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Friday, July 29, 2005
[Let's start this off with lovely Sally's report on the con. Her second.]
This year's Comic Con was a little easier for me because at least I new what to expect so it wasn't as exhausting as last year, which was the first convention I attended. We stayed at the Radisson Inn and as usual those one way streets gets us every time. Nothing easy in San Diego, you can't just get off the freeway and drive straight to the hotel, you have to take a tour of the one way streets and try to enjoy the view while trying to figure out how the hell you're suppose to get to the front of the hotel when it's on the other side of the block and it's going the wrong way. What's even more frustrating is you can see the hotel and you can go right by it but trying to get to the entrance or parking garage is a neat trick. But eventually we made it.
Anyway, the first day, Robert of course is conducting business and I get to just gawk at all the people who dress up and wonder what the hell possesses them to dress up like that. Then finally Robert tells me to start taking pictures. So then it becomes my mission. At first I hesitantly ask people if I can take their pictures and then I realize these people want their pictures taken. By anyone! So I then start to assertively ask people if they want their pictures taken. I had a few people ask me why and when I said "I was just taking pictures of people at the show", they happily posed for me. I had only one female decline the opportunity of having her picture taken, which I thought was odd because isn't that why you dress up, so that people take notice of you and perhaps want to take a picture?
There was one defining moment for me. I saw this geek taking a picture with this gothic girl and noticed the gothic guy was taking the picture of the mixed couple. So I asked all three of them if I could take their pictures together. I thought what a picture this would make, talk about one extreme to the next, it would be a great shot. To my dismay the boy bowed down his blue headed hair and said "No, you don't want my picture, they're at least goth, I'm just a geek". I felt so sad looking at his forlorn face that I wanted to just put my arm around him and tell him "it's going to be okay", when this guy jumps in with "Dude, you got to be kidding, do you know where you are? This is the comic con, being a geek is a badge of honor!". But it didn't sway him at all, he just kind of sloughed off without turning around. How sad is that.
I'm sure the people that dress in costume at the comic con, if they're not actors trying to land a job, do have some sort of sadness to them if not something their trying to prove or maybe a persona their trying to emulate. Is being a geek such a bad thing? My boyfriend calls himself and his friends geeks and they even have a weekly "geek lunch". The first time he said that to me I didn"t think anything of it, but then I noticed that you either were proud to be geekly (it's a word) or ashamed. I don't think there's an in-between.
The one thing that keeps bringing me back is that I find all these people very fascinating. I watch how these people conduct themselves, do they look confident or shy or do they look like their trying to emulate someone else because they don't like who they are. Whatever the case, it takes guts or confidence or even belligerence perhaps, to dress up in these outrageous costumes and parade around in public. It's a great place to examine the human species and what makes them do the things they do. It surely subjects you to a humongous amount of speculation and wonderment. This is really what the Comic Convention represents to me. I had a great time.
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SAN DIEGO COMIC CON INTERNATIONAL
First problem, as soon as we get into town and try to get to the hotel Radisson.
This hotel was a huge tower sticking out of the north end of town. The 5 freeway south offramp was the hotel's front door.
One way streets +construction work going on = hard to get to the hotel
I felt bad for the people who live in the house with no front yard and no side yard and no back yard butted right up next to this twenty story monstrosity.
Seriously, this thing was like a giant job's spike fired from space into the tectonic plate. And it just happen to impact in a residential area.
I have been attending Comic Con for years. San Diego is certainly a lot less stressful for me than it once was. It has for the last few years become less fun, or at least less satisfying. I will get back to that shortly.
I have always wanted to draw comic books. Always wanting to draw comics used to be a universal motto amongst artists. Then sometime around the 90's explosion that changed. I started reading interviews with artist who claimed that they were only working in comics. But they really want to direct or until their video game or animation or whatever took off.
This was the time that going to San Diego was no fun for me. I was still going and trying to find work and was being told "no". While it seemed like all around me many times I saw plenty of people with much less skills and certainly much less or nonexistent passion for comics getting work.
Nowadays I am not usually told "no" or "your art is not good enough". Now it is more along the lines of "hey, that's pretty good but I don't have anything to use you for right now".
Don't get me wrong I enjoy San Diego immensely. And it is certainly much less stressful to hear "not right now" versus "you stink". Of course I want to hear "you're hired". And I do hear it just not as a result of San Diego.
