Category: Comics

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Some years I find myself spending most of my time at Comic-Con attending panels. Some years it’s looking for books. Sometimes I end up mostly looking for people with interesting costumes. This year, the theme seems to have been collecting sketches and autographs, and in fact, I spent just about all of Saturday on one event.

Sketches:

Autographs (Kelson):

  • Phil & Kaja Folio on complete set of Girl Genius volumes 1-7. (I’d gotten Phil’s signatures on volumes 1-6 in bits and pieces over the last few years, but Kaja was never at the booth when I had the books. So I made an effort to catch up.)
  • Phil Foglio on the edition of Myth-Chief for which he did the cover.
  • R.K. Milholland on Super Stupor.
  • Colleen Doran on A Distant Soil vol.1, Orbiter, Reign of the Zodiac #1 and Comic Book Tattoo. (I went to her table 3 times over the course of the con.)
  • Sergio Aragonés on “Day of the Dead” (because I forgot to bring something for him to sign, and I looked for stuff at his booth that I hadn’t seen before)
  • Tori Amos on Comic Book Tattoo (see the full story)
  • Rantz Hoseley, Hope Larson, and (I think) Jason Levesque on Comic Book Tattoo (they were all at the table when I picked up the book)
  • Rantz Hoseley and two people whose names I can’t make out on a poster-sized print of the Comic Book Tattoo cover.

Autographs (Katie):

  • Naomi Novik on the new Temeraire novel, Victory of Eagles.
  • Keith Knight on The K Chronicles and Red, White, Black and Blue.

I ended up not spending much time looking for comics, because of the whole low-grade Golden-Age problem. But I did pick up a couple of new items — like the Tori book, and the new Halo and Sprocket, and such. I was looking in the fantasy art area this morning, and there was actually a painting of Red Sonja that I really liked (she was wearing practical clothes — leather armor, not the usual chainmail bikini), but couldn’t think what I’d do with a print, and it seemed kind of weird to pick up a print of a specific character whom I didn’t normally follow.

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Busy day. I had a lot of stuff that I wanted to get to but had to make choices. Shoulders are starting to acclimate, though there’s also the fact that I’ve taken a lot of stuff out of my backpack as I’ve gotten it signed. I have no idea what I’m going to do to carry around Comic Book Tattoo.

Speaking of which, yes, the books finally came in! I picked mine up late morning, and decided to shell out the extra $20 for the hardcover because it’s just so big. It’s at least an inch and a half thick, and it’s 12 inches square — the size of a vinyl record album case.

Katie dressed up as Yomiko Readman, and we started the day at Richard Walker’s Pancake House. They were very busy, but had a system in place that kept people moving — and they were also very good. We got to the convention center around 10:00, explored the floor a bit together, then split up. When I bought a comic from Sergio Aragonés that I hadn’t seen before, and asked him to sign it, he asked her what character her costume was from. He clearly didn’t recognize the show, but it was nice of him to ask. The first hour or so that we were there, she mostly got people asking, “What’s that from?” but then people who knew the show started asking for her picture.

I managed to round out the complete set of signatures on the Girl Genius trades. I also picked up a print of the Flash: Rebirth cover at Moose Baumann’s table, and commissioned an Impulse sketch from Todd Nauck. When I got there, he was talking with someone, and I waited while they chatted for several minutes. When he left, it turned out that he was Carlo Barberi, who drew Impulse during most of Todd Dezago’s run. I couldn’t stick around while he drew the sketch, since I was on my way to a panel, plus he was finishing up a sketch for someone else, so I’ll be heading back sometime tomorrow to pick it up.

I went to a couple of panels by science fiction authors, both one-person shows: Connie Willis and Robert Sawyer. Connie Willis was very funny as she talked about writing in general, about her upcoming novels, and answered questions from the audience. Robert Sawyer mostly talked about his experience in the publishing industry, and managed to make it interesting. I followed it up with a panel on lost civilizations and secret societies that should have been fascinating, but was dull enough that I left only 10 minutes in and decided to hit the art show instead. Katie attended “Humor in Science Fiction” and the Bones panel, and I finished the programming day up with Final Crisis Management.

Today was the day for running into people. On my way from Image (with the Tori book) to Studio Foglio, I ran into a group from Comic Quest (the local comic store I go to on Wednesdays). I ran into my mom at the Connie Willis panel. We met up with our friend Sean at lunch, and I ran into our friend Wayne after Final Crisis…because Katie had spotted a Minbari, and I went over to take his picture. Ten feet away, there was Wayne.

Lunch was at an Irish pub called The Field. I missed Sean’s phone call, so by the time we caught up he’d already found a place and ordered lunch, but they were nice enough to move all of us from the tiny little pub table he was sitting at to a larger table. Up to this point, we’d been batting 1.000 on food. Dinner was another story. We hadn’t gotten around to making reservations, and after a couple of places with long waits, we just went to the Horton Plaza food court.

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Comic-Con seems to have learned from last year’s line debacles. They’ve worked out a traffic system where halls are one-way, lines are clearly labeled, and breaks are clearly marked, with staff directing foot traffic. At least for the small-to-medium rooms. I haven’t messed with the large ones, like Ballroom 20 or Hall H.

I’ve found that my shoulders are screaming in pain whenever I put my backpack on, but they get used to it after a while. And I’m losing my voice from trying to talk above the background noise.

I caught the Mark & Sergio panel after lunch, which was (as always) fun. Found the S*P booth, talked to Randy Milholland, and picked up a copy of Super Stupor with a sketch of Aubrey. (Thankfully, I don’t seem to be the inspiration for this strip.) Made my way back to Studio Foglio to get two more volumes of Girl Genius signed by Kaja Foglio. Got to the TwoMorrows panel and booth, where I finally met Keith Dallas, the primary author of The Flash Companion.

Managed to liveblog DC nation, which I started posting as soon as Dan Didio introduced Geoff Johns and Ethan van Sciver as the team on Barry Allen: Rebirth. This woman dressed as Batwoman was about 10-15 feet behind me in line, and got to go up on stage and…well…look like Batwoman.

Getting out of the panel was slow, since they were funneling everyone through one set of double doors and handing out little Batman pins. Once I was free of the crowd, I raced back to the hotel to meet Katie (fortunately we’d already planned to just meet back at the hotel, because my cell phone’s battery died right before DC Nation), and we went out to dinner at Dakota.

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Interesting if true: the rumor column Lying in the Gutters reports that one of the bones of contention at the Warner Bros/DC Comics film summit was not just the “I’m a Marvel, and I’m a DC” comparison of movie slates, but Elfquest.

Wendy and Richard Pini made their deal with DC not just to hand publishing duties over to someone else, but to expand into other media — like the long-discussed Elfquest movie that never got off the ground. And what happened just months after the Pinis ended their arrangement with DC? Warner Bros. bought the movie rights.

So while DC had those rights, it didn’t do anything with them…but their parent company wanted to. Rich Johnston points out that it would have been a lot cheaper for Warner Bros. to develop the film through DC.

(Hmm, that reminds me, I’d better check their CafePress store before it closes due to the movie deal. If it hasn’t already.)