gwalla

I need to be better about updating with stuff I've done reasonably close to when I do it. It's been a week since WonderCon!

I went all three days, but only have pics from Saturday and Sunday. Oh, I brought my camera on Friday...it just refused to turn on! Batteries were fresh too. I was a little put out, since I'd lugged the damned thing to work with me (I work just a few blocks from Moscone Center), and I'd just had it fixed (I just hadn't bothered to try it out since I got it back from the shop, and it'd been too long since then to just bring it back and get it fixed again for free). I borrowed my folks' digital camera for the rest of the weekend

( Dr. Who, Cobra, and Girl Genius )

( Art Adams, Silent Hill, and Cartoon Network graffiti )

( By the gleamin' gates of funky Asgard! )

( lol wut )

( Street Fighter, Star Wars, Mike Mignola, Johnny Depp, and Batty bad girls )

( The Dark Horse panel, plus criticism )

( Violet Incredible, Dan Brereton, Halo, and MST3K )

( Above ground: R2D2, Link, Cassandra Cain, and a monster )

( Boba Fett, Green Hornet, the Clone Wars, Mike Royer, and ROB! VAN! DAM! )

( Boba and Boushh, Gandalf, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon )

( Kurt Busiek, manga maestro Jason Thompson CHARGIN EYE LAZOR, Sergio Aragones and Steve Leialoha )

I also attended the latter half of the DC panel, saw some Bleach, and saw a couple of movies. One was the 3DCG anime Appleseed: Ex Machina. The semi-cell-shaded look took some getting used to, but it was pretty fun. Although it's kind of hard to believe that Deunan is an "unmodified human" when she's pulling off crazy Matrix gun-fu acrobatics. And it's produced by John Woo, so naturally there are flocks of doves everywhere (later it's revealed that the doves are actually robots broadcasting a mind-controlling signal. At this revelation, the entire theater broke out laughing). The other was the animated Justice League: New Frontier, based on Darwyn Cooke's revisionist (but not "superhero deconstructionist") take on the Silver Age DCU. I missed most of the first half, but what I saw was pretty good (I don't think there was any need for Hal Jordan to be abducted by a UFO to find Abin Sur rather than just being led to him by the ring, because blowing up the room he was in makes his secret identity a little harder to justify, but then by the end it seems like a lot of folks, including Rick Flagg of all people, know his ID, so it hardly matters). Both are worth checking out, JL:NF more than Appleseed (unless you're up for some fairly mindless explodification).

And to sum up, here's all the stuff I got:

( Con haul )

Anyone?

Anyone?

Bueller?

I have yet to find an open hotel room for Comic-Con this year. So, does anybody out there going this summer have room for a couple more guys? My artist friend Mondo, who's never been, also wants to go and we were planning on sharing a room until it turned out there weren't any.

WonderCon started on Friday, but I didn't go, since work and gym conflicted. I came kind of late on Saturday, but I don't feel like I missed anything—none of the early panels really grabbed me. I didn't go to any panels, actually, and just hung out in the dealer room spending money and getting sketches.

The dealers room was very good to me. Just about the first thing I found was a booth selling old comics, where they had a table of random issues they were selling for $5 each (not bad at all for vintage stuff in still-readable condition). We're not talking Action Comics #1 here, but there was some stuff that at the very least would be fun to post on scans_daily. I picked up a Silver Age issue of Action Comics in which Superman goes up against a criminal made of kryptonite, an issue of Blackhawk in which the Blackhawks (a WW2 flying team) fight a magician who shoots himself into the water with a cannon, an issue of Giant Size Man-Thing (hee hee!), an issue of Dial H For Hero where Robby Reed turns into three bizarre creatures, and an issue of Where Monsters Dwell featuring Kirby art. At another booth I got some old weird DC stuff: Anthro #2 (a caveman hero), Star Hunters, and DC Super Stars of Space (a collection of reprinted adventures of Adam Strange, Captain Comet, Tommy Tomorrow, and SPACE CABBY!).

