Setsuled's Journal

Now Comic-Con's over. Every time I stand up, I feel my feet crumple like soda cans, and yet I sorely miss the Con already.

I feel like all four days are toppling on me now. I'm so tired. But now is the time for blogging. So let's see . . . I'll start with Thursday.

I know I said I wasn't going to promote my comic at the con, but I figured, hell, Comic-Con's just once a year, so after checking out the floor quickly, I went to the portfolio review. I showed up a little later than last year, putting my name on the second page of a waiting list. I started waiting at 10:30am, I think, and waited until after 2:30pm for them to get to me. But the guys I talked to really seemed to like my colouring and character designs. Still, I don't find myself terribly optimistic. Maybe they're waiting until after Comic-Con to do callbacks, but I'm not keeping my hopes up.

Over and over at the Con, I heard from people, from Ray Bradbury to Ralph Bakshi, that it's more important to do what you love than to make money. At least I have that covered.

I went to room 26 that night to see the documentary Lovecraft: Fear of the Unknown, about the life and work of H.P. Lovecraft, featuring interviews with Guillermo del Toro, Neil Gaiman, Peter Straub, and Caitlin R. Kiernan, among others. The interviews were great; Caitlin's comments came off as good impressions of the general mood conveyed by Lovecraft's philosophies. I'm pretty sure I've heard her talk before about Lovecraft's wonderful use of the existential terror caused by impressions of "deep time" in his work, but it was nice to see her talking about it in an official H.P. Lovecraft documentary. And Neil Gaiman did that adorable thing he does with words that end in "st" where he stretches the "s" into a hiss as though he's not entirely sure he's going to get around to the "t". The documentary wasn't perfect; it spent too much time synopsising Lovecraft's stories and there were a few too many documentary clichés, like the slow fade to black on the tombstone accompanied by solitary piano after the narrator says something like, "On March 15, 1937, Howard Phillips Lovecraft died . . ." At one point, the narrator started off with something like, "In 1924, Lovecraft embarked on another kind of relationship," and I thought to myself, "Please don't say he got married, please don't say he got married," and of course, he said he got married.

But I learned one or two interesting things about Lovecraft I didn't know. And you can't beat the lineup of interviews. It's nice to see Lovecraft being analysed.

Room 26 is one of the smallest rooms at the Con, about the size of an average college class room (not the theatre rooms). It was half filled, and yet I still managed to sit next to a girl who decided to talk throughout the entire movie. I consider this rude during any halfway decent movie, but it's especially contemptible when the director happens to be sitting a few feet away, and its the premiere of his movie. I couldn't make out any of what the girl said, but it sounded like she was actually arguing with the narrator. I glanced at her once and saw she wasn't with anyone, so I guess she was just trying to instruct all of us. But I enjoyed the documentary in spite of this and the fact that I really needed to pee.

Well, I think I'll wrap this up here. I'm just too tired right now, and I suppose that's natural after several days of lots of walking and very little sleep. To-morrow I'll probably write something of better length, as I'll undoubtedly be up early and energetic.