Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

The thing I’m learning about attending Comic Con is that you need to keep a pretty strict schedule to do all the things you want to do. That contradicts my somewhat laid-back approach and has resulted in a few missed opportunities. The flip side is that I’ve stayed pretty relaxed and have avoided crankiness.

Ben and I got started earlier than yesterday, though we still didn’t make it in time to see the first panel that I was interested in (Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends). We decided to go stand in line to see a panel with Shaun of the Dead stars Simon Pegg and Jessica Hynes, but the line was very, very long and snaked in and out of the building onto the veranda and we decided to skip it. I did get a free Stan Lee adverfan in the hallway, though. I don’t know what it’s really called, but it’s a sturdy paper cut-out of Stan Lee’s cartoon face stuck to a piece of wood that’s pimping a documentary of his life, True Believer. Advertising fan. Adverfan.

Other freebies I picked up today: a lot of button pins from various booths, a Ghost Hunters 4-inch statuette of Jason Hawes, a bright orange Nickelodeon slap bracelet, issue #1 of a comic called Burn, a paperback copy of Kushiel’s Scion by Jacqueline Carey (who signed it for me at the publisher’s booth), a Land of the Lost movie promo lanyard, an Attack of the Killer Tomatoes bag, and tons of random postcards.

I made it to three panels today. “Looking at Our World: Eye on the Present” was supposed to be about how authors use the supernatural in stories of contemporary society, but covered stuff that was sort of hit-or-miss according to my interests. Authors were Kelley Armstrong, L.A. Banks, Kate Brallier, Marjorie M. Liu, C.E. Murphy, Justine Musk, LIlith Saintcrow and Samantha Sommersby. I mostly went to that panel (with Ben in tow) so that I could squat a seat for the next panel, “The World of Graphic Novels.” Turns out that neither filled up, but oh well.

I learned a few interesting things from the author-illustrators on the second panel, but was disappointed that none of them were just writers or just illustrators. As a potential graphic novel writer, I’m interested in learning how writers can best collaborate with artists when their art skills don’t exactly fall under the umbrella of the word “talent.” The panelists were Nick Abadzis, Eddie Campbell, Rutu Modan, Alex Robinson, Adrian Tomine and it was moderated by Tom Spurgeon. I’d heard of Rutu Modan’s graphic novel, Exit Wounds, and she had a lot of interesting things to say. She’s Israeli but her book has not yet been published in Israel… the comics/graphic novel scene is almost nonexistent there and so she turned to the U.S. I recorded all these panel sessions and hope to be able to post them in some format on my website after I return home.

After the first two panels, Ben and I headed down to the exhibit hall to visit totally famous artist Katie Cook, a geek girl who we first met at Wizard World in 2004 when she drew a fun monster couple for us on the spot. I love her style, but she’s much busier these days so we settled for a signed print of her cartoony Darth Vader holding two small kitties with the caption “The Dark Side… is full of cat people.”

Then Ben and I split off and I happened to walk by the G4 tv channel booth… where Attack of the Show’s Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn were interviewing Samuel L. Jackson! I got a few crappy photos of him and my hands may have been visible in the background. I wanted to yell “Tell me more about your role in S.H.I.E.L.D.” but would have been drowned out by the retards who were just randomly screaming “SNAKES ON A PLANE!” Seriously, WTF. There was a mega horde of bodyguards surrounding him at all times.

From there, I walked around the exhibit hall and took lots of photos of cosplayers… even Barf from Spaceballs!

To be continued…

We arrived at the convention center at the lazy noonish hour and hit the exhibit hall right away. It only took 5 minutes for Ben to tire of my distracted walking pattern and run off on his own. I enjoyed strolling around at my own pace, stopping to look at everything that interested me. Aside from the big booths (Marvel, DC, Hasbro, Lucasfilm, LEGO, Gentle Giant, etc.), here are a few that I liked and had snaggable websites (that are all safe for work):

gwinarmy.com Little vinyl Tux penguin shapes with fun paint jobs. Ben likes “Bunny” the best.

mistertoast.com I love the little original watercolor cards the creator and his wife (?) were selling. I’m going back to see if they found any with Inky the ink well that they could sell me tomorrow. Because, you know, I’m a writer and stuff. So it makes sense.

comicimages.com I snapped a great photo of employee Ken wearing his company’s Yoda backpack. It really felt like I was in Dagobah! (photo to follow)

mimobot.com Designer USB flash drives. Cool as shit and just as expensive. I want C3P0. It would also be cool if an audio clip of Threepio saying “Oh, hello” played upon the computer recognizing the drive.

chessex.com Dice, dice, dice! Lots of lovely dice! All shapes, sides, and sizes. Ben and I picked up a couple 30-sided dice (“Those will be great for playing Magic [the Gathering],” said my husband who didn’t think there’d be anything of much interest to him at Comic Con).

