This post is directed at the animals; yes, I hear you, I just don't know what you're trying to say.

I won't count the enormous orange spiders who make webs across the front porch which I inevitably walk through, finding the creatures later dangling frantic from my arm, clothes, or hat. Those show up every summer. Instead, I'll begin with the moth;

Two nights ago, I put the coffee pot under the water dispenser on the refrigerator and reached up to press its button. Instead, my finger jabbed at something that I thought was the rubber nozzle falling off, but in fact it was a large grey moth that fell directly into the centre of the coffee pot. I went out the front door, flicked the pot, and the moth flew away, somehow avoiding the spider webs.

Yesterday morning, I had to leave the house for the usual Thursday reasons, so I decided to drive to the mall. Only a few blocks away from the house, I came to the top of a small hill and suddenly saw a snake slithering across the road directly in front of me. I swerved to avoid it--wouldn't it be funny if it caused an accident? "Snake, why did you cause a car accident?" "Because I'm a snake, it is my nature."

In the evening, I was walking to my parents' house for dinner when I noticed a lone female duck walking next to me. I smiled at her and continued walking. Looking back, I saw her waddling after me.

Friday's barely begun and already a large black spider has crawled across the desk. I'm not too worried; I have a good rep with the spiders around here. Well, except for the orange ones outside, but they have to know I can't help it.

I'm not sure what all this portends.


Groovy, Baby.

I was drawing a few moments ago when I felt this weird tightening sensation on the upper region of my left cheekbone, just below my eye socket. It went away after a moment and I didn't think much about it. Then it came again and went away again. I still didn't think much of it until I glanced at the mirror and actually saw a small depression form in that area in my cheek as I felt the sensation, and then disappear along with the sensation.

It's still doing this even as I type. It looks like my cheekbone has started breathing. I've never had this happen to me before--anyone know anything about this sort of thing? I haven't eaten anything weird this morning--I had a butter croissant and a grande Americano from Starbucks. I'll go eat a banana and see if that helps.

Nope. It's still breathing. I hope this isn't something that's going to make me rue my lack of health insurance. Rue it more, anyway. I hope it doesn't get in the way of me drawing--I seem to have gotten into a good rhythm, and for the past five days I've spent nearly all day of each day working on my comic. I see Dark Horse has the "New Recruits" contest on their site again, and I think I'm going to try for that. But the deadline is December 31 and my project wouldn't be reviewed until next year. Which is actually kind of similar to the other thing I'm considering, applying for a Xeric grant. So in any case, there's no rush, but I guess it'd be nice to have the full mini-series ready for submission.

Damn, my cheek's still breathing. And it's getting more rapid. This is really weird . . .

So Karl Rove's leaving the White House. I guess even he realised there wasn't anything left for him to do. And maybe the subpoenas and Bush's gratuitous invocations of executive privilege to protect him and others started to heat the water too much even for Rove. I still don't think he's in any immediate danger of indictment, but I wouldn't be surprised if the pasty goose-brain flees the country. Probably for the United Arab Emirates.

I don't think Rove's the political genius most people claim he is. I think he was just part of the team who saw the complacency of the American people and decided to take advantage of it. And the peculiar cocktail of pain and intellectual complacency after 9/11 is at least as responsible for Iraq as anything Karl Rove did. I saw a pundit on CNN this morning say this is effectively the end of the Bush administration. I hope that's true, I guess. But it's come far too late.

For my sister's birthday on Monday, our parents took us to see the Dead Sea Scrolls which are currently on display here in Balboa Park. In this picture I simulate the dedicated calligrapher who obviously handwrote all the signage (it couldn't possibly be a Matura font), thus giving one and all the impression of an ancient people, avoiding the stuffy classiness of a simpler font.

Yes, every time you think you've seen the limits of my snobbery, I go one step further.

The exhibit was ridiculously crowded, and it was hard to really look at anything as at the same time everyone was concentrating on not bumping into anyone else. And this was a Monday. And people brought kids--little kids, most of which were running about, some of whom were literally banging their heads against the wall. It never fails to amaze me how far parents overestimate the children whose creativity and curiosity they've ignored or dismissed.

I have a feeling most of the people were there on account of a certain popular novel that inspired a certain studiously lacklustre Ron Howard movie staring Tom Hanks with a skeevy haircut. I fully believe every be-flip-flopped sir or madam was there with some vague idea of cracking the code at last, of finding the secret crossword puzzle hidden by the Catholic Church.

It was interesting stuff to look at, though. Looking at items thousands of years old always gives me a pleasant feeling of vertigo, and actually my favourite item was a two thousand year old shoe, a women's size 5 according to the recorded guide. You could see the imprint of toes and heel in the leather sole.

Anyway, my mother and sister took pictures of me, and I must say I really hate the way I look these days. In fact, I do believe this is my best side;



Don't believe me? Behold!

If you have information regarding the whereabouts of my chin, please contact me.

Finally, here my sister and I leave the exhibit. Yes, she wears flip-flops, but I try not to hold it against her;


Obviously, I need to be doing more than fifty sit-ups a day . . . Or avoid standing next to my sister for photos, at the very least.

A journey inspired by a recent post of Robyn's;



Teach us, Ronald Entity . . .

