San Diego Comic-Con is the rare opportunity to see the billions being invested in the comic book industry. Click on the video for a closer look at three ways this truism manifested itself at Comic-Con 2010:

  1. Preview night: Comic-Con officially opened on Thursday, July 22, but there's always a "preview night" for the most committed fans, giving them a chance to scour the floor before the rest of the 125,000 who attended trampled it in search of stars, games, giveaways, and deals. Check out the footage to see fans flooding Disney's (NYSE: DIS) booth during preview night.
  2. Battle of the preview panels: Another Comic-Con staple, "preview panels" allow Hollywood studios to show early footage of films and engage fans. I only made it into Sony's (NYSE: SNE) session, which included previews of Priest, a post-apocalyptic thriller starring Paul Bettany, and The Green Hornet, a remake of the classic TV series that stars Seth Rogen in the title role. Interestingly, the line for Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) preview panel, which included sneak peeks at Green Lantern and the final Harry Potter film, backed up more than a mile.
  3. Games and props: There's no cheating at Comic-Con. All the props are real, and the video games on display are as rich and discerning as the audience testing them. You'll get a better sense of this when you see the footage for the latest City of Heroes, published by a division of South Korea's NC Soft.

In all, Comic-Con was a massive event that, thanks to Hollywood and the public's growing appetite for interactive video games, seems destined to keep getting bigger.

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