Convention swag. Star Wars Books has revealed some of the summer freebies on their Facebook. There’s a nifty 84-page sample books with excerpts and the Insider short stories, a Mercy Killiron-on and Scoundrels bookmarks. The catch: There are 7, but they won’t all be available at the same con, so unless you’re going to be at SDCC, CVI and NYCC, prepare to swap with some pals to get them all.
Cartoon Network released their schedule of panels at Comic-Con, coming up in a few weeks in San Diego. For Star Wars fans, they confirmed the Lucasfilm panel on Star Wars: The Clone Wars coming on Saturday, July 14.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars: Onto Season Five
The aftermath of Season Four has left the Star Wars galaxy a very dangerous place: Darth Maul is alive, Asajj Ventress is a bounty hunter, and the Mandalorian Death Watch is deadlier than ever. How will these threads continue in Season Five of Star Wars: The Clone Wars? Find out in this behind-the-scenes panel, which will feature new clips, new insights and more. Join the discussion with Supervising Director Dave Filoni and head writer Matt Michnovetz (who wrote Season Four’s powerful Umbara arc). Moderated by Star Wars author Pablo Hidalgo. Room 6DE
Also from Cartoon Network’s announcement: panels for Adventure Time, Regular Show, DC Nation,Ben 10, and Mad and two new shows based on existing properties: Annoying Orange, and Dragons: Riders of Berk (from How to Train Your Dragon). The Adult Swim programming block will have a single panel on Friday to highlight seven of its shows, including Robot Chicken (and their upcoming DC Comics Special) and The Venture Bros.
Meanwhile, there’s been some confirmation from Tim Minear that Comic Con will also have a 10th Anniversary panel for Joss Whedon’s Firefly. That’s gonna be a mighty fine shindig. Will Nathan Fillion be there? Probably so, even if there’s no Castle panel. Who needs Castle when there’s a (Dan Harmon-less) Community panel?
Her Universe is hosting a panel celebrating geek girl fashion at San Deigo Comic Con, MTV Geek reports. They’re on the lookout for “custom-made cosplay ,” but I have the feeling other geek custom-wear will be welcome as well!
the panel will feature a lineup of experts — made up of fashion buyers from Hot Topic, designers, and stylists — who will be on-hand to judge the best outfit! So don’t miss out on the chance to win great prizes, see awesome fashions, and talk all things Geek Fashion!
The panel will be Saturday at 6:00pm in Room 25ABC.
Fandom insanity is at fever pitch after a producer teased an upcoming Stargate project at the Creation Stargate convention over the weekend.
Darren Thomas is apparently affiliated with an app development company and said the announcement would be made at San Diego Comic Con.
Michael Shanks and Ivon Bartok took things up a notch by teasing each other on Twitter about what the project really is. But they have since clarified that if it’s a live action type thing, neither of them has been contacted to be involved.
Since it’s an app development company, I’m not confident it will be much beyond a comic thing at most. But it’s nice to have something new in Stargate.
Toy Fair is going on this weekend, and according to multiplereports, Jedi Master Mara Jade Skywalker was voted the Fan Choice figure. (You might remember the contest from last fall.) Unfortunately for those of us hoping to finally get a Mara figure without that blasted catsuit…
#StarWars Fans’ Choice tidbit: Mara Jade Skywalker will use Adam Hughes artwork as a start. #hotness
UPDATED! StarWars.com has posted photos of Hasbro’s Toy Fair offerings, and sure enough, there’s no sign of Mara. (Though there is some nice Clone Wars stuff, if that’s your thing.) Needless to say, we’ll be watching Hasbro’s presentations through summer con season with great interest.
Continuing our review of the year that was, we have a glimpse back at how Star Wars has been lighting up the video screens – mostly our televisions in 2011, with an epic year for The Clone Wars, and the Blu-ray release of the Star Wars saga.
It’s the last San Diego Comic-Con 2011 post, I swear! Here’s some different thoughts and recaps on what came out of Comic-Con this year:
DC Comics opened up a new can of worms with their whole universe relaunch in September when a fan asked in Q&A: “Why did you go from 12% in women [creators] to 1% on your creative teams?” – Check out some commentary on ComicsAlliance and then an official reply on the DC blog, and Newsarama does some fact checking.
Tangentially related to the topics of gender and the DC comics universe, LAWeekly has a write-up and photo gallery of the Gender-bent Justice League cosplay group at Comic-Con.
