Saturday: I had some thoughts of seeing the Chuck panel, as I was there early enough, but early enough for the panel and early enough for the line are two different things and the line for Ballroom 20 was beyond insane, so I decided to go over to the Indigo Ballroom in the Hilton which is generally less impacted and see the program track there.  En route, I witnessed the line for Hall H, where the movie panels go on.  It had overflowed it’s already insane bounds and gone over across the street, wrapped around the park where the Clash of the Titans games promos were set up and extended into another dimension I think.  The games in the park were all nice: You could have your face painted and have a picture taken in cut-outs as one of Medusa’s victims, you could bounce on a giant trampoline (which did a number on my knee last year at con), you could play boffer wars in a bouncy arena, and you could even climb a rock wall with a cable safety harness.  Almost no one was playing the games, preferring to stand in line, so I decided I’d try the rock wall, which was free.  Unfortunately, I’d sprained my LCL a few months ago and about ten feet up the rock wall I felt it complain so I wussed out.  The guy who was supervising the wall looked more approving after I compared knee surgery scars with him.  In any case, I got a souvenir fan in place of a shield or a medusa headdress and went on to the line for the Indigo Ballroom, which was fortunately short.

I was there in time for the panel for Leverage, which I’d only vaguely heard of.  They had free MASTERMIND and GRIFTER T-shirts.  I took MASTERMIND, of course.  The room was packed and I had an extremely excited fifty-something fangirl next to me who was sqeeing with delight over seeing her favorite actors, one of whom I then noted was Christian Kane who I’d previously seen on Angel and who mentioned that he has a new music debut on iTunes of some song played on the show (explaining why his character Lindsay on Angel went off with a guitar at one point–they were incorporating a talent of the actor into the character).  Wil Wheaton was also playing this seasons’ guest villain, Chaos. It looks like a great show, and has a nice simple premise: a gang of modern-day Robin Hoods pulling a heist each week against some bad guys who deserve to get ripped off and then have their money given to charity.  I now have to set my DVR for another show.

Next was the Venture Brothers panel.  It’s a fun cartoon I’ve watched some episodes of and I’ll probably watch a few more.  The actors on the panel were entertaining and generally gonzo, as one might expect.

Then came the Sanctuary panel.  I’ve enjoyed the show, and the panel was enjoyable as well.  They talked a good bit about the Bollywood dance that figured into the last season finale, and also mentioned how they’ve set up a charity which has been helping various groups around the world.  The guy next to me started recording the whole show on his camera, but it wasn’t going to be an unsteady shot, because he’d brought an actual tripod.  I looked around and he wasn’t the only one.

Then came the panel for The Guild, who could teach the rest of Hollywood something serious about work ethic and how to please your fans.  Aside from being at their booth throughout the con with all the actors present doing continuous signings from what I could see, they started the panel with the producer thanking all the fans and telling some production details that were genuinely interesting (as opposed to the twaddle from the guy for the Falling Skies panel, for example).  They then introduced the actors and segued neatly to showing the third episode the current season because they assumed everyone had watched the first two.  I hadn’t, but I can remedy that now, it was fun to see Wil Wheaton back as the villain Faux who had ended up as Codex’s love interest at the end of last season.  They then gave out buttons with the bodice ripper painting of Codex and Faux shown in the episode as a funny bit.  Then, when you wouldn’t think they could top that, they said they’d show the fourth episode, though the editing wasn’t quite done.  So we start into a nice seen with Codex and Zaboo in her bedroom which suddenly organically turns into a Bollywood extravaganza called “Game On.”

Wow.  That was some serious showmanship, and not just for the music video, which was amazing, but for the reveal to the fans.  Obviously they planned this well in advance and I’m pleased to see it such a success.

The guy with the tripod then packed up and left, but I then stayed around to watch a bit of the Community panel.  It was fun and whacky and basically what you’d expect for a comedy set in a community college with Chevy Chase as one of the professors, but after getting a free community college membership card with a discount for buying the DVD, I decided I was tired of sitting and so left too, going back to the convention center to see the art show, which was underwhelming, and more of the art on in the dealer’s room, which was not.

One artist I should point out to everyone is Echo Chernik.  She does some amazing art nouveau illustrations.  Another is Jeremy Bastain who does the Cursed Pirate Girl comics.

I then picked up with Albert and a couple of his friends and we went to Dick’s Last Resort which was a good deal of fun, especially since they were into the Comicon spirit and the waiters were in costume.  Ours was dressed as a white Mr. T with a Brooklyn accent, which was entertaining, and the food was good.  Pete, who’d joined us for dinner late, told us about the really cool Tron set-up they’d had off-site from the convention center.  I wish I’d been able to see it, but there’s always too much stuff to see, but what he showed me on his camera was pretty amazing.  We ate and ordered too much, which in hindsight we shouldn’t have because the next stop was the House of Blues where one of my publishers, SmartPop, had invited us to a party.  There was a buffet with too much delicious food, and also copies of their latest essay anthology A Taste of True Blood which the editor, Leah Wilson, was signing for all the guests.  There was fun talk about anthologies and the usual convention party fun.

