Conventions | Heidi MacDonald reports that the organizers of San Diego Comic Con are tightening up on badges with measures that include matching the name on the badge to the user's ID to prevent counterfeiting and illegal resale. Amusingly, you don't have to go too far down the comment thread to see someone blaming Twilight fans. [The Beat]

Legal | Canadian artist Craig Wilson didn't make it to this weekend's Phoenix Comicon because U.S. Customs and Border Protection turned him away, saying he needed a work permit to sell comics at his Artist Alley table. Not only that, Wilson was also thumb printed and his car was searched. He said the customs agents even sent a notice to the other border crossings in case he tried to enter the country somewhere else. "I'm paying my own table at the con, hotel, meals, drinks ..." Wilson said. "I was going to inject close to $2000.00 dollars into the very economy I was supposedly threatening." [boardguy]

Comics | Joshua Yehl looks at the state of gay characters in mainstream comics. [IGN]

Creators | Writer Tim Seeley and artist Mike Norton discuss their upcoming "farm noir" title from Image Comics, Revival. [USA Today]

Creators | Lila Quintero Weaver talks about Darkroom: A Memoir in Black and White, her memoir of growing up as a Latina immigrant in Marion, Alabama, during the racial turmoil of the 1960s: "Both of my parents are deceased. As I worked on the book, I felt at times powerfully connected to their experience. It hit me as never before how courageous they were in leaving what was familiar and striking out for a new country. I had a similar rush of emotion as I worked on drawings of African American protestors in my hometown of Marion, Alabama. They faced all sorts of repercussions for their courageous stand, including mob violence one night in 1965, the same night that Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a state trooper." [al.com]

Creators | Chip Kidd talks about his new graphic novel Batman: Death By Design: "I really very much wanted it to feel like a really good film from the thirties actually, from like the late thirties. And the art direction to the artist, Dave Taylor, was what if Fritz Lang had a big budget to make a Batman film in 1938? What would it look like? We never specifically say what year it is, but it very much meant to feel like it’s set back then." [Big Shiny Robot]

Creators | David Brothers interviews Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips about their horror-noir series Fatale. [Comics Alliance]

Creators | Rumble Girls creator Lea Hernandez has launched a Kickstarter drive to fund the print edition of her new webcomic The Garlicks, an all-ages comic about a cute vampire that started with a misunderstanding: "I was reading something about an Archie Comics project and the editor there (Victor Gorelick) is spelled G-O-R-E-L-I-C-K. I mispronounced it as 'garlic'… Ding!" [Geek Speak]

Creators | Chris Schweizer chats about his centuries-spanning action-humor series The Crogan Adventures: "I think of them first and foremost as adventure stories. I include humor to give a sense of ups and downs and pacing, rather than to deceive the reader into being unprepared for heavier material. Honestly, I don't write for a specific age range — which the marketing guys hate to hear. I try to write a book where, if I hadn't written it, it would be my first choice if I go into a bookstore. Books like Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and Huckleberry Finn are written very much at an adult level. The fact that they're successful for kids is that they're ripping good yarns." [Creative Loafing]

Comics | It looks like DC Comics' New 52 is working for Dak, who is not only enjoying it but expanding her reading because of it. [GeekMom]

Graphic novels | The Queens, New York-based organization New Immigrant Community Empowerment has produced a graphic novel, in Spanish, aimed at helping new immigrants avoid shady immigration service providers who offer to help them get legal status and then take off with the cash. [DNAinfo.com]

Publishing | Random House is looking for a manga editor to work on Kodansha Comics titles. The successful candidate will be able to read Japanese and handle putting out 80-90 volumes of manga per year. [The Beat]