International Comic Con was held this past month in San Diego, California and I had the fantastic opportunity to attend with several good friends of mine. I had plans to spend lots of time attending panels and learning all sorts of things about comic book art and copyright laws, but instead I was talked into working in one of the booths on the floor. So a good portion of my perspective on the con comes from someone with an exhibitor's badge, which is a bit different from a normal con attendee in that. Well we got into the hall a good hour earlier then everyone else, and so we were able to wander around and look at things before the crowds surged, but it also meant that I spent more time on the floor then I intended to. That being said, I still had a massive amount of fun and plan to attend next year, probably as an exhibitor again.

I decided to attend Comic Con on the spur-of-the-moment. My good friend Mike and I came up with a plan to surprise our friend Kris, and that was my primary reason for going to San Diego. The plan went off without a hitch Thursday morning. . .

Thursday July 17th.

I'd flown in the previous day and spent a little time at the zoo looking at the pandas and checking out the sites, but I was still on my own time zone (two hours ahead of San Diego) when I woke up bright and early Thursday morning. Dawn and I puttered around her and Mike's apartment a bit before we headed off to the airport to surprise Kris. After a total and complete, but very happy surprise on Kris' part, we headed for the convention hall. Kris was flying in to actually work at Comic Con with another friend of ours, Mary Lee. Mary Lee (aka Mommy Ferengi) is a vendor specializing in mostly TV/Movie memorabilia. She sells at several sci-fi/movie/comic book conventions worldwide, but Comic Con is easily one of the largest and she can always use the extra help. A quick call to Mommy to let her know we were on the way drafted me to help as well. Dawn dropped us off at the convention hall and headed off to find an open parking lot, while Mary Lee met us at the door with exhibitor's badges.

My chief task for the weekend, as it was explained to me, was going to be a good "Baby Ferengi" and scrounge. One of the great things about most conventions like this is the amazing amount of really cool free stuff that can be found on the dealer's floor. Over the weekend, I procured half a dozen buttons with various things on them, four new t-shirts, posters, mangas, models and a limited edition set of Star Wars and Lord of the Rings lithographs.

Thursday turned out to be quiet, and relatively uncrowded. A lot of people were still flying in. I saw a lot of people strolling around with their luggage as if they'd come directly from the airport to the convention center, and hadn't bothered to stop at the hotel first. I spent a great deal of time wandering the floor looking at things and simply taking it all in. The dealer floor was at least two football fields in length (or about 200 yards or a bit less then 200 meters). It was full of booths from one end to the other, with the largest booths from people like New Line, DC Comics and Bandai in the middle of the hall. On one end of the hall was an art gallery where amateur artists could display (and sell) work for the cost of 35 dollars per display panels. On the opposite end was Artist Alley, where a lot of professional comic book artists were on hand drawing, signing autographs and selling original panels from comic books and other things. Somewhere in the midst of all the rambling, we managed to stumble on to the Froud booth, where they were selling all sorts of prints. Brian Froud himself was in attendance, doing sketchbooks, signing autographs and chatting with fans. They also had a few originals on display. In case anyone is wondering what it takes to bring an original Froud home with you, the ones on display ranged from $8K to $10K.

Brian Froud and his booth
There were several panels going on Thursday, but the only one I managed to attend was a Neil Gaiman panel, where we viewed his short film "A Short Film About John Bolton". The film seems to be a documentary until you realise about three-quarters of the way through the film that it can't possibly be one. Neil said he got the idea from a forward he'd written about the real John Bolton for one of his art books. The real John Bolton is in the film, though not playing the principal lead. For those of you who aren't familiar with the artist John Bolton, he's most famous for his paintings of female vampire nudes. The Q&A consisted mostly of people asking about his inspiration for the film, when it would be released--currently the company that had made it was working on another film, but they had several people interested in distributing the DVD and when they finished making the other film, called Layer Cake, they'd get back to looking for distributors for North America and other regions. I was really very impressed with Neil Gaiman, before this Q&A I'd never really read anything that he'd done. I was familiar with the name thanks to my work on Elfwood, and if asked I could have connected his name with Sandman, though to be honest I thought he was an artist, not a writer. I found him to be very witty and humorous. After the Gaiman Q&A we all decided we were a bit tired and hungry, so we headed for a restaurant and then home to bed.

Friday, July 18th

Friday morning, again, dawned bright and early, about two hours ahead of when it needed to because my biological clock was unfortunately still on the earlier time zone. After a quick fast food breakfast, Dawn, Kris and I found ourselves back at the convention center. With an exhibitor's badge we were allowed right in to the hall. Since I'd finally remembered to bring the camera, I took several pictures of various displays, including the DC Comics and Weta displays without people being in the way.

