The Comics Arts Conference—a gathering of comics scholars and professionals—returns to the San Diego Comic-Con this week for its biggest year. Founded in 1992 by Dr. Randy Duncan of Henderson State University and then-Michigan State University graduate student (and now Director of the Institute for Comics Studies) Peter Coogan, the CAC is the longest-running academic conference on comics in the nation. And it’s held right smack in the middle of the biggest comic book convention in the country.

Highlights this year include a panel on Superman’s 70th anniversary; a workshop on applying comics in K-8 language-arts classes for teachers, who can get development credit for attending; a “focus” panel on Miracleman artist Mark Buckingham; and a panel on re-inventing the superhero. The Conference is even the site of a for-credit college class, “The Culture of Popular Things: Ethnographic Examination of Comic-Con 2008.” Matt Smith, professor of communications at Wittenberg University, offers a chance for students to observe how popular culture is marketed to and practiced by fans attending Comic-Con. Students arrive early in San Diego the week of the con and spend mornings attending class and reading anthropological theory. During the convention itself, they fan out and investigate topics such as swag (free stuff given away on the exhibit room floor), promotion by comic book companies, the interactions of fans and professionals, the representation of women in comics and at the con, the social hierarchies of celebrity, fan, pro, and cosplayer, and in a meta-move, even the Comics Arts Conference itself.

The Comics Arts Conference expanded in 2006 to offer a slate of panels annually at Wonder Con, a comic book convention put on in February or March in San Francisco by the sponsors of San Diego Comic-Con. The CAC-WC (or Comics Arts Conference-Wonder Con) is a smaller affair, offering one day of panels versus the CAC-SD’s sixteen panels, but it represents significant growth of the field of comics studies. Expanding upon this growth, the CAC this year is offering the Comics Studies Forum (CSF), a chance for comics scholars to discuss the current and future state of the field of comics studies and to form working groups to bring projects to fruition. The CSF offers to cement the centrality of the Comics Arts Conference to the field of comics studies and to be a launching pad for the field to define and expand itself.

And the CAC is only one programming track of the San Diego Comic-Con. Any comics fan should make the pilgrimage at least once in their life. Tickets are sold out for this year, so start making plans (and hotel reservations!) for next year.

The Comic-Con’s website, with the programming for this year, can be found at: www.comic-con.org

The Comics Arts Conference website is at: http://fac.hsu.edu/duncanr/cac_page.htm

Matthew Smith’s class website is at:

http://www.powerofcomics.com/program.html