Worst Comicon ever?
This year we almost skipped Comicon. It all started when hotel rooms sold out in less than an hour the day they became available through whatever dealie Comicon does. The event grows and grows. Every year a larger crowd, every year more The Industry, every year less comics. At least the number of comics at the convention seems to be shrinking much less rapidly than the number of The Industry Whores is growing. If the speed of the decline of comics at Comicon matched the rise of The Industry, there'd be one lonely small press table left, probably shoved in the back of the main lobby men's room (by far the stinkiest bathroom this side of a packed show at a dive bar, though you could argue alcoholic rocker pee smells better than the excretions of comicon attendees). Five years ago, the Con was, I believe, about 1/3 the size it is now, but it was mostly comics and collectibles (what they used to call toys). When the Sci-Fi Channel got a booth, I didn't mind so much. Same for Cartoon Network. They are both part of nerd culture. Now, there's a Warner Channel booth, and I saw a huge CSI banner, and I dunno, it was hard as hell to walk through the non-comic part of the con, but I'm sure there was an NBC, and an ABC, and a CBN booth packed into all that flash and crap. Yeah, so we almost skipped, because after all the growth-of-dubious-quality of the past few years, the instant hotel sellout seemed a bad omen. And as I gave away in that digression just a minute ago, bad omen it was.

But we didn't skip it. Jen clicked obssessively for days, until we got a hotel room at the Sheraton Suites, with a view overlooking Balboa Park and the airport, so we went. I took our Buick LeSabre, Monstro, to a mechanic who exchanged fluids with the car and told us all was well, and we could (and should) drive the monster all up and down the coast at will, willy nilly even. We declined to fix the air conditioning because we're tough. And, causing one of those rare moments when I furrow my brow and wonder if maybe there is a god, and it's the God I learned about in fundie sunday school, the entire fucking world was hit by a heatwave during San Diego Comicon. But we left for San Diego at 6:00am, fleeing before the wave of heat like a little dog in an action movie jumping out of an exploding high rise. We were in San Diego by 3:00pm, the Central Valley a distant memory of rotting live cowflesh and squeaky LA refugee girls.

I notice the citizens of San Diego have become much enamored with the aesthetics of the characters from the television show "The O.C."

Yeah, so, it was the worst Comicon ever. But you have to remember, even in the midst of a fit of depression because sometimes things change for the worse and don't live up to your vaseline-coated-lense memories, that you're sitting in a booth with a bunch of people you only see at cons, and talking to fans and friends you only see at cons, and even if there are 99,000 idiots milling about the con, there are still 1,000 worth talking to, so of course it was, once again, well worth it.

I didn't find a lot of great new stuff. I bought Lost Girls, all hardcover with dust jackets and lots of smut, written by Alan Moore, painted by Melinda Gebbie. Also picked up the new Renee French book, The Ticking. Lastly, the find of the con, Tony Millionaire's graphic novel(la?), Billy Hazelnuts. Awesome. I love Tony Millionaire. He was signing, but the line was really long and I can never think what to say to artists I dig. I thought of trying to talk like one of his characters to him, because I read him say somewhere once that he was going to punch the next person who did that, but that's the kind of joke that falls flat when it leaves your head. I'm trying to let less of those jokes outside my head. Though it would be cool to be punched by Tony Millionaire.

So I bought four or five books, but I spent $115, because all the books that come out nowadays are hardcover and one even had what someone at Top Shelf insisted was gold leaf on the cover, though I'm pretty sure she was just drunk.

I also picked up a copy of the new compilation by Young American Comics, BIZMAR (which stands for "Bunny Insect Zombie Monkey Alien Robot", and which you can currently pick up here, but I can't find a permanent link). Jen and I are in that, or some art that Jen drew from a script that I wrote is in there, anyway. Our story involves a cage match to the death, a frequent fantasy of Jen's, wherein her and the Cat (the Cat is always Hopey) battle, and which always ends in tragedy. To be sure I'm clear, the frequent fantasy is Jen's, the story I wrote does not involve Jen or Hopey, though it does involve all creatures from the title BIZMAR, plus a cat.

YAC has been around for about five years now, I think. They have been supportive of Jen and I from the start, going so far as to invite us to parties and stuff. We've participated in, I think three compilations - Captain Preposterous, Unseen on TV, and BIZMAR. It's always fun and short - two to four pages - with a simple, usually ludicrous, theme. BIZMAR marks the first super fancy, actual graphic novelesque release of YAC's, and I think it bodes well for their future. They also publish Snakepit, which is a great comic strip diary of a punk rock dude from Austin, TX.

On the last day of the con, we happened to see Ira at a hostel. I hadn't been able to find his booth, so I thought Champions of Hell was missing from this year's con, but fortunately, I was wrong. I picked up a Zombie Jesus shirt, a DVD of zombie shorts, and the latest comics from Ira and Robin.

So, what else happened in San Diego? We ate tacos. I bought new shoes because my old tennis shoes (sneakers, whatever) were causing my foot to grow strange nodules. Jen bought a pair of non-denim pants because the heat was driving her to homicidal rage. We drank mexican mochas at Pannikin every morning. We ate slices from Ciero's most days. We slept in a very comfie bed, and I got about two hours more sleep every night than usual.

We decided to stay for Sunday, cutting out at 1:00. See, even the worst Comicon ever is still fun. Hell, we'd probably even go back to the Las Vegas Extrosioncon. Managed to leave San Diego around 2:00, stopped at Juanitas in Encinitas for carnitas, then started making our way up the coast. Around LAX on 405, the heat started getting to me. I'd checked weather.com at the hotel before we left, so I knew it was going to be around 110F in Central Valley, and I wasn't stoked. LA was kind of hot, but on the way up into the Grapevine, shit got really bad. Another car every mile or two, stopped at the side of the road, overheated. All the way up the Grapevine. Fortunately, the sun went behind a huge, pink cloud about half way to the valley. Then, as we're starting down into the valley, I realize the cloud is a cloud of smoke, and the slopes of one of the hills/mountains is on fire. Apocalyptic. We stop along with everyone else at the first rest stop past the Grapevine. Jen gets a cappucino at Starbucks (hot coffee for a hot day), and gets me a cold drink. The gas station is full of grumpy folk, semi-panicked from the heat. Or maybe I was projecting. A flashing sign just before the rest stop warned that the highway was closed 143 miles down the road. Exactly at Cowschwitz, it turns out. So now I know that Cowschwits is 143 miles north of the Grapevine. Hurray. Somehow, there was no smell. Usually I have to roll up the windows and turn off the vents while we drive past that hellhole, but there's no way, no matter how strong the stench, we're sitting with the windows up and the vents off in 100 degree heat. We can almost touch the cows. Jen hears them mooing sadly. But no smell. A moment when I know that fundie god doesn't exist or died long ago. Long, hot, sweaty story short, we stopped at Anderson Pea Soup, which was closed, and ate in a nearby truck stop, mainly for the air conditioning. I sipped syrupy Jarritos to stay awake as we turned the corner onto 580, into the flowery, herbal smell of the outer east bay hills. We hit 13, less than 10 miles from home, and rolled down our windows. The inner bay air feels like air conditioning, if air conditioning was fresh and piney. Home at 12:30am, the cats regaled us with meowy tails of life without Mommy and Daddy.