The preciousss disssplay

Then I headed to the booth where Kris and I got our marching orders. Our mission for the morning was to stand in the line. I would pretty much spend the remaining three days of the con standing in one line or another. The particular line we were told to stand in Friday morning was a line for con exclusive Bobba Fett figurines. Our job was to wait till they started selling, which they did at about 10am, and then get our hands on our allotted amount, which was two. They stamped our badges so that they'd know if we tried to head through the line again. Once we'd gotten our figurines, Kris got one of those she bought signed by Jeremy Bullock, who had played Bobba Fett in the original series. By the time we'd finished up, the hall was open for everyone, and we joined Dawn, who didn't have an exhibitor's badge. She'd heard from someone that Stan Lee was going to be signing autographs in one of the upper halls, so she and I headed out to find something for him to sign for Mike who was unfortunately still stuck at work. At first we went for something simple, a picture from the recent Spiderman movie, or even a photo of Stan Lee himself, however we didn't find anything like this, so Dawn broke out the credit card and we set off to find something really good. The day before we'd stopped at a booth to admire animations cells from various comics, so we headed back to that booth. While the sales people tried to sell me a cell featuring the Girls of Gotham. The conversation went something like this…

Me: "So…How much is the cell?"
Sales person: "$800"
Me: *gasp* *gurgle* "Um…geee…well it's a lovely picture"
Sales person: "Well we can do a payment plan, say $200 over the next few months?"
Me, knowing I'd pretty much have to forego paying my rent to buy the picture: "Right, lovely, I'd have a picture then, but no where to hang it"

Comic creator Stan Lee signs some art.

Needless to say, the Girls of Gotham didn't come home with me. Dawn found a cell from the original Spiderman series. Once she'd made her purchase, we went upstairs to where they were holding the autograph signings and waited in line. . .and waited in line. . .and made friends. . .and waited in line some more. Standing in line is a great way to get to know the other people who come to conventions. Let's face it, there's not a whole lot else to do when you are standing in a line, besides talk to the other people standing in line and see what they've brought to get signed. The hour and a half or so we spent waiting in line paid off, because we were very close to the beginning, and they'd cut the line after a certain point, because Mr. Lee was only going to be signing for an hour. Unfortunately no one really got to chat much with Mr. Lee, but we all got plenty of pictures, and I was very pleased that he'd been amused by my T-shirt which had the simple phrase "No, I will not fix your computer." across the front.


Farscape panel
After we got out of the autograph line we checked our watches and realised it was very close to the beginning of the Farscape Panel. So we grabbed a cookie and then Dawn and I headed to the large room where they were holding the panel. To ensure that we got good seats, we sat in on the last bit of the Rob Zombie panel. The break between the two panels was a rather chaotic mess. For every person trying to leave the front of the room, there was double that number trying to get to the front of the room to get a seat, because all seating in the convention was first come first serve. Dawn and I ended up fairly close to the front and over to the left of the main stage. The actors came in and made a big deal of switching name cards and saying hello. In attendance were Ben Browder, (John Crichton), Lani John Tupu (Bialar Crais/Voice of Pilot), Wayne Pygram, (Scorpius) Jonathan Hardy (Voice of Dominar Rygel XVI), Virginia Hey (Pa’u Zotah Zhaan), David Franklin (Capt. Braca), Francesca Buller (M’Lee, ro-Na, Raxil, Minister Akhna) and Richard Manning (writer and executive producer). I missed a good portion of the start of the Q&A because the digital camera and I were having an argument that ended with it winning, and me going out into the lobby to buy over priced batteries. So I got decent pictures, but not a whole lot of notes on the Q&A. I can report that they didn't not make the announcement that most of the fans were hoping, that there would be a 4 part mini series or possibly a movie to tie up loose ends in the series. However, they did announce that the series would be back in some way, and the actors were really looking forward to it.

Ben holding out his phone for the audience to leave a messsage for Claudia.

The two events that really stuck out in my mind in the Q&A were Ben calling Claudia Black (Aeryn Sun) on his cell phone, so we could all leave a very nice and very LOUD message on her answering machine. The other event I remember best is probably one of my favorite at the con. The last question of the Q&A was from a guy dressed in a weird mask so you couldn't tell who he was. He started out asking Ben what was the best fan fiction he'd read on the web, which for those of you who might not be up on your con etiquette is a major faux pas, one of which probably 30 or 40 people sitting next to the microphone hissed at him for. So the question quickly became what's the worse thing he'd seen online. Apparently, Ben had seem some photo manipulations of Crichton and Crais in some er. . .interesting positions, which those of us familiar with slash (Yaoi) and slash photo manips had a laugh at. Then came my favorite line, which is now part of my sig line, and something I was reminded of over and over through out the con by friends. It goes something like this: "You people with Photoshop, you need to step away from the computer and seek help."

