T-Shirt worn:  Comic Book Movie promotional T-Shirt from 3 cons ago.

My secret parking spot for the downtown trolley is completely full, so I have to backtrack to the Fashion Valley lot and end up missing the first half of Sci-Fi author and boinger Cory Doctorow's panel.  Doctorow is reading an excerpt from his next published book as I enter, a futuristic story that somehow relates mecha and 1950s futurism in a way that was probably explained before I got there.  He is done writing his next book, Little Brother, which will be published next year, and is about a group of hacker kids who declare war on the DHS.  The book will be filled with personal privacy and civil liberties HOWTOs (get yourself off a no-fly list, keep your RFID stuff unscannable, etc), and was entirely researched from links submitted to Boing Boing.  Rating:  A-

Next up is a panel that's part of the Comics Arts Conference series.  This is a set of panels that runs for the duration of the Con, and is made up of Humanities grad students and professors who have written texts that relate somehow to comics.  This one in particular is on Gender roles in comics, and I've come because one of the panelists has something to present on Y: The Last Man, one of my favorite running titles.  Unfortunately she doesn't show up for the panel, so I sit through the other two presentations which are pretty inane--one from a prof who speculates why gay men love Wonder Woman so much, the other from a grad student who's deconstructing the recent outing of DC's cowboy character The Rawhide Kid.  I don't follow either too closely, because I'm more intrigued by a power-point slide show handout from a nearby table:  Someone's made a psychological investigation into why DC felt it was necessary to write the Crisis on Infinite Earths saga, rather simply rebooting the line, or simply starting to ignore outdated continuity issues.  The author's premise is that the prevailing theory of identity at DC was such that it demanded a published story arc that ties up all known loose ends.  If not, they feared that the readers would not consider future versions of DC heroes to be the "same" as the ones they followed before the continuity clean-up.  Rating:  B-, mostly because of the handout than the actual topic of discussion.

Next panel:  The G4 channel's panel for their new show Code Monkeys, which I only know from the recent Wired blurb.  Holy crap, I'm the prime target age for this show and I played the heck out of my consoles when I was younger, yet I find myself neither getting most of the references nor caring at all for this show.  The smart-aleck attitude of the creator Adam de la Pena wears off pretty quickly as well, and I duck out early.  Rating:  D

Next up:  Fletcher Hanks:  Ed Wood of comics?  Paul Kerasik has recently published a book collecting the known commercial work of Fletcher Hanks, and obscure auteur who worked between 1938 and 1940.  I almost didn't come to this panel, because I'd seen Hanks' work online, and I found it to be very unsettling and disturbing--something you'd expect from a man who's very powerless, very angry, and very stupid.  Like the work itself, I was eventually drawn back to the panel anyway.  Kerasik shows us some artwork done by Hanks for correspondence courses in the 1920s, and eventually rejects the Hanks-Wood comparison on the grounds that Wood brought more passion into his characters, and was also trying to make his work in a genre that was already well-established.  Biggest surprise--Kerasik genuinely feels that Hanks was good artist, although this works best when you take single panels completely out of context.  Rating: A.

Bill Plympton has a panel all to himself.  He gives out his personal Dogme code--Keep it short, keep it cheap, keep it funny--then shows us three pieces from his most recent work:  A Weird Al music video he made, a short horror/noir film called "Shuteye Hotel", and three clips from his next feature film in progress, called Idiots and Angels.  Shuteye Hotel is one of his weaker works--Plympton himself admits it breaks all his own rules--but the film is something to look out for.  Any con goers that stop by his booth during the con will get a free drawing--an angel, IIRC.  Rating: A

I have some time to shop now, so I hit the floor.  It's already crowded on Thursday, and I decide to make most of my purchases today rather than hunt around for out-of-stock stuff during the Sunday discount craze (my shopping list & recommendations will come in a later post).

The last event I attend is the world premiere of To Infinity and Beyond, a documentary on the history of Pixar from its inception to Cars.  The early bits are the most interesting, but towards the end it starts to get a little repetitive with the "greatest challenge ever" story repeated once for each movie the company did.  Overall, a fascinating film, and I give it an A.

At this point I duck out in an attempt to get home before 9PM, so I can spend time with this girl I'm seeing.  However, the nighttime trolley service screws me up yet again, and I end up not getting in until 10:20.  On the ride home, I do end up sitting next to the cartoonist Jorge Pacheco, who claims to have attended every con since the first.  I pick his brains a little on the history of the con.  As Pacheco sees it, the con didn't get big until after the Movies and TV shows started coming in about 10 years ago, but the popularity was also driven by the popularity surge in Anime and Manga from the same time period.  People also started showing up in costume at around the same time that the con went big.  Pacheco is currently working on Kung Fu Klutz and Karate Cool for TokyoPop.