Sunday: The last day of the con, I decided to catch Ann and Jeff Vandermeer‘s panel where they talked about upcoming projects, including steam punk anthologies and various curious and whimsical things.  I then did the dealers room floor, snagging up various things that caught my eye as purchases for the final day sales and also getting the final day swag.

The most interesting/fun bit of swag came in the WETA Workshop booth where a guy got up on a chair and announced that in partnership with TheOneRing.net were doing a trivia contest based on The Hobbit. Now, I pride myself on having a semi-eidetic memory, so I thought my chances of winning something with trivia from a book I’d read over thirty years ago were not half bad if I played my cards right.  After flubbing one question, I got called on for another, wanting the names of two of the swords Bilbo found in the troll’s hoard.  Now, if I racked my brains I might have been able to recall the fancy elven names, but they just asked for names, so I immediately gave the orcish ones: “Biter and Beater!”  The Weta guy looked at me as if I’d gone slightly mad since he was reading the card and those were not the names he was looking at but I just grinned and nodded to the OneRing guy for arbitration, and he admitted that those indeed were two of the names for the swords.  Not the names they were looking for, but names from the book.  I was asked if I knew the elven name, which I didn’t, but a guy next to me did: “Glamdring and Orcrist!”  The OneRing guy decided that that question was sufficient to advance us both to the finals after we’d answered a couple other questions.

The final round was me, a woman, the elven scholar guy, and a kid who I expected had read the book recently.  The elven scholar won the first question, selecting a miniature shield as his prize, the kid then correctly said that Gandalf had asked for red wine in Bilbo’s house and got the map of New Zealand as Middle Earth, and I then answered the next question correctly and got my choice of fancy rubber Hobbit ears or a red T-shirt for TheOneRing.net with the slogon “Talk Nerdy to Me.”  I’m not much of a cosplayer, but a T-shirt in my size?  Excellent.

After that, Albert gave me a ride to the airport and my friend Michael picked me up.  All in all an excellent Comicon.

First off…wow. Comicon was amazing. In over twenty years of attending, Comicon’s managed to outdo itself again, mostly by dint of those who came, both industry types and fans. I don’t know how many, but numbers of over 200,000 were rumored and probably underestimated.

Second thought, what’s up with the art shows at all the cons? At Comicon, I saw more winged kittens in the art show than superheroes, or for that matter, any comic book characters. Yes, I understand the cottage industry of marketing to dragon and cat fetishists, but seeing the same dracokitty art recycled from Westercon to Comicon was surreal given the difference of the rest of the convention.

Saturday night of Comicon, I skipped the masquerade to go to the X-Sanguine party at The Abbey. Theme for for the night was quarantine for a viral outbreak, and the goth industrial finery was on full display, with highlights being a trio of veiled Victorian ghost brides who’d used phosphorescent electric wire to illuminate their gowns from inside, stilt-walking mad scientists, and a guy who’d managed to reproduce Captain Hammer from Joss Whedon’s new project, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, on short notice, but looking even more impressive–Nathan Fillion, who plays Captain Hammer (and was at the con), is slightly over six foot, but the costumer I talked to, Damien, stands about 6’6″ with a superhero build.

My friend Storm was also there, dressed as Marie Antoinette, and we ended up talking to a bunch of fans from Vegas, where Westercon was just held, who were saying that Comicon should move to Vegas because Vegas had the convention space to hold Comicon. I countered that I didn’t want to see the guy in the Chewbacca costume fainting in the Vegas heat, as it had been 115 earlier this month when I was there. They had to agree on that point.

The San Diego Convention center had a dealer’s room the size of two football fields and it was still crowded, despite the alternate draw of all the panels going on upstairs or in Hall H. I completely missed Hall H which consisted as per usual of all the movie previews and panel discussions with the various writers, directors and actors for the movies, instead mostly going to the ones for the comic and television shows and dealing with the lines to get into some of them.

In contrast, the resort where Westercon was held was palatial, if smaller than the San Diego convention center, but the few hundred fans and pros attending were still rattling around. Attendance at Westercon was down from previous cons, and while I did have a good time, it was very much a relaxicon with the added perk of doing 4th of July in Vegas, and Vegas did not disappoint–The fireworks show at the Red Rock was spectacular, and the Vegas restaurants similarly excellent.

That said, the biggest amenity Comicon has going for it in the current location is San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, which in my estimation is second only to New Orlean’s French Quarter for restaurants in strolling distance, and possibly superior in that New Orleans does New Orleans cooking almost without exception, whereas in the Gaslamp, I had Irish food twice at The Field, semi-Irish food once at Hennesey’s, and amazing Indian food at a new restaurant called Masala. And that’s just a small sampling of what’s there.

Many fine things can be said about Vegas, but strollability in July is not one of them. I’ve heard rumors of Comicon possibly moving to Anaheim sometime, but the restaurants in the Disneyland area, with certain exceptions, do not equal those of the Gaslamp, and certainly do not have their number and range.

