Chicken Scratch Calligraphy

OK, fuck United Airlines. That's all I have to say about that. Any and all future travel bookings will avoid both that airline and the San Francisco airport. They both suck and I want them to die.

But San Diego is PRETTY AWESOME.

OK before I even talk about the Comic-Con, I have to say. The trolley system? I AM IN LOVE WITH IT. Those of you who live in a city with decent mass transit may be puzzled by this, but a simple way of getting from place to place with electronic ticket purchasing, rides every fifteen minutes, and no confusing route system is mind-blowing to someone from Ottawa. I was AMAZED by how easily I was able to get from my hotel to the convention center.

The lineup to get my badge was INSANE. I've never seen the like before. It stretch aaaaaaaall the way down the convention center. Insane. But it actually moved pretty quickly, and while I was in it I got to see a Unohana cosplayer which was all kinds of awesome because Unohana is both awesome AND underappreciated by fandom.

The first order of the day, once I had my badge, was to head to the exhibition hall and get Faith Erin Hicks, aka the creator of Demonology 101, my favorite web comic of ever, to sign my copy of Zombie Calling, her first published graphic novel. She signed it and even did a little doodle in it (a zombie with a spork in its head). I am the happiest boy alive.

I then bummed around the exhibition hall for a while, and then went to a panel on How Not To Break Into Comics. Actually, I caught the tail end of a panel on the portrayal of LGBT characters in comics, which was in the room before the one I wanted to see. It was pretty decent, and Gail Simone was on it which was cool, but that shit got real five minutes from the end, when STAN "THE MAN" FUCKING LEE walked in and joined the panel. Holy FUCK. It was extreme.

I talk about how Stan Lee shouldn't be allowed to write comics any more because he's sort of gone off the deep end, and it's true...but damn, is the man funny.

I missed the Ed Brubaker panel because of Subway being crowded like fuck. Dammit, I just wanted my foot-long tuna sub, why I gotta wait for Tall Blond and Lanky there to finish ordering eight subs?

Also, apparently people put Avocado on Subway in the states? Weird.

Between lunch and the other two panels I wanted to see, I killed time by watching some of the Anime showings. Two of the three episodes I saw were One Piece and Bleach, so nothing surprising there...the other one was something called Mar. It was pretty awful. Maybe it's better in Japanese, I don't know, but as is, it was pretty bad. But people laughed out loud many, many times during the One Piece showing and that makes me happy.

The last two panels I saw were back-to-back in the same room. First was more practical, it was basically a whole bunch of comics editors (including Mark Waid) giving advice on how to write a pitch. Lots of good advice there. The last was a motivational speaker talking about goal-setting for creative types, particularly geared towards comic and film makers. It actually had some surprisingly useful advice! I was shocked. More on that at a later date.

Oh, and I saw Rob Liefeld. I mean, I didn't got talk to him or anything, because I'd have nothing to say to him besides 'I hate your work and you are the bane of the industry', which is not polite conversation...but he was there, and I saw him. It was pretty surreal.

ANYWAYS, MORE EXCITING DEVELOPMENTS TOMORROW.