Some booth in the event hall was giving out big, round cardboard shields to promote the 300 DVD release, and I saw these shields all over the place at and around the Comic-Con. Some companies have learned that a smart way to promote their products is to give lots of people enormous freebies they have to carry around town--I saw a lot of huge, cloth Smallville bags, and big yellow Dark Horse bags.

Whenever someone with a 300 shield got up to ask Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy, and Mike Nelson a question, Corbett insisted they yell "Sparta" as loud as they could before they were allowed to ask their question (there were only two such yells, both of which were a little weak). The three guys were asked what their favourite television shows were. Kevin Murphy said Arrested Development, Corbett concurred, and Mike Nelson said the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes (I was the only one in the room who applauded for that one).

The Film Crew panel ended at seven o'clock, and it was the latest I'd ever stayed at the Comic-Con. I received a call from my cousin Courtney and I learned she and Susan were in line for the masquerade ball. I told them I was tired and was going home . . . so that covers Saturday.

Sunday, the last day of the Con, is always a little sad, not only because it's the last day, but also because it's shorter and there's a whole lot less going on. My sister, Chelsea, went with me that day because the previous day she'd acquired for herself a "Professional" badge. Which is a funny story;

Chelsea had been hired, along with a hundred fifty-nine other girls, to dress like Alice from the Resident Evil movies, wearing red dresses, fishnet tights, Doc Martens boots, and what my sister described as "really bad brown wigs." The girls walked the Con together and were instructed not to smile at anyone or talk to anyone--which made my sister feel bad when one guy approached her and tried to flirt with her.

As Chelsea told me this, I remembered a guy on the trolley Saturday night complaining to his friend about how "the hundred girls dressed the same--in fishnets--all went up the escalator at the same time and created even more of a bottleneck when people had to stop and take pictures of them."

Apparently, no-one knew what they were supposed to be and Chelsea told me she'd heard a few people speculating that they were simply all part of the same class on a field trip.

"Yeah, maybe the streetwalker's school of etiquette," I said.

So my sister and the hundred fifty-nine other girls found themselves backstage Saturday in Hall H, where Chelsea found herself very close to Gwyneth Paltrow, Edward Norton, Robert Downey Junior, and Josh Hartnett even stopped to speak to her, saying, "I wish I'd worn my red dress."

Chelsea was also close to Ali Larter, who must wear some heavy foundation because Chelsea said her face looked like "a baseball mitt." But she said Liv Tyler was absolutely beautiful.

The idea was that the hundred sixty Alices were supposed to go onstage followed by Milla Jovovich to give the audience some kind of "Who's the Real Alice?" puzzle. Only Milla Jovovich accidentally ran out onstage first and Chelsea said all the Sony people standing nearby smacked their foreheads in frustration. So Chelsea never got to go onstage.

But just before she was supposed to, one of the girls' minders helpfully offered to "take those badges now." Chelsea and her friend Flora hid theirs in their boots because, as my sister observed, "that's what big Doc Martens are for."

So I showed up to the event hall with my sister on Sunday morning and wandered a bit (we got there a little early and the guards weren't letting anyone in without professional badges until ten, but Chelsea opted to wait for me). I actually bought something on Thursday, which I just about never do at Comic-Con; Slave Labour was selling these one dollar packages of three comics selected completely at random. The package was brown and covered the comics completely, so there was no way of knowing what you were getting until after you'd purchased the package, which I thought was a really good idea. I still haven't gotten around to reading those comics, though . . . Why doesn't Slave Labour publish more colour comics? Aren't they a big enough company yet? It's the only reason I haven't submitted my comic to them. They work with Disney, for gods' sakes, you'd think they'd be in the money now.

My sister bought herself a Jack Sparrow action figure and we visited Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean display, which was actually pretty cool--a big, fake cave people queued up to enter, and inside was a dark, lantern lit tunnel with original costumes from the movie in display cases. Mostly they were Singaporean pirate costumes, but they were all very intricate and beautiful. One of Keira Knightley's Singaporean costumes was particularly nice looking.

After this, we went upstairs and watched an episode of Azumanga Daioh, which drew a pretty big crowd. Before that, there were significantly fewer people in the room as we watched an episode of a series called Super Gals, which I'd never heard of but enjoyed quite a bit. It's genuine shojo, which I so rarely get from Tim, my regular anime supplier, and very funny. Though looking at the Wikipedia entry, I see the series references a rather disturbing practice in Japan called enjo kosai, wherein older Japanese businessmen legally purchase sex from high school girls. It's apparently not technically considered prostitution but, as Roger Ebert noted in his review of Memoirs of a Geisha, "Here is a useful rule: Anyone who is 'not technically a prostitute' is a prostitute."

Chelsea and I thought about seeing Nicolas Cage and his brother trying to sell their new comic book, but decided to just go home instead.

And so I say farewell to another Comic-Con . . .

After the small press booths, Susan, my cousin's friend, called me and it turned out she was all right except that she'd decided the line was too long for the Heroes panel and so far hadn't done much but wander. I still don't know if Susan ever actually saw anything.

I wandered northwards from the small press booths and, at the Slave Labour booth, I met a really nice British comic book writer who talked to me about how he met his artist, an Italian woman, on the internet. Damned if I can remember his name or the title of his comic, or even what it was about. As I said to Sonya this morning, sometimes I think my head was made for nothing more complicated than breaking ostrich eggs.

