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Ok. Ok. Let's see. Where do I begin? Well, first I apologize for the lateness for my last article for the ComiCon this year. I was finally released from the hospital after being in a coma for the last three weeks. According to the police report I was found unconscious in my hotel room with three dwarves, who were coked out of their minds, jumping up and down on my bed and wrecking the place as I was slumped on the floor. All I can really remember are some very vague Rosemary's Baby like flashbacks of a woman in a Klingon Costume wearing a strap-on. At least I hope that was a woman. And I sure hope that was a strap-on.
Anyways, that's how I've been. How about you? Let's move on. Shall we?
My entourage and I were finally able to get onto one of the free shuttles down to the convention center after being turned away from two previous buses that were already full. The shuttles are usually great but the amount of people at the show this year has really made everything more of a challenge. It took us about an hour or so to get down to the show. When we entered the hall the first thing I saw was a whole group of Stormtroopers standing around just inside the entrance to the hall. They were taking a break from being inside their helmets under the sun. Man, these guys looked beat already and the day was just beginning. To make matters worse I was getting in their faces taking pictures of their sweat drenched faces so I can show them to you all.
My wife, who had flown in the night before, was now with me and we moved in to start covering the main convention hall. One of the first people I was looking forward to seeing this year was David Hartman. I mostly knew of him from his work on www.channel101.com. He is an incredible artist with a brilliant imagination. If you like monsters, zombies, scantily clad chicks and Lovecraft then check out his artwork here: www.sideshowmonkey.com. And my favorite production of his for Channel 101 here: http://www.channel101.com/shows/show.php?show_id=109.
Next we ran into a favorite artist of mine and my wife's, Ted Naifeh, www.tednaifeh.com. If you like your horror and magick swirled together with a dash of Goth thrown in you?ll absolutely have to check out his Courtney Crumrin series, www.thenightthings.com. Courtney Crumrin has been some of my favorite reading in the last couple of years. Ted was nice as ever, but seemed a little distracted while talking to us. While in a conversation with some of the artists at the ComiCon you'll see this happen. They are trying to do two things at once, be there for the fans and be there for business. I can only imagine how difficult it must be. Don't get me wrong though, Ted has always been extremely generous to me. Last year he even did a sketch based on a verbal description I gave him of a character I created from a short story about my wife. It was so great I framed it and gave it to her for our anniversary.
I started to look over the Dark Horse Comics booth again, which is always huge and always chaotic due to a never ending schedule of artist and writer signings. I always throw a glance over to their signing table to see who's there and this time I notice it's an older Japanese gentleman who looks kind of familiar... Holy Shit! It's Kazuo Koike and there is like nobody in line to see him, which works for my benefit but is also a travesty. The man is like the ultimate manga writer in Japan. Even if you have never read Japanese comics you have heard of or seen rip-offs of his work before. For the longest time it was hard to find English translations of his work, but thanks to www.darkhorse.com, that is no longer the case. Their American releases of Lone Wolf and Cub, Samurai Executioner, Lady Snowblood and Path of the Assassin have been the answer to a lot of classic manga fans dreams. So, I go to get in line and the guy in charge stops me saying they were shutting down the signing. My heart sank as I started to ponder how ridiculous I would look standing in the middle of the Dark Horse booth crying like a little bitch. Thank god I have made friends with some of the people at Dark Horse in the past few years. Dirk Wood, their Director of Marketing, sees me and tells the other guy that I'm cool and waves me through the ropes. Now if that isn't cool enough I see my friend Mark Bernardi up ahead and after he sees that I don't have a book to get signed he just give me one. How nice is that? Meeting Koike, although brief, was one of my greatest experiences of the whole show. Thank you Dark Horse.
I got to face a cold, hard reality at the ComiCon this year; if you start out following and supporting an artist from very early in their career, chances are they will become successful, really successful, and much less approachable. In my case it's with Gris Grimly, www.madcreator.com. When I first started following Gris about six years ago he was starting to get some notoriety for some of his illustrations in some kid's books and he was just starting to take on bigger projects. His booth at the Con back then was a little 7' X 5' space where he humbly sat waiting for somebody to stroll by and take notice of his work. Now his real estate at the convention center rivals some of the midlevel publishers. His original works go for thousands of dollars and he has several employees and a promoter working his booth while he turns up during scheduled signings. I am not criticizing Mr. Grimly in any way. He is and has always treated me like a friend. I am thrilled that someone with such talent is finding such great success. I just wish I didn't have to stand in line for an hour to get a book signed.
Someone else I have been following for a while who is surprisingly not more well known is Brandon Bird, www.brandonbird.com. Last year he had a small booth at the show and I was lucky enough to buy a signed print of "The Anguish", http://brandonbird.com/anguish.html, from him. This year I knew he was going to be there, but not with a booth. On his website he said that if anybody saw him walking around to say hi and he would give them a treat. I lucked out and happened to notice him standing around with some friends. I went up and said hi and got two awesome postcards for my trouble. "No one wants to play Sega with Harrison Ford", http://brandonbird.com/ford_aqua_blue.jpg. And "Crimefighters", http://brandonbird.com/crimefighters.html. The man is brilliant and super nice. If I had any say on who would receive the MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant" it would be him. He is the first artist to make a smiley face that is a sequel to their previous entry.
After running into Brandon and getting my reward, my wife and I started heading towards the end of the hall where all the big movie promo booths were. On our way there I noticed a group of young kids traveling in a pack. I recognized one of them as Justin Long the up and coming actor. He was there promoting his latest movie "Accepted". I noticed they all seemed excited about something and that made me curious. One of his friends had found a guy dressed as Harry Potter who had a tank of some kind of pressurized gas under his robe connected to the wand in his hand. When he released the gas it would shoot out in a cool white blast that looked very dramatic. Well, Justin just had to take that and do something funny with it so he bent over and had the Harry wannabe blast him up the keister. It was hilarious and I got quit a few good pics of it.
After all that excitement we were back on track to the movie booths. As I was walking I saw Dan Harmon walking in my direction. I couldn't believe it. One of the founders of Channel 101 and fucking Laser Fart himself, http://www.channel101.com/shows/show.php?show_id=58. I went up to him timidly and muttered, "Uhm. Mr. Harmon." My wife still makes fun of me for calling him Mister. Hey what can I say, the guy is fucking Laser Fart. Another highlight of my life.
As we finally got down to the movie promo area we found it getting more and more dense with nerd flesh. And if that wasn't bad enough we had to deal with security people screaming in our ears to keep moving. There was obviously some kind of big signing going on but I couldn't really get a good look at who was drawing this huge crowd. After poking my head up over the mass of geeks I caught a glimpse of... Holy shit! It's Veronica Mars! I put my camera over my head and started snapping away. After getting a bunch of worthless pics of the back of people's heads I collected myself and started to look for the end of the line for the signing, because it wasn't just Veronica, it was the whole freaking cast. I find the end of the line and start to jump on when the security goon tells me they are shutting down the line and the guy in front of me is the end. So close, oh well, at least I got to meet Laserfart.
The movie booths at the Con are always impressive. My favorite this year was the booth for Guillermo Del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth". The focal point of the booth was a recreation of the giant creepy tree from the movie. Over the tree were two giant banners showing some of the creature design from the film. It looks like it is going to kick so much ass.
Well, I hope you've enjoyed reading about my adventures at the show this year. It's a lot of fun and a lot of work. You get to fight for personal space in a room with a bunch of people you wouldn't want to call friends yet you all have pretty much the same interests and obsessions.
To see all of the pictures from Saturday go here:
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