Geek Speaking of Booze Hound Conventions

Geek Speak: Booze Hound

Sometimes I struggle with what to call a strip when it's posted. In this case the name kind of suggested itself. I suppose I could also have called this "Dog Breath vs. Morning Breath: Dawn of Halitosis," but DC Comics has a lock on the rights to shitty titles.

In a way this strip explains how I feel about drinking to forget your problems. When you wake up in the morning the problems are still going to be there. You still have to deal with them, only now you get to do it with a hangover and feeling like you might puke if someone so much as says the word...well...puke. Sometimes having a drink after a hard day is ok, but hard drinking at the end of the day is a problem.

You might wake up to find a talking dog in your house.

Comic Con 2015

It's not possible after last weekend for me to sit at my keyboard to write a post and not talk about the San Diego Comic Con. Every year, and every convention I go to, whether it's Wonder Con or Comic Con I think, "this is it. This is the year I become jaded, and the feeling of belonging goes away and this stops making me happy." I'm happy to report that so far I've been disappointed in that regard. The feeling of being able to shed the person that I present to others in my day-to-day life and really get to be authentically myself has changed somewhat. It has diminished to a degree, but at the end of each day of convention I went back to the hotel tired, happy, and little lighter in the general region of my wallet. 

This year I drove down with a friend of Tea Leaf who we'll call Master Turtle. I'd met him a few times before, and we generally get along. We killed the time in the car by talking about everything from what he does for a living, which is way, way more interesting than what I do for a living, to marriage, to kids, to what he does for a living which is way, WAY more interesting than my job. 

We arrived in San Diego around 8:30, which means we made pretty good time. Pro-tip: if you only make use of them occasionally, you can use toll roads in California without an electronic pass. After using the toll road you have a week or so to pay the toll on the website www.thetollroads.com. It's worth it to knock twenty to thirty minutes off of the trip. To be honest, though, I might try taking the train to San Diego the next time I go to the convention. 

Through the magic of Tea Leaf and the arcane influence he exerts on the world we were able to find parking at PetCo Park, and we made our way into the convention. I would like to pause (or "paws") for a moment here to say that a sports arena called "PetCo Park" should have puppies on-site at all times, and you should be able to spend five bucks to get fifteen minutes of play time with them. 

At some point Master Turtle let me in on a secret, or not so much a secret as something that Comic Con makes available, but doesn't generally advertise. On the second floor of the convention center they have a room set aside as a "Pro Lounge" for professional badge holders. The lounge is set up with chairs and tables, it has outlets for charging devices, it has wi-fi, they offer a coffee and tea service, and it's even staffed with people to help you out. It's magical, and whenever I needed a break and to get off of my feet (or a free cup of coffee) I went to the lounge. Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl, both hardcore con-goers, were also unaware of the lounge. This became the high point of my time at Comic Con as I had some great conversations, with some neat people. 

Master Turtle and I picked up our passes. One of the nice things about having a professional pass is there is almost never a line to pick up your pass, and you fly right through check in. From there we headed up to get in line with everyone else waiting to get into the convention. 

Here is an area where I think Comic-Con International fell a little short. The line to get into the convention was on the second floor and funneled everyone onto a single escalator. That's right, tens of thousands of people getting to the con floor by one escalator. I can understand why they did it. It means there isn't a crowd of people waiting at the doors to get in, so it eliminates that Black Friday crush of humanity surging toward a door and stomping anything, or anyone, in its path. It is a deliberate bottleneck. Still, the convention center is a huge place. It has a lot of ways to get down to the convention floor, and I feel like splitting things up would make for a smoother opening, better crowd control, and a safer situation overall. Lesson learned, next time I go to comic con I am getting my badge, then going out into the Gaslamp Quarter to find something to eat instead of waiting in line.

Master Turtle and I did eventually make it to the floor, where we immediately went our separate ways so we could make it to our first panels of the convention. Most of the panels I attended were specifically geared for people who draw comics, so the first panel I attended was "Drawing with Ed McGuinness." He talked a lot about the craft of getting into comics, but not too much about actually drawing. I take that back, he talked a lot about how he didn't like how the drawing of Superman he was working on, which had been requested by people in the audience who, admittedly, knew his work better than me. It's understandable, he's used to working on an elevated, angled surface, and in order to draw and talk at the same time he had to perch awkwardly on the back of a chair and draw on a digital overhead projector whose lamp was directly in his field of vision. Even so, most of us looking at the illustration of Superman he was apologizing for even as he created had a single collective thought, "screw you dude. I draw maybe half that well on my best day."

From there it was off to a workshop with cover artist Michael Cho, and graphic designer Chip Kidd. At the start of that panel the moderator had the privilege of presenting Kidd with a Comic Con International Inkpot Award for his contributions to comics. This is the second time I've seen this award presented. The first was to Bruce Timm. In both cases it was nearly without ceremony and a complete surprise to the recipient, which gives the presentation of the award a kind of authenticity that is really charming.

