The First ICON Festival Officially Adds 3 Legends as Guests of Honor [Exclusive]

Published Oct 13, 2026, 12:00 PM EDT

A cinematic obsessive with the filmic palate of a starving raccoon, Rob London will watch pretty much anything once. With a mind like a steel trap, he’s an endless fount of movie and TV trivia, borne from a misspent youth of watching monster movies on TV, perusing the sun-faded goods at the local video rental shop, and staining his fingers with ink from the Video Movie Guide. Areas of interest include science fiction, film noir, horror flicks, ’70s disaster pictures, Bond movies, ’90s action, giant robots, dinosaurs, super heroes, and the exuberantly schlocky output of Cannon Films. He also enjoys both Star Trek and Star Wars when they’re good, and maybe even more when they’re bad. As a Canadian, he also has a vested interest in Canadian movies and TV shows, especially the cheesier ones dubbed “Canuxploitation.”

An expert on Marvel Comics, he has also written for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, and is a member of the Marvel Research Team. He can frequently be found pontificating on comic-book continuity or bemoaning the misfortunes of the Toronto Maple Leafs on his Twitter account.

Once considered completely disposable, the art of comic books has become an increasingly respected art form. Now, a new festival will celebrate that art form: the ICON Festival. The first-ever ICON Festival will take place at the historic Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles from November 7-8. Several notable guests from the comic book art world have already been announced to be in attendance, including Absolute Batman’s Nick Dragotta, Young Avengers’ Jim Cheung, and Invincible’s Ryan Ottley, and many, many more. The festival, unlike most comics conventions, will allow attendees one-on-one time with the artists in attendance, who will have much to share about their artistry.

Today, Collider is proud to exclusively announce a new VIP event at the ICON Festival featuring three disparate legends: Bill Sienkiewicz, Glen David Gold, and Thomas Jane. Reporter Borys Kit of The Hollywood Reporter will host a special tripartite discussion between the three luminaries. Sienkiewicz broke out with Marvel’s Moon Knight in the early 1980s before moving on to a seminal run on New Mutants, which spotlighted his increasingly surreal and inventive work. He has subsequently worked on titles like Elektra: Assassin, Daredevil: Love and War, and Stray Toasters. He also worked as a concept artist on Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.

Gold is best known as the writer of the novels Carter Beats the Devil and Sunnyside, but is also a noted expert on and collector of comics and comics art. Jane may be most famous for playing comics character the Punisher on the big screen, but he’s also a celebrated comics author: he co-created The Lycan, a horror comics series that won a Harvey Award last year.

Four teams, four completely different reasons to put yourself in danger for strangers. This is the roster you actually belong on, what they would want from you, and what it would cost you to stay.

You belong where the stakes are largest and the personalities are loudest. This is a team of people who are all used to being the most important person in the room, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it keeps nearly falling apart.

You have never had the luxury of being thanked for this. The X-Men protect a world that has never once been comfortable with them existing, and something in you understands exactly why they keep doing it anyway.

You do not want colleagues, you want your people. The Titans are the team where the friendship came first and the world-saving turned up afterwards as an inconvenient side effect.

You are not asking who to trust. You worked out the answer a while ago and it was nobody in a cape. This is where you go once you have decided the people in charge need watching, and that nobody else is going to do it.

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