In addition to last Friday's surprise announcement about the Harvey Awards moving to the Baltimore Comic-Con, show promoter Marc Nathan has announced a substantial slate of returning guests for next year's show.

Even though the convention is not scheduled until September 9-10, 2006, Nathan said he and the show's staff wanted to capitalize on the awareness of the event's "drive to" nature created by the Harvey Awards announcement.

"Following the announcement about the Harvey Awards moving to the Baltimore Comic-Con, we received a larger than usual number of calls and emails, as you'd probably expect after that kind of news," he said. "A number of them came from people who had never considered before how easy a drive Baltimore is from just about anywhere on the eastern seaboard. We're going to do our best to get the word out, and a large part of that will be telling people early how great our guest list is going to be."

Service organizations, publishers and manufacturers setting up at the show thus far include A Commitment To Our Roots (ACTOR), the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF), Gemstone Publishing, and Century Comics.

Creators scheduled to attend include Marvel Comics legend Dick Ayers (courtesy of ACTOR), Howard Chaykin (The Shadow, American Flagg!), Frank Cho (New Avengers, Liberty Meadows), Steve Conley (Astounding Space Thrills, The Escapist), Rich Faber (Roboy Red), John Gallagher (Buzzboy, More Fund Comics), Cully Hamner (Batman: Tenses), Dean Haspiel (Quitter, Opposable Thumbs), Marc Hempel (Sandman: The Kindly Ones, MAD), Michael Avon Oeming (Powers, What If?), Brandon Peterson (X-Men, Strange), Eric Powell (The Goon, Marvel Monsters), Amazing Spider-Man legendary artist John Romita, Sr. (courtesy of ACTOR), Brian Stelfreeze (Matador), Robert Tinnell (The Black Forest, The Living and The Dead), Billy Tucci (Shi), Neil Vokes (The Wicked West, The Black Forest), Matt Wagner (Grendel, Batman), Mark Waid (Superman: Birthright, Legion of Super-Heroes), Mark Wheatley (Mars, Frankenstein Mobster), and Marv Wolfman (New Teen Titans, Crisis on Infinite Earths).

For more information about the Baltimore Comic-Con, visit www.comicon.com/baltimore (site updates start soon).
For more information about the Harvey Awards visit www.harveyawards.org.