This weekend comes with a feeling of great loss for geeks of all associations. Shel Dorf, Comic-Con’s founding father, has died this past Tuesday, he was 76.

Beyond the rift comics and manga have, or any other flavor of geekdom, we should all be grateful for Dorf’s work to the community as a whole. Basically pioneering pop-culture conventions, at least in the western world, is no small feat! He turned a small 300 people convention in 1970 into the behemoth that is Comic-Con nowadays with over 125,000 people in attendance.

Whether you’ve been to Comic-Con or to Otakon, AX, ACEN, or your local anime club’s convention, you owe a lot of that groundwork to Shel Dorf and his team. He was a man that lived for his passions. Let’s take a moment to reflect on that and celebrate all that he brought forth. May he rest in peace.

[Chicago Tribune]

Otakon 2008! There was good, there was bad, there was a woman in an all blue bodysuit running around and being amusing. It was certainly an experience, if nothing else, and we at Dark Diamond set out to bring you the best of it! Unfortunately, a camera malfunction and various problems have caused a great deal of our pictures, interviews, etc. to be rendered unusable (our sincerest apologies to all the great cosplayers that I saw there – You were all awesome), but we’ve salvaged as much as we can to bring you the darkdiamond.net otakon 2008 cosplay gallery.

Note From The Nahu: And using a new gallery system which I hope you enjoy! Its after the jump. :)

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Continuing with out Comic-Con report we now bring you the sights and people of Comic-Con 2008! Its a lot of cosplay with some other stuff thrown in there for good measure. Catch the cool, the scary, the sexy and the gross as we take you through a trip of the San Diego Convention Center on its oddest days of the year.

Be on the lookout for Velcor in his sweet Philosopher Ganondorf outfit, it was a hit with the ladies. Hit the jump for the complete gallery.

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Hi guys how have you been? Its time for a couple of announcements! First of all I’m really excited to announce that the Dark Diamond Crew is gonna be at two of the most important conventions in the US this summer.

We’re going to be at Comi-Con International 2008 in San Diego, California at the end of July. Abraham ‘Velcor’ Duarte and myself along with other friends of the crew will be covering the event. If you are planning to attend you better buy your passes as the event will probably be completely sold out in a couple of weeks.

Next is Otakon, Brandon Gaskill will be bringing you the best of Otakon in early September. Expect a couple of surprises from this event, its looking good, mighty good!

If you are attending either of these events let us know in the comments! We’d love to meet you guys! Now hit the jump for some more announcements.

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One of my sources informed me that while at Fanimecon on Sunday, the president of GAINAX, Hiroyuki Yamaga, let slip details on a possible next season of 2007’s rating-piercing hit, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. After discussing the upcoming Gurren Lagann movies for a bit, he supposedly asked the panel attendees, "Do you also want a new story?", and after overwhelming cries of "YES!" "YEAH!" and "WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK WE ARE!?", he simply replied: "I want to say something, but I can’t."

GAINAX had previously announced the production of a Gurren Lagann movie for release this fall with a possibility of a second in the spring. Yamaga-san has had a history of attending Fanimecon for several years, and this year gave up his usual "Guest of Honor" status, instead bringing over several other members of GAINAX for a Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann panel.

Come and see the best, most remarkable cosplayers who attended ACEN 2008! Finally after days of literary fighting to put this together it’s done: a gallery and slideshow of all of the awesome cosplayers our ACEN team got to meet. There is some great stuff in here: ingenious, comic, sexy and sometimes near naked cosplay for you to enjoy.

Also, catch a few shots of the crew in some of the less compromising positions I could find. Seriously, I had to remove about 20 images of empty alcohol bottles at the hotel room. You can watch the slideshow above and then head over to the full gallery after the jump.

PS: Bonus points if you can name every song in the slideshow!

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As of right now Fadsy, Luminous Path, FBINinja and a bunch of other DDN friends are at Anime Central wreaking havoc on all that is holy. If you spot them be sure to say hi, or run. Running is the safest choice. Expect tons of pictures and reports as soon as they get back. May the world forgive us for what we have done, and for what they will do!

Ah, the Tokyo Anime Fair, conjuring up dreams of giant mecha, expectant otaku as they drift bye, booth girls, cosplayers, and of course, shwag! Some of the highlights seem to be the Freedom Project “Vehicle,” the much-anticipated Guren Ragan, the dark horse Cencoroll, and the CG rendition of Blame! Much like I would like to go to Comiket, this is also an eventual must-see. Perhaps one day a direct report from the fair will be in order.

[DannyChoo]