But before going back to the wonder that is Dr. Horrible, I should probably go over the con in order. Rather than driving or flying, this year I decided to take the train, both for budget and novelty. And luckily I decided to go down a bit early and leave a bit late, so I missed what the conductors said were the most crowded trains they’d ever seen.

Anyway, my friend Albert picked me up Tuesday night when I got in. Wednesday we went to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and then to the con in time for Preview Night, which has gone from being a perk for those who get their memberships in advance to a virtual necessity for those who want to see the show relatively uncrowded. Repeat, “relatively.”

The dealer’s room was amazing. Small generalities: Larger Hollywood presence, smaller game company presence, a somewhat larger artists alley and more fine art booths, both modern and vintage. As opposed to the winged kittens upstairs at the art show, the owner of Century Guild had just acquired a portfolio of original Klimt prints and was showing them to interested buyers and also those like me who couldn’t afford them but still appreciate fine art. Last year he had original Mucha. Century Guild was also showcasing some works of current day artists working in similar styles and there were a large number of professional artists who had booths outside of artists alley.

It was, in short, the grand bazaar. I bought a colored die I needed to complete a set, for ceremonial and aesthetic reasons, caught dinner at The Field with Jim and Nancy Hay, and then went to the X-Sanguine after-party held at the Airport Lounge, a nightclub in San Diego done in an early 70s airport theme.

Thursday, I did the dealer’s room floor for the most part, locating the Tor booth, waved “hi” to Patrick Nielsen-Hayden who looked like he was busily liveblogging the whole thing, admired the cover of Inside Straight, and then spotted Caroline and Warren Spector nearby. We were all heading off to the Doctor Who/Torchwood panel in Ballroom 20, which was thankfully big enough to hold everyone, but the line wrapped around the upper floors. A large number of the writers, producers and actors were there, especially for Torchwood. John Barrowman was particularly funny and was obviously having a great time because San Diego is his old college town and he was able to return as the triumphant actor-hero.

After Torchwood, I ran over to 5AB for Javier Grillo-Marxuach’s new project, The Middleman. Javi was there, pleased as punch (and deservedly so), and Matt Keeslar who plays The Middleman was there as well, obviously having a great time too. They played a clip from the other star, Natalie Morales, in which she apologized for not being there, and then showed an amusing clip from an upcoming episode in which Kevin Sorbo plays a bad Middleman from a previous era. All-in-all, very fun. I hope the show makes it, and not just because Javi’s a friend but for the selfish reason that I want to see more episodes.

A bit later there was the Superhero Superfiction panel in the same room. Caroline Spector and Melinda Snodgrass were there representing Wild Cards and promoting Inside Straight as well as Melinda’s new novel, Kevin J. Anderson with a new Superman book, and several other authors for various other books, including two from a new one called The Darker Mask. Mary Elizabeth Hart from Mysterious Galaxy was moderator and afterwards hosted the signing. I’m looking forward to next year when Busted Flush is out, as well as Esther Friesner’s Witch Way to the Mall anthology so I’ll have something current to sign.

After dinner at the aforementioned Masala with Margaret Organ-Kean (who came after finding from the internet that fans were already expecting her in artists alley) and her husband and fellow Foolscap instigator, Bruce Durocher, they con had a special showing of The Lost Boys: The Tribe along with a panel with the writers and actors. Corey Feldman was hamming it up by coming in character as Edgar Frog, and Angus Sutherland was taking the analogous role to what his brother Kiefer did in the original. Short review: Not as good as the original, but still quite good for a sequel, and far better than a direct-to-DVD movie has any expectations of being. I saw it along with my friends Albert and Jerry who are about the same age as I was when the original came out. They liked it a lot and I smell more sequels sooner than twenty years.

Friday was the day of lines. Joss Whedon was in Ballroom 20 with the cast of Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. The line went on forever, but the panel was both funny and informative. I’d thankfully been turned onto it before the con, so was able to watch it free, then paid for an iTunes version I could watch on my iPod on the train the way down. I was hoping and expecting there to be a big-screen showing of it, and one was scheduled for that evening, but unfortunately not in that room, which was reserved for the Eisner Awards. Instead, it was put across the hall in room 6B, after the showing of the Sci Fi Friday Night preview shows of Eureka and Stargate Atlantis, after the 30-year reunion show of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

This was a mistake. Not everyone could get into MST3K who wanted to, and everyone who wanted to see Dr. Horrible was getting in line early to see Sci Fi Friday too. I actually could have gotten in to the room earlier because one of the door guards looked at my badge and thought I was the Kevin Murphy from MST3K, but I don’t think I’d be able to fool the audience let alone the other panelists, so I didn’t capitalize on the confusion.

Thankfully there was some mad plate-spinning from the convention staff and they arranged for rooms 5AB and 7AB to be opened and show early showings of Dr. Horrible. However, I was already in a good place to see the SciFi Friday, so I got in and watched both. The producer of Eureka introduced the Sci Fi portion of the show, and Joss and the rest of the cast and writers attended the big-screen premiere of Dr. Horrible and took their bows to thunderous applause.

I’m thinking that in the future, Hall H may have to be opened for nighttime programming.