After walking around for a while and seeing some amazing costumes (I kept running into a very tall Ghost Rider (sans motorcycle) on the floor), I caught two interesting panels: “Science Fiction That Will Change Your Life,” sponsored by io9.com and “Spotlight on Bill Willingham” with Mark “Bucky” Buckingham.

The Sci-Fi panel was interesting and I hope that my new voice recorder caught all the titles that I’ve never heard of and need to read now. There were some interesting perspectives on the genre and people’s personal experiences with it. Also, I about died for Graeme McMillan’s Scottish accent. I mostly attended the panel so that I could squat a seat for the Willingham panel in the same room, but I’m very glad I went.

Fables was the first comic to really pull me into the genre of comics, and that’s because I have a thing for folklore and fairy tales. I love new takes on old tales, so Fables was thematically my cup of tea and I was pleasantly surprised to discover the wonderful writing and beautiful artwork in the comics. It turns out that one of my early loves, the Fractured Fairy Tales shorts from Rocky & Bullwinkle was also an inspiration to Bill Willingham and he’s a huge connoisseur of folklore and fairy tales, too. He talked about his start in comics writing/drawing and assured the crowd that Fables will not end at the conclusion of the big war story arc. I asked a question about in what format Bill provides his story to Mark, and Bill commented that it was a good question (squee!). Everyone in the audience received a one-page Fables comic on glossy cardstock with the tiny woodland creatures of Fabletown and it’s quite cute.

After the panel, I jetted to the DC/Vertigo booth to stand in line to have Bill and Mark sign my newly acquired one-page comic, as well as Bill’s old comic reprinted in graphic novel format, Pantheon. Haven’t checked it out yet. Special thanks to Catherine, a Batman-loving senior English major from SF State who was in line behind me and held my place while I ran to the hard-to-find booth that was selling those graphic novels. We had a very nice geek girl chat during our wait time, and she recommended the best Batman graphic novels that she’s read.  (I wonder if I choose the correct spelling of Catherine?)

Then I met up again with Ben and almost didn’t get into the “Comics Experience: How to Write a Pitch!” panel. Ben waited on the beautiful veranda while I got some good tips, and then we met up with Liz and Josh and had dinner at Karl Strauss Microbrewery. I’m not a huge beer drinker, but I highly recommend their signature Amber Ale. Liz and Josh do not recommend their Melon Martini.

That about sums up today. We came back to the hotel to relax and get to bed early… which turned into Ben zonking out quickly and me blogging into the almost-wee hours. Crap. I need to get some sleep because tomorrow will be a long day. Not sure if I’ll be able to blog about it but I’ll try.

We decided to take a slightly laid-back approach to Comic Con today in order to be better rested after a hellish travel day. On the trolley ride down to the convention center, we sat across from a nice (but a little odd) middle-aged man who was missing a front incisor (tooth #6; residual knowledge from working at a dental office).

His first question when we sat down was “What do you read?” though he wasn’t familiar with anything until I mentioned X-Men. He’s writing a screenplay with the title “Flapjacks: The Movie” about life in San Diego and when I told him I was a writer, he offered me a comic idea that had been floating around in his head and said that I should write it.

He pitched a story about a worm who wiggles around and recognizes places in the earth he’s been before, then discovers the surface of the ground where he is plucked up by a boy who puts him on a fishing hook and introduces him to the water.

“How does it end?” I asked. “Is he eaten by a fish?”

“I don’t know,” the man replied. “I leave that up to you, the writer. It’s your story now.”

Then conversation turned and he asked where we were from, and never just wanting to say “Utah” I responded “Originally from Ohio.”

“Not from Cleveland, I hope,” he said. Ben and I glanced at each other.

“Yeah, actually…”

He apparently knows a guy who is a security guard at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and opened up a binder filled with looseleaf notebook paper to write down his name for us.

“Next time you’re there, we’ll have to work out a practical joke for you to play on him, to really freak him out.” He had a huge grin on his face s he mulled it over. “Maybe you can pretend to have ESP. Yeah, that would be great.”

He handed me the paper with just the guy’s name on it and slowly shared more ideas and talked about his friend’s good sense of humor. We just sat there wide-eyed, listening and nodding our heads, alert to the bizarre nature of the moment.

