Posts Tagged ‘san diego comic-con’

Kinda pushing it a little close, here, but an iPhone app for the San Diego Comic-Con just arrived.

It's basically a mini version of the SDCC website, with a bit of interactivity. You get a countdown, the latest news (which opens the SDCC site in a browser instead of using RSS feeds or anything configured for an iPhone), a program list which allows you to select favorites (but not to call up a list consisting of only your favorites), a list of exhibitors, and maps of the different levels and exhibits. But the search function is only marginally useful, lists and the maps are not at all connected and the maps are simply graphics instead of Google-map-type programs.

All in all, a good first try. But it needs a LOT more interactivity to truly be useful. If I pull up an event, I want to be able to add it to my iPhone calendar, find it on an interactive map, and create a personal to do list. Hell, this is the iPhone, I should be able to select all the events and exhibitors and guests I'm interested in and be presented with a personal schedule with mapping directions to get me where I need to be, when I need to be there.

Maybe in the 2010 version.

Dark Horse Comics is really cool. They are unbelievably cool. They are, in fact, so unbelievably cool that they've joined forces with the California Browncoats to make a variant Serenity comic to sell at the San Diego Comic-Con, just to benefit Kids Need to Read.

Which is pretty cool, you gotta admit.

The California Browncoats will be selling the comics at SDCC. It will be a variant edition of "Serenity: Better Days #1" with the Will Conrad wraparound cover art they used for their special DH 100 version, only this will display Will's pencils instead. 32 pages, all the stuff from the first one, but with a cardstock cover for extra specialness. Only 5,000 will ever be available and they'll be $10 each, a good portion of which goes to Kids Need to Read, the children's literacy program founded by Nathan Fillion and author PJ Haarsma.

These will only be available at Comic-Con 2008, but even if you can't go the California Browncoats are there for you. Specifically, on eBay, where on all five days of the con they'll be selling copies of the DH-California Browncoats SDCC edition of Serenity. Again, all proceeds will go to Kids Need to Read. Bookmark their eBay page and be ready (I'll give you a heads up when it gets close).

Major thanks to Dark Horse and to the Cali Browncoats sponsors Gabriel Stempinski, Margaret Weis Productions, Creation Entertainment, Poplollies.com, The Powers Team – Marsia and Eugene, Dwight Bragdon, Done The Impossible , SaveHiatus.com and Quantum Mechanix, who helped make this possible.

This is a great collectible and a great cause (funny how so many Whedon-based projects combine the two). Check out the California Browncoats site for more details.