San Diego Comic-Con is coming up in a couple of weeks (July 23-26, to be precise), and there’s a panel on Thursday’s schedule that will probably be of interest to Halo fans:

4:30-5:30 The Halo Franchise: What’s Next — Frank O’Connor (franchise development director for Halo) will be joined by a number of special guests to discuss how Halo is evolving into a robust entertainment franchise and what’s coming in the future. Room 6BCF

If you’re going to be there, be sure to show up for that panel!(Louis Wu 15:20:17 UTC)

Gilver was the first to let us know about a new video from IGN – “Five Ways Natal Will Ruin Halo“. You might like it, you might hate it. It’s only a minute long, so what do you have to lose? (Besides a minute, of course.)(Louis Wu 15:10:13 UTC)

The latest installment of Hawty McBloggy’s Friday Caption Fun is now online – and along with captions from the community for last week’s pic, there’s a new – and potentially hilarious – pic up for you to caption this week. Get over there!(Louis Wu 15:08:10 UTC)

neoxdonut117 sent word of ‘Shimmer‘, a music video using Fuel’s song and Bungie’s cutscenes to portray a sad love story.(Louis Wu 14:58:26 UTC)

There is only one new story for you in the Fan Fiction section this week – but the community DID update the images that advertise their ‘Feet First into Hell’ contest. Go check it out!(Louis Wu 14:57:00 UTC)

Three new comics to mention today:

• Dennis Powers wrote to say that Shipwrecked Episode 78 – Reflection is online. There’s something out there…
• Bloogyo linked us to Rat’s Nest 20-6 and 20-7 – he’s right, 20-7 is nearly impossible to read.
• TTL Demag0gue stopped in with word of Reclaimer 202 – Rivers of Information. Ferial’s sharper than first appearances would suggest…

Go read!(Louis Wu 14:47:01 UTC)

A new Community Cartographer feature is live on Bungie.net – urk has talked to Blackprinze about his map, ‘The Kingdom’. Go give it a read, look at the pics, download the map!(Louis Wu 21:40:42 UTC)

Whoa, cool. We haven’t heard from Dan Baker since late March, 2008 – he was recreating the story of Alpha Halo, with all new artwork – but he’s back now, with a new page (thanks, UNSC_Trooper), and apparently is ready to pick up the pace again!(Louis Wu 19:02:47 UTC)

Captain Spark sent in another batch of dialogue snippets for our Dialogue Databank – some great stuff from marines, plus a really funny Grunt quote! Check ’em all out.(Louis Wu 18:55:09 UTC)

New artwork from Luke McKay – a couple of days ago, he welcomed back an old friend, and this morning, he summed up the Bungie vs the World experience most of us either had, or would have had. Nice work!(Louis Wu 18:16:42 UTC)

Bunch o’ videos (and other fan stuff) on the BungLog™ today:

• The ‘Zoxin It Up’ podcast will be recording Episode 3 live on July 24 – guest is Puptastrophe, from Grifball Hub.
• Yet another Racetrack has been highlighted – Extremity has more ‘indoors’ sections than I’m used to seeing.
• Ready Up Live put together a Summer ’09 Community Montage – clips from their community, all montaged and such. Looks like fun!
• If you never understood why people make video blogs, you won’t understand why Spartan Z06 made his – he’s an Out of Work Spartan, and this is Episode 1.

That enough to keep you busy for a bit?(Louis Wu 18:05:52 UTC)

Minime637 whipped up a set of panoramas from the gameplay that resulted when fans met Bungie on the field of battle in the Bungie vs the World playlist on Tuesday. Check ’em out!(Louis Wu 17:49:42 UTC)

Gamasutra has a blog post that takes a look back at Halo 3, in an attempt to see how it fit into the progression of Halo games. Mostly, though, it’s a tirade against a particular facet of Halo campaign play. Go read.(Louis Wu 17:45:19 UTC)