Jill from Newsarama gives her recap of the con, including being on the Oh You Sexy Geek panel, cosplay, and meeting George R. R. Martin.
Big Shiny Robot sums up the Doctor Who panel and finds out why bow ties are cool.
Gamespot takes a look at Kinect Star Wars, bring Jedi adventures and podracing to motion-controlled gaming.
SirStevesGuide sums up the Star Wars collectibles panel. And what’s this? Sideshow Collectibles is bring out a life-size Han Solo in Carbonite.
Missed The Old Republic MMO panel? TORWars has the whole thing online to watch.
The Official Star Wars blog catches some of the best in Star Wars costuming at the convention.
And let’s end our wrap-up with a photo gallery progression of the artwork drawn on the Volkswagen Passat in the Star Wars pavilion by a Sharpie-wielding comic artist, Ken Lashley. 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8.
Two of the three winners of Suvudu’s SDCC lunch with Tim Zahn and Shelly Shapiro contest just happened to be a pair of familiar bloggers: Amy Ratcliffe of Geek with Curves and Peter Morrison of Lightsaber Rattling. They were sworn to secrecy on some points, but wrote up what they could on their respective blogs, including that Tim is interested in writing a Clone Wars episode.
Zahn was busy at SDCC, and sat down with the folks of the podcast Star Wars Action News. That interview is up now, though Nanci at EUC has summarized a few pertinent points about a possible future project.
Her Universe hosted its second annual panel at Comic-Con last Thursday, with Ashley Eckstein moderating a panel entitled “What Women Want in their Female Sci-Fi Heroes.” The six announced panelists were Dave Filoni of The Clone Wars, Betsy Mitchell (Editor in Chief of Del Rey), Gail Simone (comics writer, including Birds of Prey, Secret Six, and the upcoming Batgirl), Chris Sanagustin (Senior VP Development & Current Programming for Universal Cable Productions), Bryan Q. Miller (Exec. Story Editor for Smallville, comic writer Batgirl), and Melinda Hsu Taylor (writer/producer- Lost & Medium and Supervising Producer on Touch) . They were joined by unannounced panelist Alison Scagliotti (Claudia on Warehouse 13).
Eckstein started the panel by giving each panelist a question regarding developing female roles in their particular media, especially with the female audience in mind. Watch portions of the panel:
Chris Sanagustin on making characters accessible to the audience, including a bit about Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome
Bryan Q. Miller on character vulnerabilities and breaking down the notion that a butt-kicking heroine has to be either a robot or a sexbot
Betsy Mitchell comparing now to 30 years ago for women sci-fi readers and women writers and editors, and the rise of female-oriented urban paranormal fiction.
Gail Simone on progress in the portrayal of women in comics, moving past the Women in Refrigerators trope, and the industry’s gradual awareness of growing female readership, and developing female characters.
Ashley Eckstein commenting on the progress in recognizing that there is a female fan base in science fiction.
Finishing up with Gail Simone and then Melinda Hsu Taylor on being inspired by sci-fi growing up in Maine, and some of her favorite female characters from science fiction and fantasy.
Dave Filoni on the process of developing a female Jedi character like Ahsoka Tano and also reading Éowyn as a child.
Allison Scagliotti on playing her character Claudia Donovan, the women characters of Warehouse 13 and the issues of being a female actor – and being a role model of the cool smart girl.
In the Q&A, Simone, Filoni, and Scagliotti fielded most of the questions, with Filoni and Simone clarifying how their approaches to writing female characters were similar. Even though the panel went over time, the audience remained and the panelists stayed on stage to answer questions about incorporating female biology into developing and portraying female characters, the differences in creating female villains from male villains, predicting the future of the importance (or nonimportance) of being critical of gender for characters (and for creators), and finally ended with a young fan thanking the panelists for making it cool to be a young female fan.
Joe Schreiber, author of Death Troopers and Red Harvest, was kind enough to sit with me for an interview about his two Star Wars novels and more at Comic-Con.
Convention swag. Star Wars Books has revealed some of the summer freebies on their Facebook. There’s a nifty 84-page sample books with excerpts and the Insider short stories, a Mercy Kill iron-on and Scoundrels bookmarks. The catch: There are 7, but they won’t all be available at the same con, so unless you’re going to be at SDCC, CVI and NYCC, prepare to swap with some pals to get them all. 
