Thursday, July 31, 2008

Friday

I should have mentioned that Wednesday night the car parked behind us got broken into. Don heard the smash and tink of broken glass, loud enough to wake him up.

Friday morning revealed another car break-in. Another bullet dodged.

From my journal that day:
"San Diego feels like a city that's faking it, that's blatantly dishonest, like the facades might come down at any moment and it'll be standing there with its pants around its ankles."

Downtown SD is so polished, with skyscrapers and joggers and folks walking their dogs. It's the paradigm of wealth and health. But drive down the wrong street, and the image cracks, like bad reception on your TV. It's a pretty place, just don't go anywhere outside of downtown. More on this later.

Got to the Con Center.

Spent most of the morning on the exhibit floor. Met people, handed out ashcans. Bought some presents for the family.

Tried to get in line for the Spaced viewing around noon. Nothing doing. The line was interminable. I ended up outside, down the rear steps, behind a few thousand people. I relented and headed towards the hall holding the Dr. Horrible panel. Got in just fine, caught the tail end of the Stargate panel. I don't watch Stargate, so I read and wrote.

Dr. Horrible panel - Just absolutely hilarious. Those folks are just as funny unscripted as they are onscreen, if not more so. My fanboy geekout for the day. Or at least one of them. Joss is my master now. Just find the Youtube footage of the panel, I'm not going to waste time trying to do it justice.

The Webcomics Weekly guys and Phil Foglio - Just excellent brainfood. Kurtz and co. get schooled (in a good way) by Girl Genius creator Phil. I don't read PVP, but Scott is genuinely funny in person. At one point he was discussing the reaction he gets when telling syndicated cartoonists about giving his work away for free. He then pantomimed the front of his imaginary tuxedo rolling up like a windowshade, his monocle popping out of his eye, and his bowler flipping on his head. I broke up. In general, the entire panel was school. Phil pulled out sales numbers, his justifications for working with retailers and Amazon, and lots of wisdom. Dave Kellen provided historical perspective on one-on-one entertainment which was very insightful. Just a solid, entertaining, and educational panel. Great stuff.

The Image Panel - Fairly awful. The big announcement was a crossover book with all of the original Image heroes drawn by their creators. It looked jarring and uninteresting. I left after about 20 minutes.

Colleen Doran's Creator Resources panel - Sad anecdotes and irritated looks. Colleen did her homework. It was like watching a Jesuit trying to bring Christianity to a troop of apes. She did an excellent job, and I learned a lot. Sometimes she can seem a little too quick to anger, however. It's a convention, it'll all turn out okay.

Hit the floor some more.

Tried the line MST3k reunion. Impossible. I think at this point we ate at Dick's Last Resort. Headed for the Eisners.

The Eisners are painful to watch. Frank Miller seemed unprepared. Not a natural public speaker. That wouldn't be a problem, except he had the keynote. A disappointment.
The best moments were the Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba acceptance speeches for 5 and Umbrella Academy. Those guys have electricity coming from their fingertips. They are not tired of comics. They love comics, and you could feed on that enthusiasm. It takes some guys from Brazil to tell America what we're doing wrong with comics. There's your "future of comics" right there.

Left early to attend the Spaced screening. Participated in a 2000-strong imaginary gunfight. Watched some Spaced, and laughed.

After the Spaced viewing, Jeremy and I headed for the car. We passed a couple of drunk twenty-something party girls, feeling their way down the sidewalk like they were lost in a cave.

Drove Jeremy down south to his hotel in Chula Vista. The closer I got to Tijuana, the more uneasy I got. The last place I wanted to end up was Mexico at 1am. Found his hotel, dropped him off, managed to avoid a couple of wandering hookers. Couldn't reconcile the excess in SD and the rundown vibe of Chula Vista. Shrug. Relaxed a bit when I got back on I-5, heading away from Mexico as fast as I could.

Drove back to SD, but the GPS provided some inaccurate instructions which led me down to the harbor. Empty streets, traffic lights, and lots of water. It was a GTA3 moment, sitting in the car, staring out at the water, with no one else around. I could have found some crates to smash through, or a cool ramp to jump off of into the bay.

Or I could just get back to the hotel, which I eventually did.

Better day than Thursday, I think.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

More Thursday

- I bumped into Walter Koenig. At least I'm pretty sure it was him.

- Hit the Pitching panel with Mark Waid, James Lucas Jones, and some other editors. Mark Waid wants to crush your soul. Not really. Good panel, and a good splash of reality.

- Attended the excellent Graphic Novels panel moderated by Larry Young. Matt Silady's DIY sensibility is inspiring. Just make your stupid comic book and screw everything else. Just do your thing, and get better at doing your thing. It served as the counterpunch to the "You're Screwed" sentiment at the Pitching panel. Pretty much everyone on the panel was making comics because someone forgot to tell them not to. Gotta pick up the Homeless Channel now, the dude was just so refreshingly upbeat about comics.

That was Thursday. I went to the hotel, ate, and slept.

SDCC 08

Let's have a few words about San Diego Comic Con.

Wednesday night highlights:
- Grabbed a copy of Channel Zero from Brian Wood.
- Berated by Brian Azzarello for not posting more on Standard Attrition.

Thursday highlights
- Got sketches from Geoff Darrow

- Hit the J. Michael Straczynski writing panel, which was a good jumpstart for the con. Got me in the right headspace of "student" instead of "fanboy."

- Caught the last half of DC's Superman panel. Now I know everything about Krypto the Superdog, and I'm a better person for it.

- Caught the Xmen panel with Fraction, Jason Aaron, and a bunch of other X-creators. Axel Alonso and Brubaker were AWOL. Takeaways: I have no friggin' idea what X-men is about anymore. I took copious notes for my buddy Don who could not attend. We went over the notes later, and we both agreed that they were unintelligible. Something about... superheroes... we had never heard of. Although Jason Aaron's new supervillain in Wolverine who can punch people in their soul sounded like a good idea. That was the only point that hooked me during the entire hour.

-Entertainment Weekly did a panel on comic book Visionaries. It was the nexus of all comic book worlds contained within one room. Grant Morrison, Colleen Doran, Mike Mignola, Matt Fraction, Jim Lee, John Cassaday, and Robert Kirkman. It had the potential to wipe Southern California off the map, but overall it was a disappoinment. The moderator was a kid, and her questions were inane. If she was familiar with any of the creators' material, it wasn't apparent. It degraded into long uncomfortable pauses and nervous joking. The one flash of insight came from Grant when he discussed how superheroes are the only future-oriented American archetype, while cowboys, gangsters, etc. are all past-oriented. Worth it to see them all in the same space, but a missed opportunity.