I went to the Oni Press booth next and spoke to James Vining, creator of First in Space. It's a comic about a chimpanzee test pilot for NASA named Ham.

"It's good if you like chimpanzees," he said.

"Oh, everyone does," I said. "Except people who lie to themselves."

"Really?" he responded, apparently slightly taken aback.

It was around noon by this point and I was hungry so I decided to get lunch. For the first time this Comic-Con, I ate at the place I ate every day of last year's Con, Pokez. It's more than ten blocks away from the convention centre, but boy, is it ever worth the walk. A great variety of vegetarian options and, most importantly, an enormous bean and cheese burrito with lettuce and stuff for only $3.25. The Con cafeteria is pinned on its face crying, there's no battle.

I thought then about seeing the Joss Whedon panel, but I saw that his panel ended at exactly the time the panel consisting of Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett began. I chose instead to sit through the two panels preceding the MST3K guys in the same room, a decision which secured me a third row seat for that panel. Plus, I got to see J. Michael Straczynski and tell Sonya about it.

The first panel was for The Amazing Spider-Man and was moderated by Joe Quesada himself. The purpose of the panel was to introduce the new writers and artists for the series, which is now going to put out three issues a month. All four of the new writers were there, including Bob Gale, screenwriter for the Back to the Future movies. Looking at his imdb profile, I see he's done little else, but I'm astonished to see that he and Robert Zemekis are credited as writers for all twenty-six episodes of the Back to the Future cartoon series.

Anyway, apparently the plan is to scale back on Spider-Man's presence in other comics in order to consolidate his storyline for comics buyers. The Amazing Spider-Man is to concentrate on Peter Parker's personal life.

Next was J. Michael Straczynski, a writer I've heard many good things about, though I'd not read or seen any of his work since I'd watched He-Man, She-Ra, and The Real Ghostbusters as a kid. He's made Babylon 5 since then and has had a well-received run on The Amazing Spider-Man.

He seemed like an intelligent guy and he was funny and charming. But there's something odd about being the only guy in the room who's not a rabid fan of the person speaking. Straczynski talked like he was only surrounded by those who love him, and I felt slightly like I was watching a couple having tender sex who'd been married for twenty years. I've since picked up a copy of Skin Deep, a collection of a small story-arch from Straczynski's run on The Amazing Spider-Man, and it is indeed good writing.

After him was the panel for The Film Crew, a comedy team comprised of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 writers Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett. I must say, of all the people I've seen at any Comic-Con, those three were by far the most intimidating.

The panel was moderated by a nervous young guy from Shout! Factory who nevertheless tried to maintain a cocky façade. "How many of you are fans of a little show called Mystery Science Theatre 3000?" he asked before the stars were on stage.

The crowd cheered.

"Well you've come to the wrong place." Although the upcoming Film Crew DVDs are essentially new episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, featuring the main three writers doing the same thing--providing joke commentaries for bad old movies--they're for some mysterious legal reasons unable to carry on under the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 name or premise. I, for one, shall greatly miss the puppet robots.

I've watched Mystery Science Theatre 3000 since I was twelve, when the series had already been on air for four years. The voices of Joel, Mike, and the 'bots are inextricably woven into the voices of my subconscious, so maybe that's why it was so strange to be only a few feet away from these people speaking with these voices, and demonstrating remarkably agile and quick wits.

The moderator first called Bill Corbett, the voice of Crow T. Robot in later years of the series, and Corbett came running up from the back of the room amid cheers; his fists jabbing at the air like Muhammad Ali before he took the stage to yell, "SPARTA!" into the microphone.

Next Kevin Murphy, the voice of Tom Servo (my personal favourite), was called to run up to the stage. After finding he'd crawled up on the wrong side of the table, he came around to his seat and cried into his mic, in an uncertain tone, "Athens . . . ?"

Finally came Mike Nelson, to the biggest cheers. I'm not going to repeat what he said.

The audience was treated to extensive clips from three of the four new Film Crew releases, Killers from Space, The Wild Women of Wongo, and Giant of Marathon.

That last movie, sadly enough directed by the talented Jacques Tourneur at what must have been a very depressing point in his career, stars Steve Reeves, familiar to MST3K fans as the star of many a lame Italian Hercules movie. In Giant of Marathon, he plays the clean-shaven Phillipides, opposite a pretty, talentless actress playing Andromeda, whom Phillipides comes upon cavorting with several nubile young ladies in scanty tunics. "This is what the Jihadists think heaven is like," Mike observed.

The Wild Women of Wongo featured an opening narration by Mother Nature herself, who explained that she and Father Time worked together long ago to create these strange, Wongo societies of cave people seen in the movie. After she finished speaking, Mike volunteered narration of his own; "Hi, folks, this is Father Time. Yeah, I bagged that broad Mother Nature. Don't believe a word she says . . ."

I wish I could remember more of what those guys said. Bill Corbett came off as much funnier than I was expecting. But I'm out of time again . . .

Saturday was definitely my favourite day of Comic-Con, for several reasons. I really didn't expect it to be--as it was the day to sell out first, I assumed being there would mostly involve shoving my way through crowds. And yet it turned out to be the day that gave me the least amount of trouble with mass humanity; the busiest day at the Con felt for me like the least busiest day.

