Comic Con expands to two days

Set your phasers to stun: The Tampa Bay Comic Con is returning in March with a new two-day format, including its first full-scale video game tournament to compete head-to-head in games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Halo Reach and Soul Calibur 5. In other geektastic news, Jim Steranko, an artist for many Stan Lee-written comic book stories (Captain America, Nick Fury and X-Men) will be in attendance. Steranko played an integral role in "modernizing" the genre to meet the maturing tastes of readers in the late 1960s, The convention will have other artists, writers and sci-fi actors on March 3-4 at the Doubletree Hotel in Tampa; $10 for adults, kids 12 and under free. See tampabaycomiccon.com. — Sharon Kennedy Wynne