Check out the above very cool sculpture. It represents an epic battle from My Hero Academia, the “Historical Battle in Kamino.”
This sculpture is the centerpiece of a new exhibition that opened today, just in time for Comic-Con 2023!
I’m not all that familiar with this manga series, but the colorful displays definitely caught my attention this morning as I wandered about the lower level of the museum. Around the statue are action-packed graphics that depict various characters and scenes that fans love from My Hero Academia.
If you’re a fan of manga or anime, and you’re going to Comic-Con this year, jump on the shuttle from the San Diego Convention Center to Balboa Park. It stops a very short distance from the Comic-Con Museum!
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I’m covering Comic-Con again this year. To see all my current and past blog posts concerning Comic-Con, click here and scroll down!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Spider-Man, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Black Widow, Doctor Strange…
Given the immense popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films in the past 15 years, who on the planet doesn’t recognize at least a few of those names?
What do these iconic superheroes all have in common? Their famous co-creator, Stan Lee.
An excellent new exhibit opened today at the Comic-Con Museum in San Diego. It’s titled Excelsior! The Life and Legacy of Stan Lee. Those attending Comic-Con 2023 this week have the opportunity to jump onto a shuttle at the San Diego Convention Center and head to Balboa Park to enjoy this exclusive exhibition!
Visitors to the Comic-Con Museum will see how Stan Lee, over the course of his 78-year career, not only influenced the evolution of comic books, but as the creative leader of Marvel Comics, helped build the company into an international multimedia powerhouse. Fans can view rare comic books, original art and paintings that were born from his seemingly inexhaustible imagination.
Many of the used comic books on display, including dozens of superhero origin and Marvel landmark stories, come courtesy of exhibit co-curator Michael Uslan, originator and Executive Producer of the Batman movie franchise! They have been selected from his vast boyhood collection. You can tell how his comic books were well read! Michael was a good friend of Stan Lee, who was described as endlessly energetic. (I learned Michael is the one who suggested to Stan that he write alternative stories concerning DC Comics characters!)
Stan Lee‘s enormous accomplishments merited induction into the comic book industry’s Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1995. He received the NEA’s National Medal of Arts in 2008.
Personally, I loved viewing the exhibit with its many decades of artwork. It revived pleasant memories from my own past–particularly those years long ago when I collected comic books. I amassed hundreds of issues in several long boxes, which to me were vaults filled with treasure.
Fans of anime visiting the museum might also enjoy two other exhibits that opened today just in time for Comic-Con: the Cowboy Bebop 25th Anniversary Art Exhibition and an incredible sculpture inspired by My Hero Academia.
If you haven’t already experienced the Comic-Con Museum’s ongoing exhibit The Animation Academy – from Pencils to Pixels, that is also a definite must-see. From animation’s rather crude beginnings to today’s high-tech computer generated graphics, you’ll experience it all. You even have the opportunity to create your own animated stories!
Learn more about Excelsior! The Life and Legacy of Stan Lee and the many other wonders that await you at the Comic-Con Museum by visiting their website here!
An extensive new exhibit on the bottom floor of the Comic-Con Museum celebrates the life and legacy of legendary Stan Lee.Today’s huge Marvel Universe was co-created by Stan Lee. The name “Marvel Universe” was suggested by a fan in 1966. This year Stan Lee would have celebrated his 100th birthday.Marvel Tales Annual, No. 1, published in September 1964, features the artists and writers who comprised The Marvel Bullpen back then.Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, co-creators of many iconic Marvel characters, pictured together at different times.Captain America, No. 3, 1941. 19-year-old Stan Lee’s first writing in comic books and first use of the pen name “Stan Lee.”The Marvel Age dawned in 1956, with the resurgence of superheroes. In an increasingly stressful modern world, readers enjoyed escapism, much as they do today. As time went on, characters became more complex and believable, displaying ordinary human emotions.One of many iconic comic books on display. The first appearance of the Fantastic Four, November 1961, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.Just Imagine, by Stan Lee with Chris Bachalo. A reimagining of DC character Catwoman in 2002.A new Stan Lee Universe is soon to appear! It’s called Stan Lee’s Workforce. A major announcement is forthcoming!Kill-Switch by artist Greg Hildebrandt. Part of the upcoming Stan Lee’s Workforce!Stan Infinity, by artist Rob Prior. Very cool!Members of the media get a first look at the new Comic-Con Museum exhibit, Excelsior! The Life and Legacy of Stan Lee. It opens to the public today, July 18, 2023
If you’re attending Comic-Con 2023 in San Diego, you don’t dare miss this!
