be expected. Marvel’s biggest news for the fall – the new direction for the X-Men post Schism – was already out there, and there’s no way DC had anything left in the drawer that was as big as its September reboot. DiDio, Lee & co obviously didn’t want to go into too much detail beyond what they’ve got coming six weeks from now. Sure, general plans for the books were discussed and artwork for the first couple of issues for most of the titles was shown, but that’s it.

The good news was that the lack of big mainstream news allowed a lot of indie companies to grab people’s attention. This SDCC will go down in the history books as one where indies ruled and the comics art form finally recaptured some of the spotlight Hollywood had forcefully taken out of our hands.

Sure, Andrew Garfield’s (planted?) surprise appearance at the Spider-Man panel and the Walking Dead Season 2 trailer got lots of coverage internet-wide. But so did Tr!ckster, the excellent initiative by Scott Morse and Ted Mathot, taking place at the Wine and Culinary Center across the convention center, which will likely be back next year after such a resoundingly successful inaugural edition. If you don’t take our word for granted, read what creators like Steve Niles and Ivan Brandon had to say about it. Because of Tr!ckster, Brandon hardly set foot in the convention center.

Then, there was IDW leading all comics publishers with five Eisner Awards, the news of fan-favorite director Guillermo del Toro bringing his novel series The Strain to Dark Horse, and the return of Brian K. Vaughan to our beloved industry with the Image ongoing series, Saga. And let’s not forget about Legendary Comics revealing more details on Frank Miller’s Holy Terror and reeling in luminaries Matt Wagner and Paul Pope or Cullen Bunn and Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun being on its way to the silver screen at Syfy.

Indies ruled at Comic-Con International 2011, which may very well make it a convention to remember after all.