I didn't take the trolley that morning because my aunt Gaylene wanted me to accompany my cousin Courtney's friend Susan. Courtney and Susan wanted to go to the Con even though Courtney was working most of the day. Before Courtney showed up, my aunt wanted me to escort Susan because Susan had never been to the Con before and I guess someone, she or my aunt, was wary of the behemoth. So Susan and I got the Convention Centre at around 9:30am, thirty minutes before the Con officially opening.

I didn't talk to Susan very long; apparently she was mainly there to see the entire cast of Heroes, so I talked to her about how silly I thought the ending of season 1 was, and I explained to her my theory about how the writers screwed up with the Haitian character. She didn't say much, and then we were separated at the gates when pre-registers (her) had to go in through a different entrance than people who already had their badges (me). I waited around for her a while in the Sails Pavilion upstairs but gave up after a few minutes. So much for my chaperone career.

There I was with my portfolio and a printout of the first issue of my new comic, and I'd already learned that the portfolio reviews weren't worth my time. So I decided to go downstairs and talk to the people in the small press area of the Event Hall. People were going down there even though it was only 9:45am, but it wasn't very crowded. I've now arrayed about my keyboard all the cards and fliers and little handmade booklets I collected from the various booths and it's sort of dizzying to think I actually had conversations with all these different comic book artists and writers. I can't even quite remember the order in which I talked to everyone, nor can I remember all the faces attached to these comics and cards. I'll do my best, but my apologies to any of you who might actually be checking my blog and getting miffed that I utterly forgot a long, meaningful conversation we had.

The first person I spoke to was a guy who worked on a comic called SPaZ. I glanced through his comic and told him I liked the colouring. I showed him some of my comic and he told me I definitely ought to join the west coast chapter of a comic artist guild. Apparently, it's a bigger thing on the east coast. Considering I've noticed that another two comic book stores have closed around here recently, I'm beginning to think comics are more of an east coast thing in general.

Let's see, I'll just go by cards here . . . Kelli Nelson was pretty cool, and seemed like she had a good sense of humour. Her books were in some amazing, handmade bindings, and she told me about a specific dye or material she used for one book in order to get an interesting thick, glossy texture with oddly good traction.

I met Randy Reynaldo at his booth, and he seems like he has a very nice comic . . . Val Hochberg, creator of a comic called Kick Girl, seemed very sweet, giggled a lot, and really seemed to like my comic.

I met Brion Foulke, creator of Flipside, the only creator I met Saturday whose comic I'd actually read and the only comic creator who'd actually read Boschen and Nesuko. That was a rather pleasant surprise. He told me he really liked my work, and that he didn't always say that to people. I told him I liked his, which I do, though I haven't read more than two-thirds of the Flipside archive. He was doing a radio show or something at the time I spoke to him and I told him he had kind of a radio voice. He was with the creator of another comic called Paradigm Shift, which also looks well drawn.

In the booth next to him was Jennifer Brazas, who I think is Brion's girlfriend, and also the creator of Mystic Revolution. I had a slightly odd conversation with her because she and I were wearing exactly the same hat and glasses (though her fedora had a c-crown). She looked through some of my stuff at Brion's urging.

"You'll like it, it has naked women," he said.

"So I see," she said, for although I'd thought about restricting my portfolio to my less explicit work, I actually had a really hard time finding any significant groupings of pages that didn't feature at least a few NC-17 items. So I didn't bother with self-censorship, which really perturbed the creator of Zecta, to whom I'd spoken earlier. Upon looking at my comic, the first thing he very soberly said to me was that I ought to have a mature content warning on my cover. He seemed very concerned that children might get a hold of my comic.

"It's very hard for me to think that way," I said. "I'm too much of a pervert."

I don't think this was a statement he appreciated. He was also the only person to tell me I needed to replace my handwritten lettering with computer text. We may very well have been broadcasting at polar opposite wavelengths. His comic is about robotic insects.

I spoke very briefly to the creator of Bob the Angry Flower, who was wearing a very stylish cardboard headdress of yellow petals. The comic sample I picked up from his booth was very funny, too.

I spoke to three of the makers of Bushi Tales, and we admired samples of each others' comics, noting how we seemed to be exploring mildly similar design concepts. I had a very interesting conversation with Bushi Tales artist/Co-Creator Lin Workman about colouring programmes. He uses PhotoShop, the industry standard, while I'm still using my 1998 shareware copy of Paint Shop Pro 5 (who wants a copy? Here you go. Now you can colour exactly like me. Results may vary).

There was another artist I spoke to who had some very good stuff, but I seem to've completely lost her card . . .

Next to her was Athena LaRue, creator of The Adventures of Onion Boy, and she seemed very intrigued by my work, just from overhearing me discussing it with the girl whose card I lost. LaRue's comic is rather nice looking, like a cross between Tim Burton and Maurice Sendak.

I spoke to GB Tran and we had a conversation about the butterfly effect, how he used it in his comic, and how unfortunate it is that there's an Ashton Kutcher movie of the same name. I pointed out that I'd heard a character in a Star Wars game refer to the unforeseen dramatic effects the flapping of a mynock's wings can have, so maybe the concept is adequately proliferated in our pop culture regardless of Ashton Kutcher.