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I’m covering Comic-Con again this year. To see all my current and past blog posts concerning Comic-Con, click here and scroll down!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
The Comic-Con Museum in San Diego’s Balboa Park will be opening several new exhibits during the week of Comic-Con 2023!
The exhibit I’m most excited about is titled Excelsior! The Life and Legacy of Stan Lee. The Comic-Con Museum and Kartoon Studios will celebrate 100 amazing years of Stan Lee’s legacy by showcasing rare comic books, original art, and paintings, including some never-seen-before items! One part of the exhibit will feature other co-creators of the Marvel Universe, including legendary artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko. You know it’s going to be awesome. ‘Nuff said!
Those attending Comic-Con who love anime and manga shouldn’t miss the Comic-Con Museum’s coming Cowboy Bebop 25th Anniversary Art Exhibition, presented in partnership with Crunchyroll and Mondo, and a special My Hero Academia installation: a Historical Battle in Kamino statue that depicts the epic fight between All Might and All For One.
All three of these new exhibits will open Tuesday, July 18.
By the way, visitors to the museum will also enjoy the currently running Animation Academy – from Pencils to Pixels interactive exhibit. I blogged about it here!
A shuttle bus will be running during Comic-Con between the San Diego Convention Center and the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park, much as it has in recent years. For your ride, you’ll need a museum ticket and Comic-Con badge.
Courtesy Crunchyroll.Courtesy Crunchyroll.
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I’ll be covering Comic-Con again this year. To see all my current and past blog posts concerning Comic-Con, click here and scroll down!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
What is Trino’s World? It’s a world of cartoon fun that opened today at San Diego’s Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park!
Trino is the “pen” name of popular, award-winning Mexican cartoonist José Trinidad Camacho. You might recognize some his wacky characters.
With his humorous, often irreverent art, Trino both lampoons and celebrates Mexican life. I noticed that his subjects include lucha libre, movies, soccer, politics, ordinary people…
The funny thing is, his humor can provoke laughter from just about everybody. His wry illustrations can resonate with many. Human foibles seem to be universal.
The cool artwork on display for Trino’s World comes from the artist’s personal collection. This is the first exhibition of Trino art in a United States museum.
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The Animation Academy – from Pencils to Pixels officially opens tomorrow at the Comic-Con Museum in Balboa Park!
Members of the Comic-Con Museum got a preview of the incredible new exhibition today!
Who doesn’t love animated features and cartoons? We all have our favorites, right? Well, chances are some of your best-loved television shows and movies pop up in this delightful exhibition.
The Animation Academy, as its name suggests, is both educational and interactive. Every sort of technology that has produced animation is explored, from early magic lanterns and spinning thaumatropes and phenakistoscopes(!), to state-of-the-art non-photorealistic rendering and 3D printing.
Not only will you learn about the rich history of animation, and the artists and studios who’ve added to the popular culture, but there are several opportunities for visitors to create their own animated masterpieces!
Among the numerous displays are realistic recreations of work stations, puppets and miniature sets that demonstrate what it’s like to be a stop motion animator.
Fans of Gumby and Looney Tunes, in particular, will be excited to find themselves immersed in well done, interactive displays.
Do you love Bugs Bunny and his friends? You’ll have a chance to view all sorts of original sketches, drawings and animation cells. You’ll even see the typewriter used by legendary Chuck Jones. (Did you know Chuck Jones was inspired by Mark Twain? I didn’t!)
The exhibition encourages curiosity and creativity. Kids will surely enjoy it. Adults with imagination and a sense of fun absolutely will, too!
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Thanks for visiting Cool San Diego Sights!
I post new blogs pretty often. If you like discovering new things, bookmark coolsandiegosights.com and swing on by occasionally!
I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
Creativity is always welcome at December Nights in Balboa Park! I could clearly see this, as I periodically checked out some tables hosted by San Diego’s very cool Comic-Con Museum.
Everybody and anybody was invited to grab some paint and help color in a community mural. Actually, there appeared to be multiple murals, as you can see in my photographs.
I walked around the big December Nights event both Friday and today, and watched as the murals took form.
