So ends the first tournament.

Absolutely. And depending on the type of tournament will decide whether or not I will judge either.

Comic book characters could work.

I'm down for it, but I agree we should try something different than video game characters this time.

I think mini tournaments from different genres of games would be nice, like RPG battles, Action battles, Adventure battles, etc with less characters than the normal tournament.

There are plenty of examples of other genres of entertainment to draw characters from. Movies, comics, books and anime would be a number of prime candidates. And, as King suggested, there's the possibility of further specifying certain categories with which to hold a series of smaller tournaments. Examples might be "Final Fantasy Characters", "Anime Villains" or "Marvel Comics Characters". There are a number of possibilities for future tournaments. That discussion, however, will be examined at greater depth in the next few days.

Well...how about the aspect of using real people? Kinda Celebrity-Deathmatch-ish. Clinton, Bill Gates, Paris Hilton, Bush, Kerry, Hillary Duff, etc and so on.

Just an idea.

You can't really show strengths and weaknesses there as easily as from games.

I'd prefer mini tournaments to big tournaments, but that's probably because this one went on way too fucking long.