Then I found what I was looking for: most of the DC Challenge maxi-series. It's missing a couple of issues from the middle, and the last two, but I'd never been able to find any issues before (and I looked at the last Comic-Con!). I'm looking forward to reading this silliness. The samples on scans_daily are just too awesome.

Got a sketch of Nocturne by Michael Ryan. It's beautiful.

After some ships-passing-in-the-night hijinx, I caught up with Shaenon Garrity and bought signed copies of Narbonic volumes 2 and 3, and chatted for a while. She agrees that Fin Fang 4 should be an ongoing, and told me that the original pitch was for a miniseries which at one point was to involve a Stan Lee clone with hypnotic powers. God I wish they'd gone through with that. I got vol. 3 signed by Phil Foglio, too, who did the bonus story. From Phil I got a few cloisonne pins (why does nobody else sell these? I love 'em), volume 1 of Girl Genius, and a copy of Dealer's Choice: The Complete Guide to Saturday Night Poker (which he illustrated). Both books were signed, and I got a sketch of Agatha. Also, since he collects poker variants, I told him about Crosstown Traffic.

Caught up with Chuck Whelon and bought a book from him. I left my sketchbook with him while I wandered around Artists Alley, and when I came back he'd filled the page with a huge and very detailed cartoon dragon! Chuck is awesome. Read his comic.

Bought the new K Chronicles collection and the new Marginal Prophets album from Keith Knight. Got a sketchfrom him, too...of his K Chonicles alter ego riding a milk bottle (captioned "don't ask").

At the Oni Press booth I got a sketch of Pandora from Death Jr. by Ted Naifeh, and bought his comics Polly and the Pirates and Courtney Crumrin and the Night Things. Good stuff.

And one booth I got DVDs of Doctor Who and the Curse of Fatal Death (the Rowan Atkinson parody), Wild Wild Planet (partly just to impress my dad, who still repeats his favorite line from it, "look out for those gadgets on their chests!" said regarding a bunch of buxom space amazons), and Light Years (a French animated sci-fi film directed by the guy who did Fantastic Planet, with an English script by Isaac Asimov and a whole bunch of famous people in the voice cast before that was common). At another I got a bootleg 4-DVD set of the early 1980s Incredible Hulk cartoon, which I remember watching once on video way back in the day (on Betamax!).

Con closed at 7. Got beer & dinner at the ThirstyBear brew pub/tapas bar (Golden Hallucination ale is good, Menage a Frambois not so great, tortilla española really good, fried calamari too salty, olive tapenade for bread tasty). Then home.

Going back tomorrow (er...today. How'd it get this late?)

That was very nearly the biggest mistake of my life.

Rewind. I found out earlier today that the hotel reservations for Comic-Con had opened up, but by the time I tried to get one they were all sold out. Shit. I tried a few times, but got nowhere. So when I got home from work, I tried again. Still nothing. I decided to bypass the SDCC booking service entirely and go straight to the hotel websites, because maybe they kept some rooms aside for other guests.

I was batting zero for a while, but then the Holiday Inn On The Bay let me make a reservation. Awesome! I select the cheapest option (about $187/night) and go through the whole thing, give my credit card info and all that, and click confirm.

The total comes to over $7,000.

I had accidentally selected June 25, not July 25, as my arrival date, but correctly entered July 30 as the departure date. I'd just reserved a 2-bed room for 35 days. And to get that lower price, I'd taken the advance payment option, which you still have to pay for even if you cancel.

I tried to correct my reservation on the site, but it wasn't working. So in a panic I tried to call the hotel (nobody there but an answering machine), then Holiday Inn's main reservation line. The woman there tried to shorten my stay to just the 5 days in July I wanted, but it wasn't working. Apparently they're booked for those days (although why it allowed me to reserve a room for those days as part of a longer stay makes no sense), and she insisted that an advance payment reservation couldn't be cancelled. I was on the verge of crying, and getting nowhere. I suggested that she shorten it down to one day, any day,not necessarily in that 5-day range, that I'd just pay for as a stupidity tax. I was really grasping at straws.

