Austin Chronicle. Sci-Fi issue. (And Comic-Con.)

Like AO Scott, I've had my fill of superhero movies - and I haven't even seen a single one from this year's round. I guess, as Nikki Finke puts it, introducing the LA Weekly's Luke Y Thompson's previews of Comic-Con (today, tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday), "I don't do geek."

But hold on: How, then, can I be so excited about the Austin Chronicle's Science Fiction Issue? The one in which every section - books, music, even food, and of course, movies - is sci-fi-themed this week; the one with "Wonder Stories" sprinkled throughout? What is the difference between a geek and someone who loves a good speculative story, someone who'd count Metropolis and 2001 somewhere in his all-time top ten?

Whether or not we ever figure that one out, Comic-Con items, as I stumble across them, will be filed to this entry.

Updated through 7/30.

Updates, 7/25: First, Cinematical, the SpoutBlog and Variety's Anne Thompson are all over Comic-Con.

"[I]t looked pretty certain that Fox's recent box-office drought would not be a long one," reports Michael Cieply for the New York Times. Fox is promoting X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Max Payne and The Day the Earth Stood Still.

Darren Aronofsky is slated to direct a Robocop movie, due in theaters in 2010. Todd Brown has details at Twitch.

Rebecca Winters Keegan for Time: "Comic-Con audiences sank their fangs into two hotly anticipated vampire projects Thursday, as the makers of Twilight, the movie inspired by Stephenie Meyer's best-selling young adult novels, and True Blood, the new HBO show adapted from the Southern Vampire Mysteries books by Charlaine Harris, showed footage, fielded questions from expectant, sometimes hysterical fans and tackled the enduring appeal of the undead."

Film Threat's Mark Bell blogs on.

Keith Phipps is there for the AV Club.

Updates, 7/26: Michael Cieply reports on the glimpses attendees have had of The Spirit, Frank Miller's take on Will Eisner's landmark series; Wolf Man, starring Benicio Del Toro; Zack Snyder's adaptation of Watchmen; and TR2N, "a much-rumored but hitherto unconfirmed sequel to Disney's 1982 film Tron, about a hacker sucked into the world of computers that, in those days, were almost big enough to have accommodated the star, Jeff Bridges - who also shows up in the new one."

At PopMatters, Bill Gibron is watching the Watchmen watchers.

Update, 7/27: "Comic-Con is the new Sundance, the marketing event for people who want to be the first to know about things that other people will envy them for knowing because they knew about them first. (See my earlier ruminations on 'Be the first on your block...')" Jim Emerson.

Updates, 7/30: The SpoutBlog indexes its coverage.

Time's Rebecca Winters Keegan recaps the highs and lows of this year's Comic-Con.

Online listening tip. IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore.

Posted by dwhudson at July 24, 2008 6:44 AM