You know a once-subcultural event has fatally passed over the point of capitalist no return when a U.S. government agency tries to get in on it. And so, in a far, far corner of the San Diego Convention Center, the U.S. Postal Service has set up a booth, in order to peddle wares to the ever-growing contingent of fanboy stamp collectors. I’m not kidding––Star Wars stamps are a huge deal. The gentleman I spoke to at the booth told me that when this series of stamps were released last year, they almost immediately sold out.

Whilst, technically, you could use a Luke or a Leia to mail your gas bill, due to the shortage of supply these 41 cent treasures are regularly selling for $12-15 on eBay. The booth also displays a number of comic and superhero themed stamps, including a box set of DC comic characters immortalized in postal currency.

We will shortly have a bunch of photos from tonight’s Comic-Con show floor preview on our Flickr stream. Stay tuned for a number of detailed posts on various things (Toy porn! Star Wars porn! Lego porn!  Vintage poster porn! Postal service porn! Hentai! A couple of things that aren’t porn at all!) that especially turned us on. Above: in a pretty typical example of Comic-Con commerce, a smart man finds a way to milk money from a stupid joke.

Remember that interview that Variety EIC Peter Bart gave MTV in June, responding to the “boycott” of his publication by a handful of fanboy sites who insisted that the trade had repeatedly failed to properly credit their “scoops”? Variety’s Anne Thompson resurrected the debate and the Bart quote this morning in a blog post pegged to Comic-Con, where a gang of outlets of various sizes––including us––will be fighting to post the same material at the same time. If my post about The Watchman goes up 20 seconds after Cinematical’s, will I get in trouble for not giving them “credit” for “breaking” the story? What’s the netiquette??!!???

She’s mostly looking at the divide between a “legit” outlet like Variety and the independently run sites like Film School Rejects, but I think Anne makes some good points about this stuff not being the black-and-white matter of thievery that some of the sites would like to believe. As far as I’m concerned, this is the key part of her piece:

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The official schedule for the first full day of events at ComicCon is now up at their website, so you can compare it to the draft schedule we posted earlier this week. Plus, they’ve announced a special event for Preview Night. On Wednesday nights, the Con traditionally opens to show floor to press and passholders, and then after a couple of hours everyone adjourns to dinners and hotel parties, and starts full-bore conventioning the next morning. But this year, they’re going to have two special screenings on Wednesday night of the pilot for the new FOX show Fringe, produced by JJ Abrams and starring Joshua “Pacey” Jackson. Details here.

• At Portfolio, Fred Schruers profiles Austin Chick’s dot com crash period piece August, which the filmmaker and his stars will cheekily promote by ringing the bell at the NY Stock Exchange on Friday. “The film will need all the promotion it can get. In this summer of tent-pole behemoths…even an art-house film that won plaudits at the Sundance Film Festival faces a challenge.” Yup. So imagine how hard it’s going to be for virtually plaudit-less August!
• Focus Features sent Variety a ComicCon Survival Kit, complete with a copy of Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics. Mike Jones recommends leaving it at home. “If the geeks see you reading this there, you’ll get the worst eye-roll ever. Their equivalent of a beat-down.”
• There’s a New York in the Movies blogathon happening at 12 Grand in Checking (blog named after a throwaway line on 30 Rock? Very good sign.) and a Self Involvement Blogathon at Culture Snob. I’m going to try to work up something tonight that fits both.
• In the meantime, watch a video that has no application to either: above, The Mind of Danny Tanner, a wrangling of sound and image from Full House into the poetic style of Bergman and the soundtrack of Donnie Darko. Via Mark Lisanti.

• Walden Media is planning a huge blitz to promote their fall Bill Murray starrer City of Ember at ComicCon. The current plan is to “re-create the mythical city depicted in the film on a private two-car train that will transport 25 members of the media on a 2½-hour journey to the convention’s San Diego locale,” accompanied by the film’s director, screenwriter and producer.
• Expect to be inundated with “Hulk Smash!” headlines on come Monday morning. Variety kindly suggests that The Happening “will likely play like a traditional horror film rather than a broad summer title”––read: $20 million opening––leaving the by all accounts imperfect but not that bad Hulk to reel in mid-five figures.
• Sony Pictures Classics, the only studio other tha IFC to seriously stock their shelves last month at Cannes, has announced another acquisition: Palme D’or winner The Class.

• This is the true hallmark of a word-of-mouth hit: when single lines of dialogue take on a life of their own. “’I drink your milkshake’ has such Dickensian grandeur that its miniaturization in the mouths of SportsCenter anchors, scab gag writers, bloggers, and their ilk is practically a national tragedy,” writes food blogger extraordinaire Josh Ozersky. “Nonetheless, if somebody is going to do it, it’s going to be us.”
• David Carr comments on the surprises at this morning’s Director’s Guild of America nominations; his commenters comment on everything from racism in America to whether or not the Coen Brothers are lazy, or if they want “the audience to just assume people are just born evil?”
• Marc Bernadin ponders how the strike will impact ComicCon, while his colleague Annie Barrett joins me in appreciation of Conan O’Brien’s strike beard.
• Speaking of my stupid crushes on stupid stars: Michael Cera’s iTunes celebrity playlist is just ehn. I’m much more impressed with Ellen Page’s shout-out to Erik Satie.

The massive Paramount panel took place at Comic-con yesterday afternoon, where the studio leaked tidbits on Iron Man, Beowulf, Indiana Jones 4, and two J.J. Abrams projects. Here’s some notes from those who were there.

According to MTV, Abrams confirmed that Cloverfield is not going to be titled Monstrous. It still *could* be titled Cloverfield. But probably not. Also, there’s a new poster, which is getting a lot of bloggy attention. While most of the chatter seems to center around the question, “What is this, a Godzilla remake?” MOVIEBOB notes that visually, the poster looks a lot like a certain photograph taken on 09/11/01:

Now, Michael Bay can get away with it when he claims that he doesn’t think of 911 when crafting city-destruction scenes because, well, Michael Bay was born without a human soul. But Abrams and company, being both human and extremely insightful about humanity, MUST have either intended the analogous gut-punch this poster provides or at least recognized it and decided it was appropriate. I’m now even more strongly thinking what I was only considering when the blurry “spy” shots of this first appeared: Is this the real key to what this mystery-movie actually is?

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• Variety has a run-down on the ten films it thinks fans are most excited about sneaking at Comic-con. At the top of the list are Indy 4 and Star Trek 11; Cloverfield (or Monstrous or whatever it’s called this week) is conspicuously absent. In related news, Paramount has bought Iron Man an Audi, and Patrick Wilson, Jackie Earle Haley, Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Malin Akerman have been cast in Watchmen.
• Showtime has acquired broadcast rights to Nicholas Jarecki’s documentary The Outsider, which offers an inside look (ha ha) at director James Toback. The film, which opened at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2005 and had a brief theatrical run last year, will make its cable debut in August.
• Variety has a story on Sony’s massive 2nd quarter profits; The Hollywood Reporter’s got one on Disney’s.