I asked him to write “security guard at R&R Hall of Fame” on the paper, which he took back from me and happily did. He also wrote down his email address so that we could contact him to discuss the details of our plan.

Then the trolley stopped and he looked up and told us he had to get off – that his stop was a long time ago and he’d have to take the next train back to his destination.

We said goodbye and I folded up the paper and put it in my purse. I don’t think that I’ll contact him to plan a practical joke on his friend, but if I ever write his worm comic, I think I will drop him a line. He’ll want to know how it ended, I’m sure.

Additional notes from standing in line yesterday for the con registration:

Regarding the tremendous number of people slowly walking in the line toward registration, Ben quipped: “Just shows you that people will do anything if you tell them Mark Hamill will be there.” (I don’t think Mark Hamill will be there, but you get the point)

There were several people standing on the roof of a parking garage overlooking the south end of the convention center. Two guys were standing on the ledge (much to the dismay of their mothers*, I’m sure), clearly enjoying the gasps and finger-pointing from the crowd below. One of them was wearing a Batman costume. I wanted to scream “Fly, fatass, fly!” but I didn’t want people to, you know, think I was a geek or anything.

*Ben says the guys were probably our age, but still.

(I’ll have to update my stories with photos later tonight… it’s time to head out for day #1!)

[Edit: I added the photo, and must admit that my camera has better vision than my eyesight. The kid on the right is wearing a black cap and black clothes, not a Batman costume as I saw with my "corrected" astigmatism.]

It’s been a long day, and the next few days will probably be filled with more excitement… but I want to make sure to write a couple thoughts about today before they blend into everything else.

Ben and I went to bed late, then got up at 5am and made it to the airport in plenty of time for our 8:30 flight. Well, plenty of time on my clock, and not enough on Ben’s. We’ve learned to compromise over the years on that. The flight was oversold, and we nearly got free tickets and first class seats on the next flight… but some retards never checked in so we got on our scheduled flight and arrived in San Diego without incident.

We left Utah’s sunny, dry, 90+ degree heat and arrived to experience San Diego at a very pleasant low-70s with a fair amount of humidity. And palm trees! It warmed up a little during the day, but cooled off to the point of needed a light sweater in the evening.

At the airport, it was obvious that some people were coming to town for the Comic Con. Geeky T-shirts, overheard conversations, empty plastic poster tubes, etc. One guy was wearing a geeky black t-shirt (I don’t remember exactly what it was, something with orange flames) and was wearing a real top hat!

We had to wait an annoyingly long time to get into our hotel room, so we stashed our luggage at the hotel and stalled by eating a mediocre brunch at the nearby Denny’s. After our food arrived we basically zoned in and out of consciousness and every other statement to each other was “Sorry, I just zoned out there for a minute.” We camped out in the lobby for another hour after that, where Ben popped open his laptop to help him stay awake and I passed out in about three seconds on his shoulder. I figure there’s nothing like a snoring, travel-weary loiterer spread out in a hotel lobby to make the hotel clerks want to put me into a room.

After we finally were given keys to our room, and then missed the elevators after walking right by them, the first thing we did was put down our luggage and collapse into a nap for a few hours. It felt great, though we probably could have slept for a while longer and been fine with it.

The Trolley station that looked on a map to be a quite walkable distance from the hotel turned out to be a much different experience than planned. When I’d called to ask about walking, the guy I talked to said it was kind of a boring walk through an industrial area. What he didn’t say was that we’d have to walk past a strip club and through a somewhat seedy area to get to the Trolley station. Yeah, that was fun. I made Ben cough up a couple extra bucks to take a short taxi ride from the station back to the hotel later on because I didn’t like the thought of walking that in the dark. I’m just a baby from a small town, I guess, but sometimes it’s worth 6 bucks to trust your instincts. We’ll walk the same way tomorrow during the day and play it by ear at night, I guess.

My eyes are drooping and I haven’t even gotten to the Comic Con Preview Night exclusive to 4-day pass holders part yet!

We had to walk a good distance to get to the convention center from the Santa Fe Depot station because we decided to walk instead of dealing with transferring trolleys. A different guy told us it was only a half mile walk, but I would say more like a mile and a half. Anyway, it was a nice walk and we seemed to pick up other pedestrians heading to the con as we walked along.