Another observation about the show, out of the independent publishers' booths at the show a great number of them fell into one of two categories. Cutsie, almost animation style of art but with a goth twist. Like goth Betty Boop. Or the dark-demon-blood-splatter-death metal type. What this means to me is that it cuts down on my job opportunities. Apparently I am (despite my previous complaints) being picky. I know, a gig is a gig. I have done plenty of commercial work that I could give pip about. But I know that I want material that I can sink my teeth into and put my heart into.
Javier Hernandez hawking his new movie starring Fez from tv's "That 70's Show".
Many of my friends were not at the show this year. Some of whom I only get to hang out with at shows and some only at San Diego in particular. So this year I consciously tried not to take a bunch of name dropping shots of pros and me. However here are a few
Mike Wellman and I worship Satan.
Wow! So does Steve Lieber. Cool!
So does my buddy David Walker. No surprise there.
Michael Aushankar, creator of El Gato Comics, the editorial staff of Two Morrows Publishing and I.
Here is Sally and I and Dern and his wife Kendra right after signing a contract at notorious Dick's Last Resort.
And here is our crazy waiter who insisted that I personalize his work shirt with some custom art.
I (and by "I" I mean mostly Sally) shot the endless parade of freaks. I did notice one thing uniformly. In every example of Jedi, Stormtrooper, or Klingon, I noticed it. They all had some sort of physical condition that if the Jedi order or empire(s) were real, it would have kept them out of the service. I have never seen more overweight, bespectacled Klingons, or Jedis with limps in my life.
And before geek parade here is a shot of me under the Stargate, or as the Japanese and apparently my grandfather know it, Space Travel Machine.
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FREAKS ....HO!
Um for some reason you have to scroll down.
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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
BEFORE I GO...
Here is a link to an interesting ebay entry about life imitating art.
My friend is right , somebody should be giving this guy a grant.
mecha
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Monday, July 11, 2005
OUT OF THE OFFICE
I will be down in lovely San diego for the comic-Con this week(end). Promoting my two new books, the covers of which you can see here. And also trying to rack up more gigs.
I will do my best to take notes for a con report. And I will try to wrangle a report out of Sally as well. If you are in attendance at the show and see me, give out a yell. 'Till next week, mahalo.
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Wednesday, July 06, 2005
WELL SOMEONE IS PAYING ATTENTION
I saw this store sign next to a Chinese restaurant Sally and I like to go to. I wonder how big a fan of Hellboy the owner of the sign shop must be.
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Tuesday, July 05, 2005
WELL WELL WELL
I am finally back. Man, what a hiatus. I have not posted for the longest period of time since I started this thing. However due to deadlines, vacation and having a slightly sprained ankle and broken toe I haven't been too ambitious lately. But that should change now.
Spent the fourth at the movies. Sally and I saw Batman Begins. The best review I can give it is that it ignores the previous movies. It is actually a pretty good action flick. I had a few problems with it. First off: the dialogue. If the creators were going for stilted comic book type dialogue then mission accomplished. Next; was the fight scenes. Too many quick cuts. I assume that they were trying to give the idea that Batman fights like a flurry of bats. The bad part is that it is just a bunch of blurred movements and the bad guys groaning. And if they are trying to stylize the Dark Knight's fighting techniques, then why did they use it in the beginning of the movie before he became Batman?
This brings us to the part of the movie where Batman receives his training. I had a few problems with Ra's al Ghul. Don't get me wrong, I actually think Liam Neeson was a great choice for Batman's future father-in-law. Reserved, calculating. Truly cut from the same cloth as other such Oriental masterminds, e.g. Fu Manchu. Therein is my problem. An Irishman playing a character traditionally portrayed as being of Eastern (Middle-Eastern?) descent is not too hard to accept. I know that Ra's's past is intentionally ambiguous. Who is to say what his ethnic origins are? But his definite emphasis on ninjas, a decidedly Japanese affectation seemed a little, oh I don't know, not mysterious enough for him. Him being a mastermind, ninjas seem a little pedestrian. I figure that an immortal genius would have an amalgam of all the world's fighting and assassinating cultures.
Again much like Fu Manchu. Up until now I had not realized that Ra's al Ghul really does belong amongst the pantheon of Oriental criminal masterminds: Fu Manchu, Wu Fang, Yellow Claw, etc.
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