“An ‘lol’ just makes it all better.”
Well, I just got back from Arizona for a wedding, and I realized that I’ve gone West twice this year, yet I still haven’t written about that first, action-packed trip: San Diego. I made a promise to get to that before the end of the year, and my mommy raised me to never make a promise I couldn’t keep. So, it took me until 5 AM, but I finally got the saga down on paper (or e-paper, I guess). Here’s how it’s going to run: I’m going to post a new part every day this week, so you can either follow along, or read it all Saturday morning as you’re nursing your hangover. Either way, it’s all gonna be posted by Friday night. I swear that everything mentioned in these stories actually happened, so either be in awe or be ashamed, as I’m laying it all on the line here. It’s going to start out kind of slow, but I swear it gets better (I’m particularly fond of tomorrow’s post). So, don’t say I never entertain you, and most of these stories aren’t going to paint me in the best light. But that means they’re real. So, here we go:
I’ve got to say that “excitement” was not the initial feeling when I got to San Diego. Don’t get me wrong; I was excited beforehand, and during the flight. However, once I touched down, I got kind of “blah”. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I didn’t have anyone to call. Sure, that sounds stupid, but I didn’t exactly have anyone to share it with. Most of my comic friends were with me, so it would’ve been preaching to the choir. So, I had no real outlet for the excitement and, oddly, that turned into depression. I spent the first night in my room, blogging and checking work e-mail (if you remember the disjointed post about Dr. Phil and Good Times, that was the post).
The first few days were consumed by slave labor. Either we were assembling booths or delivering product to retailers, it was all the unglamorous work you neither see, nor ever want to see. That Wednesday night was known as “Preview Night”, which used to be exclusively for retailers and exhibitors to get a lay of the land before the “commoners” hit the gate. In recent years, however, fanboys and retailers alike have taken to coming on Preview Night, so it’s not really anything special anymore. If anything, it’s a good way to gauge the magnitude of the crowd that is expected over the course of the weekend. Show organizers were expecting upwards of 140,000 attendees over the 5 days, and I truly believe that they hit that mark (yeah, I’m too lazy to actually check for stats; I’m not a real journalist!). I’d have to say that I was almost overwhelmed by the amount of people I saw on Preview Night. It also didn’t help that I had booth duty, so I had to do my best Vanna White impression as the “preview nighters” came by to drool at our display cases.
To better explain booth duty, you’re basically a spokesmodel posted at a particular product, available for questions should the attendees want more details. If they want to purchase the item, you send them in the appropriate direction. I had the (un)lucky fortune of being posted at the Diamond Exclusive Colonel America Zombie Bust. Allow me to elaborate: Marvel Comics did a miniseries a little over a year ago, featuring their main characters as zombies. Seeing as how zombies “are the new black”, the thing sold wonderfully for them. So, Diamond decided to make a bust of one of the prominent characters, Colonel America (an alternate version of the traditional Captain America). The bust had chunks missing out of the body, while the scalp was removable, allowing easier access to his patriotically zombified brain. This was all well and good…except for the timing of this bust. You see, the popular miniseries was now a year old, while just weeks prior to Comic Con, Marvel killed off Captain America. And here we were, selling a zombie bust of the character. Can you say “in poor taste’? No? Can you say “too soon”? Let’s just stick with “morbid”. Now, most people would laugh it off, and just think it’s kooky, asking, “Dude, where can I buy this?!” However, it was the old school fan base that really took offense to things. I had a guy come up to me, telling me his life story of how Captain America has always been a hero and a role model to him. I’m smiling and nodding, wondering where this is going. That’s when he decides to inform me that he’s offended that we’d disrespect his role model in such a way. I wanted to launch into the, “Dude, he’s not real” defense, but that’s something that you only want to use in case of emergency. No need of biting the hand that feeds me, just to save face. So, I had to do some emergency back-peddling. I pointed out that the bust was of Colonel America and not Captain America. Since the Colonel was an alternate reality version of Cap, they’re not the same person. So, he could rest assured that his hero was still where he remembered him, six feet under and being consumed by maggots and worms. God Bless America!
I can’t make fun of the fanboys, though, as I’m certainly one of them. Little did I know I was going to have my own, weird fanboy moment the next day. You see, my friend Keith and I were roommates, and we were rushing to get to the con floor for the first real day of the show. As we get into the hotel elevator, we see a guy who looks oddly familiar. Now, the thing with comic folks is that many of them are faceless. If the creator has never graced Wizard‘s Top 10 Creator lists, you’ll never know what they look like (it also doesn’t help that they’ve been using the same pics and creators for the past 10 yrs). So, I’m looking at this guy, when I notice that he has a DC bag with his stuff. He smiles and asks if we’re headed to the con. We tell him we’re working it, blah, blah. Then, I ask if he’s with DC. That’s when he introduces himself: he’s Ethan Van Sciver, regular artist on Green Lantern. So, we shoot the shit for all 12 seconds of the elevator ride. When we get outside, he asks if we want to split a cab.
Now, the convention center was literally one block away, and we were kind of looking forward to walking it. I mean, the early morning cosplay sightings were reason enough to hoof it (you’ll understand when you see the droves of Cassie Hack and Power Girl clones). Not wanting to seem rude, and it was EVS, we decide to join him in the cab. When we tell the driver where we’re going, he gets all pissed. “Why can’t you walk?”, he asks. “It’s right there!”. I guess we were keeping him from getting a “real fare”. Trying to sound like I was cool and edgy, I responded with, “Well, we thought you wanted to get paid!” Nice one, Will. So, it actually takes us about 5 minutes just for the cab to get back onto the street. The entire time, the driver is pissed, trying to tell us that we could’ve walked, seeing as how the convention center was a block away. Well, EVS had a couple of boxes of comics on a cart, so walking would’ve been cumbersome. At some point, the guy calmed down.
In the meantime, Keith and I are talking to Ethan, anything from where he lives to how he felt about the success of the Sinestro Corps storyline. At some point, he mentioned his wife, and that’s when the driver decided to be our friend. “How many girlfriend do you have?”, he asked Ethan. Ethan was like, “I don’t have any girlfriends, man. I’m married.” That wasn’t stopping the driver, though. “You have one wife, so you have enough time and energy for about 2 girlfriends. Lots of beautiful women out here. You might get a girlfriend this weekend.” Dude really started getting forceful, like he couldn’t believe that his math wasn’t making sense to us. We were bewildered by how incessant he was in selling his 1 wife = 2 girlfriend lifestyle. I swear, a 1-block trip took about 20 minutes, and we went from being abused to being this guy’s new best friends, as we were lowly, inexperienced fools, while he was the guru of love. Anyway, it was awesome ’cause I was in the middle of a “con story”. I’d always read about them online, but I never knew I’d actually experience one. I shared an experience with a popular comics pro, in a scenario that you’d have to experience to believe. Comic-Con Rocks!
Tomorrow’s Chapter: “In fact, I think I fell in love with you…”