Now, what to say of Dr. Horrible? I’ll echo what Joss said at the panel earlier that day: During the writers strike, they’d thought about making art without any money going to certain people, with “certain people” being an obvious circumlocution for the studios. It was rather exciting to watch something at the forefront of a new media form, direct-to-iPod rather than direct-to-DVD or its precursor, direct-to-video.

Of course Dr. Horrible showed up on DrHorrible.com first, for free viewing to build buzz, and of course the Comicon placement and showing was well chosen. Joss’s brothers and co-writers, Jed and Zack, mentioned that there would be tryouts for the Evil League of Evil on the website, and ten or twelve winners would be added to the League and included on the eventual DVD. And there was also mention of future installments of Dr. Horrible.

But what to say of Dr. Horrible? Apart from superlatives about the writing, acting, and music, and nice words about the low budget costuming which looked like stuff that regular people who were superheroes or villains could throw together (explaining how so many costumers reproduced it so quickly), maybe a quick thumbnail pitch: Dr. Horrible, aka. Billy, wants to join the Evil League of Evil, but also wants to get the girl of his dreams, Penny, but has trouble when Captain Hammer, narcissistic prat of a superhero, gets in the way. I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say that it does a very nice job of wrangling with the concept of what is good and what is evil, who’s the hero and who’s the villain, and far more successfully than other things which I would have expected to be better but weren’t and I’ll get to later. (Hint: The Dark Knight.)

In any case, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog was marvelous to see on the big screen. I want the next installment. Now. But in the time being, I can just rewatch the original three acts on my computer for my happy payment of $3.99 to iTunes.

Saturday, got to the con too late to get in the line for Heroes second season panel, but was able to get into the Tori Amos panel. I’m a big fan of Tori Amos and it was great to see her, though it was a bit odd given the dressing down of most of the panelists (Joss was running around in rumpled plaid), Tori was got up in a black designer gown and long red wig like she was going to the Grammies. She was also discussing the new coffee table book of comics that have been done based on her songs, and mentioned how after reading the stories in it, she was hearing different, new music in her head. Which means we’re going to get more albums from her. Really interesting discussion between her and the writers and artists on the project.

After this came the line and panel for Joss Whedon’s other new project, Dollhouse. Eliza Dushku was also there, as well as the actor who plays the investigator and also played some major role on Battlestar Galactica, which is still on my “to catch up on” shelf, so I can’t say anything about him other than looking forward to seeing him on the show since he and Eliza appeared to have good chemistry. And Dollhouse looks like it’s going to be very interesting.

Now of course comes the question…this is Comicon. Where are the panels about the actual comics, as opposed to fancy coffee table books or comics like The Middleman that made the jump to the small screen? Okay, I next attended the Fables panel, which had the full writing and art staff there, as well as the editor as a ringer in the audience and a friend who was model for Bluebeard playing the MC. Plus a gang of fans who’d costumed themselves as everyone from Flycatcher to The Snow Queen. There was also a giveaway of a one-page comic, which was good fun, and special giveaways of art for those who didn’t get one last year.

I then went and caught the second half of the Chuck panel. All the actors were having a great time kidding each other and extremely earnest about getting people to watch their show. I was rather disappointed it and Fables were put opposite the Pushing Daisies panel, but at least it kept the rooms less crowded.

For dinner, met up with my friend, Pete, aka. Dr. Peter Coogan, instigator of the Comics Arts Conference, a whole academic track going on in Room 30 (a.k.a. Outer Mongolia) during the con. Got a great academic conversation fix with him and the gang and then primed myself for going to the aforementioned X-Sanguine party at The Abbey, where of course there were a number of other professionals spiced in with the regular goths.

Finally Sunday. Missed the Smallville panel with was on strangely early, and then couldn’t get into the room for the Supernatural panel due to the large number of drooling fangirls. Instead, went to the Emily the Strange panel which had the usual Mad Lib and a rather interesting slideshow of Emily art, but less schwag than previous years when they had a music sampler. Caught the end of Paranormal State so as to sit down for the Ghost Whisperer panel. Jamie Kennedy showed up acting like, well, Jamie Kennedy, and wearing a plaid fedora through the panel. Probably the best example of “star” behavior I’d seen all weekend, as opposed to “giddy happy actor” which everyone from Barrowman on had been doing when they weren’t doing the “play your character as a member of this panel” shtick. Of course Jamie Kennedy was also probably happy that Jennifer Love-Hewitt was unexpectedly absent so he could make jokes about her breasts.

After checking out more of the dealer’s room, I went to Outer Mongolia, or Room 30, and caught the last panel of the academic track, a round-robin of undergraduates and graduate students giving nutshell presentation of their papers. The most interesting of these came from Brian Swafford of Ohio State, who talked about Comicon as a site of pilgrimage, and how status was accrued by fans by having visited the legendary Comicon. I’d never put it in that context before, but it made perfect sense, and the link between medieval pilgrim badges and modern con badges is far closer than one might think.

After that, I decided to go to the Once More With Feeling screening as the finale of the con, but got in the room early and caught the tail end of Grant Morrison and Deepak Chopra talking about their new project, some online animated Indian mythology that left me underwhelmed and had me staring at Deepak Chopra as he talked about worldwide poverty while wearing these red-sequined spectacles that looked like they’d been made to accessorize with the Ruby Slippers. But I suppose being an international self-help guru lets you transcend irony.

