It's time for Comic-Con 2002!

It's only 5:01 and I already regret getting up at 5:00.

For only $2.25, I have been whisked away into a world I thought only existed in the story-books. The bus driver knew everyone he picked up, the passengers were amicable and chatted comfortably with each other, and nothing smelled like urine! (one of these statements is false)

The line for Starbucks is longer than the airport check-in and security lines put together. I'm sure someone with more unfocused cynicysm than me would find that interesting.

San Diego: your one-stop Spirit of St. Louis destination.

I am on the Official Comic-Con Shuttle. Someone already shouted out "Star Wars!"

San Diego has been completely taken over by Comic-con. Every single lamp post has a Comic-Con banner on it. I have too much information to be witty in every post.

This place is downright AMAZING. The size alone is enough to AMAZE you. And the stuff, and the people... I'll try to describe it using more-definite words once I get a chance.

I stopped by the Goats table, since it is poulated with people I feel like I've known for years (even though they don't know me). I met Jon and Phillip of www.goats.com and Jeff Z. of www.pagancity.com. rstevens of dieselsweeties.com was there but busy, and Jeff Rowland of wigu.com and Sam Brown of explodingdog.com were nowhere to be found.

Jon inducted me into the Cult of the Satanic Chicken (or whatever they're calling it) with this Diablo tattoo.

Over at the Gameskins booth, Gabe and Tycho of penny-arcade.com are signing posters. Everyone behind the table was an instant hiptop convert.

I just ran into Phil Foglio in the aisle! www.studiofoglio.com

"Sly Cooper" is the coolest game ever.

Readers of my APE2002 report may recall that I went up there to meet Stephen Notley of Bob the Angry Flower (angryflower.com), but was indirectly thwarted by U.S. customs.

This time, he's here, and was kind of disappointed that I already own all of his books.

I just walked in front of a bunch of marching storm troopers to see if they'd stop for me.

They did :)

Ok. I'm at the keenspot.com panel right now, sitting next to wigu.com's Jeff Rowland and scarygoround.com's John Allison. It's very well attended.

And before that, I talked to Keith Knight (pictured, big head) and bought some books and a cd from him, and a got sketch! He's really cool, as are most of the people I've talked to.

Before that, I caught Phil Foglio at his table and got a sketch of the Winslow! I also got a sneak-peek at the first Girl Genius collected book.

And before that, I saw Doug TenNapel! Awesome! I talked to him about his excellent "Gear", and got his new "Creature Tech" book and an original Earthworm Jim pencil sketch!

I think that's it for now, though THE Gene Simmons is in the room across the hall.

I'm eating a pretzel, the first thing I've eaten since the McDonald's this morning. Salty.

Patrick Farley of www.e-sheep.com was sitting in the hall outside of the keenspot.com panel, so I talked to him a little about his latest installment "Delta Thrives". I met him after the web comics forum at APE2002, which is the only reason I recognized him.

During the panel both John and Jeff drew some sketches for me. They're awesome.

I left the Howard Tayler Show (aka keenspot.com panel) with the aforementioned Jeff and John. Jeff twice tried to point out sinfest.com's Tatsuya Ishida, but he vanished like a ghost in the night each time.

On our way outside we caught Pete Abrams (Sluggy Freelance, www.sluggy.com) just arriving. There seems to be a long-standing rivalry between him and Goats' Jon R; each was informed that the other was looking for him.

Back to the goats table, and I met explodingdog.com's Sam Brown, pictured here with Jeff Rowland.

My pretzel's gone and I'm still hungry. GRUMBLE GRUMBLE

Usagi Yojimbo was one of the first print comics I started reading, and I've always been in complete awe of Stan Sakai's writing and drawing.

And what do you know; he's here! And he did a sketch for me! And I bought this big brush-rendered picture of Usagi! I could go home happy right now.

I'm finally at my hotel, the Wyndham U.S. Grant, or should I say, "the designed and run by the same crazy people who made that hotel in the Shining hotel".

Possibly more on this later. I'm going to catch the after-hours activities with the goats table posse.

Latest celebrity: Ryan Duchane of houndshome.com

This room is way too fancy and crazy for me. None of the light switches work, and it comes with a bathrobe.

I've been awake way too long for this drinking business. One of the many area Starbucks is doing its best to help me out, but I've got a feeling I'm gonna crash before I even find the goats table ensemble.

