As you know, swag is a key aspect of Comic-Con. On preview night I picked up what I think will turn out to be my favorite freebie: a beautiful set of 4 character posters from Lionsgate's The Spirit. These will go perfectly with the teaser poster Lionsgate gave out at last year's Con. Rheir booth is done up like the city in which the Spirit moves. There was even snow falling continually. Warner Brothers gets the award again for best big bag, this time an enormous one with Wonder Woman on it. Fox gave out a very practical poster tube but they neglected to fill it with any posters. Tons of free preview manga out there but, unless I'm mistaken, no Tokyopop booth. There are also cool Tintin bags celebrating the French comics' 80th anniversary.

Lionsgate will have a panel on Frank Miller's adaptation of Will Eisner's comic on Friday at 2:45pm in Hall H.

What's good in your swag bag from Preview night?

You could find these Why So Serious? dollars as part of a scavenger hunt for The Dark Knight at last year's Comic-Con (Warner Brothers)

This Friday the eagerly anticipated sequel to Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins opens and the buzz about The Dark Knight is that it kicks ass. Kevin Smith posted on his blog that "It's the Godfather II of comic book films." But the buzz for the film began generating at last year's Comic-Con with a viral marketing campaign (whysoserious.com) and scavenger hunt from Warner Brothers. On July 26 of last year the altered dollar bills (pictured above) started circulating at the Con. The rumor was that funny money was a clue and would lead to something big on Saturday. Warners didn't deliver a Dark Knight panel at the Con but if you participated in the scavenger hunt you were able to unlock an exclusive Joker photo and teaser trailer. Who knows what surprises may lurk at this year's Comic-Con. But I'll bet we have a lot of Jokers showing up.