E-7: Keeping Comics Alive At Comic-Con!

Comic-Con 2010 is in the books and I’m happy that it’s over. Before every Comic-Con I always go down to San Diego wide-eyed and hopeful and afterwards I leave San Diego bleary-eyed and battered. I even left the Con one hour early on the last day! I didn’t want to be traveling on a post-convention train with the fans who attended all four days without changing clothes… I would rather watch my beloved LA Dodgers give up four runs in the ninth to lose to the Yankees!

Once again I was with the good people in the Bare Bones Studios
booth at E-7. Mike (the bunny-eared leader) was there, as was Killer Robot Rob and Carnival Barker Carlos. However, Sandra wasn’t in our booth this year. Mike explained that she was in the booth behind us. “Maybe she thinks she can make money this year,” I said in jest.

The fourth person sharing the booth this year was Lin. Her cool, inexpensive Wicked Apple jewelry was on display, but since she also had her own booth at the art auction area, I didn’t see her until the fourth day of the Con. I was glad to finally meet her, as she was very nice and paid her sales tax!

Lin had her jewelry, Mike and Rob had their latest copy of Pocket Book Heroes and I had Pretty Vacant: Vegas Showcase. All we needed was the item that got people to our booth. And as usual, Mike supplied that item for the booth: stickmen!
Mike brought 8,000 stickmen on Preview Night and we started giving them away for free the entire show! I don’t mind drawing faces on Styrofoam too much because doing so gives me time to actually talk to a rapt audience about my book. I drew specific faces on the stickmen when requested, and there were a lot of requests: happy, sad, angry, constipated, vampire, zombie, Jedi, even Bob Marley! My favorite request came from Stasia, who was in the booth next to me. She wanted the expression of “someone who just realized she was brushing her teeth with neosporin!” Apparently this came from personal experience.

The stickmen were so popular that io9.com called them the Best Homemade Free Swag at this year’s Con! They could have told us in person. Mike said he found out from a midget dressed as the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man! I hope it was a midget – I’d hate to think that a kid could get that out of shape so early in life!

Usually film crews and press people interview Mike, Rob or Carlos. I always join in with the wacky shtick, but they seem to turn the wackiness up a notch whenever a camera is nearby. Yet one time I was drawing a happy face on a stickman for a lady when she thrust a microphone in my face. I saw her press badge and I realized she wanted to interview me. We talked about the origin of Pretty Vacant: Vegas Showcase (an optioned movie script turned into a comic) and the story itself: How The Still Life Corporation plans to transform Gigi Gutierrez into an unmoving, unthinking body mold for their mannequin line and how Gigi struggles to escape her plasticized fate. The lady thought that I was too intelligent and articulate to be with the others and asked why I with Bare Bones. I simply told her that I want to “keep comics alive for Comic-Con.”

Comics don’t distinguish whether they are art or trash. They are judged by the fun factor: Is it fun to read? Even the “worst comic book ever,” Rob’s Shadow Prophecy is a fun comic if you spend your time poking holes in it. My companions at E-7 couldn’t be any more different from me, but we like each other, balance out each other and we have a lot of fun! Someday the Comic-Con Board might realize balancing con-specific films and television (what are “Dexter”, “Community” and “Hawaii-5-0” doing at Comic-Con anyway?) with comics and gamers will lead to a better show rather than emphasizing Hollywood at all times.

Despite the long lines, sore feet, overreaching tax men and overzealous security, I had a lot of fun at Comic-Con! I dispensed wisdom (“sum up your idea in one sentence when pitching your story”), got the free swag item I wanted (a “Chuck” promo bag), and sold enough copies of Pretty Vacant: Vegas Showcase to pay for the print run and my share of the table!

Yet the most fun I had was with my friends, be it old friends (Bare Bones gang, Sandra, Dustin, Hye Jung, Erwin, Phillip) or new friends (Kevin and Stasia). I still managed to talk with my friend Rachel even though she was running the G4 booth this year, and I had lunch twice with my best friend at Comic-Con, Rodney. Rodney taunted me about my Dodgers imploding against his beloved Yankees and I mocked him for waiting two-and-a-half hours in line and still failing to get into the Green Lantern presentation!

I also got to take a cool picture with my friend Elizabeth, who cosplayed this year as Red Sonja! Thanks Rob for the photo (I have to write that or he’ll go Killer Robot on me)!


Dance, Killer Robot, Dance!


And I do hope the lady who had nicest smile at Comic-Con comes back to sell her comic book in 2011!

"Chuck" Comic-Con Panel: Fan-less Fun!

My niece and I were in line since 8:30 this morning working our way into the dreaded Ballroom 20 for the 10 am Chuck Panel at Comic-Con when Erica, a friend of a friend at the show, called in a panic. I had met her the previous day and told her that she could get inside with us if she couldn’t get in herself. She told me she would call only if it was absolutely necessary. First time conventioneers are always so naive…

“I don’t think security will let me through!”

“Relax. Just tell them that your husband and daughter are saving a place for you near the head of the line,” I replied.

“That’ll never work… hold on… okay, I’m through! Where are you?”

Erica met up with my niece and I and we got into Ballroom 20 at… 10:03! Luckily, the good people at Chuck waited an additional five minutes to let inside as many people as possible!

All the previous Chuck Panels at Comic-Con were a lot of fun, and this year’s panel was no different! It started off with a video presentation of Season 3’s highlights (with the biggest cheer for the scene where Chuck and Sarah finally got together), but it soon veered off in a strange direction! When Season 3.1 ended, Chuck was going to start a quest to find his mom. The screen then revealed who was going to play Mary Bartowski for Season 4: Linda Hamilton!

After that revelation, the screens were suddenly taken over by The Ring, using it to indoctrinate the audience! Luckily, Chuck and Morgan interrupted The Ring’s video presentation (even though Morgan wanted to be at the Twilight Panel) to break The Ring’s programming with the only “cure” they had available… a Jeffster dance video!

And as the audience roared to the antics of Jeffster dancing to Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” on the video screens, Vik Sahay and Scott Krinsky (who play Jeff and Lester) slyly made their way onto the floor, soon followed by Zac Levi and Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck and Sarah), and finally the rest of the cast, the producers and the moderators.

There were plot developments mentioned (like the Buy More being taken over by the CIA) and guest casting leaked (Olivia Munn of G4 and Isaiah Mustafa the “Old Spice Guy” playing CIA/Buy More Green Shirts codenamed “Greta”). Yet the one thing that really stood out for me was when producer Josh Schwarz was asked if he would things differently during Season 3, especially with the Shaw character. He answered, “We’ve learned some things,” which is the closest we’ll ever get to an actual apology for putting Shaw between Chuck and Sarah.

There were a couple sour notes, as the Chuck Panel ended exactly at 10:45 without a Q&A period for the fans and the fact that nobody who attended the panel could get autographs from the cast at the WB booth as the autograph line was capped before the panel ended. Yet my niece enjoyed the panel anyway, and so did I.

I don’t know what Erica thought of it.

Update: Thanks to the magic of YouTube, and if you’re really interested, here is the Jeffster dance sequence and the cast emerging to the floor! Who has the better chest shake, Vik or Yvonne?

Next Stop, Comic-Con!

Once again it's that time of year where everything I've worked on in a vacuum is presented to 130,000 of the most critical people one can ever meet. If any of you who read this blog can make it to Comic-Con this year, my booth is E-7. Please say kind things to me!

If for those of you who don't know, today is my birthday! And yes, I'm gonna have a good time!