She said she'd try something, and then there was silence. A lot of silence. For what seemed like forever. She briefly reappeared to say she was working on it, and then yet another ball-twisting eternity of dead air. Finally, she came back on the line, and told me that she got it cancelled. I confirmed that that meant that I wouldn't be paying for any of it, and she gave me a cancellation number to give to my credit card issuer in case the charge had already been registered. I thanked her profusely.

Afterwards I tried a few more hotels, but that experience had sucked the will out of me, and I gave up pretty quickly. So I'm still without a room for me and my friend. But at least I'm not in massive debt for no good reason.

I need a drink. And a heart transplant.

I started off the trip on a bad foot by getting off at the Concord BART station instead of North Concord, and ended up waiting around until after midnight. I didn't have Starlock's cell number at that point either. Fortunately Starlock, his daughter Caitlyn, and CPOK did end up getting there (good thing, because BART stopped running) and we took off. The drive down was mostly uneventful (read: I slept through most of it, although we did talk for some of the it, about random things like driving and patriotism and anime). Chief and I did switch off driving duties in a rental (Starlock and Cait took his truck) so he could catch some Zs, but somewhere down a little south of L.A. (I think), I woke up and managed to avoid swerving out of my lane. We took the opportunity to grab some breakfast at Crap in the Sack and swap again. I forget when we finally rolled into San Diego, but I do recall CPOK getting agitated about Starlock not signalling in the lead, forcing us to e.g. cut off a Lincoln just to make an exit.

The first thing we did in San Deeg was head to the airport to pick up moltare and TSKy. Caitlyn had drawn up a two-sided sign for the purpose, and I regret to say I never got a picture of it. It was quite impressively silly. We found Mol first (he'd actually arrived the previous night and gotten a hotel room near the airport), but had to wait for a while for TSKy's plane to empty out. Once assembled, we went (more or less) straight to the Holiday Inn in National City, which is a considerable distance from downtown SD (past the Naval station). We were a little early, and one of the rooms wasn't ready yet, so we chilled in what became the "girls' room". Mol and I exposed each other to silly music via iPods (and I got Wesley Willis's "I Whupped Batman's Ass" stuck in his head). TSKy kept getting calls from her friend whose name I can't remember, who she was at first supposed to meet downtown but it got changed to him just taking the trolley all the way out because she didn't realize how long it would take and then he overshot because he didn't realize that you had to press a button to open the doors and detrain even though he lived there and TSKy kept getting madder and madder. He did finally make it. I introduced a few people to Bang!, the spaghetti western card game. TSKy liked it (which could have had something to do with the fact that she won).

johnforstershowed up, and I cajoled him into giving me a ride to get some camera batteries (I had film, but no power). We were also joined by CPOK's two Canadian friends, Hellfire and The Quiet One Whose Name I Could Never Remember. Sometime later, after we'd gotten our stuff into the second room, we took off for Preview Night. For those who've never done the San Diego Comic Con thing, Preview Night is something they added some years back, a special half-day only for people who pre-registered. The booths aren't necessarily fully set up yet, but it is a good opportunity to case the joint before the real crowds. When they first started doing it, it was pretty quiet, but word got around and now even Preview Night is pretty busy.

( Walking to the con )

Getting in on preview night was a breeze. It used to be that at the pre-registration line, you had to go to the booth for the first couple of letters of your last name, and they had to look up your name in little index cards. No more. The new pre-reg tickets have bar codes, and they just scanned it and let you through. No line whatsoever, even thought Preview Night was pretty packed. Pre-reg has always been the way to go (the on-site lines are insane), but now you're crazy if you don't pre-reg.

( I'm tired of this muthaf***in' booth )

( Delicious UDON )

( Hot Wheels get funkay )

After the dealer floor closed up, John and I met up and tried to gather the rest, but it turned out they'd left earlier. So we went to the Gaslamp District and got some good (albeit pricey) Italian food. Nice seafood pasta. Back at the room there was horsing around and watching videos (far too many AMVs), and sleep sometime in the early morning.

Tired

Photos later

Sleep now

Well, I shall be leaving for San Diego Comic Con shortly. Of course, this means I will most likely be netless (horrors!) for about a week. I'll see some of you down there, and talk to the rest later!