Then came the second Joss Whedon musical of the con, with the entire audience singing along. It was marvelous fun, and after it, I met up with my friends Albert and Jerry and we went off to meet up with Pete and the other professors to see The Dark Knight. En route, we ran into a grand score of con schwag: a young woman opening up boxes of T-shirts and squirt pistols promoting Sukiyaki Western Django, telling everyone to take as many as they wanted. I took a brace of pistols and a pile of T-shirts, as I had an empty bag and was going to be meeting Pete soon. I handed around some to the Pete and the other professors and one of the Dark Horse editors who was also hanging out with the academics, we got our tickets, got dinner at the food court, and then saw the film.

Afterwards, over drinks, everyone was pretty much in agreement: It was a good film, but we were all disappointed because we went in having been told it would be a fantabulous film and it was merely good. Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker was probably the shining star of the film, but couldn’t transcend the numerous plot holes and idiocies. Also, the child playing Commissioner Gordon’s son couldn’t act his way out of a wet paper bag, but to give him credit, even a cross-dressing Shirley Temple couldn’t have pulled off the winsome moppet dialog they gave him, or made it convincing in the absurdly CSI-esque version of Gotham City he was living in. If they’d let him drop an F-bomb or two, I might have bought him as a real child, but not as they had him.

More problematic, Aaron Eckhart makes a perfectly fine Harvey Dent, but his transformation into Two-Face is unconvincing to say the least. Here again, I’ll blame the writers, since I can’t think of any actor who could have pulled off the lines they gave him.

Also, the Joker’s traps only appeared to work because the people of Gotham are idiots who take everything he says at face value, rather than expect him to do something like lie, or change his mind, because he’s crazy. There’s a couple boatloads of people in one of his traps and nobody twigs to the idea that you can’t trust that what he’s said is true. Some others defended this by saying that they didn’t have time for a long dialog between the civilians, but as I said, I would have settled for just one junior high school student who’d just done a book report on “The Lady or The Tiger.”

Again, similar themes to Dr. Horrible, but far less successfully dealt with.

And that was Comicon 2008. Whew.

There are twenty eight characters on the show and we’ve got illustrations for all of them from the amazing Mike Miller. More, all of the authors have been writing confessionals from the standpoints of their characters. Up now for Week 1 are Joe Twitch (created and written by Walton Simons), Spasm (created and written by Daniel Abraham), Drummer Boy (created and written by S.L. Farrell), and Rosa Loteria (created and written by yours truly).

Go over and take a look. Ask the characters questions. Of course, the contestants are all busy with challenges on the show, but who knows, some of them might answer. (Mine are Rosa Loteria and The Maharajah.)

This is also kind of exciting as an author since it’s a new publishing venue. I’ve seen website expansions to the content from movies, most notably the rather amazing Donnie Darko site which had some neat fiction which expanded the movie, and likewise the (now long defunct) website for the Point Pleasant tv show. But this is the first time I’ve seen extra web fiction content being done for a series of novels and anthologies, especially author created and owned.

Anyway, please take a look and see what you think, and also, let’s talk about the web as a venue for new fiction in general.

Some years later, I got an email thanking me for my first novel — from Bosnia. The last care package had somehow made its way to the next international conflict and the soldiers there were grateful for something to read. I’d made some fans, but more than that, I’d help make the world a little brighter for people in a dark place (ironically with a dark fantasy set in Europe.)

Then came 9/11 and before I could think about getting some books together for “any soldier who like F&SF (and horror),” some jerk put anthrax in the mail and everything got restricted to mothers of soldiers and other people who actually knew someone, and since I was fortunate enough to not have any family or friends serving, the whole idea of kindness from strangers got buried.

Then I read a post by Cory Doctorow on Boing-Boing, mentioning that Iraq is having its first fantasy roleplaying convention, Ziggurat Con, being held June 9 from 1200 to 2100 hours at Camp Adder/Tallil Airbase, open to all allied military personnel and civilian contractors in Iraq. There’s a call for donations of roleplaying game books for prizes, as well as for things such as dice, because d20s are in rather short supply in Iraq.

However, all my spare game books are either not current or I’m currently using them, so I dropped the con’s organizer, SPC David Amberson, an email (david.amberson (at) iraq.centcom.mil), asking him if he might like novels for prizes as well, and also if I should pass along the request to other authors I know. Here’s his response:

As for Fantasy & Sci-Fi Books, YES PLEASE!!!!! We have a loaner library here, but few books in it. People borrow and never bring them back. Books are the keys to understanding the world, and how it really works. By understanding other worlds and how they work, we can learn how to change our thinking and progress.

My address is as follows:
SPC David Amberson
A Co 86th Sig Bn
APO, AE 09331

Thank you so much for your support,

Dave

Building a library in the shadows of ancient Ur is a worthy cause, and while we should of course keep sending signed copies of our various works to all the local conventions in our own countries, sending them somewhere where there’s a scarcity of books in English and a whole lot of people who want to read them is a good thing. And we can even sneak in a letter to “any soldier” on the flyleaf.