Check it out!
UPDATE!
I saw a completed mural at a later visit to the museum…
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It’s easy to explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on this website’s sidebar. Or click a tag. There’s a lot of stuff to share and enjoy!
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September 8, 1966 was the day when the very first Star Trek episode of the Original Series aired, titled The Man Trap. Remember the shape-shifting creature that sucked the salt out of Enterprise crewmembers?
In the past I’ve photographed all sorts of Star Trek related stuff: from Comic-Con cosplay and extraordinary Paramount exhibits, to artwork at IDW’s San Diego Comic Art Gallery, to the old Captain Kirk’s Coffee in South Park (a block from where Whoopie Goldberg–who played Guinan–once worked), to an amazing Gene Roddenberry exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum . . .
To celebrate Star Trek Day, please enjoy a few of these photographs!
If you’d like to see even more photos on my blog that concern Star Trek, plus written descriptions, click this tag and scroll down. You’ll notice lots of other fun stuff mixed in, too!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
You can easily explore Cool San Diego Sights by using the search box on my blog’s sidebar. Or click a tag! There are thousands upon thousands of photos for you to enjoy!
There’s a modest exhibit at the Comic-Con Museum that previews a much larger exhibition that is coming later this year. Those visiting the museum to see Spider-Man during Comic-Con should head down to the lower level and check out Hemingway in Comics!
I love reading literature, and Hemingway is one of my favorite authors, so I was pleasantly surprised when my curious eyes spied this comic art today.
The styles that are represented are quite varied, and the fictional stories involving the celebrated American author can seem fantastic and implausible, but that is art! And it’s all very cool!
I really look forward to seeing the full exhibition when it opens at the Comic-Con Museum this coming September.
Read the sign below to learn more….
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
This week a very cool educational event is being held at the Comic-Con Museum that should interest Comic-Con attendees and residents of San Diego alike.
Today through Sunday–throughout Comic-Con week–a group of Advancement of Science (AAAS) IF/THEN Ambassadors are at the museum encouraging STEAM learning! Particularly for young women!
The event features computer scientists and environmentalists and paleontologists and astrophysicists . . . even an astronaut! Visitors both young and old (like me) can create, experiment, play games, and talk to professional woman who are leaders in their fields.
I walked around the museum’s COX Innovation Lab looking at table displays, impressed by all that I saw. I even got to watch how to make a quasi-comet!
One cool display was about how life might have evolved on the fictional planets of Star Wars. Comparisons are made between often bizarre creatures and the organisms in our own Earth’s fossil record.
Inspirational talks are held down in the museum’s auditorium, but I arrived a little too early, so I missed that. But they will be held all week.
To learn more about this awesome event, click here!
If you’d like to view my coverage of Comic-Con so far, which includes hundreds of cool photographs, click here!
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
The extraordinary exhibition, which occupies nearly all of the Comic-Con Museum’s large first floor, celebrates the history of Spider-Man.
Visitors can see dozens of pieces of original art used in the creation of the comic books, and important props from many of Spider-Man’s immensely popular movies. The superhero’s appearance on television and in video games is also documented.
I spent a full hour today just reading the many displays and viewing incredible, historic artwork.
Originally drawn from the imaginations of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, Spider-Man has evolved over time, as new writers and artists have built on Spidey’s complex story. Societal norms and comic book sensibilities have shifted over the decades, but one thing has been fairly consistent. Spider-Man represents a youthful, optimistic “everyman” hero, who copes with life’s ordinary problems while battling fantastic villains.
A good crowd had already arrived as the museum opened at ten o’clock this morning, and I saw numerous families and excited kids–many wearing Spider-Man shirts and costumes. There are many opportunities to take selfies, and the atmosphere created inside the dynamic exhibition is truly exciting.
Walking through, I felt my old passion for Spider-Man flaring again. The exhibition makes it obvious why the wall-crawler remains one of the all-time favorite pop culture icons!
During Comic-Con, a shuttle bus will run between the San Diego Convention Center and the Comic-Con Museum. I encourage Comic-Con attendees to come up to Balboa Park and check out the exhibition. It’s well worth the time and effort!
Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing will continue at the Comic-Con Museum through the end of 2022.
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I live in downtown San Diego and love to walk around with my camera! You can follow Cool San Diego Sights via Facebook or Twitter!
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