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]

Comic-Con 2009 is over and boy it was a blast! All Through the week I’ll be posting footage and galleries from the event but for now here’s this little teaser. A couple of facts from the video:

• It doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t.
• It’s still better than Dragon Ball: Evolution.

You can even watch it on HD on YouTube. Expect more during the week!

Here’s one for our female readership (hey there must be at least one of you out there), or for anyone else with a lolita persuasion. The Valley of the Dolls Lolita Tea Party is a party going on in LA on November 23 for well, lolitas and their dolls. There will be food, tea and plenty of J-rock J-pop. I even hear they will have a screening of *gasp* Rozen Maiden. The lolita community is one of the fastest growing sub-communities within the western otaku crowd and its awesome to see events like this coming to life. If anyone in the LA area is planning to go, take some pictures and send them our way, we’d love to know!

[Valley of the Dolls / Via Boing Boing]

In this time of year when that which bumps in the dark is ever present, a real world zombie rises from the grave. That’s E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo is back, not as a media summit but as a full blown extravaganza of media, hype and obscenely expensive booths.

Now back under the overview of IDG World Expo, who originally produced the event since 1995, E3 is looking to come back with a bang. Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America said:

"The video game business will be twice as big in 2009 as it was in 2006 when we had the last real E³ Expo – so get ready for some fireworks!" said Laurent Detoc, president of Ubisoft North America. "The changes made will ensure that the 2009 E³ Expo conveys the best of what makes us proud as entertainment leaders."

Bold statements right there, specially after the fiasco that was this year’s E3 media summit. June 2-4 of 2009 is the elected date for this grand event, so that’s a bit over 6 months for E3’s rotting corpse to pretty up.

Full press release after the jump.

Read more!

Anime After Dark, the film festival that earlier this year rocked Boston, is coming to California. Anime After Dark is making a name for itself as an event that has some eclectic taste in what it shows and generally have attract a smarter crowd.

This time around the festival will be at the GOLDEN STATE THEATRE in Monterrey, California and it will be showing 10 films over the span of 3 days. Among the picks for the showing are Ghost In The Shell: Innocence (great franchise, shitty movie),  Princess Mononoke, Millennium Actress (an excellent pick), and of course they are closing with the tear jerker de rigueur Grave For The Fireflies. You can check out the official website for tickets. Hope we get to see more events like this survive.

[Anime After Dark]

Jrock fans, this is for you. Yoshiki Hayashi, founder and former drummer and keyboarder of X-Japan, has teamed up with event producer 4 Fini to plan a festival dedicated to Jrock music. Jrock Revolution is the name and it will hit Los Angeles during May 25 and 26. The lineup is composed of 9 hugely influential bands, namely Vidoll, MUCC, Miyavi, Merry, Kagrra, Girugamesh, DuelJewel, alice nine and Despair Ray. Tickets go on sale on Saturday April 21st at 10am PST via Ticketmaster.

Its $35 per day and $60 for a two day pass, plus whatever method travel you use to get to LA, I do not recommend the Hobo Express, although fast, its not very safe, and frankly the smell is a little too much. In any case, those of you going, you’re all set up for a weekend to remember! Hit the jump for the complete press release.

Read more!

From the ashes of E3 and the hellish debacle it brought to the gaming community rose GamePro Expo, an open event that would take the place of E3. We were able to breath once again. But the name was just a placeholder and a contest was put in motion to name the new event. You can look it up in our archives.

Well the new name for the event has been chosen as the contest came to a close. GamePro Expo is now the E For All Expo. The name is suposed to evoke an openness of the industry to let everyone participate, specially us, the gamers. I’m all for that but I would have gone for E For Everyone Expo, just to keep the E3 moniker.

The official website for the event is already open.

[E For All Expo]