Try not to break anything while I'm gone!

I was totally on the ball and got my time off from work arranged for Comic-Con well in advance.

And then today, talking to CPOK and Starlock, I find out that I'd misremembered, and we're leaving Tuesday night, not Wednesday night.

FUCK.

Gotta get that straightened out. My boss is a good guy, don't think he'd have a problem with it. But I still feel like a moron, and now I'm worrying about what if it's too late to get that day off?

So, who's going to San Diego Comic Con?

( Photos from the 2006 San Francisco Japantown Cherry Blossom Festival: koto, origami, paper dolls, swords, tea, etc. )

I'll be going to the taiko performance on Saturday night. I would like to go back to the festival this Sunday, because it's the last day, with the big parade. Plus there's a kendo exhibition. However, that's also the day of the conlanging conference at Cal, and there are a couple of seminars there that sound interesting (plus, it may never happen again). I'm kinda torn. And I need to decide soon, because I would need to register for the conference. What to do...

So I went to the Cherry Blossom Festival today in San Francisco. Despite the off-an-on rain, Japantown was packed with people. Caught some of the iaido demonstration, but it wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped (no tameshi-giri?), and that coupled with the rain drove me inside. Over in the Miyako Hotel I saw a little bit of a koto performance. The young girl playing the koto was definitely not the best I've heard—this was clearly a sort of student recital—but decent and didn't let the occasional mistake throw her off. And anyway, it made it feel more like a community event than something staged for tourists. I checked out the origami room (some fun stuff, including an origami Godzilla-menacing-Tokyo, a Starship Enterprise, and some cool abstracts as well as more traditional fare) and the paper dolls exhibition.

I was a little on the late side to one of the tea ceremony demonstrations. Not so late that I missed any of the actual demonstration, but enough that I got kind of a lousy seat and couldn't see much. Not that there's really a whole lot to see if you don't know the significance of all of the things they do. Still, it was interesting to watch, and the guy MCing did explain some of what the two women were doing. They only did the final segment, the serving of "thin tea"; a full tea ceremony, which includes a small meal, sake drinking (the host shares a cup of sake with each guest—as the MC said, "one should be careful not to invite too many people!"), thick tea, and finally thin tea, takes about four hours! After the demonstraton was over, anyone who wanted to could sit at a table on one side of the room and be served a bowl of thin tea and a Japanese sweet. I tried it, and it was delicious. Tea ceremony tea is made by mixing ground green tea leaves with hot water, rather than steeping. Thin tea is just a more dilute mixture than thick tea, but both are much thicker than, say, genmai-cha. The MC, who was a student of the hostess performing the demonstration, did a Q&A with the audience. Somebody asked about water, and he said that the sites famous for their tea water in Japan are not springs, but places along rivers. He said that it seems water is prized not for its mineral content but for a lack of minerals. Well, I thought it was interesting anyway. On the way out, I saw the tail end of the wu shu demonstration (yeah yeah, wu shu is Chinese, but the group has a place in Japantown so they get a pass as part of the community).

Of course, I had to hit the food stands. Like the last time I went, the food concessions were all fundraisers. I got a teriyaki burger from the senior services group, which wasn't great (teriyaki sauce and mayo is just overdoing it on the glop, frankly) but wasn't terrible. There was a stand selling cold beer and hot sake again this year, and I got a cup of the latter. Mmmm, sake. Passed on the Zen temple's takoyaki. I've tried them before and they're just kinda bland with a sour-ish fishy sauce. Not my bag. The stand selling those little pancake thingies stuffed with bean paste was there again, and I got a couple. It was right next to the booze stand, and they announced last call while I was in line, so as soon as I got my beanie cakes I hopped over and got another cup of sake for half price. Mmmm, sake. Got back up to the peace plaza just in time to see the end of the S.F. Nipponto Society's sword demonstration. They actually did some tameshi-giri!

