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Win lunch with Joe Quesada or breakfast with Guillermo del Toro, an autograph from Stan Lee and more at the Hero Initiative ebay auctions. Details in the jump.

TALENT SCHEDULE
All signings will be held at booth #964 with the exception of Friday’s Stan Lee and Saturday’s Romitas signings, which will held at the CGC booth #2333.

FRI, April 18 (con hours 3:00-8:00)
3:00-4:00: Ron Marz + Greg Tocchini+ Stjepan Sejic
4:00-5:00: Mike Perkins 
5:00-6:00: John Romita Sr. + John Romita Jr.
5:15-5:45: Stan Lee (at CGC!)
7:00-8:00: Bob Wiacek

SAT, April 19 (con hours 10:00-7:00)
10:00-11:00: Joe Prado + Joe Bennett
11:00-1:00: Mike Perkins
1:00-2:15: John Romita Sr. + John Romita Jr. (at CGC!)
1:00-2:00: Ivan Reis
2:00-3:00: Ron Garney 
3:00-4:00: Gary Friedrich + Jim Valentino 
4:00-5:00: Greg Pak + Fred van Lente + Khoi Pham 
5:30-7:00: Steve Epting 

SUN, April 20 (con hours 10:00-5:00)
10:30-12:00: Mark Buckingham
12:00-1:30: Charlie Adlard
1:00-2:00: Leonard Kirk
2:00-3:00: Walter Simonson

TWO STAN LEE AUTOGRAPHS AT NEW YORK COMIC CON
Go to http://qurls.com?i=33552 NOW to win a ticket to meet Stan Lee and get two autographs on your items of your choice! Stan Lee, co-creator of the Marvel Universe, and such beloved characters as Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and even Fin Fang Foom has graciously agreed to do a half-hour signing appearance for The Hero Initiative on FRIDAY, APRIL 18 at 5:15 PM! As Stan’s time is limited, Stan has also agreed to let Hero auction off 30 tickets, each of which is good for TWO Stan Lee autographs at this event! Only 30 people will be allowed into the signing, with 30 tickets total, max one per household. Each ticket is good for two signatures. WE STRESS AGAIN: YOU MAY BID ON ONLY ONE TICKET PER HOUSEHOLD, AND PER EBAY ACCOUNT! ALL QUANTITIES GREATER THAN “1” WILL BE DELETED IN TOTAL!

NYCC VIP PACKAGE AUCTION STILL OPEN
Go to http://qurls.com?i=33555 to win The Hero Initiative and NYCC VIP Package! Get all weekend access for the con, April 18-20, BONUS early Friday admittance, Express-entry “professional line” entrance, An exclusive Iron Man litho, Priority seating for panel events, A Fantastic Four variant comic, An Iron Man bust, a NYCC hoodie plus a whole lot more!

GWEN AND MARY JANE LOOKALIKE CONTEST
The first-ever Gwen and Mary Jane Lookalike Contest judged by legendary Spider-Man artist John Romita Sr. will be held on April 19 at 3 pm. One Grand Prize winner in each category will receive an Essential Spider-Man paperback with an ORIGINAL John Romita sketch! And the lucky winners will also share a “Look Who’s Talking” page in a future Marvel comic, where they’ll get to tell the world about their exploits! Sign up at The Hero Initiative booth, #964, on April 18 or 19. For more information, go to http://www.marvel.com/news/comicstories.3088.Gwen_%26_MJ_Look-Alike_Contest_at_NYCC.

COMIC BOOK BOOT CAMP – ONLY A FEW SPOTS REMAINING
Don’t miss out on the once in a lifetime Comic Book Boot Camp with such comics luminaries as Top Cow President Matt Hawkins, famed Batman editor and writer Denny O’Neil, top writer Chris Gage, artist’s artist Phil Jimenez and comics legend Chris Claremont! This Hero and Comics Experience all day event will be held Thursday, April 17th - the day before New York Comic Con – and will send you through a crash course on how comics are made! Don’t wait! Sign up now! To register and purchase your $275 tickets, visit www.comicsexperience.com and click on the PayPal link.

New York Comic-Con is looking at the end of the week, and to celebrate the occasion The Beat has a stiff neck, doubtless touched off by the stress. We’re maing a stress pizza here, folks; nay a veritable stress bouillabaisse. Luckily, or unluckily, every other person we know in New York vagely involved in comcis is having the same stress pizza. So it’s a stress pizza with EVERYTHING, including anchovies.

We’ll be giving tomorrow’s Beat over to our world famous, non-stop New York Comic-Con preview. If you have a signing schedule posted somewhere we can link to, post it in the comments or in an email. We’ll round ‘em all up. We’re also assembling our world famous Party Poop page so send us links to that, too.

Legendary Stan Lee will be given the first New York Comics Legend award at this year’s New York Comic-Con. Lee will be presented with the award at a VIP reception at the Virgin Megastore. You can read all the PR in the jump, but it’s a nice touch that the award, the first of an annual tradition, will only be presented to individuals who have made a contribution to civic life in New York and lived in New York for a significant number of years. By that criterion, it will be only 150 years before The Beat gets one!

The New York Comic Con and POW! Entertainment, Inc., (POWN) announce legendary comic book writer and creator Stan Lee will be a Special Guest of New York Comic Con this year where he will appear on several panels, as well as receive the first-ever New York Comics Legend Award at a special VIP party at the Virgin Megastore in New York City’s Times Square. Celebrated by millions of fans worldwide for building Marvel into a comics and motion picture powerhouse, Stan Lee is revered for co-creating Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, and the Incredible Hulk, among other original and wildly popular characters. New York Comic Con, the biggest and most exciting popular culture event on the East Coast, will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Center, April 18 – 20, 2008.

