Confessions of a Comic Book Guy is a weekly column by Steve Bennett of Super-Fly Comics and Games in Yellow Springs, Ohio.  This week, Bennett looks at the pre-coverage of Comic-Con International.

It sure seems like there were a lot of stories in the mainstream press this year that somehow managed to promote Comic-Con while rarely mentioning comic books.  I saw the first one, an AP piece by Sandy Cohen titled "Movies, TV and yes, toys, draw fans to Comic-Con," among the headlines while trying to access my Yahoo email account.  It describes the event as something that "began as a humble comic-book convention 43 years ago and is now an annual marketing extravaganza."  Movies and TV shows were covered but the special emphasis was on all of the special-issue, limited-edition toys available on Wednesday’s preview night.

Then there was the story in the New York Times, "In the Footsteps of Marvel" by Brooks Barnes about the recent revival of Valiant Comics.  But that was quickly dispensed with to get to the real story, that Dinesh Shamdasani, Jason Kothari and "turnaround specialist" Peter Cuneo were poised to turn the brand into a "Marvel 2.0" style blockbuster movie generating financial juggernaut.  Which I suppose is well within the realm of possibility but still not where the smart money would bet.

Exhibit A though would have to be the Comic-Con preview issue of Entertainment Weekly where print readers are invited to go to the EW website for hour by hour coverage or, as they put it, "Get in on the geektastic action."  I've long said somebody ought to just go ahead and televise it for stay at home types such as myself, well, this year the EW site will feature streaming video of panels.  Plus there will be "exclusive portraits" of actors, no doubt taken after the scheduled "celebrity red carpet" crawl as well as "daily updates on and sneak peaks at hot Hollywood projects" and (my favorite) "Zombie alert!  Reports from The Walking Dead obstacle course."

But to be fair there was some actual comic book coverage in it, like this issue contained the first real reportage on whatever we're supposed to be calling Marvel NOW! since it's been established that it is neither a 'reboot' nor a 'relaunch.'  Initiative has been overused of late so I'm going with 'incursion."  Let's see if it catches on.  But much more interesting was the piece on Before Watchmen which quoted Dan Didio as saying these comics were intended as a "shot of adrenaline" needed to help bolster a "weakening industry."  Oh, so that's what they're supposed to be.

It's an intoxicating turn of phrase that can't help but conjure up the scene from the movie Pulp Fiction where John Travolta plunges a syringe into the chest of Uma Thurman (which, thanks to my "childhood" dyslexia almost always comes out first as "Thuma Urman").  But that doesn't mean he's wrong. As controversial as Before Watchmen has been it accomplished what it was created to do; getting people talking about DC Comics.  I want comics to be about telling good stories and as much as I disparage stunts I can't argue with the fact that job one is keeping the lights on.  And first and foremost that means getting people's attention; I can see no other reason why Archie is crossing over with Glee...

But probably the most surprising plug Comic-Con got this week was on The Adam Carolla Show.  On the podcast dated 7/10 he had on actor/director Thomas Jane who was there to promote his graphic novel Dark Country and his upcoming appearance at Comic-Con with its artist Tim Bradstreet.  Jane went on at great length about his love of comics and how much he enjoys attending Comic-Con and Carolla said nothing, which is kind of odd, seeing how he hates us nerds so much (see "Confessions of a Comic Book Guy--He Hates Us And He Wants Us To Die") he'd say things like "Somebody has got to take Comic-Con down... let some anthrax virus lose in the place, dynamite that place and put them out of their *expletive deleted* misery."  One assumes he doesn’t care to repeat such things to someone who might, you know, strongly disagree with him.

Carolla is fond of misusing our term "Nerd Rage" (which the Urban Dictionary defines as "indignant, hysterical and incoherent screaming brought on by video game induced frustration") to describe our seething hatred for those who've wronged us.  But in an interesting twist that will surprise most of you, apparently all of the slights and outright abuse we endured in high school never actually happened.  No, see, it turns out all this time we've really just been secretly jealous of athletes (such as himself) who would never, ever bully anyone.  For someone who actually believes such utter nonsense the prospect of something like Comic-Con must fill him with cold dread.

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.