Browsed around the shops for a bit, and ended up buying a Domo-kun t-shirt and a couple of books from Kinokuniya. I also got tickets for the big taiko festival next Saturday. At the CDs-and-other-stuff store I got my spine mangled by a massage chair before taking off for home. I think I'll be back next Sunday—that's when they have the big parade (and the cosplay parade). Plus there'll be a kendo demonstration, which I'd like to see, because I'm always up for some swordplay. So if anyone in the area wants to meet up, the offer still stands.

Easter dinner was a delicious leg of lamb with roasted potatoes and carrots, and steamed asparagus. Dessert was spice cake with a honey-caramel glaze, and strawberry-rhubarb fool.

Life is good.

The Cherry Blossom Festival in SF Japantown is tomorrow and next weekend. Anybody want to go? There'll be good eats, stuff to see, anime to watch, and plenty of sake. There's a schedule here (Acrobat/PDF format). If you want to meet up, reply here and we'll work something out.

I may not go next Saturday, because there's a conlangers meetup that afternoon.

( Posting the rest of my Wondercon '06 pics! Grant Morrison and Jim Lee! Peter David and Terry Moore! Pewfell Porfingles! Cosplay! )

I got my second roll of Wondercon pics developed about a week ago. I'll try to get those up tomorrow.

Took me a while to get these developed, but here's part one. Part two (which includes most of Sunday) is waiting for me to finish off the roll of film, because I don't like to waste it.

( Behind a cut to protect friendspages from utter ruin )

Couldn't convince my friend Armando to come along, since he was alrady headed to his mom's place.

Got there too late to catch the DC Crisis Counseling panel. Oh well.

Caught the end of the "Secret Origin of Good Readers" panel, which was about using comics to promote literacy, comics in libraries, comics in the classroom, etc. It was interesting, although the brief history of comics didn't tell me anything I didn't know (and it overstated the seriousness of comics pre-CCA). For those who are interested, they have a site here with lesson plans and other resources for educators.

Came into the DC Wildstorm/CMX panel expecting it to already be underway, but it turned out to have been pushed back to 2. So I got in at the beginning. And was subjected to the vocal stylings of Alé Garza singing "Sister Christian". The guy working the soundboard went with the flow and actually cued up the song for him to sing over. Anyway, Grant Morrison and Jim Lee showed up but could only stay briefly due to the change in times causing them to be double-booked. They talked about their upcoming collaboration on WildC.A.T.S., which sounds pretty interesting (although I'll admit to being a sucker for Morrison). The premise of the new series is going to be pretty different from previous runs, but will star the usual suspects for the most part and will build on the older stories. They're going for a pop art feel, which could be fun. After Morrison and Lee left, Garza and his writer (can't recall his name—couldn't remember Garza's either but it's in the program) talked about their new project Skye Runner. It sounds like your basic fantasy action story, nothing that new. They seemed enthusiastic though. And Wildstorm executive editor Scott Dunbier went over the titles that will be coming out through them and CMX (DC's manga line). A question about whether there will be an uncut edition of Tenjo Tenge (a sore point with manga fans, as CMX had billed itself as being uncut but had cut some mild nudity) got a vague, uninformative, and slightly defensive answer.

After that was the Comic Book Writers panel in the same room, with Peter David, Terry Moore, and Mark Waid. For some reason Mark Evanier, who was supposed to moderate, was not there, and Mark Waid was late. So it started out with Moore and David just taking questions from the audience. Fortunately, David loves to talk, and they could riff on things for a while. The lack of a moderator turned out to not be such a setback. After David said that Moore had it easy because he was both writer and artist, and could therefore make sure that what he wrote came through exactly as he intended on the page, Moore said that in fact he frequently finds when drawing that he needs to scrap or change things he'd written. He said that his comics are still made by committee, but they're a committee in his head—and they don't get along very well. Waid appeared about halfway through. They talked about the differences between writing limited series and ongoings. David claimed that "the only difference is that on an ongoing you stop when you quit or get fired", but Waid brought up the fact that with ongoings you can't always plan out your story arcs completely ahead of time and can usually drop a story seed in and just see where it leads, but with limited series you need to tighten things up. None of them use index cards when writing (David said the only time he used index cards to keep track of things was when he wrote choose-your-own-adventure books, since it's basically impossible to do otherwise). It was a very fun panel.