There was another guy I spoke to who was charging fifty cents for his little cards bearing his URL.

"Fifty cents for one of your cards?" I said, thinking he hadn't understood what I wanted.

"Yes," he said with perfect sincerity.

"Er, I'll pass." So no link for him . . .

I then made for a booth for a comic called The Devil's Panties. I spoke to its creator, Jennie Breeden, who was wearing a really cool tan coloured, space military looking coat. She explained to me the comic is autobiographical, so I asked the obvious question; "Do you wear devil's panties?"

"We figure the devil would go commando, actually," she explained, and I could tell she's answered the question many times before.

I'd have advised her to own the concept, say, "Yeah, I wear the devil's panties, and they're always on fire!" or something. She seemed to like my comic, and recommended I use a site called www.lulu.com for my self-publishing needs, though she said my comic, being in colour, might be quite expensive.

"I knew I was doing the bad thing when I went with colour," I said, sighing. "But I did it anyway . . ."

Next I spoke to Kelly Lynn Jones, who was quite appalled when I told her about the guy charging fifty cents for his cards. She gave me a card and a nice postcard, free of charge,

Well, it's time I did something else to-day, so I'll finish Saturday next time. Yes, there's more. Lots more . . .

So where was I . . . ?

Ah, I forgot to mention that Zack Snyder actually won a few points with me when he talked smack about the V for Vendetta movie. In discussing the fact that there has yet to be a decent movie based on an Alan Moore comic, Snyder said, "The problem with V was that the filmmakers acted like Alan should be so lucky that they were making a movie from his comic--that they knew better."

Fifty points. But 300 still sucked.

Anyway, after the Warner Brothers presentation, I waited in line at the Con cafeteria until I got close enough to the menu to read that a small, notoriously awful pizza cost eight dollars. So I walked to Horton Plaza and got a nice slice with tomatoes and feta cheese and things for less than four dollars. That's how it's done, as Mitsurugi would say.

I was rather disappointed to notice later that I'd missed Ridley Scott doing a panel about the new Blade Runner cut, but I was upstairs seeing Neil Gaiman speak. I figured it just wouldn't be Comic-Con if I didn't see Gaiman at least once.

This was in Room 6CDEF, which is one of the larger rooms upstairs. There was an enormous line upstairs, but at least we were inside. Ahead of me was a middle aged man leaning on a cane and wearing an extraordinarily placid smile. For some reason, he decided to speak to me; "Seen anything interesting so far?"

Maybe it was because he was so peculiarly calm, but after a brief description of the Warner Brothers presentation, I let into a bitter rant about 300, going on about how it was misogynistic, homophobic, and racist. The man nodded peacefully, smiling, saying, "Yes, that's what I read."

"I'd like to see a good adaptation of an Alan Moore comic . . ." I said.

Behind me was a guy in a button down white shirt and little glasses accompanied by a female assistant-type lady. The man said, "Couldn't [so and so] get us in?"

The woman replied, "[So and so] was talking to [someone else] and [someone else] and finally she had to start saying 'no'--She said everyone--everyone wants a piece of Neil."

"He's like a god," said the man.

I got a seat near the back of the room next to a dark haired kid I could see staring at me in my peripheral vision. I didn't really mind being far away--there are huge screens, and I have no desire to touch Neil, as much as I like his writing.

The crowd cheered as he got on stage and the first thing he said was something like, "There's nothing like looking out on a crowd of several thousand people and thinking . . . I really should have prepared something."

In fact, mostly he repeated almost verbatim a few stories from his blog. He actually took off his leather jacket at one point--a garment that's always looked slightly ridiculous in San Diego weather--and thousands of female voices screamed.

"What was that?!" he asked his swooning masses.

The guy actually looked like he was in better shape than I remember him in previous years and in DVD special features. Though the dark circles under his eyes were much darker.

He told a story about this line of "Scary Trousers" shirts people are selling featuring a cartoon image of himself. Apparently the phrase comes from an incident where Gaiman, having lunch with Alan Moore, became slightly ill when Moore discussed in detail some of the more gruesome moments of From Hell, which he'd been writing at the time. As Gaiman had to step out for, I think, the third time for air, Moore said, "Well, well, well. Neil 'Scary Trousers' Gaiman . . ."

Gaiman said Moore is very tall, and looms, and is hairy, and it occurred to me later, after on Saturday I'd seen J. Michael Straczynski mention Moore as example of a truly great comic book writer, that Alan Moore looms over the entire Comic-Con, even moreso because of his perpetual absence, year after year. I see from the Con's Wikipedia entry that he was at Comic-Con in 1985 "in his only U.S. convention appearance." He's like a vast, dark shadow over everything.

So maybe Gaiman's more of a steward. Alan Moore's the god.

Anyway, I have to cut this short on account of it being Thursday . . .

Friday I made it a point to be in Hall H in the morning. Hall H is where the big studios shill their stuff, and Thursday I'd missed the Paramount presentation, which, from what Tim's friend Amber had described, sounded fantastic, with stuff about the new Indiana Jones, Star Trek, Beowulf, and Stardust. I learned later that there was even a full screening of Stardust.