“This is a double whammy for us,” notes Lance Fensterman, Show Manager for NYCC. “First, we get to have the extreme privilege of hosting Stan Lee at our show, and second, we have the distinct honor of awarding him our first-ever New York Comics Legend Award, which we have created to honor New York City’s greatest contributors to comic books and to New York life. I can’t possibly think of anyone more suited to be the first recipient of this award than Stan Lee! He has done so much through the years for both comics and for New York City.”

The reception for Stan Lee where he will receive his New York Comics Legend Award will take place on Thursday, April 17th at 8:00pm at the Virgin Megastore, 1540 Broadway, in the heart of Times Square in New York City. A limited number of tickets will be made available to fans starting March 28 at www.nycomiccon.com. This reception, which will include a selection of famous and traditional New York City fare, will center on the presentation of the New York Comics Legend Award, followed by comments by Stan Lee, as well as brief comments by select friends and colleagues of Mr. Lee.

The inimitable Stan Lee, whose creative genius propelled Marvel to its preeminent position in today’s market place, is doing it all over again with his newly founded company POW! Entertainment Inc., (POWN). Under the umbrella of POW!, Stan is creating at an unprecedented rate, and a whole new cast of contemporary Stan Lee Originals are just beginning their premieres.

Stan Lee commented on his up and coming New York Comic Con appearance:

“Even though Los Angeles has been my play pen for the past few decades, I’ll always consider New York my home town. It’s the beautiful city where I was born (a beautiful baby!) grew up (beautifully!), got married to my beautiful wife and had my beautiful daughter. (When I find an adjective I like, I stick with it!)

So, whenever I can wheedle an opportunity to return to the greatest city in the world, it’s an indescribable thrill for me. And, to make it even more fabulous, it gives me the chance to meet old friends– artists, writers, editors, fans, all sorts of terrific people who speak the same language– the language of creativity.

Hey, what I’m trying to say is– I can’t wait to see ya!

Excelsior!

Your Man Stan”

New York Comic Con organizers note that the New York Comics Legend Award will be given to one recipient each year. Each recipient must have made a major contribution to the advancement of comics, either through achievement in art or business. They will have had to have made a significant contribution to the civic life in New York either through charity, education, public service or by advancing the image of New York City through direct involvement with New York City causes, or through positive depiction of the city and its culture within their body of work. They must each have lived in New York City for a minimum number of years in order to be eligible for the award.

Tons o’ guests have been recently announced for this year’s New York Comic-Con, including Gail Simone, Orson Scott Card and now =…the Venture Bros. crew of Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer will be on hand. REMINDER: ONLY THREE MONTHS TO GO! Season 3 debuts this June. It’s been a long lonely year (!) without the Ventures, and we’ve had to make do with beautiful concept art on Stephen De Stefano’s blog to keep us going. WE haven’t been running much NYCC PR, but these creator bios are a welcome reminder of why we can’t wait to go adventuring with Team Venture once again!

ABOUT JACKSON PUBLICK:
Jackson Publick III was born in 1971. The only son of Jackson Publick, Jr., author of the popular Rusty Venture series of boys’ adventure novels, he forsook his literary birthright to pursue comic books and a degree in the liberal arts. He was successful at neither, and after a period of sky country hoboing and soul-searching, he decided to put his limited skill-set to use in the Creative Warfare department of the Marine Corps; Psi-Ops division. His most notable achievements during his short tenure were designs for something called “The Mindcopter,” and a squadron of giant, flying metal lions which, when reconfigured and joined together via electrical current, formed a giant, flying metal man. Neither project was ever put into production and, upon learning that he had plagiarized the latter, the Marine Corps discharged Publick summarily, but honorably. It was to be the most important day ever. Drawing on the powers and influence of his amazing Bilderberg Group superpals, he then made up The Venture Bros.

ABOUT DOC HAMMER:
Doc Hammer was born in 1626 in Hamar, Norway under the name Erik VonHamer. Being the son of a humble cobbler, not much was expected of the young man other than to cobble, and to not complain about all the cobbling. But Doc was destined for greater things. “Greater things” being not cobbling. At seventeen, with nothing more than really well made shoes and a dream, he made his way to Antwerp to study oil painting under the great Rubens. Within a year the two were at odds. Rubens spoke (infrequently) of Doc as “that creepy skinny kid,” and Doc spoke of Rubens’s work as “kinda unattractive if you really look at it.” By 1648, Doc had relocated to Leiden, where he found his master in Rembrandt. It was there, in his 23rd year, that Doc met “She Who Was To Deliver The Kiss Of Eternal Youth.” After a spicy courtship, “She Who Was To Deliver The Kiss Of Eternal Youth” and Doc were married. By 1650, Doc had grown weary of immortality and committed an unsuccessful suicide by burying his never-corpse in the basement of a Dutch cottage. In 1870, Doc again resurfaced. Using the name Vilhelm Hammershoi, Doc resumed his painting career with mild success. After thanking his bride for “the immortality thing” and nicely reminding her that he had “heard every one of her stories like a billion times,” “She Who Was To Deliver The Kiss Of Eternal Youth” and Doc split up in 1916. Again, Doc literally went underground ’til the 1920’s, when Doc (now using the name Armond Hammer) resurfaced and made a whole mess of money selling overpriced meds to the Russians. Sick of all the baking soda jokes, Doc faked his death yet again. Biding his time ’til the MC Hammer thing had blown over, Doc again resurfaced as “Doc Hammer.” Today, Doc still paints in oils and writes, voices, and does other menial tasks for The Venture Bros. (A show you can watch on cable TV, were you to have cable TV.)

Need Inspiration? Take a look at Nocloo's page of Harry Clarke's amazing black and white illustrations....