And now...back to the con!

(is 3fingerspointback)

T-Shirt worn:  Vintage Milk and Cheese shirt.

My digital camera has finally arrived in the mail, so I can show you guys some decent pictures of what's going on here.

The first panel I go to is for 24, but I arrive halfway through.  There are a few writers and directors there, disclosing what they can, and laughing at questions about the rest.  The big news for 24 is that the next season isn't intended to be held in Los Angeles.  Unfortunately, they're still working the White House drama into the series, which is probably the worst habit they've stuck with.  Other revelations:  By the time the first episode is aired, the first 15 are already scripted.  The writers admit that the tech speak for CTU is pretty much composed in exactly the same manner as tech speak for Star Trek.  Actors can talk writers out of their characters' deaths.  Peter Weller's character was supposed to die a few hours into Day 5, but instead he convinced the writers that he should kill Tony instead, because it would make him a better villain.  DHS officers told the 24 crew that they actually have phones that can download satellite pictures just like Jack Bauer's, the only difference being in speed.  One idea for the 24 movie is that the first 23 hours would be summarized in the first hour of the movie, and the last hour would be shown in real-time.  Rating:  A.

Rob Zombie shows a shot of his remake of Halloween, then opens up the floor to questions to him, or his stars Sheri Moon Zombie, Scout Taylor-Compton, and Tyler Mane.  He's pretty unprepared to elaborate on the movie, and so are we.  I never get an understanding of why anyone wanted to do a reboot of that series.   When Zombie's bit is over I see enough of The Mist to not care about it, and leave to walk the floor a bit.

The trick to walking the floor is that if you're going to take pictures, you must have your camera ready AT ALL TIMES.  I didn't, and I missed getting good shots of the remote-controlled R2 unit, Elektra, and Catwoman and Ghost Rider sightseeing.  I stop by the SIGGRAPH San Diego booth and pick up an intriguing freebie.  Someone named Gayil Nalls has created an "olfactory sculpture" that blends the smells of indigenous plants from 230 nations, in proportion to their population.  This scent is reproduced inside the card.  If I had to describe the smell of our world, the quick answer would be "like a pine tree car freshener".  After a few more smells, I think the answer is closer to "like driving in a car with a pine tree freshener, after replacing the mothballs in your closest".  After some more sniffing, I think I need to clarify some more:  "Like someone wanted to reproduce the nasal equivalent of a pine tree freshener rolled in mothballs, but with all-organically grown herbs."

The Vertigo Panel.  This one was the most information-dense of all the panels I've been to so far.  Basically, it's the combined news of everything that DC's Vertigo line is doing, given in 25 minutes with a 25 minute question period.  About half of the first 25 minutes was spent just blazing through the slide show ("Here's a cover for 100 Bullets." (cheers) "And here's a cover for Fables.  (cheers)), and the other half was spent on more in-depth coverage of selected titles.  Here's my distillation of their distillation:  Hellblazer's 20th anniversary storyline is going to take Constantine to Iraq in November.  Matt Wagner is resurrecting Madame Xanadu, a minor character who was a rival of the Phantom Stranger.  The Un-Men, the House of Mystery, and the Unknown Soldier get their own retries as well under Vertigo.  Neil Young is going to do a graphic novel adaptation of Greendale.  Preacher is being developed by HBO, and has a pilot scripted.  Y, The Last Man is in development at New Line.  Death may actually get a green light soon, Neil Gaiman has a script.  Matt Wagner's Grendel is optioned to Warner Brothers and isn't going anywhere.  Rating:  A

The old Ray Harryhausen movie 20 Million Miles to Earth is 50 years old this year, and has just been colorized, under the direction of Harryhausen.  I watch the premiere of the rerelease with Harryhausen and a panel of colleagues doing live commentary and answering questions.  No one is going to call the movie great, but it's hokey and kind of fun to watch, esp. with Harryhausen explaining his secrets behind animating the creature.  But ultimately it drags in scenes without the monster, so I'm giving this a B.