After that, I wandered the dealer room. Met Jason Martin of Super Real. It's available in pamphlet form now. Also finally caught up with Chuck Whelon, who did a sketch for me that turned out to be my only sketch of the Con. I'm really kicking myself for not bringing more money, and also for not trying to get a sketch from Phil Foglio earlier because he was gone by the time I got to his table. Ah well.

Con ended at 5. I got a couple more costume photos and went home. I had a good time.

Today was a rich full day.

After watching some of the Olympics while eating breakfast, I took off for San Francisco and Wondercon. It was in Moscone West (the above-ground part of Moscone Center), and the line was pretty long this year. Not San Diego long, but definitely longer than last year's WonderCon. It went around the corner and stretched about to the next corner.

Most of the day I spent in panels. I got in in time to catch the end of the DCU post-Infinite Crisis panel with Dan Didio, Grant Morrison, Mark Waid et al. 52 actually sounds kind of interesting now. The idea is that it'll establish what's up with the DC Universe after the ∞C shenanigans, and as such will feature stories about all sorts of characters. And the discussions of who will appear are still ongoing. So Mark Waid called for audience members to suggest their favorites that they would want to see. Ambush Bug was one of the suggestions, and he said that since Giffen is doing the breakdowns, Ambush Bug will most likely make an appearance whether he's written in or not. There were several other suggestons, both serious and goofy (like Ultra the Multi-Alien). Some woman suggested Aztek, to which Morrison (his creator) replied "He was destroyed and his atoms were spread throughout the galaxy. So he's a little busy right now." Apparently there are plans related to Dial H for Hero. After the panel, I suggested Space Cabby to Mark Waid, and he said that with all the stuff going on in space right now he was kind of surprised that Space Cabby hadn't been thrown into the mix yet.

After that, I caught the end of Scott Saavedra's Comic Book Heaven panel. It was amusing, but not that great. I considered going to the TV Horror Hosts panel (John Stanley!) but passed it up in favor of the Dark Horse Q&A. The turnout for DH was surprisingly small. They introduced a guy who's doing a new comic for them about a superhero and supervillain who are roommates in their secret identities, which sounded okay. It was a pretty interesting panel, even though they didn't come in with anything specific to say and it took a bit for the audience to work up the nerve to start asking questions. They fielded questions about how working with bookstores is different from working with comic shops (the short answer seemed to be: "It's not that different. They both like swag."). One interesting thing: they're coming out with a new line of horror manga translations. Horror manga is big in Japan, and they're figuring that with manga having taken off in a big way, taking cues from Japanese trends could pay off big. It certainly sounds interesting, because it's not something the other US manga companies have really been pursuing. Also, Hellboy will be getting new collected editions, the Conan comics (which are adaptations of the original Robert E. Howard novels) are selling well, and Sin City made them a ton of money.

I met Shaenon Garrity and her hubby Andrew Farago outside the room. Andrew was going to be moderating the next panel, put on by the Cartoon Art Museum (where he's curator), about their current show Gross, Gruesome, and Gothic. Shaenon admired my It's Walky! t-shirt, and we caught up on things. I was conflicted about whether to see this panel, or the Spotlight on Grant Morrison. It was a tough call, because Morrison is the king of all awesome, but then I'd already seen him at the DC panel and he was slated for the Wildstorm panel tomorrow. I went to check out his panel, but it hadn't started yet, so I went back to the room for the CAM panel and ended up staying for the whole thing. They had Chris Bachalo (Sandman, Death: The High Cost of Living and Death: The Time of Your Life, Witching Hour, Generation X, currently X-Men) , Eric Powell (The Goon for Dark Horse), Bill Morrison (in charge of Bongo Comics' Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror), Batton Lash (Supernatural Law neé Wolff & Byrd: Counselors of the Macabre), and the legendary Gahan Wilson (the glory days of National Lampoon, Playboy). Andrew is kind of an awkward public speaker, but he kept things going and the panel was a lot of fun. At the end, Morrison asked Wilson if he'd like to do something in Treehouse of Horror, to which Wilson replied "Fuckin' right!" So, that was news in the making.

