Conventions | Creators like Neal Adams, Tim Bradstreet, Howard Chaykin, Amanda Conner and Scott Lobdell will headline the Long Beach Comic & Horror Con, held Saturday and Sunday at the Long Beach Convention Center. “I think most of our artists are thrilled to come back each year,” said Phil Lawrence, principal sales director for the event. “This is the earliest we sold out our Artists Alley and we have almost 190 tables. By focusing on the artists and giving them their due, they seem to keep coming back and signing up earlier — and they promote the show, which helps us out, too.” [Gazettes.com]

Conventions | Tucson Comic-Con may be small, but it puts comics — not other entertainment — front and center. [Arizona Daily Star]

Conventions | Also up this week: Rhode Island Comic Con, which doesn't eschew the other media but boasts RISD alumnus Walt Simonson as the headline guest. [The Providence Phoenix]

Creators | Stan Lee dropped in on students at the Savannah College of Art and Design for a friendly chat and some quick critiques. “We just hoped that a book we were drawing would sell so we could keep our jobs and pay the rent,” Lee said of the early days of Marvel. “We never for one minute thought there would be schools where they teach this.” [The Associated Press]

Publishing | Fantagraphics editor and publisher Kim Thompson discusses the challenges of translating comics, particularly humor: "The Swedish daily comic Rocky was fiendishly difficult because there was a lot of not just European-specific or even Swedish-specific but even Stockholm-specific material. And his characters had enormous dialogue balloons full of meticulously sarcastic dialogue that would 'flatten out' if you didn't get just the right amount of snark in it." [World Literature Today]

Creators | Writer Dan Slott goes straight for the hyperbole in his description of A+X: "If you want to see shield-slinging, Hulk-smashing, Wolverine-clawing, Cable-blasting action, we're gonna give you what you want. Blow up your popcorn, open up a page and prepare to get your eyes assaulted by the awesome." Jeph Loeb, who writes the Wolverine/Hulk story in this issue, chimes in but is a little more subdued. [USA Today]

Comics | Archie Comics Co-CEO Nancy Silberkleit explains "Archie Therapy": "They are light-hearted, humorous stories that have appealed to readers for generations. They are stress busting pills — fun and light." And she talks about the socially progressive themes in Archie comics and how they have evolved over the years. [The Times of India]

Creators | Writer Jim Zubkavich talks about Skullkickers, which is slated to end with Issue 36, and how he develops his ideas into comics. [The Beat]

Creators | Artist Kent Williams (Sandman, The Fountain, Blood: A Tale) discusses his collaboration with Jon J. Muth on Havoc & Wolverine: Meltdown and his work process, which still involves physical rather than digital media. "My personal feeling is that it doesn’t exist," he says of digital media. "There’s nothing tangible to hang on to. So even though I may initially be drawn to an image, I find myself never going back to it, because I know it doesn’t exist in real life." [GMA News]

Comics | Will Eisner biographer Bob Andelman talks to M. Tom Inge on video about his upcoming book, Will Eisner Conversations. [The Daily Cartoonist]

Creators | Shane West, a star of the TV show Nikita, crosses over into comics with The Big Bad Wolf, a werewolf tale he's collaborating on with William Wilson, Jason Stevens and Jean-Paul Deshong. It will premiere digitally on USA Today. "It's a road story about a brother and a sister and their commitment to one another and what that means for the sister if her brother turns into this hulking monster later on in life," Stevens explains. [USA Today]

Exhibits | "Seduction of the Innocent," part of the Vegas Valley Book Festival, takes a look at the history of attempts to censor comics, paying special attention to the 1950s and the work of Frederic Werthem. But curator (and illustrator) Pj Perez notes that censorship hasn't gone away; it's just taking a different form: "It's not the big industry-targeted censorship that happened back in the day. But there are little cases of things popping up - people being arrested for having stuff or selling it. Shops have been put out of business over legal fees because they carried a certain style of manga or graphic novel." [Las Vegas Review-Journal]