Those of us with new novels about to come out might also drop a note to the publicity department at our publishers as to where to send the spare review copy or even a promotional case. Just think of it–review copies and promos that actually get read.

And of course boxing up some of those works by other authors that we’ve read and enjoyed (or promos we were sent that we didn’t have time to read) is also a good thing.

Where to start?  Where to end?  Egads, I’ve been going to this thing for twenty years now, saw it when it was small, saw it when it was dying, then saw it when it moved to the new convention center and doubled in size every year, even as they continued to enlarge the convention center.  I remember a couple years ago when I made the mistake of being on the main floor when the crowd capacity overtaxed the air conditioning and I nearly fainted on top of Guillermo Del Toro as he was slipping out the back of the Marvel booth and under my arm as I supported myself on a pillar.

Anyway, I’ll start with a brief description of the con and go on to particulars.  Comicon International takes place in San Diego sometime during the summer.  The earliest is 4th of July weekend, which it’s only done once when it was bumped by the Republican National Convention (and that only by political clout, not size).  The latest is late August.  It’s moved the “San Diego” out of its name so if the city pulls any monkey business, the Comicon can move to the Anaheim Convention Center (where Worldcon will be this year) and Anaheim really wants its business.

Anyway, it’s technically a four-day convention, but there’s also three hours of “Preview Night” on Wednesday where the Dealers Room is opened early and there are even special collectibles available only to folk who attend Preview Night, which is only open to those who are preregistered for the convention.

I was preregistered, but got caught in LA traffic so arrived six minutes after registration closed on Wednesday.  Boo!  Hiss!  However, I did link up with my friend Storm, who was my “Guest of” (professionals get easy free registration–if done ahead of time–and one free guest) and got her the scantron form, which, due to new regulations/bureaucratese, cannot be transfered from one individual to another except by writing beforehand.  Unfortunately, her boyfriend had not known she was my guest, so had also gotten her a membership, but luckily under her given name of Avril.  So she later redeemed both then had her friend Baxter go to the con for the weekend as “Storm” (which was more likely for a guy with a braided beard than “Avril”).

Ah, fandom.  This workaround was even suggested by Registration.

Anyway, the layout of the place: The San Diego Convention center has a huge bottom floor with Halls A-H.  For the Dealers Room, Halls A-G are conjoined making a single room about the size of two football fields end-to-end.  No, I’m not making this up.  I’m told it’s 3/4 of a mile and I think that’s about right.  In that space there are a few districts: Artist’s Alley is a section of tables set up for various artists and illustrators selling their original works.  I know several of them, and found out from one that he’d come down at the last minute, emailed the artists’ network asking for crash space, and had someone who actually had a whole unfurnished house that wasn’t going to be rented for two weeks.  Hotel space is booked months in advance, so this not unusual.  (I and another author were staying at another author’s house, for example.)

Anyway, Dealers Room…  Imagine everything you’ve ever seen at a convention dealers room, but more and larger: Used book dealers, new book dealers, book publishers, game companies, movie companies, clothing dealers, jewelers, curio shoppes and purveyors of oddments and grot, armorers, sword dealers, actors and Playboy pinups.  And so on.  I started in Hall G and dedicatedly started out trying to see everything starting Thursday morning.  I gave up by the time I got to the A section, but most of what was there were various small publishers of comics I wasn’t too impressed by and Starbucks pimping free samples of some form of pumpkin-colored slush.

Hall H is the huge hall that’s used for the giant movie previews where  they have a panel with actors and directors and writers and expect an ultra-huge crowd which could not be handled by any of the upstairs halls, even the still huge Hall 20 and Hall 6.

Anyway, the Halls upstairs are given over to all programming and panels.  Gaming got banished to the Hyatt a few years ago, but it’s a nice banishment since the Con Suite is there too, and the only inconvenient thing is that you can’t just stroll in and out of gaming along with everything else.

Anyway, in between the upstairs Halls is the Sails Pavillion.  Read: Huge-Assed tented hall with concrete floor and cloth ceiling overhead which keeps down the echoes.  All author and actor signing is up here (in separate sections) except when a signing goes on at a dealers booth on the showroom floor.  However, for crowd control, most of the dealers will still do the signings upstairs in the Sails Pavillion unless they have an absolutely huge area able to accomodate it, such as the DC “booth” (read: tennis court).

Part of Registration is also under the Sails, as is the Art Show.  There’s also a large area with tables for conventioneers to just have somewhere to sit and chat and check what’s in their bags.

Anyway, while I was there, I ran into an old friend of mine from college and so hooked up with him and his wife for dinner.  So Thursday night for me was just just Fan night, but quite enjoyable.  (Wednesday night ended up being strangely enough Staff night, since after not getting my registration, Storm, Baxter and I bailed and found an In-and-Out Burger, where it turned out all the other people in line were the Registration Staff from the Con.  However, they were nice, and were also correct in that morning registration was expedited so it only took one minute, which is a new record.  If that’s what the scantrons do, maybe it’s good.)