Wandered over to the big room to catch a bit of the Silent Hill preview and see if it might be any good, but the Pixar 20th Anniversary Tribute was running way over time and they hadn't even shown clips from Cars yet. Cars doesn't really interest me at all (a rarity for Pixar, but the trailer just didn't grab me at all). I took the opportunity to grab a late lunch at a little before 4pm.

I came back to catch the second half of the Spotlight on Peter David. He was reading from his script for the next as-yet-unpublished issue of X-Factor, and it sounds pretty awesome. I won't spoil any of it (he swore us all to Interweb secrecy), but will only say that at one point he thumped the mic against the table repeatedly for a sound effect. I wish I'd thought to take a picture when he was doing it, because it was hilarious. Anyway, apparently Fallen Angel is selling much better as a creator-owned indie than through DC, even though the price is a dollar higher. Crazy. Also, he's got more Trek novels coming out—including a TNG novel, the purpose of which is to, as he put it, "make the Borg not suck"—and a Battlestar Galactica novel. He says he resisted watching the new series for a long time because he's friends with Richard Hatch and he felt that they'd screwed him over, until somebody pointed out that Hatch has a recurring role on the new show. So he watched and got hooked. A book entitled "Writing Comics With Peter David"—a title which he hates, but makes his mom happy because his name takes up about 2⁄3 of the cover— is also in the works.

The big news of that panel, though, was that Peter David is now Marvel exclusive. He says the decision was pretty simple: being exclusive means they pay medical benefits, and he's got a wife and 4 kids. He says that any time you hear someone explaining that they went exclusive because they love the characters and really treasured the chance to blah blah blah, they're full of crap, and took it for the medical. He was concerned that he wouldn't be able to do his other projects (like Fallen Angel, his current Spike miniseries, and Soulsearchers & Co) anymore, but Marvel got back to him and said that they'd write an exception into the contract for his current projects. Which is really cool. Apparently they offered him the contract because they're really happy with his work on X-Factor and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which bodes well for X-Factor (probably the best X-book right now).

After that panel let out, I went down to the dealer's room and wandered around. Didn't buy anything. Met the guys who do Alpha Shade, and they were really cool. Websnark came up, and the guy sounded disappointed that the discussion had mainly been about the interface (I didn't mention that it was one major reason why I'd never seriously checked it out). Chuck Whelon of Pewfell Porfingles had a table, but he was out & about so I didn't see him. Took a few pictures here and there. Saw Mark Waid again at the DC booth, where he was doing Batman sketches (?!) on the backs of flyers for new DC action figures. Got a sketch, and asked if there were any 52 plans for the Green Team. He said he didn't know what they'd would be up to during 52, but he'd bring it up in the meetings. I also asked about the original Outsiders, to which he said "Oh, you mean the Joe Simon ones? I'll definitely bring that up." Finally, I asked more seriously about Linda Danvers, and asked how that would even work. He thought a bit, and said that he didn't really know. There'd been some discussion, but nothing had materialized.

After that, back home just in time for the Olympics to come back on as I ate dinner. Then this, and now to bed. Crap, it's after 1am.

I'll be going back tomorrow today.

PS: Pictures eventually. I use film, so no instant digital gratification, sorry.

So WonderCon is this weekend at SF's Moscone Center. I'll probably check it out, as I had fun last year. Anyone else going?

EDIT: Anybody? C'mon now.

Went to the JapanTown Anime Fair yesterday. Crazie had to cancel at the last minute, but I took BART and bus and got there around 2pm. Had an excellent time. For most of the day I just wandered around the mall hoping to bump into Aeire, browsing mostly at Kinokuniya and Miyako Music. Bought a couple of CDs (one J-gothrock, one J-rap). Almost bought an Ultraman lighter, but decided against it as I don't actually smoke. Ate at Osaka-ya (very good tanin-don). Eventually I stumbled upon the dealer room, where Aeire had a table (d'oh!). We talked for a bit, then some squealing fangirls showed up and I wandered off.

