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DC announces Batman, Suicide Squad and more for Free Comic Book Day 2021

A ‘Fear State’ tie-in, a King Shark story and two previews aimed at younger readers highlight DC’s line-up this year.

DC Comics has announced their plans for this year’s Free Comic Book Day, revealing the four titles they plan to have available on Aug. 14.

The event is run by Diamond Comics Distributors, which DC stopped using last year as they migrated to Lunar Distribution. While Diamond won’t provide DC’s comics to retailers, they did say DC was more than welcome to participate.

Here are the four DC titles you can look for in August, which include a preview of the Batman event “Fear State” and a tie-in to the second Suicide Squad film:

Baltimore Comic-Con plans to return in October

The annual comic convention will return to the Baltimore Convention Center for a live show Oct. 22-24.

The Baltimore Comic-Con has announced plans to hold its next in-person show over the weekend of Oct. 22-24. They’ve also announced a preliminary guest list.

This will be the BCC’s first live show since 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic shut the world down. With changing CDC guidelines and more people getting vaccinated in the U.S., it isn’t surprising to see conventions start to ramp back up.

“The current status of the U.S. is migrating from a very conservative posture to a much more open approach to gatherings,” their statement reads. “We continue to be in contact with the Baltimore Convention Center staff, and all signs point to our ability to having our event this fall.”

CCI responds to criticism of their planned Thanksgiving weekend event

The new statement questions whether a November event would even be feasible.

Comic-Con International has issued a clarifying statement about the Comic-Con Special Edition convention they announced over the weekend. They also attempted to explain why they chose Thanksgiving weekend for the event.

This weekend’s announcement was for a smaller convention that would be held Nov. 26-28, though few details were shared. Part of the reason for the event would be to “shore up our financial reserves and mark a slow return to larger in-person gatherings in 2022,” CCI said in their original statement.

The announcement received some backlash, however, from creators and fans; this CNBC story rounds up several pieces of feedback from Charles Soule, Dan Slott and others, who question why they would schedule the event for Thanksgiving.

“My family missed Thanksgiving last year because of the pandemic,” wrote Dan Slott. “This year, we’ll all be vaccinated. There’s no way I’d be attending any event instead of spending that time with them. Even if everything were magically back to normal. I can’t imagine others feeling differently.”

Comic-Con Special Edition to occur Nov. 26-28

The first live event held by Comic-Con International since 2019 will take place at the San Diego Convention Center over Thanksgiving weekend.

Comic-Con International has announced the dates for their first live event since the COVID-19 pandemic started — Comic-Con Special Edition will occur Nov. 26-28 at the San Diego Convention Center, kicking off on the Friday that follows Thanksgiving in the United States.

Details on badge costs, programming, attendance capacity and other details are still being finalized, but part of the goal is to help raise money not only for CCI but also the local San Diego business community — both of which have been hit hard by the pandemic due to a decrease in in-person events and the tourism they bring.

“While we have been able to pivot from in-person gatherings to limited online events, the loss of revenue has had an acute impact on the organization as it has with many small businesses, necessitating reduced work schedules and reduction in pay for employees, among other issues,” said David Glanzer, spokesperson for CCI. “Hopefully this event will shore up our financial reserves and mark a slow return to larger in-person gatherings in 2022.

2021 Free Comic Book Day will include 50 free comics

Silver titles for this year include Star Wars, The Boys, Sonic the Hedgehog, Avengers/Spider-Man and more.

Diamond has revealed the additional “silver level” titles that retailers can order for Free Comic Book Day this year, which will take place Aug. 14. With the gold titles that were announced yesterday, that brings the number to 50 titles.

The line-up of silver titles includes several recognizable names, including Star Wars, Zorro, The Boys, Judge Dredd, the Smurfs and R.L. Stine, just to name a few. No DC books are included on the list, though they have indicated plans to participate. Also, while Marvel hasn’t revealed much about the contents or even the covers for their gold and silver titles, they did reveal that the gold title will feature Hulk and Avengers, while the silver title will feature Spider-Man and Venom.

Here’s a look at all the silver titles:

Star Wars, Blade Runner, InvestiGators among the 2021 Free Comic Book Day gold sponsor comics

This year’s Free Comic Book Day on Aug. 14 will include titles from Marvel, IDW, Dark Horse, Titan and more.

Diamond Comics Distributors has announced the 12 gold sponsor titles that retailers will offer on Free Comic Book Day this year. This year’s event will take place Aug. 14.

“This year’s lineup of titles has something for every kind of comic fan,” said Ashton Greenwood, Free Comic Book Day spokesperson. “We can’t wait to once again share the FCBD experience with fans, especially on our landmark 20th anniversary! We hope fans will safely visit their local comic shops to celebrate and to pick up a few of the great titles available this year.”

Missing from the list is DC Comics, who no longer use Diamond to distribute comics to U.S. retailers. DC has indicated their plans to participate, however.

The titles were curated by more than 20 comic shop retailers who make up the FCBD Selection Committee. The Gold Sponsor titles come from Marvel Comics, Dark Horse Comics, IDW Publishing, Image Comics, Archie Comics, BOOM! Studios, Macmillan/First Second Books, Penguin Workshop, AfterShock Comics, Titan Comics, TOKYOPOP and VIZ Media.