So I caught the Warner Brothers presentation on Friday. Hall H is the biggest panel room in the convention centre, but there are always thousands of people trying to get in, so this year the line stretched outside the convention centre and wrapped around the back of the building. I had to wait under the sun once this year, after all. Matters were made worse by the poor separation of lines--I saw a skinny Superman near the front of one line, only to later see him gloomily trudging to the back of the line I'd gotten into. Overhead, a skywriter wrote, "HA HA HA." This turned out to be marketing for the new Batman movie, but the Joker's sting was felt by many that day, I think.

Actually, the line starting moving pretty fast after I'd gotten into it. It wasn't long before I was in the big dark chambre where I'd seen the absolutely wonderful panel for Grindhouse last year, though I wasn't to see anything half as interesting this year. Immediately upon entering the room, everyone was handed big white t-shirts with "CONTROL" printed in big black letters on the front and "KAOS" on the back. This was for the new Get Smart movie, and the film's director, Peter Segal, appearing on stage, followed shortly by cast members Nate Torrence, Masi Oka, Ken Davitian, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and Steve Carell.

I'm a big fan of Steve Carell, despite the fact that I have trouble maintaining awareness of Evan Almighty. He was my favourite correspondent on The Daily Show, he was the best part of Little Miss Sunshine, he's great in the American version of The Office, and I even liked The 40 Year-Old Virgin.

Vague speculation I'd heard months ago that Carell actually might have a tighter grip on Get Smart's creative reins than its mediocre director seems perhaps to have been accurate. Carell unabashedly answered a question about the movie's vision;

"I wanted the world to feel like the world of The Bourne Identity." When people laughed, he said, "No, I'm serious." He explained the threat in the movie, personified in a villain played by Terrance Stamp, is meant to seem very real. Carell said he didn't want an unrealistic world around his bumbling character because, in his opinion, it's much funnier when such a character is up against realism.

I'm not sure I think it's necessarily funnier, though I think it can be. But it might make for a better film. Certainly such a philosophy falls in line with all of Carell's best work to date.

The Rock was actually pretty charming, and I'm always surprised by how much I like him in interviews, despite the fact that I've never felt slightly inclined to see one of his movies. There's actually an affable guy under the thick gloss of fake sweat. When a kid asked if they had any funny, behind-the-scenes stories, Carell said, "Peter Segal never wore pants for the entire shoot." The Rock added, "Yeah, and he always wanted us to call him 'Big P'."

Masi Oka received an enormous applause when he came on stage, and several feminine screams of adoration. He always seemed awe-struck by what had probably been a pretty consistently effusive fan-reaction at the Con. He awkwardly explained his and Nate Torrence's roles in Get Smart as being tech guys, sort of the movie's Q, but explained their gadgets don't always work properly, adding a very self-conscious sounding, "Yikes."

Ken Davitian, a large man who played Azamat Bagatov in Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, last appeared at Comic-Con in the form of some preview footage of himself and Sacha Baron Cohen fighting naked in a hotel. So when asked about his role in Get Smart, he replied simply, "I get to wear clothes."

The notorious nude footage had apparently been a point of discord between Twentieth Century Fox and the Comic-Con administration as those latter folks, trying to market the Con as a family event, were unhappy not to've been told about the Borat footage ahead of time. So this year, Con administrators insisted on screening any footage studios planned to present before it appeared before the Con audience. Which was kind of funny in light of the fact that, after Get Smart, Warner Brothers gave us two fairly gore and horror laden previews. First to The Invasion, which was accompanied only by a perfunctory and substanceless recorded introduction by Nicole Kidman, and then for a remake of a Takashi Miike movie called One Missed Call. The movie's stars, Edward Burns and Shannyn Sossamon, appeared onstage. She seemed incredibly nervous, while he seemed comfortable and charming, explaining he plays "the cop with the heart of gold who doesn't try to sleep with her."

After them came the gory trailer for Whiteout. Appearing on stage were producer Joel Silver, director Dominic Sena, creator of the source comic Greg Rucka, and, after a fifteen minute delay, the film's star, Kate Beckinsale. Beckinsale is another one of those stars who's so much better to see interviewed than to see acting in a movie. She seems to be one of the most charming people in Hollywood, making cute references to crewmembers groaning whenever she bent over during the filming of Underworld, and gamely grinning and waving at the audience as the panel ended. I get the impression that she has kind of a domineering husband, though, as she kept prefacing things by saying, "Well, my husband would think," or, "My husband probably wouldn't want me to." She also explained she probably wouldn't be in a James Bond movie because it would require her to appear in her underwear, and she thinks she's "getting a bit elderly for that." For the record, she's thirty-four. No-one throw beverages at her, okay? She seems really sweet otherwise.

The funniest part, though, was when a small kid asked a twitching Dominic Sena, who looked like he'd just snorted a Radio Flyer wagon full of cocaine, if the cast and crew played any pranks on each other.

"Oh, they're probably a little too X rated for you," he said. "They involve Kate and dildos . . ."

A moment later, Greg Rucka said to Sena, "You realise that kid was like seven, right?"

The big event of the Warner Brothers presentation, though, was Zack Snyder, who appeared at first alone onstage, but was later joined by two cast members of his upcoming Watchmen film, Malin Akerman, who'll play Laurie, and Jackie Earle Haley, who'll play Rorschach. Both actors, I'll admit, actually look like their roles. Though they didn't get to speak at all. I heard Haley say, "That's passion" to Akerman when a fan dressed as Rorschach got up to ask a question, but otherwise it was only an intriguingly inarticulate Zack Snyder speaking.