After the workshop with Cho and Kidd it was off to lunch. I was straight starving and needed sustenance. I hit the food trucks where I met up with Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl for the first time at the convention. They spotted me because of the bright green Green Lantern shirt I was wearing, I spotted Celluloid Girl because of her awesome stripey hat.

After lunch it was off to more art instruction in the form of a painting and illustration panel with Jeffrey Watts and Erik Gist of the Watts Atelier. It was like a sixty minute infomercial for attending the Watts Atelier, interspersed with some really sound advice for improving figure illustration. I listened with half an ear and a bit while I drew the models. I'm linking to it here because, honestly, I like their approach and their philosophy on teaching art. Both of the panelists are the real deal. What they were able to do with paints in an hour represents a lifetime of learning, practice, teaching, and application.

From there I was off to the Terry Moore Panel. I could fill an entire blog post talking about Terry Moore. Instead I will just say this, I have tremendous respect and admiration for Moore as a person and a creator. Every time I'm lucky enough to hear him talk, or even to talk with him in person I feel like I leave with a lot of things to think about. He's also a very talented writer and illustrator whose books are worth picking up.

After that I ran to a panel on marker rendering presented by Mark Books. He and his wife were co-hosting the panel, which was good because he was invested in illustrating and rendering a drawing of Catwoman and Batman as he was talking. On that one I bailed early because it was six in the evening and time to go to dinner because, once again, I was straight starving. I'd also agreed to meet up with Master Turtle, Celluloid Girl, and Tea Leaf at the Old Spaghetti Factory.

We arrived at the Old Spaghetti Factory and were informed there was no soup available. Which seemed like an odd thing to take off the menu. The waiter then doubled down on the odd choices by offering Master Turtle a side salad to go with the chicken salad he'd ordered for dinner. Food ordered I dove into drawing a goofy little cartoon sketch while my companions dove into their phones to follow a live blog of the Star Wars panel that was going on at the same time. When J.J. Abrams announced that everyone attending the panel was going to be treated to a surprise concert featuring music from the Star Wars movies Tea Leaf all but wept. There were tears and consolation. Then we went for ice cream.

It is becoming something of a convention tradition to go to the Old Spaghetti Factory, and then go to Ghiardelli to get ice cream for dessert. They make a hot fudge sundae that can deservedly be called legendary, and is the thing I order whenever we go. In some ways I look forward to those two things as much as walking the floor, or learning how to draw from icons in the field of comic book illustration.

After ice cream I drove to the hotel, which wasn't really notable except for one thing. We could see Mexico from our room. That is not a Sarah Palin "I can see Russia from my house" kind of exaggeration. We could literally see Tijuana from our hotel. What did it look like? Honestly? It looked like any other big city at night, just a bunch of lights in the darkness. I have to imagine there were probably people looking back in our direction and thinking, "I can see America from here."

On a final note. I was a lot more selective with the pictures I took this year, and used the camera on my phone almost exclusively. Still, I got some fun images. I'll share those and my doodles in the next post. 

Draw Melting Into Uncharted Regions of Jim Lee

Wow! That title is...um...I need more sleep.

Draw Melt: Uncharted Dude

This Monday's Drawmelt event hosted at Meltdown Comics by the incomparable Satine Pheonix once again featured Justin Morrison modeling hardware and desert chic inspired by the main character from the video game Uncharted. I have to play this game. Justin was telling me a little bit about it before he dove into posing for us; it sounds completely off the hook. Do the kids still say that these days? "Off the hook?" 

Drawn in 60 Seconds

 

I really, really enjoy drawing Justin. He puts real thought and effort into his costumes and he attempts to tell a story with each pose. Some I get right away, some take a minute to click, but his character is always doing something. It's not something that every model does, nor do they really need to, per se, but it's something Justin does well that helps add a different dimension to illustrations created by the artists of the evening.

Ten Minutes to Draw

   

             my favorite of the evening

Satine challenged me at the last Drawmelt event to try drawing without making use of the "structure lines" that I've used heavily for years. 

"You know proportions," she said pointing at some of my drawings of Shakti Shannanigans. "You don't need the structure lines. Get out of your comfort zone."

So I did, and the result was a little bit of a mixed bag, but in the mix was some of the best drawing I've ever done. As I was working my dad's voice popped into my head. For a few moments I was twelve or thirteen again and trying to draw Spider-Man. When I started out I didn't start out by sketching the pose I wanted using a kind of stick figure; I just started drawing the outlines of the body. My dad looked at it and told me what I was doing was "contour drawing." It's interesting to go back and do it again with everything I've learned. 

Monday was, as usual, a lot of fun. Satine is a great host, and Justin kept everything fun with interesting, dynamic poses. The mood of the evening was supported by a playlist from Satine's collection. Mixed into the tunes were some pieces that contributed to the globe trotting adventurer feeling of Justin's character. I'm looking forward to when I can go again. 

