San Diego Comic Con International 2099

These Con reports are pretty long, so if you have some free time, read them at your discretion. I mean, if you want to feel like you were there, as me. Otherwise, you could be reading the new Spoilers, or the new pushups, which take less time to read.

Anyway, I had fun writing these. After the cut:

Some things I left out

When we first got to the bus stop for the ComicCon shuttle, the line was ridiculous and the wait was sure to be arduous. Fate was at work again, though, because when I went to find some other bus schedule, Emily got to meet Biker Woods. I’m not sure if this was just something that was going on because of ComicCon, but all around San Diego, you could pay $5 – $10 to ride in a pedicab, a little rickshaw pulled by bicycle. Long bus lines are easy targets for pedicab riders, but I doubt any fared better than the one I missed.

“I’m Biker Woods! I eat bikes for breakfast!”

“I rode around Lake Michigan THREE TIMES! I’m 54 years old!” (Apparently, he looked in his 20s)

He lured 5 people away from the line and sped off.

I think Emily only bought one thing for herself on Thursday, this T-Shirt from the Newgrounds booth. Which do you think it is? It came with a red Sharpie to mark your guess and a copy of Giant Robot magazine.

We met Rob Liefield.

Everybody knows that cosplay happens all over comicbook conventions. We saw a lot of slutty Pikachus, a not-so-slutty Umbreon, Scott Pilgrimm characters, almost every Street Fighter, all of Mario’s party, Gokus, Sailor Scouts, X-Men and Jedi. The best one, though, was the one that got away. While we were outside the Exhibition Hall, waiting in line for the bus outta there, I saw a flash of red out of the corner of my eye. Andy yelled “Italian Spider-Man!” and I saw that’s who it was. Somebody had made a near perfect cosplay outfit for one of the best things I’ve seen on the internet for a while (this isn’t too hard, as Italian Spider-Man’s costume looks pretty shabby to begin with). “YESS!!!” But Emily didn’t see him. Andy(UPDATE: Actually it was Emily) and I gave chase but before we could catch up to him, he had crossed the road just as it was shut off to pedestrians. All we could do was watch him disappear into the crowd somewhere. It was pretty sad.

Our meal at Atonia’s (the Mexican place we ate at for dinner) was paid for by Ed “the Kay” Motley, another Board member who was not able to make it to the Con. All he asked for in return was a phone call, so later that night when we had met up with Alex in the Gaslamp District, we stood on K Street and gave Mr. Motley a call. He’s an exceptionally nice guy. (We had also tried to get Board ruffian Jimmy Nova to come up, but he still wasn’t able to). There’s more back story to all this and a lot more was happening at the Con, but it might be more interesting to pick it up from more points of view other than mine.

Antonia's

The Gun Handshake

Where the incident took place

Andy and Chris stayed in San Diego for the night, shacking up in the motel next to where we were staying, so it was much easier to meet up with them for some breffist. We ate at a little deli in Little Italy and sat outside and just shot the shit, Chris revealing small details about his night with famous people and the fact that he likes Harvest Moon.

Going back to the motel, Chris researched 100 things to do in San Diego as Andy invented a brand new handshake based on my handicap (when I was 18 I fell down the stairs and broke my right arm in half. They bolted it back together but since then, I haven’t been able been able to stretch out my ring or pinkie fingers past the first knuckle, resulting in a permanent peace sign or Buddhist Mudra). This is called the Gun Handshake: Make your hand into the shape of a gun, with your two fingers out, two tucked in. Now insert the “barrel” into the tucked fingers of your friend who is doing the same with their hand. Now both of your “guns” sits in the comfy “holster” of the other’s hand. It’s a pretty dope handshake. UPDATE: Read comments for fact-checking.

We’re not the only ones who thought so. As we were doing this, a car pulls up at a red light next to us.

“Hey man, what kind of handshake is that?!”

“It’s a gun handshake!”

“Oh yeah?! Gun Handshake. That like a gang thing? What kind of gun do you got?”

“A handgun… ”(wawh wawh)

As they drove off, Emily turned to us and said “I think you just started something.”

After walking along the pier a little bit, it was time for them to head back to Arizona. We said our sad goodbyes and parted ways.