As much as I didn't like 300, I felt kind of bad for Snyder when someone asked him if Watchmen might finally be the movie Alan Moore keeps his name on. Snyder sadly replied, "No, he's already said he doesn't want his name on the movie." He said, "We all want to please Alan . . . it's not so much to ask, wanting the guy who actually creating the fucking thing to like your movie . . . I just hope some rainy day in England he'll put in the DVD--and he probably won't--and say, 'They didn't fuck it up that much.'"

I must say, though, that if I'd never seen 300 and I didn't think Watchmen could be done in under a five hour running time, I'd actually be pretty optimistic for the film based on what Snyder said; it's going to be rated R, it's set in the 1980s, Snyder wants to include the Black Freighter segments, and he even wants to keep Sally Jupiter's poodle haircut.

Well, that's all I have time for to-day, and I still haven't told everything interesting about Friday. Tune in next time . . .

So Comic-Con's over again. I have much to tell but I think I'll begin by saying I saw Sailor Mercury bend at the waist. I was behind her.

Little white panties.

But that was Saturday. I'll start with Wednesday, which was Preview Night. I didn't have to wait at all for my badge, unlike thousands of poor schlubs who queued up around the convention centre under the cruel Yellow Face. It actually wasn't so hot this year, never getting above 85 degrees, a significant difference from last year's 111 degrees.

At 2:30pm I started walking towards the Con from a sandwich shop I'd stopped at six blocks north of the Convention Centre and I already started seeing people walking past me with badges. The site had said pre-registered people could start picking up their badges at 3pm, but as seemed to happen so frequently at the Con this year, the mob forced things to move a little faster, which probably explains why I was able to get to the event hall at 9:45am on Saturday, fifteen minutes before opening.

The Wikipedia entry says there were two hundred thousand attendees this year, and I can certainly believe it as the masses of people built up around the front of the convention centre were slower and more dense than I'd ever seen at any previous Con. Even on preview night, navigating the event hall was difficult. I didn't hang around that day as I was really just happy to've gotten my badge so early, meaning I could simply walk right in on Thursday morning and perhaps thereby gain some advantage at the portfolio reviews.

Joining me on Thursday were Tim and his friend Amber. We took the trolley, which is roughly an hour trip from Santee to the convention centre. The trolley stops in front of the centre where its track runs parallel to that of an actual train. As I said, masses of people were attempting to move to and fro all day, every day of the Con, and these people had not only to contend with crossing the busy street, but also the trolley track and the train track. We had to wait nearly ten minutes for a train engine with a single car attached to stop in the middle of everyone's path and blow its extremely loud horn several times. The conductor was leaning out the window and he looked familiar. To Tim, I said, "Is that Ben?!"

"It could be," said Tim. "He always wanted to be a train conductor."

And I remembered then how Ben, whom Tim and I knew from elementary school and high school, would ride his bicycle with a small electric light on his helmet, and how, when he'd gotten a car, he'd attached massive, working train horns to it--I think he actually got pulled over for that one. Ben wasn't a talkative guy; he communicated by being annoying.

So when Tim wondered why the train was simply stopped there in everyone's way, I said to him, "It has to be Ben. And he wouldn't even understand that he's pissing everyone off."

During the Warner Brothers presentation on Friday, Kate Beckinsale was about fifteen minutes late because, she said, her car was caught behind a train.

Anyway, after the train backed up--that's right, after all that, it went back the way it came--I was indeed able to walk right into the Con. Tim was buying his badge that day, so he had to wait a long time, and Amber, who'd pre-registered, had to wait ten minutes longer than Tim, which goes to show something. I guess, unless you did it like me and registered for the four day pass and picked it up on preview night, pre-registering has ceased to be an expedient and has become merely a way of getting a badge before they sell out, as they did, for the first time this year.

I quickly found the little portfolio review area and discovered I'd overestimated the number of people who'd be there--there was never more than three hundred comic book artists waiting there at a time. I managed to get my name on the first page of the Dark Horse call list and sat down with everyone else. One of the first things I noticed is that we almost all of us looked the same--guys in our late twenties or early thirties with ponytails. I was the only one with a fedora, though there were plenty of those elsewhere at the Con. The standard issue hat for the aspiring comic book artist seems to be a backwards fitted baseball cap, usually navy blue in colour.

Although I was on the first page of the call list, the wait was kind of excruciating because I had to go to the bathroom really bad. I didn't want to leave because I saw that the few bozos who did, for what ever reason, walk away were skipped over after the girl called their names a few times. So I sat and watched Dark Horse Senior Editor Randy Strandley talking to one guy after another--and one very gorgeous auburn haired girl in a long brown skirt. I don't know what anomaly she came from.

In the Comic-Con schedule, the Dark Horse portfolio review thing read thusly; "Dark Horse editors will be reviewing the storytelling work of professional-level comics artists. They will be looking at consecutive story pages only, with an eye toward storytelling as well as drawing skills. A minimum of five consecutive pages is required. Please bring your most recent work. Artists with cover paintings, inking or color samples, pinups, or sketches are invited to submit work by following the instructions at www.darkhorse.com/company/submissions.php. It is suggested that this review be treated as a job interview."