Comic Con: Jim Lee and Wrapping Things Up

One of the only disappointing things about going to WonderCon in March was that I missed the opportunity to see the spotlight panel on Jim Lee. I collected a lot of comics in the early 1990's when Jim Lee's star was really rising. He was working on major titles like X-Men, and I grabbed as many of the titles he was working on as I could afford with my allowance. In many ways he inspired my artwork, and my interest in comic books. 

When I saw that he would be doing another spotlight panel at Comic Con I made a vow, with all the appropriate ritual observances, that I wouldn't miss it this time. I almost did anyway. 

It's an established fact, even flirting with legendary status, that lines to get into panels at Comic Con suck donkey wiener. When I saw the line outside of halls 5A and 5B, which had been combined for the Jim Lee Panel, I nearly lost heart. I got in line anyway. Almost as soon as I did it started moving, much to the disappointment of the group in front of me who'd just sat down to eat. In all fairness, it was probably the cosmic forces of irony screwing with them that got the line moving, so I might need to be a little grateful to them. 

The line snaked around the hallways of the mezzanine level of the convention center and I was getting antsy as we approached the doors. Eventually the line stopped moving and they stopped letting people in, but no one came out and said, "there's no more seating for Jim Lee," so I held on. One of the people wearing an official "I get to tell you that you don't get to see this thing you really want to see" t-shirts did come out and make an announcement. She said, "There's only individual seating left for Jim Lee. Do we have any single parties."

I said, "yo!" and raised my hand. She pointed at me and said, "come with me, sir." I was led in and pointed to a seat where I squeezed in between two other con geeks and waited for the show to start.

Jim Lee. There's a lot I can say here. He doesn't disappoint. He's a class act. He's funny and approachable. He treats people with respect. He communicates with his audience. 

The panel started with Jim Lee coming out on stage, setting his bag down, and he started to pull stuff out of it. I swear he must have borrowed the thing from Mary Poppins because he just kept pulling stuff out. 

An overhead projector had been set up for him so he could draw and the audience would be able to see him work. In and of itself that is unusual for spotlight panels which usually feature artists and creators talking a little about their work, what they're doing now, and then spending the rest of the time taking questions from the audience. 

Jim was taking a different approach. Instead of talking about himself he would talk about the art, which is the reason we were in that room in the first place. He talked about what he called de-mystifying art; taking art and breaking it into concepts that everyone can understand, and just maybe igniting the artist that lives in all of us. 

Before he could do that, though, he needed to get his supplies out of his bag...MY GOD MAN! How much stuff do you have in there, really? While he excavated the contents of his bag, which was apparently manufactured in a time lord sweatshop somewhere on Gallifrey, he talked about his background and how he came to be an artist. 

His stories were largely self-effacing and funny anecdotes. The best of which was the story of the moment his parents finally came to understand what it is he does for a living. It was right after the first X-Men movie had come out, and his parents were able to make the connection between those characters and his work. Which apparently didn't exempt him from criticism as his mom asked him, "Why you draw Wolverine so short?"

Once he'd unpacked everything he needed from his bag he told the audience that he would be doing three drawings and then giving them away at the end of the panel. I have to say that again. He would be giving them away not selling them, not putting them up for auction, giving them. Those drawings could probably get a couple thousand dollars on eBay if someone were crass enough to sell them off that way. 

When he started to work on the drawings his first was going to be of the character Death from The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. As it happened Neil Gaman was scheduled to be on the next panel. He drew in some quick pencil lines, then went back over everything with pens to ink in the contours and a few of the details. Then he did something completely unexpected, he asked for a volunteer from the audience, someone with a steady hand who could handle a brush. As it happened he picked a girl from the audience who had come for the Neil Gaiman panel and was dressed as Death.

When she got on stage he greeted her, introduced her to the audience, handed her a brush and ink and showed her where he wanted the dark filled-in areas of the drawing to be, and put her to work inking his drawing. As a fan I was losing my freaking mind watching this happen.

With her working on filling in the dark areas on Death, Jim started work on the next drawing which turned out to be the Joker. Jim Lee's interpretation of the Joker is terrifying. There's something dark and visceral about his Joker that is unique to him. 

Once again he drew the pencil lines about as fast as I've ever seen anyone draw a comic book character, then filled in the lines with ink. Again he asked for a volunteer from the audience, and he pulled up a youngish guy who is currently attending art school. Again, the volunteer was introduced to the audience and put to work with a brush and ink from Jim's own supplies.

With the second volunteer working on the Joker, Jim once again turned to his own drawing and whipped out a quick drawing of Superman. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a picture of this one. It was of Supes in mid-flight with one hand raised up above him and looking up toward the top of the page.

As with the other two Jim reached out to the audience for help filling in the solid black areas of the drawing. This time he pulled up a thirteen year old boy who turned out to be attending an arts school in San Diego. Like the other two the young guy was given a brush and ink and put to work filling in the dark areas of the drawing.