The last thing I go to tonight is the Eisner Awards.  Good lord, this is probably the most insular event at the con, including the weird Comic Arts intellectual masturbation sessions.  I came because I wanted to get some good recommendations of books to look out for, but I had to sit through about 6 different versions of the Lifetime achievement awards for...editing?  Journeyman arts work on established characters?  Even most of the recipients who are alive don't show up to claim their prizes.  The only useful information I pick up here is that I totally forgot that I wanted to check out Shooting War, even if it was the Sam and Max serial that won the Digital content award.  The technical errors don't help much either.  Rating:  D

I skip out of the Eisner Awards and try to stand in line for the Spike and Mike gauntlet of toons, from which they will select their next Sick & Twisted show depending on Audience reaction.  However, i have a headache and I'm still standing in line to get in 15 minutes after the scheduled start time, and I've been to this thing long enough to know that there'll be 15 more minutes of dicking around before we actually see anything, so I just take off and call it a night.  It's sad to say, but I think YouTube and its more Sick&Twisted-friendly clones have drastically reduced the need for the Spikes and Mikes of this world.  On the trolley back to my car, other con-goers blow bubbles, then fan them about the trolley car with their 300 souvenier shields.  It's actually less annoying than it sounds.

(is 3fingerspointback)

I'm trying to work on the theory that there's really only two days you should be buying stuff at Comic-Con.  Either Thursday, when you know you'll be able to find it somewhere, or Sunday, when you're betting that it'll still be there when sellers start offering discounts to clean out their inventory.  I've managed to get almost everything I wanted on Thursday, except for a few items.

Purchased:

• Boxed seasons of Berserk and Gantz, on the recommendation of a Japanese friend.  I know as much about them as the Wiki pages.

• Graphic novels of the first two story arcs of DMZ.  I was dismissive of it before, but now it looks like I'm missing out.

• Graphic novels of the second two story arcs of The Walking Dead.

• Yoshihiro Tatsumi's second collection, Abandon the Old in Tokyo.

• Exit Wounds, by Rutu Modan, and We Are On Our Own by Miriam Katin.  I was only mildly interested in the Katin book, but picked it up because I did want Exit Wounds and Abandon the Old in Tokyo, and I'd get a deal if I got all 3.

• Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation--Contagious.

• The Marvel Essentials reprint of Luke Cage.  Can't lose for 60% off!  I'm still waiting for them to get around to Power Man and Iron Fist, which I loved when I was 11.

• Promethea.  I'm a little puzzled by this one.  On the one hand, I'm a fan of Alan Moore's work.  On the other, it sounds like a 32-issue Chick Tract for paganism.  Would I really want to buy that?  The honest answer is "Yes, if Moore wrote it."  But I don't want to sink close to $100 into it if it's not good, so I'll pick up the first two trades and see from there.

• True Porn, an anthology of indie comic shorts about sex.  It looked pretty cool when I saw it in stores, but I figured I'd get a discount on it at the Con, and haven't found it.  Booths are selling Lost Girls, booths are selling trashier porn comics, booths are selling bizarre hentai titles, but not this one?

If I recommended all the comics I liked, this would be too long.  So here's the ones that are relatively new or exclusive for Comic-Con.

• Lost Girls.  Three volume collection of increasingly extreme porn as told and experienced by the adult versions of Alice, Dorothy and Wendy of the children's books.  But hey--Alan Moore!  He actually started on this one before he did the very similar League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but it turned into a 14-year effort, and came out after.

• Collected issues of The Filth by Grant Morrison.  It can be seen as a shorter version of The Invisibles, but told in terms sympathetic to the Outer Church.

• Almost anything by Joe Sacco, but I especially liked The Fixer and Safe Area Gorazde.

• The Push Man, by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.  Good enough that I got the second volume.

(is 3fingerspointback)

So, is Anime finally breaking into mainstream American culture? James Cameron is doing an adaptation of Battle Angel, Death Note just got reviewed on Salon, and IFC, G4, Cartoon Network, and SpikeTV are or have been running some kind of anime series or bloc in the last year or two.

If it is, I welcome it - there's no good reason animation has to just be for kids or teenagers (ditto comic books). On the other hand, unfortunately, anime might not be the great salvation either. While it's certainly edgier than your typical Disney movie, most anime is still aimed squarely at the teen audience (lots of coming of age stories, characters rarely older than 18, etc). The best anime (*cough*Cowboy Bebop*cough*) avoids those storylines, but even otherwise very good anime (like Gungrave, Last Exile, and Samurai Champloo) often have some underage characters that act in extremely unrealistic ways. Evangelion gets something of a pass on this from me, because while it's got a bunch of teenage characters (and younger), they generally act their age (through fits, masturbate, fail at being heroes, etc).

My hope, such as it is, is that as anime gains influence it spurs a domestically produced market that turns some really good American graphic novels into well produced animated features. There's no reason for a lot of comics to be live-action - Constantine, for examples, would have been much better off as animated feature. The best animation uses visual cues / unrealistic drawings to convey feelings and moods in shorthand that even the best actors would have trouble doing. It can be hard to get a human actor to show the exact emotional state that you want - but with an animated character, it's quite easy (if you know what you're doing, anyway). If the anime renaissance gives us well produced domestic anime, I will be very pleased. My fear, however, is that we'll just end up with a bunch of Naruto and Dragonball spinoffs...