The lines outside the hall were really long for Preview Night. And when I say really long, I mean OMFG ARE YOU KIDDING ME THIS IS JUST FOR EARLY REGISTRATION?!? We arrived at the north end of the convention center and headed toward attendee registration on the middle/south side. The line going inside seemed to be moving at a good pace, so we happily went to look for the end of the line. We became less happy as we followed the line to 3/4 AROUND THE BACK OF THE ENORMOUSLY HUGE CONVENTION CENTER. I have never been in that long of a line, though I have to give them credit because for as long as it was, it moved pretty quickly. And when we finally made it to the front doors, we kept following the line… up the escalators, down the hall, outside across a patio, into the actual registration hall where we were herded into aisles with Actual! People! Dispensing! Badges!

The totally awesome thing about registration is that even though Ben only had Thursday/Friday 1-day passes, the girl who printed out my 4-day pass also printed out his. We thought Ben was going to have to wait in line again, but he got really lucky! And even better, we had to get his colored badge holders from a little side booth, and the woman there gave him a sticker to wear that would allow him into the convention hall on preview night with me! So I got to walk around a lot more with him there (instead of waiting outside) and he won’t have to wait in that godawful line tomorrow to get in.

The convention hall: it’s about 3 times the size of all the other conventions I’ve been to put together. There’s so much to see that I’m going to have a hard time seeing everything and attending the panels I want to attend in the next few days. The place was packed with people fighting for the booth freebies and I could have done with a little more personal space. Hopefully that will be available in the hall as attendees are not all in hall because of panels, film festivals, various eating schedules, etc. Excitement was pretty mega-high throughout the place.

I’ve narrowed the number of panels I want to try to get into tomorrow to five. I’m guessing that I’ll be hard-pressed to actually make it to two, given the amount of time I’d likely have to devote to waiting in line beforehand. We’ll have to see on that.

I need to get some rest tonight… the next few days are going to be very busy and I’d like to have some relaxation time fit into the schedule as well!

With the discovery of some ice on Mars and all the potentially earth-like planets being discovered, somebody better start building a Battlestar with FTL capabilities.

(I’m hoping to score at least a sighting of the Battlestar Galactica cast this weekend at Comic Con.)

I made them myself, can I have a cookie now?

Creating those little cards was a lot more work than I expected. Seriously, I am a writer who sometimes designs on a computer but rarely draws anything worth showing to anyone with decent eyesight. But I finally got them close to what I was envisioning, and that made the effort worthwhile. I can’t wait to hand them to people at Comic Con next week!

Here’s how I made the design:

1. Thought about what kind of business card would work well, and came up with the idea for a comic-style card.
2. Started drawing caricatures of myself. Some were really, really, horrible. I had to look up how to draw a female body because I wasn’t getting it right.
3. Finally figured out that I should draw the caricature elements separately, scan them, and then piece them together in Adobe Illustrator (CS1 that I got in my last year of college but never really learned how to use).
4. Hit the jackpot with Blambot.com, where I found some awesome free comic fonts (for Mac and PC) and pre-made dialogue balloons in .eps format. Perfect!
5. Swore a lot as I learned how to alter the Illustrator files to get the dialogue balloons in the size and shape I wanted.
6. Added the text (Blambot’s Anime Ace 2.0) and obsessed a little over the exact wording.
7. Tweaked and tweaked until Illustrator and Photoshop both worked together with me enough to get the final result you see above.

It’s not perfect, but I won’t be embarrassed to hand out that design. And there is probably a better way to do something like that… so if you have any suggestions for next time, please leave a comment. I’m not under any delusions that I would be able to illustrate my own graphic novel, but it would be nice to learn a little more about art ‘n stuff. I would like to write one someday (soon, maybe, with all this Comic Con inspiration).

Next on the agenda before Comic Con: packing and maybe finally getting around to updating my website?

I’m just going to put it out there: This is pretty much going to be a Comic Con Blog for the next couple weeks.

The past couple days I have been reading every little bit of information available on Comic Con. They just posted the programming for panels, the independent film festival, autographs, etc. My itinerary is already looking very full and I have no idea how I’m going to be in 4 places at the same time. Let me know if you can get me the time travel hourglass that Dumbledore gave to Hermione.

I’ve already learned a lot about the comics industry and all things related just by reading through the details. My thanks goes out to the dedicated copywriters who managed to squeak some humor into a few of the descriptions. Now that my eyes are bleeding from computer monitor/information overload, I’ll have to wait until I heal a little before I can go back to see which panels won’t make the first cut.

But I made my first list without taking into consideration that there are films running throughout the day at the same time as the panels! And I know I’m going to waste a good amount of time waiting in lines for the panels that I really want to see. WTF am I going to do, seriously? Will I even have time to visit the convention floor to see all the booths, Artists’ Alley, and to buy some totally awesome crap with money that I really shouldn’t be spending? Will 4 days be enough time for me? Will Ben go completely out of his mind at any point during our vacation that he doesn’t view as a vacation but merely “traveling with my wife to appease her inexplicable, obsessive fangirl needs (and maybe to meet Simon Pegg)?”

