Exactly why are we calling our new blog “Toucan”?

The answer goes back to the early 1980s, when San Diego–based cartoonist Rick Geary—who had done a number of drawings for the San Diego Comic-Con since the mid-1970s—came up with the toucan as a kind of mascot for the event. It was originally designed as an image for letterheads, mailings, ads, etc. Rick says, “At the time, I was big into animals in human clothing, so I drew this generic big-beaked bird, never intending it to be a toucan. Also, I understood at the time that this was just to be used for a few things. I had no notion of it becoming Comic-Con's permanent logo.”