After spending a quiet evening at home looking through my sketches and reading some of the books I bought, it's time to go to bed.

Tune in tomorrow for more of the same.

I'm up, I'm up.

Just stopping for a quick bagel breakfast, then it's back to the con.

Just had coffee with Rich Stevens (dieselsweeties.com) and his entourage. They're good people.

I should mention that today is even crazier than it was yesterday. There about twice as many people walking around, a lot more artists are here (I just saw James Kochalka, Alex Robinson, Scott Mills, and Eddie Campbell at the Top Shelf table).

And the costume contest is tonight, so there are a lot more crazy dressers walking around.

How could I have forgotten? I just got a Sock Monkey sketch from Tony Millionaire! And I may have inadvertantly suggested a new character for his sock monkey series (a giraffe)

It's Scott McCloud! Author of the indispensable "Understanding Comics".

I was dumb. I ran out of cash so now I need to wait in the infamous Comic-Con ATM line. I spent it all buying all of the Fireman Press (Scud, Gear, Drywall) stuff that my comics shop doesn't carry. And I found out about a screening of Rob (Scud) Schrab's "Robot Bastard" happening in a little while. I've seen it on the web, but it'll look good on a big screen.

I'm at the Too Much Coffee Man (Shannon Wheeler) slide show, but since Jhonen Vasquez is on the panel the room is full of pseudo-goth Invader Zim fans. Not really TMCM's target audience.

Kieron Dwyer of TMCM suggests you get Willie Ames's Bibleman videos. They will blow your mind.

Man, that panel was great. Neither Tony Millionaire nor Jhonen Vasquez showed up, so a lot of uncomfortable kids with Invader Zim dolls sat around while Keith Knight poured out whisky shots for the increasingly-drunk panel. They were all very funny.

Also, I've been counting Transformers shirts while I've been here. So far the Decepticons are winning 6-4 (I kind of expected more when I started)

Hanging out in a cool park near the convention center, talking about cottage cheese.

Yeah, not as many posts today, but that's what happens when you get inured to the extraordinary.

I forgot to mention the "20 years of Groo" panel I saw. Sergio Aragones (artist/writer), Mark Evanier (writer), Stan Sakai (letterer), and Tom Luth (colorer) were all there. It was very interesting and fun, especially to see these guys who've been working together for 20 years reminisce about the comic. And everyone in the crowd got free "mulch bars" from Mark's wife (based on a Groo inside joke, actually shredded wheat on top of some sort of orange/chocolate cookie).

After that I went to the Plan 9 Publishing table to buy a set of Ozy and Millie books (ozyandmillie.com). Pete Abrams (sluggy.com) (pictured) was there and did a sketch of Bun-Bun for me. I took that sketch over to the Goats table where Jon Rosenberg did a response sketch of Diablo. While I was there I picked up John Allison's (scarygoround.com) "9 ways to spot evil at tea-time" tea towel and his Comic-Con-only minicomic (on the back of which he did another sketch).

...And I picked up a bunch of various minicomics by people I've never heard of in the small-press area. A couple of them are 24-hour comics (see scottmccloud.com), including the cute pantomime "bear w/ me" by Joey Mason (YAC at youngamericancomics.com). Another intersting YAC-published comic is "That's when it happened"; one guy wrote a short, ambiguous script and gave it to 17 of his cartoonist friends. (actually he probably gave it to more than 17. 17 delivered) Each of them drew a two-page interpretation of the script, and they're all collected in this book.

And from there I went to the pizza-picnic-in-the-park, where John Allison sang the cottage cheese song. (I need to move to England for the television programming)

The walk back to the hotel district involved lots of jaywalking and drunk-avoidance, but was for the most part uneventful.

Which brings us to the present, where it is time for me to go to bed, again. Unfortunately someone has been intentionally setting off car alarms for the past two hours and shows no signs of stopping.

Sunday's supposedly the day to buy stuff, since the dealers want to unload as much as they can before the ride home. But I don't even want to pay HALF price for this $4000 (yes, 4k) animation cel from Princess Mononoke.

Maybe they've reduced the price on the Windtalkers action figures. (I'm not kidding, they actually have some here)

First off, I totally forgot to mention the rad sketch Sam Brown (explodingdog.com) did for me yesterday. It was right before I got the sock monkey sketch from Tony Millionaire, which got me all flustered.

Sam Henderson of The Magic Whistle did a very cool sketch with a guy and some birds and a dog, though it seemed like he wished he was still in bed.