All this and more to come. Anybody else as excited as me about anything right now?

I can now check these items off my Comic Con to-acquire list:

• 4-day Comic Con pass for me
• Thursday and Friday Comic Con pass for Ben
• Hotel reservation
• Airline tickets

The only thing left to acquire:

• More money (so that we can eat food, drink beer, and buy things while we’re there)

There’s still a lot of planning that needs to happen in the next couple weeks before our plane leaves at an ugly-ass early hour on Wednesday, July 23. If you’re lucky, you’ll get to read all about the glorious details. (Do I bring my favorite Teva sandals or sneakers? Or both? How can I maximize space for swag in my suitcase and still bring all the clothes that I need?)

I will definitely be bringing along my camera, cell phone, old laptop with wireless card, mini notebook, and pen. Which means that while I am splattering my geek saliva all over everything at the con like a Saint Bernard, I will also be taking copious notes, snapping photos like a madwoman, updating my Twitter feed via cell phone, and hopefully not being too exhausted to write a little about each day on this blog and maybe post some photos.

I did a little research and just discovered that the DC Comics talent search, which includes a free seminar and portfolio review, is just for aspiring artists. Writers are left with the old-fashioned way to break into comics: by hobnobbing with any editor they can corner at a booth and forcing sample writing and business cards down their throats.  Maybe I’ll be nice and round the corners of my business cards.

I won an eBay auction for a 4-day pass to the San Diego Comic Con!

It wasn’t a stellar deal compared to the face value, but reasonable compared to what some people are currently willing to pay the evil scalpers. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to call them “people who are unfortunately unable to attend the event due to a wedding/flaky friend/business trip.”

Now I’ve paid my money and I am waiting quite anxiously to hear back from the seller, who has to contact Comic Con to transfer the registration. I don’t think that I can handle another post-elation-let-down, so I hope that all goes smoothly and I don’t have to track down a dishonest eBay seller and unleash the Brute Squad upon him/her.  Not that I’m preparing myself for the worst or anything.

It looks like Ben and I will be leaving on Wednesday, but the return date is still a tiny bit up in the air. Do we stay an extra day (with added hotel expense) to go to Sea World? If the Padres were in town over the weekend, we would definitely go to a baseball game… but they won’t play a home game until the Tuesday after the con.  And spending six nights in San Diego is not an option for us this time around.

Sigh. When you have the time to do the things you want to do, you rarely have the money. When you’re making  money, you rarely have time to do the things you want to do.

And sometimes, when you’re making money, you preorder books on Amazon that finally ship out (and are charged to your credit card) when you’re laid off. But what’s thirty bucks when it comes to graphic novel deliciousness?

These are my favorite comics that I have been reading as they come out in graphic novel form. I am a sucker for almost any re-imagining of fairy tales and folklore, even if the story ends up not being as well-written as I’d hoped it would be (not the case for “Fables”). And what’s not to love about the post-apocolyptic scenario of one man left in the world? Whose name is Yorick? I’m also a sucker for characters whose names start with the letter Y. (Except for the reference to prostitutes named Yvette and Yvonne in the musical “Miss Saigon.” My high school theater friends got a good snicker out of that back in the day.)

I LOVE that the titles of Fables and (spin-off series) Jack of Fables are yin-yang: “The Good Prince” and “The Bad Prince,” respectively. I can’t wait to find out if there’s a reason for that in the storyline.

Oh hey, comics talk got my mind off Comic Con for a minute! Oh. But now I’m totally geeking out about it again because I remembered that “Fables” writer Bill Willingham will be one of the Special Guests! Officially on my list of things to do in the remaining 17 days until Comic Con: create three great questions that I would ask Mr. Willingham if I have the opportunity to meet him there. Because the last thing I want to do is to ask for his autograph and just stand there drooling geek-froth on him while he politely avoids eye contact.

One more thing before I end this undeniably pathetic written record of how much I need to get a life. I just found Bill Willingham’s website where he lists pieces of original artwork from his comics collection. Nothing there that I need to have, but it just reminded me of how quickly the San Diego trip could become a spendy adventure in Original Art Acquisition with a spin-off jaunt into Watching Ben Blow a Fuse as I try to convince him not to pass up the opportunity to purchase <one-of-a-kind-thing>.  Also officially on my list of things to do in the remaining 17 days until Comic Con: create a map of all microbreweries in San Diego for husband-bribery purposes.