SDCC

OKAY, now for the Comic con recap!

This convention was by far the best one I've attended in a while. This might be because I wasn't having to sit behind an artist alley table or in the dealers hall this time around, so it really felt like I was there to just have fun.
That's not entirely true however, I did have some Undertown obligations to attend to.
Anyway I can't do a play by play or anything, I'm too old and absentminded to remember exactly when things happened and in what order. Here are the highlights.

Hotel: TP was kind enough to provide me with a room at the Marriot attached to the convention center. That rocked most of all. Plus it was one floor from the top, which meant it had an amazing view. But also, being so close to the convention, all the old famous comic book creators were there (i.e. Stan Lee whom I walked past when I got off the elevator one Saturday morning).
There was another point where an elderly couple were sharing the ride down on the elevator, I could sense that the guy was an old artist just by his quiet, friendly, demeanor- and sure enough he was! The thing was, I felt so bad because I had no idea who he was (I need to catch up on my comic book history!!) They both were really understanding of my ignorance though.

panels and signings: It was also a great experience to do a 'how to create manga' panel and a group signing for tokyopop and for Scholastic as well. The people at Scholastic were exceedingly nice, and it was great to get feedback from people who didn't ordinarily read a lot of comics. There were a few very excited kids there too which was cool. I also got to see Brianne and Monica there, two people I knew from when I attended CSSSA at CAlArts, back when I was a little highschooler.
Anyway, I only had to do things on Thursday and Friday and then I had the rest of the weekend to do whatever I wanted.

Friends: As mentioned, I saw Brianne and Monica, but I also ran into a few more unexpected and cool people: Aska, Emomo, Shilane! Most of the time however I was hanging out with a whole bunch of awesome people that I expected to be there: Kristen, Patrick, Adrianna, Fawn, Eriku, and shared a room (and hung out a lot) with Jim my writer. Everyone made it super-enjoyable.

Famous People: I saw a few famous people, as I'm sure everyone who attended the con did as well. It's such a multimedia extravaganza these days right? I randomly saw that scary guy from Candyman, saw Adriana get a signature from Brian Posehn, There was that driveby sighting of Stan Lee I mentioned earlier. I also got to meet a ton of comic book artists! One that I thought there might be a remote possibility that I could meet was Paul Pope, an artist that I've been a big fan of since highschool, and I knew he'd be at the con. Incidentally, I ended up (thanks to Jim) getting to go join him for drinks up at the top of the Hotel. I met Paul's family and got to talk with him for an hour or so. It was crazy and I was flipping out, but I tried to stay calm on the outside at least (to limited success). Paul pope is a really intense guy! But we talked about Manga, about styles of artwork, about comic book history, about how Jim won an Emmy, how to pull an elaborite award show prank, and small cramped apartments. Anyway it was crazy that somehow through creating this comic, I was able to meet my own comic hero.

buying stuff: I bought too much stuff. But haven't unpacked hardly any of it, it's hopeless!

regrets: I think the only 2 things I regret from the convention was not thinking to get to the Hero's panel early enough to get in. I didn't realize that ballroom 20 would be so full! The other thing was that I didn't get to the Topps booth in the dealers hall to try and track down the guy that solicited me to work on Halo cards. I wanted to remind him that I'm around. But everytime I passed by that area it was too insanely packed with bodies.

Thanks to everyone who I met at SDCC!