Then I caught up with Stephen Notley again, and he did a pretty detailed Bob the Angry Flower sketch. Sound like he did really good at the con, he said he sold out of all his books before Friday night.

I went over to the keenspot.com table, where Josh Lesnick (cutewendy.com) and David Willis (itswalky.com) blessed me with some sketches of their own. Everyone behind the table was playing with Stickfas (I think they're called), which are some kind of customizable action figures.

Walking back, I saw Groo's Sergio Aragones at a table signing books, and he dew a little Groo for me. Last night he was inducted as an Eisner hall of famer which, he says, "means either I am really old, or that I am dead."

Yu-Gi-Oh! It's the emaciated, efemminate, Egyptian boy trading-card game that's sweeping the nation! There's a big raised platform that looks like a boxing ring, and kids are lined up to play other kids on top of it. They could probably cut out the middle man and play each other in the lobby.

Somewhere in the middle of my last batch of sketches, I picked up a book I've never heard of called "The Winged Tiger" by Phil Yeh. He was there and did a nice big sketch in the front of the book. All kinds of crazy guest artists have contributed to his series, big shots like Moebius, Wendi Pini (elfquest), and Stan Sakai. I like the art a lot, but I haven't had a chance to read any of it yet.

I bought the coolest RC car; it's the size of a hotwheels car, and actually clips onto the side of the remote to charge. You can change the tires, the motor, the gears, and the suspension, which means it's too complicated for me to put together just to try it out. Plus all of the instructions are in Japanese. But they had some you could try out at the booth, and they're awesome.

I also picked up the new explodingdog, Diesel Sweeties, and Goats books. And I got a super-customized copy of Jeff's "magical adventures in space" minicomic. Their table seems to be doing pretty well, and they've gotten to spread out since one of their neighbors left. The table is only meant to have two people behind it, and they tried to fit six to eight.

It's time for another pretzel break.

The enigmatic Norwegian, Jason, is signing books at the Fantagraphics table. I bought "SSHHHH!" and the Eisner-nominated "Hey, Wait...", which I've been looking for for a while. He signed both books and drew a wonderful sketch in my sketchbook. He uses a flexible-nib fountain pen, not a very common inking instrument.

The front of the pretzel cart has a lucite box with a bunch of pretzels in it. There's a sign on the box that says, "DISPLAY PRETZELS. DO NOT EAT" The pretzel dude noticed my interest and told a story that closed with, "Pride is a silly thing. Especially when it comes to pretzels."

I just noticed that I got mustard all over the crotch of my pants.

I have to find the movie "Shaolin Soccer"

In the final minutes of the con, I finally met up with Jeff Zugale (pagancity.com) at his booth. I bought a copy of his ashcan for "kindergoth" and got a sketch of one of its characters. Very nice guy, and an amazing artist.

NBM was having a half-off sale, so I bought the new first issue of Lewis Trondheim's "Dungeon", which I've been eagerly awaiting.

Back at the goats table, everyone looked ready for bed.

And that's it for the Comic-Con. The doors closed at 5pm, and unfortunately I was talking to Jeff R. in the lobby at the time (unfortunate that I was in the lobby, not that I was talking to Jeff) so I couldn't say good-bye to all the other people I met. Oh well, I know their email addresses. To a person, some of the coolest people I've ever met.

Now I've finished my very dry chicken at Pat & Oscar's, and it's time to get to the airport.

All of my airport security luck just ran out at the same time.

1st time through: a screwdriver on my keychain that's never caused any problems before caused some problems. I'd have to mail it to myself if I wanted to keep it. I bought an envelope from the gift shop and put the offending item in it.

2nd time through: I wanted to make sure I wouldn't have to send a second envelope, so I ran through security again with the envelope separated from everything else. I slapped some stamps on it (I hope three are enough) and put it in the mail.

3rd time through: I think I artificially raised the automatic-screening-count, because the third time I was selected for the whole "raise your arms and cough" treatment, the first time it's ever happened to me.

Now we'll see if I get selected for the boarding-time security screening.

My whole window is taken up by the jet engine. But at least I didn't get the extra security check.

That's it. I'm back home safe, and all of my loot survived. When I get a chance I'll go back through this blog and edit it for grammar and spelling, and maybe splice in some of the pictures I took with my big camera. And if I have even more time, I may do some reviews of the stuff I've bought.

Thanks for reading.