Around this time the first volunteer had finished work on the drawing of Death, so she handed it back to Jim who did some additional finishing work. He showed everyone how to create a starry sky with ink, some tissue, whiteout, and a playing card. He added quick highlights to Death's hair to make it stand out, and a few other things. The audience oohed and aaahhhed. He did much the same with the Joker, but ran out of time at the end and couldn't get to Superman.

As amazing as all of that was, and it was pretty incredible, what blew me away wasn't that he asked for volunteers so he could outsource his work. It wasn't that he let total strangers inside his drawing process. What amazed me was the profound respect with which he treated everyone who'd volunteered to come up on stage with him. He didn't treat them like fans, he addressed them as though they were peers;
fellow artists who were there to draw as part of some larger panel on the craft of drawing comic book characters. Anyone walking into the room at that moment would have been forgiven for thinking this was a panel of four creators, one of whom happened to be Jim Lee.

Jim had already done something incredibly cool, and he didn't need to do any more, but he took things another step. On the two drawings he was able to finish he added his signature, then (to the amazement of the audience and scattered applause) asked the other two artists to sign their names as well; adding their signature to his.

In many ways this was the best panel experience I had from either WonderCon or ComicCon. I went into the panel really liking Jim, I came out respecting him.

Geek Speaking Quick Drawing Undies on the Outside

Geek Speak: Step Aside

You didn't actually think that I would run an old lady over with a bus did you? This is supposed to be a comic strip. How is crushing an elderly woman under public transportation even remotely funny?

Is he wearing his underwear on the outside of his clothes? Yes. Yes he is.

Sorry for the delay in putting up something new. Today's cartoon took a while longer to post for, I hope, obvious reasons. A couple of things make this an exciting post for me. It's been a long, long time since I attempted to draw anything in a full comic book layout. The last time I attempted anything like this I might have been fourteen or fifteen years old. I also get to introduce another recurring character and one of the major recurring themes of Geek Speak.

The world of the strip is definitely stranger than our own, and people with powers aren't unheard of in the general populace. The world even has its superheroes, but neither the powers nor the superheroes will always be what anyone has come to expect. At some point I may introduce super villains as well, but for the time being I think there's enough fun to be had with those in the underwear-on-the-outside-wearing people at the hero end of the spectrum.

Comic Con Day Three

Once again I'm bringing some of the highlights form my trip to Comic Con this year. Saturday was another day of panels and checking out some of the things that Comic Con had to offer in the general downtown San Diego area.  

Quick Draw

The Quick Draw panel is a huge...um...draw...every year. The best way to explain the panel is that it's set up like Who's Line is it Anyway for cartoonists instead of improv comedians. The panel usually features a guest cartoonist with regular panelists Scott Shaw and none other than Sergio Aragones. In this case the guest panelist was the great Neal Adams. For about an hour the moderator challenges the cartoonists with drawing things suggested either by audience members, or from words chosen beforehand. 

The first challenge was "if they did it" which challenges the cartoonists to draw what a child would look like if their parents were famous cartoon characters. 

The combinations they came up with were Betty Boop and Bullwinkle (for the furries or those into bestiality), George of the Jungle and Smurfette, and Johnny Bravo and Olive Oil. The crowd favorite was Sergio's who was challenged with Betty Boop and Bullwinkle.

 

Quick Draw usually also includes participation by a notable person of some sort. When I attended the panel in San Diego they had three...celebrities...for lack of a better word. The people tapped to take part in Quick Draw, or to be made fun of by the cartoonists in front of thousands of people, were people no less notable than Peter David, Leonard Maltin, and Jonathan Ross. 

This is where the event turned a little bit less enjoyable. Each of the celebrities was challenged to look at what the cartoonists were drawing and come up with an answer for what the drawings represent. This would have been fine if the audience had let them play, but jackholes in the audience kept shouting the answers. At one point when Leonard Maltin was struggling to come up with the title of a movie based on drawings up on the screens Scott Shaw got fed up and scolded everyone, "Hey, maybe when you've written eight hundred books about movies, then you can act like an expert." Admonitions from the moderator and scolding from the cartoonists notwithstanding a bunch of assholes in the audience kept shouting answers before the contestants had more than a half a chance to guess. It to a point where I was starting to feel uncomfortable with the goings on, but eventually the event got back on track. 

The last celebrity to take part in the event was Jonathan Ross, and I'll admit that I don't really know who he is. He's British. Wikipedia says that he's an actor, radio personality, and television host. Apparently he's also the voice of the dad on Phineas and Ferb. Even not knowing who he is he won a lot of respect from me when his part in the Quick Draw event was done. The moderator asked him to talk about his projects and what he's working on and instead of doing that he responded in classy fashion with, "Oh, let's not do anything so craven," and proceeded to talk about another panel presentation entirely where he would be moderating a group of scientists talking about some of the amazing things they are doing. 