I had a good laugh over that, and later scribbled it on my arm in Sharpy, which really wasn't the brightest thing to do, because it meant it was virtually tattooed there for the remainder of the convention.

After the Farscape panel, we decided it was time for some lunch. So we grabbed some nice, but seriously overpriced sandwiches and headed out to the patio overlooking the bay to have lunch.

Mike met us there, and we showed him his surprise, which he was extremely pleased with. We finished eating and headed down to the booth to check in with Mommy Ferengi and Kris, and then Dawn and Mike headed off to the Mirror Mask Panel, while I chose to stay and help out with the booth a bit and then wander around snapping photos. I'm kind of kicking myself now for not going to the Mirror Mask panel, because from what I understand, Dave McKean is essentially trying to put this movie together with commercially available graphics programs such as Photoshop, and it'd be really interesting to have heard what he had to say about it. I know he did make a plea which he later repeated on Sunday for computer artists and animators who'd like to work in England on the project for, as Neil put it, "for not very much money" (Anyone interested can email contact info and résumé to mirrormask@henson.com) By the time seven rolled around, we were all pretty tired, and decided to forego anymore panels in favor of pizza and the TV, and booze, and getting our shoes off. Getting out shoes off was of course the most important part.

Saturday, July 19th. . .the day we stood in line and stood in line and. . . . .


Saturday dawned not quite as bright and early as Friday did, thank goodness. Dawn opted to stay home because she was exhausted so it was just Mike, Kris and I. We drove down town, parked and walked a couple of blocks to the conventional hall where a very long line was already beginning to form. Kris and I got in early because of exhibitor badges. Mike who didn't have an exhibitor badge decided to go find a beer before the con started. Dork! Saturday was a three "C" day: Crowds, Chaos and Confusion. I stood in mass lines everywhere, starting with another trip through the Hasbro line for Con Exclusive Bobba Fett figurines. I spent an hour or so wandering the hall to see if anything had changed, and snapping pictures, before Mike and I headed upstairs with several purposes in mind. He wanted to see the Neil Gaiman Panel, I wanted a couple of pictures, and then I was going to head for the Smallville Panel, and then the Stargate Panel. About 30 minutes before the Smallville panel was about to start, they closed the hall, and refused to let anyone in. It was that packed. So I went back to the room where Gaiman was going to speak, sat through the first 15-20 minutes of his panel then slipped out to hit the Stargate panel which was also a packed crowd. So I decided that the Gaiman panel was obviously where I should stay and I settled down to listen to the Q&A. These are the highlights from the panel that I managed to get notes on between the getting up to try to get into other panels.

Neil Gaiman

On 1602:

1602 is a super secret project he is doing that isn't so super secret anymore.
"It's 400 years ago and the Marvel universe, for reasons that we do not know when we begin, has started occurring 400 years early," Gaiman told everyone.
He also added, "It's not an Elseworlds. It's not a 'What If.' It's actually happening and it will have some spillover into the real Marvel Universe."
"Sir Nicholas Fury was the head of Queen Elizabeth's intelligence service. The court physician was a magician named Stephen Strange. Fury's assistant is a young man named Peter Parker who has an obsession with spiders. His top agent is a man named Matthew Murdock, who is a blind, Irish ballad singer who turns out to be this very mysterious figure of the night.
"We have the witchbreed who are these persecuted kids with peculiar powers."
He said that it would probably be eight issues, unless it was nine and that it was due out in the middle of August. I've heard recently that it should be in comic book shops on about August 13th.

On Miracle Man:

Yes, he did win the court case --Todd is appealing. He then went on to explain Todd's appeal.
"Todd's appeal goes like this, 'Yes, I said to Neil that he was not signing away his copyright. No there was no indication he was signing away his copyrights. He didn't sign his copyrights away in 1993. 'Yes, in 1996 I falsely filed copyright papers claiming that I had written the 'Angela' book and 'Spawn' #9. But, in the subsequent three years, the statue of limitations on copyrights, Neil didn't find out that I had done this and so his winning the case should be thrown out.'"
Gaiman is pretty confident that he'll win out in the end, saying "I'm not a betting man but I would not put a lot of money on Todd's appeal as he's going with the 'Ah ha! Tricked you!' defense."
He also explained that after getting a chance to look over the papers that Todd does have it really doesn't seem like Todd had a legal hold on Miracle Man to begin with.

On Collaborations with McKean:

His book with McKean, "Wolves in the Walls" would be out later the next week and it was based on an idea that his daughter Maddy had given him.

