The 43rd Annual San Diego Comic-Con International took place this past weekend in San Diego, California. Comic-Con, the largest event of its kind in the world, celebrates the popular arts in all their manifestations, including comics, television, movies, painting and novels, over a span of five days, which includes a preview night for special badge holders, press and professionals. The hundreds of panels, screenings, workshops and special events primarily focused on projects related to science fiction, horror, fantasy, action and of course. . . . superheroes. Film and television studios again brought celebrities to the event, such as: The entire cast of the Twilight series, which celebrated the upcoming climax of the series; Jackie Chan, who made his first appearance at Comic-Con to discuss his new film Chinese Zodiac (Armour of God III); Tim Burton, who premiered clips from his new film Frankenweenie; John C. Reilly, the voice behind the title character of the upcoming film Wreck-It Ralph; Robert Knepper, who appeared to discuss his role in the upcoming thriller TV show Cult; Jim Caviezel, Taraji P. Henson, Kevin Chapman and Michael Emerson, who dropped by to talk about their hit CBS drama Person of Interest; RZA, Lucy Liu and Dave Bautista, who stopped by former Chuck star Zachary Levi's "Conversations With A Cause" forum, to talk about The Man With the Iron Fists; Sylvester Stallone, Terry Crews, Randy Couture, Dolph Lundgren, Jean Claude Van Damme, and Arnold Schwarzenegger invaded Hall H to talk about kicking butt in The Expendables 2 (tragically, Stallone's son Sage Moonblood passed away the day after this panel); and many, many more.

One thing that I took note of during this year's event - my fourth attending San Diego Comic-Con - was that there seemed to be more reasonable wait times on lines for access to panels, at least for the panels I attended. Hall H and Ballroom 20 had their standard lines wrapping around the convention center, however I was able to get into panels in both rooms, without having to arrive the night before. In my review of the schedule, one factor could be that programmers scheduled events for different audiences back-to-back. Another factor could be the Con's continued expansion, which has opened up more off-site venues for large panels, including an outdoor stage that was located on the front lawn of the Hilton San Diego Bayfront, which hosted live bands, podcasts and live editions of Hollywood talk shows, as well as the Hilton San Diego Bayfront's Indigo Ballroom, which hosted a series of panels, including Michael Jai White's Black Dynamite.