There is one other story I really want to share from Comic Con. At this time it's very late, and tomorrow is another long day, so it will have to wait until my next post. I think one final report from the trenches of Comic Con, a wrap up, and some photos of the best costumes I saw over the weekend and I can put this to bed. 

Speaking of bed...

The Con of San Diego and the Panel Blues

Conning the Comics Out of San Diego - Day Two

The second day of Con was our earliest day. Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl were going to be dressing in costume for the day, so they needed to be up bright and early to get dressed. For the official record, they were freaking adorable in their matching Avengers t-shirt/nightshirts. 

While they got into costume, Lendell Prime and I did our best to sleep in. When that ultimately proved hopeless we got up, dressed, and went down to breakfast. 

Kudos to the Quality Inn for offering a complimentary continental breakfast, plus some. Most such breakfasts offer only half-stale pastries, watery coffee, and equally watery fruit juice. The Quality Inn where Tea Leaf had booked our room (more on that later) offered decent pastries, plus a waffle station, plus eggs, sausage, and bacon. They get high marks for variety, an "A" for effort if you will. If you sense a "but" coming here it is, "but" they get a big old FAIL for eggs, sausage, and bacon which were an abomination. The meat in particular looked like warmed over roadkill. The waffles were good, though, and the coffee was dark and strong, so I can turn a blind eye to the steaming health hazard representing the rest of the "hot" breakfast.

When they were done Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl were dressed as Jamie and Cersei Lannister from the Game of Thrones. They had gone to a lot of trouble for a really authentic look and the results were incredible. 

The drive to the con was easier than the drive to the hotel. Mostly that was due to a good night's sleep and a cup of coffee to lubricate the reflexes. We arrived at the con at roughly 9:30, just in time for the floor to open. 

We went our separate ways pretty much right away. I left to get in line for the big Legend of Korra: Book Two panel, Lendell Prime went to a two part panel on The Anatomy of a Fight Scene, and the "Lannisters" left to walk the floor. 

What came next for me was a taste of the authentic convention going experience. I stopped to use the bathroom and check my schedule on my way to Ballroom 20, where the Korra panel would take place. Checking my schedule I remembered that I had put a star next to the same panels Lendell Prime was going to be attending. For a moment I thought, "there's no way I'm getting into this panel, I should just catch up with [Lendell Prime]." I shrugged that off as pessimism and went to get in line anyway.

To say the line was long would be like saying parts of Colorado are kind of bumpy. It definitely wasn't the longest line within line of sight. The line for Hall H, where the days biggest panels of the convention would take place (including Game of Thrones but more on that later) could be seen behind the convention center along the harbor. The Korra line wasn't that long, but it did go out side the convention center, and down the steps halfway to the path by the harbor. 

The line for Korra was moving fairly well and there was a decent chance of being able to get in. Even so there was a family behind me whose mom was less then optimistic. I'm being too generous. I should call things like I see it. She was being a whiny, unbearable brat and her bellyaching was about to drive me bugfuck. Still I persisted. Eventually we got back inside the convention center. Once inside the convention center the line stopped moving quite as well and we had some waiting time. after fifteen minutes or so it started moving again as some people cleared out of the previous panel. 

As the line moved I got closer and closer to the doors for Ballroom 20. The anticipation was so strong I might have peed a little, had I not stopped to use the bathroom before getting in line (but more on that in a moment). As a group we got to the front of the line where we could see the doors to Ballroom 20, and that's when the people managing the thing closed it off and announced there was no more seating. 

Honestly this was the worst part of the con for me. Standing in line for over an hour to have the panel closed in front of me was not fun. Not able to get into the Korra panel, and not really caring about the other panels taking place. I decided to go to the floor. The funny thing is if I hadn't stopped to go to the bathroom I would have been able to get into the panel. It would have been tight, but I'd have made it. 

More on the second day of Con is to come. 

Sketch Dumping on Comic Con in San Diego

Work Day Sketch Dump: I Do The Weird Stuff

I was in a sketching mood today. One of the things I took away from ComicCon had nothing to do with the other artists at Con, the panelists, or anything else. On the last day of Con I was walking through artist's alley and chatting with the exhibitors there when I stepped up to a booth where an artist was drawing something for a boy who could not have been more than ten or eleven years old. The artist had the boy's sketchbook open in front of her and she was drawing one of his creations. His sketchbook caught my eye. There was no theme, no structure, no single character drawn over and over again. He was just drawing whatever was in his head and it looked so...free. So when I picked up my pencil to doodle at work today I thought of him, and I thought, "fuck it, just draw, don't try to make something that looks amazing, just do what feels good."

When I look at that last sentence and then at these drawings there's only one rational conclusion. I need serious professional help.

Comic Con Day 1 (Continued)

The Witty Women of Steampunk was really good panel where the creators talked about their work and the role of women both in steampunk, and in fiction in general. They broadened the discussion to talk about what steampunk is in general, and personalized it by discussing what it means to them. My notes form the panel are fairly incomplete but the moderator of the panel was nice enough to put the panelist's websites on the screen.

