It’s fun wandering through the San Diego Comic Con and shuffling past the cosplayers, the Twi-hards and the “battle-fatigued” fans and then finding a booth with something cool in it, even if it’s only the announcement that something cool is forthcoming.

A friend of mine mentioned that he had a meeting with Jim Salicrup, the head guy at Papercutz and that reminded me that I hadn’t been to their booth yet to see what’s up. Naturally, I didn’t bother to look them up in the program book – I went wandering like a tourist trying to find the food court at Mall of America. And like magic, the Papercutz booth did appeareth before me.

After a brief chat with Salicrup himself – we almost know each other – and the woman who dresses up as Papa Smurf, I grabbed some promo information, bought a copy of The Smurfs comic book (for $1 it was one of the bargains of the con), and lurched back into traffic.

Flipping through their new catalog, I discovered that they’re relaunching their Hardy Boys graphic novel series with The Hardy Boys: The New Case Files, Graphic Novel #1 “Crawling With Zombies.” That’s quite a mouthful, but here’s all you need to know: veteran comic book writer (Amazing Spider-Man, Superman, and my personal favorite Atari Force) and TV writer-producer (Law & Order: Criminal Intent) Gerry Conway is the new writer.

In this first book, “Frank and Joe go undercover as the Living Dead to infiltrate a ‘Zombie Crawl’ that has acquired a notorious reputation.”

I’ve talked about my Conway-crush before, so I’ll just say that I’m as excited about this as I was when I finished reading The Tower Treasure as a kid. This first book ships in October, and you can pre-order it from the usual online vendors.

Paulo Henrique remains the series artist.

[Artwork: cover to The Hardy Boys: The New Case Files, Graphic Novel #1 “Crawling With Zombies”, © Simon & Schuster]