This year’s gold sponsor books are:

Comic-Con International will be virtual again this summer

CCI plans to hold a smaller, in-person event in San Diego this fall.

Comic-Con International has made it official — there won’t be a live convention in San Diego again this summer. Instead, CCI has announced a three-day virtual Comic Con@Home event, like they held in 2020, with plans for a smaller, three-day in-person convention in San Diego in November.

“Never could we have imagined what the world experienced in 2020 and continues to experience today,” the statement reads on their website. “While we are buoyed by the rollout of the vaccine and the growing number of individuals being inoculated, it appears that July will still be too early to safely hold an in-person event of the magnitude of Comic-Con. For this reason, we have made the challenging decision to postpone Comic-Con 2021 as an in-person gathering until our 2022 dates, and once again hold this year’s celebration as the free online Comic-Con@Home. Unfortunately, the challenges of this past year and the multiple postponements of our two largest events have left us with limited financial resources, so this year the online experience will be reduced to a three-day event, spanning July 23-25, 2021.”

Diamond announces date for Free Comic Book Day 2021

Mark your calendar for Aug. 14 and cross your fingers.

Diamond Comics Distributors has announced that Free Comic Book Day will return in 2021 on Aug. 14. While FCBD has traditionally been held in May in the past, the release notes that it’s being moved to August “in the hopes that much of the uncertainty and disruption related to COVID-19 will have passed.”

The 2021 event will be the 20th time local comic shops will host Free Comic Book Day. The idea was conceived by Joe Field, owner of Flying Colors Comics & Other Cool Stuff in Concord, California.

“I am so happy to be making this announcement today and so proud of our work with retailers and vendors these last 20 years to bring more awareness to the comic books we all love,” said Steve Geppi, President, Chairman & CEO of Geppi Family Enterprises. “In the past two decades, fans have experienced some truly remarkable Free Comic Book Day events because of the commitment of our partners to create an incredible celebration of comics. It’s such an energizing day and we look forward to making our 20th anniversary celebration the best one yet!”

ECCC, C2E2 postponed until December 2021

Both shows will be delayed from early 2021 due to the coronavirus.

ReedPop, the parent company that produces the Emerald City Comic Con and Chicago’s C2E2 convention, has announced that both conventions have been delayed until December 2021.

ECCC will now take place at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle Dec. 2-5, 2021, with C2E2 following it at McCormick Place in Chicago on Dec. 10-12, 2021.

The 2020 C2E2 was one of the last comic conventions to actually hold a show; it took place at the end of February, right before the coronavirus hit the United States and everyone started going into lockdown. The 2020 ECCC show was not so lucky; it was originally scheduled for March 12-15, and was one of the first events that had to decide whether to postpone or continue on. They did postpone, pushing the show back to August, when they hoped COVID-19 might no longer be a concern. Eventually they cancelled the show completely for 2020.

DC FanDome: Reaction + news round-up

Although there weren’t any big comics announcements during the second day of DC FanDome, the company did reveal a few small tidbits.

This weekend DC presented the second round of their DC FanDome event, which featured pre-recorded virtual panels on their comics, movies, TV shows, video games and much more.

Although some viewers complained of technical issues when everything went online on Saturday morning, the event this time was much smoother and easier to absorb than the first day of the event, which took place back in August. For that one, everything was streamed on a continuous loop, which made it difficult to figure out when certain panels were going live — and if you didn’t have eight hours to dedicate to watching it, you were going to miss something.

This time around everything was posted on-demand style, so you could easily pick and choose what you wanted to see. If you just wanted to see the comics panels, you could pull those up and watch them without having to sit through a panel on the Flash TV show, for instance. Across five different channels, they had a LOT of content, and like before, it was only up for 24 hours. Which is a bummer — if you missed it, it’s gone, which doesn’t make a lot of sense. They could easily put at least some of it up on their YouTube channel.

If you did miss FanDome, here’s a round-up of some of the comic news that came out of the event.

DC splits ‘FanDome’ event in two

Much of the planned content has moved to Sept. 12.

DC’s upcoming FanDome virtual event will now take place over two separate days, the publisher announced.

The bigger panels for upcoming movies and other properties, which are billed as “Hall of Heroes” panels, will take place this Saturday as planned. They will encompass eight hours of content and include the Wonder Woman 1984 movie panel, the Jim Lee portfolio review and the video game announcement that Montreal Games has planned, among others. Each panel will be replayed three times during the 24-hour period.

All of the other content, which will be “100 hours of on-demand content,” will now take place Sept. 12.

New York Comic Con goes virtual for 2020

Just like everyone else.

As you probably expected, ReedPop has announced that they are canceling the in-person New York Comic Con and will hold a virtual event instead.

“We are thoroughly disappointed that we can’t gather together, in-person for the New York Comic Con we love to build and our fans love to revel in. We look forward to this weekend all year long, just like you, and with this being our 15th edition, we were particularly excited. I will miss walking up and down artist alley and seeing friends that I’ve made since we were in the basement at the Javits Center,” said Lance Fensterman, President of ReedPop, in a press release. “While this year will definitely be a different experience, we are going to look to bring the best and most engaging event to our fans, exhibitors and studios through our partnership with YouTube.”

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