What’s to see at NY Comic-con (UPDATED)

The New York Comic-con is this weekend and there are many syndicated folks working the show. Here’s a run down of individuals and sessions of interest:

Lee Nordling is moderating a panel entitled “Comic Strips for the 21st Century.” It is described as:

Throughout the 20th Century, the comic strip rode the crest of newspaper readership that reached over 86,000,000 readers every Sunday in the late ’80s, but its wave of popularity is waning with the drastic and continuing decline in newspaper markets and circulation. But all is not lost! The Internet Age is upon us, and newspaper comic strips have a new avenue for distribution…but how will the medium need to aesthetically and commercially adjust to achieve this transformation to the 21st Century?

Panelists include: Mark Tatulli, creator of Lio, Dave Astor of Editor & Publisher, Brendan Burford, Editor, King Features Syndicate, Brad Guigar, co-autheor of “How To Make Webcomics,” and Lucas Wetzel, Asst. Acquisitions Editor, Universal Press Syndicate. This panel is scheduled for Saturday at 12:00 p.m. in room: 1E16.

Beetle Bailey creator Mort Walker will be at the Checker Book Publishing Group booth where his work will be exhibited. He’ll also sign autographs on the 19th.

Dan Piraro will be at the Andrews McMeel booth on Friday at 2 p.m. to sign various Bizaro stuff.

For the Webcomic crowd, there’s a webcomics round table (that’s also the title of their session) featuring Dean Haspiel, Molly Crabapple, Ryan Roman, Leland Purvis, Ulises Farinas, Pedro Camargo, Kevin Colden, Paul Maybury, Simon Fraser, Nikki Cook, Jeff Newelt, Michael Cavallaro, Michel Fiffe, Tim Hamilton, Jennifer Tong, and moderated by Dan Goldman on the topic of “creating free online comics as a way to grow each others’ audiences and what they’ve learned in the group’s two year existence.”

If you didn’t get enough of the debate here on The Daily Cartoonist, there’s a panel entitled “Web Comics: Threat of Menace?” that is described as:

There’s a dizzying array of different models for delivering comics over the Web, from Webcomics, to PDFs for a fee, to ad-supported PDFs, to PDFs as promotional tool, and behind it all is the backdrop of illegal file sharing of comics. Are comics on the Web going to be a tool to increase the popularity of paper products, an alternate distribution channel that takes sales from retailers and circulation from libraries, or a threat to legitimate channels as illegal downloads grow? Hear from legacy publishers and cutting edge pioneers on this critical issue for the near future.

And lastly there’s a session entitled “Zuda: The Future of Online Comics.”

Read. Vote. Create. With those three little words, Zuda is changing the face of comics on the internet. Come meet the muscle behind the magic! Hosted by Richard Bruningâ??Senior VP, Creative Director and creators Jeremy Love (Bayou), Bobby and Peter Timony (The Night Owls), Nicholas Doan (Pray For Death), and more.

See the listings of all the events over on the nycomiccon web site.

UPDATE: The GoComics booth will feature Dan Piraro (Bizaro), Mark Tatuli (Lio), Gary Gianni and Mark Schultz (Prince Valiant). See their blog post for date and times.