The sign at the review explicitly requested portfolios from pencillers only. Despite the fact that I've always considered my pencils the sloppiest in the world, I got my hopes up for some reason. I'd printed up five consecutive story pages from Moving Innocent as well as the pencil versions of those pages. Here's the first of the five I showed to Randy Strandley;



The first thing he said was, "You have a long way to go." He told me to go downstairs to the event hall and look at some original pencils. He said it would be a real eye-opener. I was a little irritated by the suggestion that'd I'd never seen pencils before--I showed him some finished pages from my new project, which, I explained to him, is from the first issue of a five part mini-series I'm trying to get published.

He said that, since I was that far along, I ought to submit it to a contest Dark Horse holds on their site for new creators at certain times of the year. And that was that.

I didn't bother with any of the other portfolio reviews--the whole thing wasn't nearly as useful as I was expecting. The schedule listed only twenty-one companies reviewing portfolios, and most of them were either video game companies, people looking for conceptual artists, or people wanting artists to do specific kinds of imitations. These weren't the publishing avenues I was looking for. So it's back to submitting this new series to comics publishers through the mail, which I've only just begun to do anyway. And if that fails, I'll try self-publishing, something I got a great deal of advice about on Saturday when I spoke to people at the small press booths downstairs. But that'll be another entry . . .

To be continued . . .

I was at Grossmont Centre in my dream last night--Grossmont Centre being a mall near here, except in my dream it was Grossmont Centre as it was when I was a kid, and it still had the cinema where I barely remember seeing Supergirl (1984). In my dream, I was trying to buy minutes for my phone, and the first place I tried was the cinema where a big bearded guy at the concession stand sold me fifteen dollars worth, which happens to be exactly what I bought yesterday in the waking world.

After buying minutes in the dream, I wandered the mall a while before deciding I wanted more minutes. I went back to the cinema only to find the interior had completely changed. It was now a dimly lit bar run by two elegant, beautiful, dark-haired Russian women. The older of the two explained she couldn't sell me minutes until I purchased a hundred dollar insurance contract from her. She was smiling and looking down her nose at me so I could tell she was toying with me and didn't care if I could tell. The younger woman was trying not to laugh at me. I liked those two.

Anyone else wonder if global warming is actually caused by secret experiments with an ancient, gigantic creature in Antarctica?

After much going up and down stairs yesterday, my room is finally back together and I have a desk again so I think I'll do some drawing to-day.

I've been getting up at 8:30am lately. Can you believe it? I've been setting my alarm so I don't continue sleeping when it feels natural to do so, despite the fact that I've been getting to bed at 12 or 12:30. I don't have much time for anything before bed except one of Sonya's poems, so I haven't been watching many movies lately. Last night I watched the final episode of Harvey Birdman (see below), which featured the supremely triumphant return of Stephen Colbert ("Ha ha ha! Final episode stunt casting!").

Looking forward to Comic-Con still. That's why I've been sleeping at night. That and the broken air conditioner, though it's been a little better since my grandmother let us open windows at certain times of day (she's now afraid of mould flying in the windows). I finished bringing things into my room and unpacking this morning (though a few bags remain in my car). I actually made some attempt to organise my books, especially my manga, but it's kind of impossible with so many things wedged in a garage. What I wouldn't give for a place with book shelves . . .

I've been thinking. We've heard recently that Al-Qaeda's back to it's pre-9/11 strength. We've heard that Michael Chertoff has a gut feeling there'll be an attack during the summer. And now Fox has suddenly, mysteriously pulled out of the Comic-Con.

There's going to be more than 123,000 people there this year. Friday, the second day of Comic-Con, is 7-27.

Ah, hell. I'm still going.

The air conditioner's broke, and it's hotter inside than it is outside, where it's 84 degrees. I've been through worse; it got to be 111 during Comic-Con last year, but I don't seem to be handling heat very well lately. It's making me sluggish and confused. I did get to use my mother's office a few days ago, though, and got a little drawing done. Otherwise, I'm not sure what I'm doing. To be honest, I'm not sure I ought to be doing anything. I have one printout of the comic I'm submitting to publishers and I can't afford another colour ink cartridge right now. So I think I'll save this one for portfolio review at the Comic-Con, and if no-one seems interested in it, I'm not sure that there's a whole lot of point in doing a second issue.

I do feel slightly encouraged about this work, though. I'm thinking I'll turn it into a five-shot mini-series, as that's close to the sort of thing a lot of publishers seem to want (this Wikipedia page is enormously helpful).

Anyway, it'd be awfully convenient if I oughtn't to be doing anything right now and I kind of can't do anything right now. Even if I had a desk, I don't know if I could work in this heat.

My aunt's friend Violet came to visit, and the timing of her bargain flight was rather bad as there's no more bedrooms left here and she's had to sleep on the floor in an air mattress. I offered the guest room I'm occupying, but it was not wanted, possibly because there are no washed sheets. And Violet couldn't get a hotel room because they're all booked for Comic-Con.

Oh, yes. For those of you who don't know about the size of Comic-Con, know that every hotel in San Diego county is full up more than a week before the first day of the Con. It gets bigger every year, last year there were 123,000 attendees, and this year the four day passes have already been sold out for a few days. I'm looking forward to this.