Anyway, as I was saying, Thursday I did the fan thing and had a good time.  I said “Hi” to George R.R. Martin briefly since I’m one of his Wild Cards writers (and we have a relaunch from Tor next year) and he was amazed by the difference between what the Comicon was in 92 when he was here last and what it’s grown to now.

One thing about Comicon that is different from almost all other conventions is the fact that the parties are both swankier and harder to get invitations to.  The easiest is probably the benefit party for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which is both a good cause and a good party.  I tend to rejoin when I remember to/have spare cash/feel like it.  If you plan to attend Wondercon and the APE Expo in San Francisco the same year, your membership works for all the parties.  Not of course that you should be joining because of parties, but an incentive is an incentive.

As a consequence of the lack of good parties for plain fans, the fans decide to hold one of their own parties and it’s now become one of the events in and of itself.  X-Sanguine is the goth party.  Actually, that’s an understatement.  It’s a major goth ball held on the Saturday night of the convention, opposite the Masquerade, and always sells out the limited number tickets it has for the convention.  Luckily, Storm is friends with the organizer (and I ran into her at the table) and while she was on the guest list already, a ticket was located for me to purchase.  I also got an Emily the Strange shoulder bag as swag along with this, which was great because it saved my arm lugging the bag of convention freebies I’d been grabbing.  I had one goth girl try to convince me that it was not macho for guys to carry such things, but since it’s a large black satchel, I feel pretty secure.  Besides which, I had an Emily the Strange T-shirt when she was in elementary school, so for me it says “counterculture” more than “women’s wear.”

Anyway, Friday I did more the pro turn on the floor, since I have a couple essays in Ben Bella Books SmartPop anthologies (Seven Seasons of Buffy and Farscape Forever specifically).  I hadn’t got my registration packet back in time to be officially included on panels, but there’s only so much space anyway.  Glenn Yeffeth (Ben Bella’s editor-in-chief) had four other authors on the panel with him, and he had five more of us authors in the audience.  After the panel, we all went over and did a big group signing with the books being provided by Mysterious Galaxy.

After that, I had a late lunch with Amy Berner, one of the other SmartPop authors, then did more of the Dealers Room, then was at loose ends and trying to figure out whether I should go to do the fan thing of going to the Stargate/SciFiFriday panel, which was a showing of all the night’s episodes on the big screen, or going to the Eisner awards, which is meant to be the showpiece of the whole convention, and where all the pros are supposed to be going if they’re not playing hookey.

So, while I stood there waffling in the hall, I encountered my friend David, late of Pixar and Dreamworks, who enticed me to the pro side of the force, and we went over to the Eisner awards (which he’d never actually seen before).  Well, not the Eisner awards at first, but at least the bar set up outside Hall 20 while people were waiting to get in.  While there I ran into Eric Shanower, who was up for a couple awards, congratulated him, then he went off to be seated early with the other honorees.  Then David got a phonecall as a dinner invitation came through and I joined him in another year of playing hookey from the Eisners and went out to dinner with a bunch of producers and magazine editors.

Saturday, I started out with the Dealers Room again, which was far less crowded on the A side with the smaller dealers, then around noon went to the panel for Fallen, the new ABC Family miniseries about a cute young Nephilim.  I’m thinking the very concept should make Pat Robertson’s head spin (which I’m all for), and the Kyle XY panel the day before was very good (with the actors there, very earnest and happy), but as a big bonus for the Fallen panel, not only did they have the actors, but they had Tom Sniegoski, the author of the novels it’s based on.  The program even mentioned there’d be free copies of the book for those who attended, and while I’ve got tons of book swag, I had to admit I was actually interested in reading this one.

Of course, what it says in the program and what happens in reality are two different things.  Tom and the actors gave a great panel, movie clips were shown, everyone was happy and excited, ABC Family had not only taken out a full-page ad in the program book but had also paid to have everybody at the 100,000+ convention’s plastic welcome swag-bag printed with a full color ad, then to top it off, had a twenty-foot-high fifty-foot-long banner strung up in the Sails Pavillion just in case anyone missed the other two.

But books?  There were no books handed out at the panel.  I assumed it would be at the signing downstairs, which I decided not to go to, just saying “Hi” to Tom outside after being introduced by mutual friends, but as I was later informed by the same friends, there weren’t any books at the signing either.  Why not?  The publisher, PocketBooks, couldn’t be bothered to reprint it.  Even with a miniseries and a marketing blitz on behalf of ABC Family.

WTF?  Do they need Nephilim to show up and start hitting them with clue sticks?  There’s a freaking miniseries.  You’re supposed to not just have a reissue, but a special tie-in printing with the actor’s photo on the cover and the movie logo.

Strangely, PocketBooks did have a booth in the Dealers Room.

I then went and did a couple of the movie panels, finding out the plans for the Spirit movie (Will Eisner’s Spirit, to be done by Frank Miller, of Sin City fame) and then saw the updates for the Narnia DVD collection, the announcement of Prince Caspian starting filming, and then numerous silly outtakes from Pirates of the Caribbean Dead Man’s Chest, followed by previews of the next film, of which I will give only one spoiler word: China.