After the panel it was more or less lunch time. None of the four of us really know San Diego at all, so we ended up in a parking lot where Fox had set up some kind of big event for Axe Cop, their new animated series. Free pizza was part of the event, and we were both hungry and sleep deprived so we decided that not paying for lunch was a good idea. The lesson of today's story is this, don't make decisions about meals when you are hungry and sleep deprived.

After lunch we parted ways again. Some of us had panels to go to and some of us were going to the floor.

Not sure how I forgot to mention it, but during my wandering around the convention floor I wandered across a booth where a sculptor was selling his wares. In the collection of scantily clad gorgeous heroines I found this good looking fella. Friends and readers of this blog will know I'm a huge fan of the Savage Dragon by Erik Larsen. I saw this, found it it was sixty dollars, struggled with myself for basically three seconds, and bought it. Money well spent. I know it's a sixty dollar statue of a comic book character that's nowhere near as well known as Spider-Man but it's money. well. spent.

The sculptor signed it for me as well. There was a rumor circulating around the booth that Erik Larsen was at the con and might sign it if I could find him, but I was never able to prove that for a fact. 

Back to "current events"

The next panel on my list was "Advanced Digital Inking Techniques" with Brian Haberlin, co-creator of Witchblade and the artist and co-writer of Anomaly. After a lengthy plug for Anomaly, which is the longest graphic novel ever produced, Haberlin got down to dropping the digital inking knowledge. 

I've started working with digital illustration tools which is why I attended the panel in the first place, so I was looking forward to getting front loaded with some serious techniques. Not wanting to fuck around I sat in the front row. No hiding in the shadows like a timid shrinking violet for this eskimo. Haberlin set up, picked up his stylus, looked at the panel attendees leaning forward in their folding chairs, yearning for knowledge on brushes and opacity controls and said, "we're going to focus on Photoshop today." Fuck. 

I use Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, not Photoshop, so this was going to have almost nothing to do with me...and I was sitting in the front row. What followed was basically a painfully dull look into how great Photoshop is. To be fair the content was great, if you use photoshop, it was only particularly dull for me because I don't use Adobe's program, and I can't afford to buy it. With that said, Haberlin is a good instructor and I'm going to keep an eye on his site www.digitalarttutorials.com. He mentioned there might be tutorials coming for other illustration software packages like Manga Studio and Sketchbook Pro. 

From there I headed back to the floor where I picked up a copy of Battlepug and the Lone Wolf and Cub omnibus edition, volume 1. Lone Wolf and Cub is a very famous samurai epic about an assassin and his son that may have been one of the inspirations for The Road to Perdition. The other book, Battlepug, is a hardcover collected edition of the webcomic by the same name. It looked like a fun read, and the book was beautiful so I picked it up, which would not be the last of the impulse purchases for the weekend. 

Around this time I met up with Lendell Prime and we made our way over to artist's alley. While we were over there we met Philip Moy who was selling original panels from his run on G.I. Joe and Samurai Jack. Lendell Prime's face broke into the widest smile I've ever seen on him when he found the G.I. Joe original artwork. I'm pretty sure that smile stayed for the rest of the convention.

While we were wandering artist's alley Tea Leaf and Celluloid Girl called Lendell Prime and asked if we were ready for dinner. By then we were starving so Lendell Prime and I met them and we headed into the Gaslight District to find a place to eat. We finally settled on a Mexican Seafood restaurant. 

Something you may not know about guys when they hit their thirties, some foods you've been able to eat your whole life suddenly don't break down all that well. This means you get to be more prone to gas. Mexican food is one of those things that's a no no unless you live alone, or you've been married so long you've given up keeping track of who's farted on who. When we sat down I raised this indelicate subject as a gently as I could.

"Let's agree here and now," I said, "that since we're having vaguely Mexican-ish food for dinner (it was really more of a Mexican fusion type place), there's no judgement tonight. Even if one bed sounds like heavy artillery is shelling the city; no judgement." They laughed, but I don't know for sure if there was any judgement. I'll get to that in a minute.

After dinner we wandered the Gaslight District and ended up in the Chuck Jones Art Museum. I want to go back to San Diego for this alone. The walls were covered with the most amazing original paintings by Chuck Jones and others. The collection included iconic moments from some of the most memorable of Looney Tunes animated shorts. I looked at them and was transported back to the first time I saw many of his cartoons on Saturday morning television while staying with my grandparents at their Kansas farmhouse. I wandered the smallish space soaking in the artwork and reliving moments I thought I'd long forgotten when it occurred to me that my friends were waiting outside. With no small amount of reluctance I made my way out to the street and we headed back to the convention center.

