I Went To San Diego Con 2007 And All I Got Were These Delightful Business Cards

By Park Cooper

First off, I flew from Austin, where Southwest Airlines told me the wrong gate to go to-- I figured it out with about 2 minutes to spare-- to the San Diego airport, where Southwest put my bag on a carousel without saying it was from my flight, thus causing it to elude me for about half an hour. I'm not complaining too hard, though... they got the FLYING part right. That's what I look for in an airline. Any non-flying problems are like if your bulletproof vest stops the bullet completely but smells a little like old socks-- pretty darn forgivable by comparison. I also found out that Alaskan Airlines had delayed Steven Saunders by like 4 or 5 hours due to some sort of mechanical troubles. Me and all Steven's other friends found each other, teamed up, and headed to the con without him.

From there, I met various homies (some of whom are superheroes or superheroines, but I met them out of costume, so for now even the identities of some of these persons must remain a secret for now) and pitched Wicker Man stuff to various companies. Unbelievably fascinating to me, less interesting to you. So I’ll just give you a few highlights...

--Iron Man Box: It’s Iron Man—in a box! This big crate was at the Marvel area. It was even bigger news than the fact that there WAS a Marvel area. People came and took pictures of the crate and stared at it. BEFORE THEY OPENED IT. Of course, by now, you’ve probably seen inside, so I won’t make a big deal of it here.

http://www.newsarama.com/Comic-Con_07/Marvel/InsideCrate.html
http://www.newsarama.com/Comic-Con_07/Marvel/armor.html

--It was great to see:

--Drew Edwards, now in pre-orders for his Halloween Man graphic novel at Silent Devil... I was at the ADV booth (where I bought Yotsuba #4) when Drew pointed at something on screen in the back of the booth and said, “Those look like zombies.” He said it in the tone in which one would say “That cloud almost looks like a giant flock of wish-granting dragons coming down out of the sky to let us ride them. In fact…” They were indeed zombies, and Drew took an interest in anime and manga as he’d never been able to before (he’d tried—I’D tried to help him), as I took him on a magical tour through the world of zombies and death in manga and anime, including the new Yen Press title ZOMBIE-LOAN, CMX’s new ZOMBIE FAIRY (if you leave a zombie under your pillow she comes and leaves you a quarter, we surmised), and I even taught him about DEATH NOTE. His world will never be the same. http://www.silentdevil.com/halloween-man.php

--His wife Jami Deadly, Marilyn Monroe look-alike, who walked the con in uncomfortable shoes and also went out to the San Diego hotel where Marilyn once appeared in the movie SOME LIKE IT HOT: http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=1843155

--Because the whole point was to wake up in time to go back to the Hyatt and schmooze with people, I was very grateful to be awoken by a phone call from Brandon Thomas, who called to tell me how sorry he was he didn’t return my call sooner… On the contrary, I was delighted that listening to him talk to me woke my brain up enough to not hit the snooze setting on my cell-phone-alarm for a seventh time… http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/ambi

--Josh Wagner and his artist colleague Joiton, writer and penciller on Fiction Clemens, which I edit:
http://www.fictionclemens.org/index.php?page=links

--Eric Shanower of Age of Bronze… a voice in my head, probably diaktoros Hermes, kept telling me I should go say hi to him again and thank him once more for selling me the copy of Spectral Snow. http://www.hungrytigerpress.com/es

--Lauren Perry, of Silent Devil and Spacedog http://www.silverbulletcomics.com/news/story.php?a=3707

--Brad of Austin Comics http://www.austinbooks.com/index.html

--The guys at Kingdom of Loathing http://www.kingdomofloathing.com

--Heidi Arnhold, now doing art for Tokyopop: http://www.chibimaryn.deviantart.com

--Rob Vollmar, also once of SBC…
http://www.robvollmar.blogspot.com
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=12511636

--The mighty Layman (they named the Mighty Avengers after him)… http://themightylayman.blogspot.com

--Kaja Foglio of Girl Genius…
http://www.girlgeniusonline.com

--Ludon Lee of D2C Games. They’re teaming up with RAW Comics and Steve Niles to make downloadable comics as a DVD-watching-type experience. LOTS more on this from me soon.
http://www.d2cgames.com/



And finally… The Cosplay. And actual people. First, the actual people:

NOT just devoted fans, but the real Eisner Award winners Sam and Max. On their win, Sam said to me, “We sure were honored to win, isn’t that right, little buddy?” whereupon Max commented, “Wow, look, what a cool camera! Can I eat it? Huh, Max? Can I?”





This is Tokyopop editor Hope Donovan, who edits Satisfaction Guaranteed, which Barb now adapts.





This is Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, Barb’s editor at Tokyopop for the project she’s working on.









This is a cool Batmobile that was at the con. Not just a fan dressed up as the Batmobile. Which is just as well because Drew Edwards was quite taken with it.





Okay, this is cosplay. This is DC’s demon Etrigan. I could be totally wrong but I got the feeling that was a girl in there.






From Naruto, this Lady Tsunade looked like she was feeling the weight of her years, but the accompanying Orochimaru was rockin’. Barb, who loves the character of Orochimaru, looked at these and said “Oh. I see why Orochimaru is popular with kids. He’s like the ninja Marilyn Manson.”





A more-manly-than-usual Vash the Stampede from Trigun.





Okay, this may seem strange what with all the anime-related cosplay, but look at them. I felt these two really… committed to the concept.






FLCL fans…






More Naruto fans… but, again, not Naruto. I don’t feel like identifying them for you… if you know Naruto, you know them, and if not, you probably don’t care.





Obviously, I noticed her first, and was like “(Catwoman? No. Some sort of spy? No… then who…?)” Then I noticed she was standing next to Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop, and got what’s one of my favorite pics from the con—Spike and his lost girlfriend Julia, reunited and having a smoke break at the con. Soooo in character.






















Half Dead update: I often hear about Half Dead being sold out at comic book stores these days -- just ask the store to order a copy for you, or else get it online, there are lots of places to do so. Since the distribution is through Marvel, they should be able to get it for you quite quickly (especially if we're talking about North America).

http://www.panel2panel.com/gsg-archives.html
http://www.wickermanstudios.com
http://www.halfdeadcomic.com
http://www.comicspace.com/wickermanstudios