I could have sworn I finished my summary of Day 3 this morning, but it's not in this thread.  Well, here's a shorter version:

Went to another Comics Arts Conference panel, this one on the value of comics as historical documents.  The speaker I wanted to see talk about 300 didn't show up, but there was an interesting presentation in defense of Will Eisner's The Plot, a graphic novel debunking the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  The Plot had been criticized for overly dramatic portrayal of the Russian forgers, and for assuming that antisemites would actually be convinced by the scholarship.  However, Eisner acknowledges in the book that few Jew-haters would care to listen to this debunking after all others have failed, and no reasonable person would assume that the conspirators actually made their plans in whispers behind the Tsar's back.  Rating: A.

A Science Fiction panel that would be very popular at a sci-fi con, and was only marginally popular here.  Greg Bear, Cory Doctorow, Vernor Vinge, Kevin J. Anderson and a couple others discuss how and why they use technology in their works.  Rating: A

Spider-Man:  The title's format is being completely overhauled.  Spectacular Spider-Man and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man are going away, and Amazing Spider-Man is going to come out 3 times a month.  This will be managed by putting four writers and four artists on the title, who will switch off duties.  To my chagrin, Paul Pope is not doing another Spider-Man story any time soon.  Rating: B

Troma's Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead.  Disappointing panel that didn't even show any video clips of the movie, instead opting for a home movie of an actor getting his head cast, and shots of a Toxic Avenger/Wolff & Byrd crossover comic.  Rating: C

The Sarah Silverman Program:  It had nothing to do with comics, but it was the only thing going at the time, so about 1500 people lined up to get into it.  A panel full of professional stand-up comedians can't easily go bad, and this one doesn't.  Towards the end, one fanboy finds an actual comics tie-in when he asks show director Rob Schrab when the next issue of Scud: The Disposable Assassin comes out.  Rating: B

Warren Ellis:  This is the kind of panel discussion we need:  An ornery brit going off on the industry, his colleagues, his fans, and life in general.  Generally a big BS session that goes for two hours.  I chose this over the Masquerade, because I prefer to catch people in costume interacting with the real world.  Rating: A+

(is 3fingerspointback)

T-Shirt worn: Commemorating the Don Hertzfeldt short Billy's Balloon.

Sundays tend to be the least interesting for me, panel-wise. I showed up for the San Diego Museum of Art's panel, because I was curious to see what they would talk about, but was expecting to skip out and catch the last of Starship Smackdown, in which television writers argue, using means funnier than your own, whether the Enterprise would win in a match with a Star Destroyer. To my surprise, SDMA's bit turned out to be compelling enough that I stayed for the whole thing. This fall the museum is opening an exhibit of works by artists that have incorporated animation into their works. As examples, we were shown The Enchanted Drawing, generally accepted as the first animated film ever made, Les Kiriki Acrobates Japonais, a stop motion bit from 1907 in color, and the first use of rotoscoping in animation. I give it an A.

When the panel lets out, there's an hour left before the floor closes. I head down, and find that my Sunday strategy is working perfectly. I snag Walk-In, a comic I forgot to put on my list, for $5 instead of $15. Then I round it out with some impulse shopping. Hulk:Grey and Captain America: Truth are 60% off. Three issues of archived Judge Dredd comics are sold for $40, and the guy at the booth also offers to throw in a free T-Shirt. I realize that of the four T-Shirts I wore to the Con only two were somehow related to comics (yesterday's was Ichi the Killer), so I agree. I pick up a couple more things, and then time runs out.

It's a little intimidating to see how much I've purchased by the time I get home. I clear off my coffee table, lay everything out, and grab a picture for documentation purposes. Only after the coffee table is restored do I realize I still had stuff in my backpack, and have to make a second shot. I'm sure that if I wanted to look, I could find some people with larger coffee tables, pool tables, squash courts, etc. that they have completely filled with stuff from the same conference, but my free space is already running low, and this new stuff will probably cut it in half.

So was the Con any good? Heck yes. I'm wiped out, and not interested in doing anything like it again until next year, but it was entertaining and I learned and saw a lot of new things. This was the first year it sold out Friday and Saturday and Sunday, but whatever threshold was used for ticket sales was fine for me. I never felt crowded on the floor, and I generally avoided the events like movie promotions that demanded hour-long waits in line. I don't think it's really "gone corporate", when it's easier to get information out of the company founders at the Indy press booths than it is from the flacks who work for the networks. My only real fear is that, with tickets to most of the con sold-out before the doors open, the organizers may consider moving the event out of town to Los Angeles or Las Vegas.

(is 3fingerspointback)