After the panel we rushed over to get in line for Gaiman to sign stuff. So we stood in line and stood in line and stood in line, and watched other people stand in line to get Angelina Jolie to sign stuff, saw Angelina Jolie, and stood inline some more. Finally, Gaiman came in and again persistence paid off as we were very close to the beginning of the line. Mike had a couple of books signed by Gaiman, and he drew a rat in my sketchbook for me.

After that it was time for the New Line Panel. So we headed over to the ballroom, the largest room in the convention center (aside from the dealer hall) took one look at the lines which went on forever and decided lunch sounded like a nicer bet. I'm glad that we didn't stand in line, because Kris, who sat through the Kevin Smith panel to get a seat for the New Line panel, wasn't impressed. They saw a three minute preview of a nine minute preview of Return of the King, or as Kris put it, not a whole lot. Elijah Wood (Frodo) and Dominic Monaghan (Merry) were there, in addition to Sean Astin (Sam), who was scheduled to be there, but none of them got to speak. In short, no one I talked to who attended the panel was really all that impressed.

After the lunch break I helped out in the booth some, and then Mike and I wandered the floor and found that the "Blonde guy from Mutant X" was signing at the ADV films booth. Our conversation went like this…

Me: "Mommy, the Blonde guy from Mutant X is signing, do you want me to go stand in line?"
Mommy: "The Blonde guy."
Me: "Yeah, the pretty one."
Mommy: "John Shea?"
Me: "Yeah? Wait No, No, that's the guy who played Lex Luthor. I know who he is. The blonde guy. The pretty one. Ya know what, we'll just go stand in line."

Forbes March and the author

So Mike and I proceeded to stand in line and wait for the "Blonde Guy", whose name turned out to actually be Forbes March (Jesse Kilmartin). We stood in line for about an hour and a half, which given our previous wait time may not see like long, but it was considering the line wasn't really that long to start with. This was the second convention Forbes had attended, and was genuinely pleased to see his fans. He took time out to shake their hands, learn their names, and have a chat with them. He was very funny, and at times rather silly. The impression that Mike and I came away with was that he could make me, the poster child for the use of Ritalin, look comatose. The guy was quite simply that bouncy, but I think it was worth the wait, because we enjoyed it. A good portion of the rest of the evening involved a little scrounging and a whole lot of sitting on the floor of the booth resting my poor feet. Saturday was the day for massive blisters and very very sore feet. We left about 7, went home and collapsed.

Sunday, July 20th

Sunday was children's day at the con, so we saw quite a few families with one day passes, and a big drop in crowds from the previous day. By now I wasn't quite so enthusiastic to get going. I pretty much started out the day with my feet killing me.

Sam- err, Sean Astin

My day once again started with me standing in a line, but this time it wasn't for Boba Fett. The previous evening, we'd gotten word from another dealer that Sean Astin would be signing all day at their booth, so as soon as we were allowed in the hall. Kris and I headed towards that booth to wait for Sean. We managed to be first there (even ahead of the dealers) and third and fourth in line, though we kept jumping in and out of line for various reason: to snag pins that the New Line booth was handing out, for me to put on my best sad puppy face and promise the folks at DC Comics that I'd be their best friends for life and spend all my disposable income on DC comics if only they'd let me buy a Mountain Dew off of them, that sort of thing. The folks at DC looked at me a bit strange, but handed me a can and sent me on my way. So I popped back in line, and got Sean's autograph for a friend who wasn't able to attend the con, and chatted with him a bit. He was a very nice guy, and in the end, ended up signing autographs from about 10:30 in the morning to about 5:30 at night. After that I wandered around the hall for a bit, but found myself heading back to the booth to sit, because well, my feet hurt. I did catch up with Mike and Dawn, who brought lunch in and so after I wolfed down lunch I headed up to the second floor where all of the panels were going on and joined Mike and Dawn for "A Sunday Afternoon Chat with Mr. Gaiman and Mr. McKean". By this time I was brain dead enough that I simply sat, snapped rather blurry photos of the panelists and laughed. They talked a bit more about Mirror Mask, fielded all sorts of questions about them working together, burbled back and fourth.

Bits of the panel that made a lasting impression on me:

We learned that Dave has a carp pond in front of his studio at home. Neil teases him frequently about his carp one day exploding.

Neil is part of the Bunny of the Month Club. Apparently Neil found an artist that he really likes that creates rather bizarre bunny figures. So he has her send one to him each month.

After the panel, which lasted about an hour and a half, we all went back to the floor, scrounged a little, and spent most of the time sitting. A cheer went up from the dealers when they announced it was time for the hall to close, and while the con was a blast, I think all of us were more than ready to break down booths and go home.

Comic Con is definitely a blast, and I recommend that anyone take the time and go, but remember these two little words: comfortable shoes.