The next thing on our list was the Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog sing-along. Tea Leaf, Celluloid, and I were really excited about this so we made our way to the huge conference room that had been set up for it. We arrived early, and there wasn't a line yet, so we were able to go right in, where we caught the last half of the Spike and Mike Twisted Animation panel. 

By this time all of us were beyond tired. Tea Leaf and Celluloid both looked as if they might happily sleep through the sing along, and Lendell Prime was looking grimly determined that he would not fall asleep until he was horizontal on something resembling a bed. I made the call and suggested that we didn't have to stay if everyone was getting really tired. There was a short debate, and just as everything was getting ready to kick off the sing-along we decided to head to the hotel. 

That first trip to the hotel was one of the most difficult drives of the whole weekend. It involved navigating surface streets in downtown San Diego so we didn't have to go through the Gaslight District, driving four different highways, then finding somewhere to make a u-turn when we found our exit in El Cajon. 

Exhausted, sore, and happier than any of us have probably been in months we checked into the hotel, got to our room, showers happened, and beds were staked out. I excused myself to sneak in a phone call with Mildly Sensational. By the time I got back the lights were out and all three were already sound asleep. I made my way to my side of one of the two queen sized beds (I was sharing with Lendell Prime), climbed under the covers and...did not go to sleep. 

Not right away, at any rate. Some asshole's car alarm went off about every five or ten minutes for an hour before I finally managed to drift off. When I did, it was the soundest, best night's sleep I'd had in a long time. I'd let go of being a square peg in a round hole for a day, and it had done me good. 

The Pathos of Comic Con Mustaches

Geek Speak: The Desolation of the Hipster 

It seems like mustaches are everywhere now. A day hardly goes by that I don't see mustaches on bags, posters, postcards, and coffee mugs. Somewhat more rarely I'll see mustaches on actual people.

At some point in the recent past there was a cosmic event, an alignment of the planets, the shifting of ley lines to create a new nexus point, or a My Little Pony/Care Bears cross over that fundamentally altered the laws of nature and made mustaches cool. Whatever it was, I missed the memo.

I'm not saying all mustaches look bad, but it does take a certain kind of person to pull it off. The guys wandering around in v-neck shirts with the cuffs rolled, their legs squeezed into skinny jeans, and a pencil-thin handlebar mustache are patently not that kind of person. It looks fussy and pretentious. If it takes longer to style the hair on your upper lip than it takes your girlfriend to get dressed, it is no longer cool.

Speaking of the significant others. I can only attest to my own experience, but none of the girls that I have ever so much as kissed have been fans of the mustache. Most have hated it because it itches, causes them to break out, and looks bad anywhere but on one of the Village People, or in porn from the 1970's.

Of course, I can't grow a mustache. Every time I've tried I end up with a kind of anemic fu manchu. My prejudice might be envy.

San Diego Comic Con: Where Wonder Goes to Play

Those who know me even a little bit, even those who only know me through this blog, know that I'm a big fan of comic books. I have my favorites such as the Savage Dragon, and Fables, but I really like comic books as a story telling medium overall. For those of us who appreciate and collect Comic Books the San Diego Comic Con has been a kind of promised land. I've wanted to go to Comic Con for as long as I've been collecting comics, which started when I was in the seventh grade. It's funny, when I think about it, that was also the year I met the girl I'd marry ten years later. I guess I discovered the two great loves of my life in the seventh grade: comic books and Mildly Sensational. 

Every year since moving to Los Angeles I've intended to go to San Diego for the convention, and every year I've been stymied by something. Most of it good. Last year it fell on the same weekend my wife and I had already rented a cabin and planned a trip to Big Bear Lake for our anniversary. One time I didn't get to go because we'd already planned a trip to Denver so I could meet my nephew for the first time.  This time, my path to Comic Con was laid out well in advance. Tea Leaf has a professional registration with Comic Con International, and generously offered me his guest pass. It was enough in advance that I could start saving money to go, and my wife said her anniversary present this year would be that I would get to go to Comic Con. 

After months of waiting, pinching pennies, and planning I woke Wednesday the 17th with just one day separating me from my pilgrimage to the holy land. I spent Wednesday with my family, playing with my daughter, hanging out with my wife, and generally not worrying about the things that cause me stress on a daily basis. I packed, I made sure I had everything I would need, and I put my daughter to bed, which was the last time I would see her for four days.

Thursday morning my alarm went off at 3:45. My wife and I stayed in bed for a bit, just being together, then I got up, ate breakfast, we said our goodbyes, and I was out the door by 4:45 to pick up Tea Leaf, Celluloid Girl, and Lendell Prime. 

The drive to San Diego was uneventful, and moved really well. We didn't hit any of the major traffic snarls that would cause people to fully lose their minds later in the day. The highlight of the drive was probably the aircraft carrier that passed along the coast headed in the opposite direction. It could not have been more Top Gun if it had theme music.

Tea Leaf had secured a parking pass so when we arrived, we drove into the parking structure below the convention center itself. By the time we were parked it was only about 7:30 in the morning and we had an easy two hours to kill before the convention started officially.

