San Diego Comic Con 2008

I survived another year of the San Diego Comic Con! I had a really great time while I was there. In many ways it was one of the most pleasant SDCCs of my career.

Highlights included meeting both Gonzo and Matt Groening (who said he had The Blot and he bought my new comics!), hanging out with all my comic book friends, and introducing my fiancée to the strange world of comic conventions. And she LOVED it.


The convention was a big success, too. I debuted my Melvins comic book "Your Disease Spread Quick" and it was well received. I also sold out of my mini-comic collection of comic strip poems. The biggest surprise was how quickly I sold out of my Moby Dick prints. I didn't have them until Saturday morning, but all week people kept stopping by and looking at the proof I had on display.

Levon brought 10 of them down from L.A. with him and within 4 hours of opening on Saturday, I had sold all of them. And I'm starting to get e-mail requests to order them already. I will have the remaining 20 copies of my Moby Dick prints available in the store soon. Check the blog for future details.

The convention has changed in the 10 years I've been going there. There's lots of talk about it being too Hollywood now... but I don't really know about that. Over half of the convention is taken over by movies, t.v. shows, toy companies and video games. And it does seem like that part of the convention overshadows the comics. But it doesn't seem like it really efects us that much. They seem to keep to their end of the convention center, and we've still got ours. That's fine with me. It's like me and my friends are all sitting at the nerd table in the high school lunchroom. The Jocks are encroaching on our territory, but they can't keep us from being who we are.

I love comic convention people. They fascinate me and entertain me and make me feel at home. There is something really wonderful about the freedom to express all of our geeky-weirdness in public.


I managed to avoid buying stuff this year. I only made one purchase the whole week: a novel based on the '60s supermarionation show Captain Scarlet. Who could resist a novel based on a puppet show?

HUGE thanks to my pals Sparkplug Comic Books and Teenage Dinosaur for letting us join them for our double booth setup. And Levon, Jeff, Shiga, Shannon, Alixopulos and David for hanging out and helping all week.

I love going to cons with these guys - they help keep me grounded amidst the onslaught of interacting with thousands of people. Even though I'm completely exhausted, I'm already lookin' forward to hanging out with them at the next one.