First off, for anyone who actually reads what I write, I apologize for not writing anything since April.
But let's dive in. This was one of the years that I got to go to Comic Con in San Diego. I've been going to the show off and on since 1996. There was no wasted time this year, as I flew out of Cleveland on Wednesday July 11th early in the morning. There was a layover in Nashville, and as I made my way to the next flight, I saw quite a few nuns. I'm not sure what sort of portent "nuns in Nashville" was supposed to be, but the flights were uneventful.
When I go to the convention, I generally stay at the EZ 8 Motel in Old Town. Sure, it's not the Ritz, but it's an inexpensive place to stay, and it has a trolley station that's a 5 minute walk away. That's important, because the trolley is what get's you from place to place. I took a couple hour nap to get recharged, and when I woke up, it was time to head to the convention center. I had no idea how long the process would take to get my admission badge, and it turned out that getting the badge was simplicity itself. I got my program and sat down to figure out the night and the week.
This year, my plan was to meet a bunch of small press creators and have them sign my copies of Strange Tales, Strange Tales II, and Girl Comics. All of these were comics that Marvel produced using small press writers and artists (well, Girl Comics just used women creators on all the stories, and a number of them work in the small press arena).
There's always 2 creators that I try to meet the first day out there. The first one is Terry Moore. I have nearly every issue of Strangers in Paradise autographed by him, I thought his second series, Echo, was fantastic, and his current series, Rachel Rising, has just kicked into high gear by making a vaguely supernatural story, a full-blown supernatural story. Since I couldn't find my hardcover copy of Echo in time to bring it with me, I just had him sign my Strange Tales 2.
And the second person I try to see on Wednesday night is Frank Cho. Each year that I've seen him, I've bought one of his sketchbooks. This year, he had no sketchbook to sell, it was either a print or a calendar. I went with the calendar.
Then it was off to see Stan Sakai (of Usagi Yojimbo fame) and Jill Thompson (Scary Godmother). Stan did a cool sketch in the Strange Tales hardcover. I've met both of them before, and they're both incredibly nice.
And to cap off the day, I managed to catch up with the last three Unshelved collections that I was missing. I'm a sucker for funny comic strips, regardless of how simple the art style may be. In fact, the cleaner the art style, the more apt I am to give it a look. But mostly I want my comic strips to be funny, and Unshelved hits that on the nose (for me).
And by then, Preview night was winding down, so I headed back to the motel, had some pizza and figured out what I was bringing with me the next day.
Here's Unshelved's website: http://www.unshelved.com/
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