Friday Meet and Greet

Thursday was for soaking in the Con, Friday was for business, at least that’s what the plan was. I had a stack of business cards that I was going to get rid of. So when we went back to the Exhibition Hall, Emily and I went around to all the indie booths and walked up and down Artist Alley introducing myself to people. Highlights include meeting John Paul Leon (one of my favorite pencilers), Katie Cook (very very cute little cards with all different characters on them. We got a Rat Creature), seeing a somewhat distracted Jim Mahfood, Kevin Church (“Are you the Kevin Church?” “Yes I am, here have some free buttons.”), Robert Goodin (who uses wood like paper!), somebody who was sitting at the booth of Gustavo Alberto Garcia Vaca, Kevin Cannon (I jumped into a conversation about Lulu.com with him and another aspiring creator to plug MagCloud) and Tom Devlin of Drawn & Quarterly (Interestingly enough, the TCJ issue I got from Fantagraphics had an article about Devlin’s former publishing enterprise, which I had not known about. Reading it was kind of heartbreaking and made me want to talk to him again).

He gave me an in with Tom Devlin

Highlights of the highlights were at Lark Pien’s booth and meeting Philip Bond. Lark Pien and Thien Pham were some of, if not the nicest people we met at the Con. We hung out at their booth for some time, talking about how cute Lark’s work was (she had a painting of animal butts!) and the pros and cons of being a full time artist versus having a day job. Very nice experience and she drew in each of the five minis we bought from her.

Philip Bond was in Artist Alley and I had not realized he would be there. I know of him mostly from being the artist for Grant Morrison’s Vimanarama and Kill Your Boyfriend. The latter came out in 1995 and was one of the surprise finds I had made at a flea market Emily and I had gone to a couple weeks before. I had planned to bring all of them with me, but due to packing restraints, I took them all out, but for some reason I had left in Kill Your Boyfriend and brought it to San Diego where it hung out in my suitcase (I had already read it before we left). So it was really funny to me to run into him. He was really nice and he told me how he didn’t even understand what was going on in Vimanarama, and that it seemed like Morisson was making it up as he went along, changing characters’ names between issues. He agreed to sign my comic when we brought it back the next day.

We also met Seth, who was signing at Buenaventura. We got a copy of his little 40 Cartoon Books of Interest for him to sign and draw a little picture in, using a felt brushy pen and blue conte crayon from his old Peanuts pencil case. Good old Seth.

Sometime during the day, I think brought up by seeing Katie Cook’s adorable little Bone drawings, Emily decided she was going to get a Ted the Bug tattoo, and have Jeff Smith himself draw it on her as a template for the tattoo artist to trace. We spent a good part of the day trying to figure out where it would go. Best ideas were on her shoulder or on her finger. We went by the Cartoon Books booth later on and “Is that him?” “I don’t think so, he has long hair” “Yeah, like that” “Oh, now I see him. That’s him.””Oh no, I can’t do it” We decided to come back in a bit (I think after Seth, or to look for Hope Larson) but he was just on his way out when we saw him. He’d be back the next morning though.

I still didn’t have the guts to approach Chris Staros.

Learning how Cons work

The Line

Any review of the show can attest that there were a lot of lines to wait in. We had experienced this pretty quickly, but what we hadn’t figured out was that the Con actually had like, business hours. After we had gotten Seth’s signature, we headed back to the hotel for some veggie burgers and “Deal of No Deal” (happy misspelling). Still thinking about Ted the Bug, Emily knew that she had to read Bone all over again, to see where Ted most often showed up. Figuring that we oughta just buy the Bone phonebook, we headed back to the Convention Center. The problem was, everyone else was evacuating. They had shut down the road and we were the last bus allowed in or out. I guess they had just closed the doors and were kicking everyone out.

(BREAK – Here and Now: hihihihiiii ~Emily)

So we got off the bus to… wait in line for the bus. I’d like to take this moment to thank all the bus drivers we had. We practically had a different one each time we got on a bus, and all of them were friendly (except that one who kicked Andy off for sleeping). Even though we didn’t really do anything, it was a good way to kill an hour before going to bed.