If there was any doubt about what is the big book/event at this year’s Comic-Con International, the response to the Scott Pilgrim panel—held in the massive 6,000 seat Hall H of the Convention Center—cleared up any lingering ambiguity right away. Thirteen members of the cast, including Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, filmmaker Edgar Wright and the film’s star, Michael Cera—who mugged through the entire panel dressed in a goofy padded-super muscle Captain America costume—appeared on stage to wildly enthusiastic applause and led cheers for a succession of film clips and adoring questions from the crowd.

Let’s face it, if the organizers of Comic-con were to change the name of this event to the San Diego Movie-con, its doubtful anyone would notice. Comic-con is still a place to find comics, meet veteran as well as up and coming comics artists and to learn about the medium, but it often seems that the comics at Comic-con are off somewhere in a smaller, quieter parallel show and media world. But in this case, if you happen to be a comics fan, the Scott Pilgrim Phenomenon has brought both worlds into a happy convergence—an inventive, entertaining and wonderfully illustrated graphic novel series has been made into what looks to be a complementary big budget Hollywood movie that comics fans and movie fans seem eager to embrace. This is refreshing at a time when it is movie fans—it’s not unusual to encounter packs of visitors who have no interest in anything else at “Comic-con” but film and TV events—and movie executives who seem to be shaping the texture and experience of whatever Comic-con is these days.

In the case of Scott Pilgrim The Comic, we’ve got an author/book that began as indie published book by Oni Press and has slowly built a larger reading audience and larger book sales. Indeed sales of the comic have now been goosed by the relentless marketing of Scott Pilgrim The Film—Oni Press publisher Joe Nozemak has always offered a deadpan description of the film as part of their marketing campaign for the book—and four of the six volumes are on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list. In fact, Wright—who said it was “love at first sight” after reading the graphic novel—drew a huge roar from the crowd when he mentioned that Scott Pilgrim was “#5 on the Amazon list and not the graphic novel list, the real bestseller list!” Although O’Malley seemed a bit stunned on the huge stage and didn’t have much to say, Wright and rest of the cast all heaped praise on the books throughout the event and there was even a video presentation showing scenes from the comics that have been recreated in the film. And it was announced at the event that the cast of Scott Pilgrim The Film will be on hand to present awards at the Eisner Comic Industry Awards--the National Book Awards of Comics--on Friday night. So when it comes to Scott Pilgrim and relentless and extravagant displays of spectacular hoopla and Hollywood excess, its not hard to admit that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer book.

But the show goes on and comics are still a big part of it. In fact there’s another casualty in the manga market downturn. Longtime Del Rey manga marketing manager Ali Kokmen (who is roaming the floor at Comic-con) has been laid off. Like every other manga publisher, Del Rey has been cutting back on the number of titles it publishes and there is much speculation about the impact of Japanese publisher Kodansha, which supplies most of Del Rey’s manga list, launching a U.S. office and its effect on the Del Rey Manga licenses. There is much speculation that Kokmen’s departure may be the first indication of changes coming in the comics publishing program at Del Rey.

In other developments Throwaway Horse LLC, the unusual venture behind the creation of Ulysses Seen, a web comics adaptation of Joyce’s classic novel that was momentarily censored by Apple, announced a partnership with Atlas & Co. to produce a print version of the web comic and now iPad version of the work. The Ulysses Seen app was briefly rejected by the Apple store because of nudity before media and public outcry forced Apple to reverse its decision. Robert Berry, creator of Ulysses Seen, attending Comic-con to appear on a digital comics panel, said the digital recreation of Ulysses will be published in print “in installments,” and said they plan to have "a 170 page book on the shelves in time for Bloomsday (June 16) 2011." Atlas & Co. is an independent publishing house that generally specializes in nonfiction. It is founded and directed by literary biographer James Atlas.

Marvel announced plans to publish another edition of Strange Tales, an ongoing anthology series that tabs indie/alternative comics artists to work on the cash cows of the Marvel Universe. Indie comics publishing stars such as Alex Robinson (Tricked), Dash Shaw (BodyWorld), Jilliam Tamaki (Skim), Gene Yang (American Born Chinese), Kate Beaton (Hark! A Vagrant), Nick Gurewitch (Perry Bible Fellowship), Paul Hornschemeier (The Three Paradoxes) and others will get to write and draw their own stories featuring Thor, Spider-Man, Wolverine and rest of the Marvel Superhero cavalcade. And indie publisher Top Shelf, which has just released AX Alternative Manga, an anthology of experimental Japanese manga, announced plans to published Cigarette Girl by Masahiko Matsumoto. Matsumoto is a contemporary of Yoshihiro Tatsumi, author of the acclaimed manga memor, A Drifting Life, and credited with inventing gekiga, a manga genre invented in the 1950s that focused on the oridinary life of working people. AX editor Sean Wilson, who is overseeing this project as well, said Cigarette Girl is Matsumoto’s first book to be published in English, “and will provide another point of view on the birth of the manga industry in Japan.”