This was followed by almost the full cast of the new Spiderman plus director Sam Raimi being believeably gracious and charming (and yes, I want to see the film, and it has both Sandman and Venom).  Then we saw Nicholas Cage decide for some reason that he needed to wear Elvis glasses to come out to pimp the new Ghost Rider he’s starring in.  Perhaps it’s his usual voice which I haven’t heard in movies, but he managed to do the odd double-feat of talking very intelligently whilst sounding stoned.  The stupid Elvis glasses definitely added to this impression.

Anyway, I did a bit more of the Dealers Room Saturday, picked up the latest book of Girl Genius in the puffy-covered hardback (and am now annoyed because I somehow missed picking up Volume IV in the same edition {ed. less annoyed now that I ordered one from Amazon on sale, who still had two of the hardbacks, despite the fact that only 500 of each are done hardback}), and then went to the WGA party for the animation writers which a friend had invited me along to.  There was much shmoozing, as well as the more serious business of announcing that the reality television writers were joining the animation writers in trying to get their shows to start thinking about being guild signatory (and thus paying writers properly).  To that end, the writers of America’s Top Model were now on strike, and two of them were there at the party.

And then I went from the WGA party to the X-Sanguine party.  Cleverly, I had worn pants that could be extended from shorts to full length.  Less cleverly, I hadn’t realized that The Abbey where the party was taking place was over 28 blocks away, all uphill.  In fact, at the crest of the appropriately named Hillcrest district.

Of course, after the crowds of the convention center, a 45-minute walk for 18 blocks (after exhausting a bicycle cabbie for the first 10) was strangely refreshing, at least in the climb-Mount-Fuji-once category.  And it gave me an anecdote to garner You swam the moat? looks.

But anyway, the X-Sanguine party: The Abbey is the actual abbey for St. Patrick’s church next door.  It’s an old, beautiful building with stained glass windows and so forth, looking all the more fun when used for the “kinda pleasantly Satanic” (to quote Ike Reilly) costuming and decorating you see in the goth scene.  And oh was there costuming.  From Chewbacca and Stormtrooper Elvis to Little Red Riding Hood and her werewolf beau.  Many beautiful bits of plain finery, and a pair of women who’d done themselves up as mirror images in matching Chinese silk 40s-era dresses, then done their hair with elaborate Chinese coiffures.  The hair ornaments, however, were chopsticks, fortune cookies, soy sauce packets and pairs of red and black take-out containers.

There were belly dancers, sword dancers, fire dancers.  And there was a photographer upstairs who, traumatized by the world of family portraits, had come to offer his services for free and take photos of everyone in their gothy best.

His release form was worth the price of admission alone, with the lines:

Q. Do I have to sign the release?

A. Yes.  No release=No pic.  This is not up for debate.  I cannot be held responsible if, ten years from now, you find Jesus, and he tells you to be ashamed of these images.

Squee!  Lovit.  I’m looking forward to my picture when he gets everything developed and retouched:

http://www.danielbergeron.com/

I of course felt underdressed compared to everone else, simply having a red “El Diablito” Loteria T-shirt with Betty Page print shirt as jacket, but I also had some great silver claws I’d gotten from Dragonspawn Crafthall years ago (in trade for mead), and once he saw those, the photographer’s face lit up.  He had me do several poses until he got one he was happy with, which I’m thinking should be one with me doing a good variety of snarling-demented while brandishing claws.

Anyway, Sunday was slightly lower key, mostly due to me developing what I thought was a mold allergy in the middle of the Pirates screening but actually turned out to be a nastying cold-flu.  I did the con, but somehow managed to subsist on nothing for the entire day save three packs of cough drops and a beer.  And I went to 4 AM, no less.

What did I do the last day?  Well, it’s good to have done things in previous years, since one of the things I’d done previously was go out to lunch with Dr. Peter Coogan, now the organizer of the Comics Arts Converence, a full-on academic conference that goes on during Comicon as part of its programming track.  He ran into me in the hall, invited me by, and I came for the final three presentations of the conference, the ones titled The Other Superhero: “The Superhero as Messiah” by Chris Carpenter of Christ the King parish, “Place and Displacement: Locating the Woman Warrior in a (Post)Modern World” by Kristy Boney of Ohio State University, and “Negotiating Life Spaces: Will Marriage Change Storm?” by Anita McDaniel of the University of North Carolina, Wilmington.

All three presentations were excellent, though I was extremely impressed by Professor Boney’s.  I was also a bit sorry I’d missed the rest of the presentations, but I bought a copy of all the papers from Pete on disk, and better, I later got an invite from him to go out to the movies with him and a bunch of the other professors.

We saw My Super Ex-Girlfriend which is particularly fun and a good note to end the con on, with lots of discussion of comics and pop culture on either side.

And then I went back to my friend’s place and slept the tortured sleep of one afflicted with the con-crud, which I’m now just kicking the last of, having gotten back to San Jose.  But this is not the fault of the con.

Anyway, that was Comicon 2006.  Looking forward to next year’s convention.