Eventually the doors did open and the convention let the teaming throngs of people (not to be confused with the people's steaming thongs, I make that mistake all the time) into the exhibit hall. In no particular order here are my first impressions of the convention. 

• Holy crap there are a lot of people here!
• Wow, the people actually working the convention are really surly.
• OH MY GOD THE EXHIBIT FLOOR IS HEAVEN!
• Holy crap there are a lot of people here.

The first panel I was planning to attend started pretty early at 11:00, so I had about an hour to walk the floor, and walk the floor I did. When the doors opened it was like being at Disneyland for the park to open. The gates part and you see the park and all the joys it offers. A piece of me that I have to stifle just to get through a day at work came to life and started weeping with pure delight.

I started out with Tea Leaf at Celluloid Girl, but we went our separate ways pretty early on, not before I had them take my picture with a life-size sculpture of Gollum. From there I meandered the floor taking pictures here and there, including the bust of a handsome devil with the serious orthodontic issues pictured to the right. 

It almost seemed like I'd barely arrived before it was time to go to the first panel of the convention. For me it was "The Witty Women of Steampunk." There are those who might read that and think, "why is this guy going to a girl's panel, did he leave his penis in his other pants?" Let me be clear on this, my favorite webcomic is Girl Genius my favorite action heroes are Ellen Ripley from Aliens and Sarah Conner from Terminator 2: Judgement Day. My favorite stories are those where the female characters aren't relegated to being set pieces that need to be saved by the male protagonist. This panel was dedicated to women who write compelling stories using the conventions (so to speak) of steampunk. 

This was a fun panel full of women writing stories in steampunk settings, but breaking away from strictly Anglo or Euro-centrist tropes. Among the panelists was Kaja Foglio who writes the Girl Genius stories. I was really going to the panel to see her, but ended up being engrossed by the other panelists as well. Kaja, meanwhile, was super caffeinated and talking about ninety miles an hour. She was gregarious, and animated, and funny and a lot of fun to watch. 

There was plenty more that I saw and plenty more that I did during the day, but it will have to wait until tomorrow as it is getting late, and this Normal Guy needs to sleep and recharge my batteries before work in the morning. 

More on my ComicCon adventures tomorrow.

San Diego Here We Come

Conning the Comics in San Diego

If you're a nerd even half deserving of that moniker then you know of, or have attended San Diego ComicCon. The weekend of the annual gathering to share, discuss, trade, and otherwise celebrate geekery in all of its forms are kind of like the holiest days in a geek's calendar. Every year fans, amateurs, and professionals alike make a pilgrimage to San Diego to join in the festivities. Everyone...except me...until this year. 

With one day left to go before I pick up fellow nerds Tea Leaf, Celluloid Girl, and Lendell Prime I find myself operating in a state of distraction. I joked with Tea Leaf today that by four-o-clock I'd answered questions from two people with, "ComicCon!...wait...what was the question?" Tea Leaf is registered as a professional with Comic-Con International. This means he gets a full-weekend pass, and a guest pass he can share. This year he offered me his guest pass, knowing that it's something important to me, and knowing that I had never had the opportunity to go.

Did I mention that Tea Leaf is an awesome guy and I'm incredibly grateful? No. Well...he is, and I am. 

He's also a talented and accomplished photographer. Check out his website, especially photos from the trip to Africa he and Celluloid Girl took for their honeymoon. Fucking outstanding stuff. There are even a couple of pictures of me in his headshot collection. 

I digress.

This year, I will be attending Comic Con for the first time, marking the realization of something I've dreamed of being able to do since I started collecting comic books in the seventh grade. For those who like numbers, that means I've been waiting to go to the San Diego Comic Con for twenty-three years. Although I'm not a "convention virgin" having broken that cherry at WonderCon, I'm by no means a seasoned pro. I'm excited, and nervous, and my expectations are sky high. 

We leave super early in the morning on Thursday for what is sure to be a zany fun filled weekend of adventure and discovery...or that might be the plot of Without a Paddle. The four of us will be splitting a hotel room, and Tea Leaf even secured parking for us so we don't have to take a bus or hike from some distant parking lot in a forgotten quarter of San Diego where there are alligators and banjo playing hillbillies. 

Our schedules while we're there are pretty packed with a combination of panels, browsing the exhibit hall, and (my favorite) visiting creator booths in Artist's Alley. While there I will be trying to get photos of the best cosplayers I find (male and female, though the ladies generally seem to have the better, more elaborate costumes) and of the panels I attend. All of those experiences I will attempt to distill into the pages of this blog for the reading enjoyment of my dozens of fans. 

If you're an artist with a booth in Artist's Alley this year, send your booth number to geekspeakcomic at gmail dot com. I'll  be sure to come by and say hello.

If you're planning on attending ComicCon there are several guides out there, but I recommend this one from Click Communications: