Karris and I decided to take a walk between finishing up our 3-hour dinner presentations and settling in for the evening.  As we were getting on the elevator we realized that we had not actually been outside for over 24 hours.  I suddenly felt very claustrophobic and really wanted to get out into the ‘fresh’ air.  Of course we got outside and there were tall buildings around us and not much in the way of greenery, and that didn’t feel too much better.  But we walked down to the Navy Pier and back, realizing along the way that apparently everyone in Chicago owns a small, white, fluffy dog, and have returned ready to blog, snack, and sleep.  No pictures this time (and I apologize for that), but tomorrow’s post should be FULL of pictures, so I guess you’ll have to deal for now.

After the Dynamite session earlier this afternoon I headed into the Wizards of the Coast panel, where they plugged some of the new Magic sets and D&D merchandise.  The one thing that I was really interested in was the idea of doing a regular Friday night Magic game and a regular Wednesday night D&D campaign.  I must have had my head somewhere dark for the last year because this was the first I’ve heard of their D&D Encounters program (sounds sort of like a dating service for gamers) that runs mini-campaigns every week.  If someone is interested in taking the role of Dungeon Master I’d be willing to consider keeping the store open later on Wednesdays and Fridays for D&D and Magic.  Soooo, let me know.

And this leads us to lunch, which wasn’t nearly as impressive as the presentations given while we finished up our sandwiches and salads.  Boom! Studios talked about the success they’ve had with their Boom! Kids imprint and talked about how they hope next year’s Cars 2 (first I’d heard about it) and this year’s Toy Story 3 will boost sales of their books.  After Boom!, Dark Horse took the floor for the rest of the lunch and really impressed the crowd with their slate of projects coming up this year and next.

The Dark Horse crew – and yes that’s legendary Jim Shooter 3rd from the left!

First up, Dark Horse (DH) announced that they will be following in the footsteps of many other companies who have initiated a series of reprints of number one issues for $1 that will coincide with a massive backlist sale.  They also announced that the current creative team on Conan the Cimmerian (which not nearly enough of you read) will be concluding their run with issue # 25 and will then start working on a new series called King Conan.  Conan the Cimmerian will continue on with a new creative team.  Star Wars: Legacy (another book not enough people are reading) will conclude with issue # 50, but the EIC at Dark Horse said there are more projects in the works that will continue in the vein of Legacy.  A huge round of applause greeted the announcement that DH will be bringing back their greatly-loved anthology series, Dark Horse Presents, which will feature a new Concrete story in its first issue.  They also announced that they will be working on a comic tie-in to the American version of the Swedish horror film Let The Right One In (there really are no new ideas in Hollywood are there?), saying that they want to bring “scary” back to vampire stories.  Finally legendary Jim Shooter discussed the upcoming reboot of Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom and Magnus: Robot Fighter.  Not sure what the writing will look like, but the art looks amazing and there will be a Free Comic Book Day preview issue available on May 1.

In one of the afternoon sessions Avatar announced that they will be creating a new imprint within its main imprint called Boundless Publishing.  And why, might you ask, would they be doing this?  Because Brian Pulido’s Lady Death is getting ready to see a big resurgence with the release of a new on-going monthly title that will be supported by a re-release of collected editions of all the Avatar Lady Death work, with collected editions of the Chaos! work still in negotiation.  And while he’s taking a break from the world he created in this year’s Crossed, Garth Ennis should be returning with artist Jacyn Burroughs in early 2011.

Finally, during dinner we were treated to a number of presentations from a variety of publishers, many of whom had already done Q&A sessions with us earlier in the day.  Among the big announcements made were the following:

- Marvel announced that the 2 remaining unrevealed Secret Avengers will be Steve Rogers and Nova.

- DC will be doing a crossover with IDW blending The X-Files with 30 Days of Night (that one looks cool and makes a ton of sense).

- The Losers, Volumes 3, 4, and 5 will be combined into one giant TPB as they did with Volumes 1 and 2, completing the series that will soon be in movie theaters all over the world.

- The classic Suicide Squad series, which was slated to be reprinted in the black and white DC Showcase format will now be released in full color in regular TPB form.

- The entire Sandman series of TPB’s will see a new printing, with Volumes 1-3 coming out in October of this year.

And the one final thing that made the evening complete was a surprise appearance by the writer of Vertigo’s Fables, Bill Willingham, who announced that Fables # 100 will have a board game as its center page (the board game will also be released as a poster that can be glued to cardboard and used as an actual game).

And that’s Day 1 folks!  It’s late, and a sexy redhead keeps rubbing my shoulders and telling me I need to wrap things up.  I think I’m gonna take her advice and I will be back tomorrow with lots of pictures and stories to share.  Thanks again for reading folks!  Say goodnight Karris.  “Goodnight Karris!”