After some more browsing, I returned for the Something Positive panel (a little late). Randy Milholland is funny in person. If you have a chance to go to one of his panels, take it, because he's really entertaining. I went in with no real questions (as I'd read the recent Comixpedia article), but I ended up asking a couple: "When you say that the real Aubrey has vetoed a couple of strips because she wouldn't really do what you'd written...does that mean that she would do the things she's done in the comic?" and "Is Mike based on a real person, or more like an amalgamation of people you've met?". Both had interesting answers: "Aubrey is a...special girl" (then talking about the real Aubrey's behavior), and "He's actually based on two people, who aren't aware he's based on them" (then talking about how one had reformed, while the other has remained a prick, and how he's at a crossroads with the character). Choo-Choo Bear's origins were also discussed, among many other things.

I missed the Queen of Wands panel (it was in the morning, before I'd arrived) and the general webcomics forum (it was on Saturday). Too bad. Michael Poe was there for the latter, reportedly.

After the SP panel, I went up to the dealer room again but they were closing it. I hung around the hotel lobby for a bit, then went back downstairs to the fansub screening room. I caught the tail end of "Boboboubo Boboubo", which was...completely insane. In a way that makes FLCL and Excel Saga look like Full House. A big burly guy in shades with a huge afro (apparently the title character—yep, that's his name) and a little guy who looks kinda like Sonic the Hedgehog's head with arms and legs (and colored orange) run in to a room and fight a guy with Medusa-powered eyes. The Sonic-head-guy is turned to stone, but Bobobo is turned to a carrot with arms, legs and shades. Medusa-guy is pissed that Bobobo didn't change to stone, so tries again, but instead turns him into a cabbage-guy. Medusa-guy rips at Bobobo/Cabbage, opening a hole in the cabbage, revealing a tiny Bobobo who squeals that the Medusa-guy is peeking as "she" changes, then flirts with him. Medusa-guy is enraged, but Bobobo/Cabbage announces that it's "amateur enka night" and produces a karaoke machine. This breaks the spell on the Sonic-head-guy, who grabs the mic to sing about how he's going to kick Medusa-guy's ass. Medusa-guy then gets a call on his cel phone from his girlfriend, reminding him that he promised to bring 3 guys for a group date with her & her friends. Medusa-guy panics, but Bobobo (now human again) and Sonic-head-guy announce that they're coming along. Medusa-head-guy tells them off, but also says that they're only two and he needs three, so they produce a pig. They then arrive at the restaurant where the girls are, but break in and score a "try" (as in rugby). Then Bobobo notices the steaming pot of yose-nabe, says that the bath is ready, drops in a rubber duck, and starts splashing himself with broth. The girls storm out, and Medusa-guy is devastated. Bobobo's head then busts open, and is filled with high school students telling Medusa-guy that if it wasn't for him, they wouldn't have graduated. Bobobo then attacks with his mighty nose-hairs, loudly proclaiming that a creep like him shouldn't be allowed to teach children. With Medusa-guy defeated, he and Sonic-head-guy go off to find the main villain, a bishonen who is trying to steal "Beauty" (the heroine)'s hair to use as a wig.

Phew.

Then they showed the first 4 episodes of Narutaru, which was pretty interesting.It's about a bunch of kids who are "linked" to dragons through things called "dragonets". The main character is a girl who finds a little cutesy blank-faced flying starfish-guy on vacation at her grandparents' place on an island. She names him Hoshimaru. The opening sequence is very cartoony and childlike, with crayon-like animation, but the series is actually darker than you'd expect (another one of the good characters is a painfully shy girl who keeps trying to slit her wrists but can't go through with it; one of the bad guys gets stabbed though the torso by a squid-sword thing that comes out of Hoshimaru's arm). I'd like to see more of it.

After that, the Con closed up. Home and to bed.

The CDs I bought, incidentally, were Nocturnal Opera by Moi dix Nois, which is pretty bad but in a fun way, and was worth getting for the ultra-pretentious cover with asian goths in greasepaint and ENORMOUS hair standing in a room with tapestries and chandeliers; and No Independent Thought by SBK, actually a remix album that's pretty cool.