Broken Frontier

This weekend the team from hot British publishers Com.x, the guys responsible for such acclaimed collections and OGNs as Cla$$war, Razorjack and Path, hit the Long Beach Comic Con and the boys will be giving BF their own unique take on proceedings. Publisher Eddie Deighton chronicles the Con adventures of himself, Com.x co-publisher Ben Shahrabani, Com.x marketing director Jon Sloan and upcoming OGN '45' writer Andi Ewington below...

October 1, Day 1

We arrived two days ago. Jon, Andi and myself had a good flight over, although Jon's idea of in-flight entertainment kept me amused for, oh, about 47 seconds (see photo below). Still, long-haul flights are a great way of catching up on all those movies you missed or didn't feel inclined to watch first time 'round.

Eddie - "Jon! No! I wanna watch 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine'"
Jon - "Trust me, this is more interesting."

I didn't handle the flight well, what with having a pretty bad cold when I boarded, but I kept myself tanked up on various medications, which saw me through until we reached the hotel at Long Beach (by the way, I've decided to keep most of the names of hotels and restaurants out of this report, mainly because we've paid lots of money for the bookings and I haven't been comp'ed on any of it. Yet.). We totally weren't on form that first evening; we all 'hit the sack' at approximately 8:30pm, which is way too early to be going to bed at a convention (or anywhere else, come to that). At least I had an excuse the other guys didn't ;-)

View of the convention centre from the hotel elevator.

Next morning, we were on a mission to find a TV editing facility that could export our Quicktime movies onto a Blu-Ray disc. As is usual with us here at Com.x, we didn't want to do this convention without going to the extreme, so we decided very early on that were going produce a trailer that was full HD. Not really a bad mistake, but one that comes with major complexities when you're trying to find a facility in LA when you're based in London. Props to a great friend of ours who pointed us in the direction of IO Films in Hollywood; they stepped up to the plate with our 4GB of files in their hands and should be, as I type, formatting our files for a looped Blu-Ray disc, which should be delivered to the convention tomorrow, the first day of 'trading'. I guess, if you catch up on this blog tomorrow, you'll find out whether they were successful or not.

The guys - working hard prior to breakfast (yes, Andi is on Facebook).

That pretty much took up most of our morning and afternoon and, after a quick stop at Amoeba Music (ok, it wasn't a quick stop, it was an hour-long CD-buying frenzy), we all decided that we'd hit my old stomping ground, Venice Beach. On the way over, we received a call from Edwin at the printer who is printing our ashcan for the show. After apprehensively taking the call it turned out that there were no problems, he just needed to know where we wanted the books delivered, as they were in the final throes of finishing. Great news. Another potential headache to cross off the list. We celebrated with an ice-cream.

(Andi: I have to say the highlight of the journey to Venice Beach was the fully dressed clown on a bike that we passed several blocks away from Ben's crib. He was fully face-painted up with a sad face, I wanted to roll down the window and shout something witty but I was reminded that he may actually catch us, and besides, custard pies are a bugger to get out of clothes...)

Taking a stroll down Pine Street.

That evening, we hit the hotel bar and met up with Mike Scigliano (who will be known hereinafter in this diary as "The Scig"), whom we've been liaising with on the Long Beach convention. Great guy, extremely supportive and someone we're very grateful to for connecting us with so many services whilst we've been up to our necks in comics and graphics back in London. So, we and The Scig spent the good part of an hour putting the world to rights before we realised that we had in fact surpassed our previous record of succumbing to jetlag by a good three hours. Comforted by the fact that we no longer qualified as wusses, we retired to our rooms, ready to face a day of registration and organisation.

Andi, worshipping at the altar.

So this morning we headed out, grabbed breakfast and then wandered over to the centre to check the place out and register. Bit of an anti- climax when we got there, as there was very little action going on and the registration desk hadn't even been built. Not that we were particularly concerned, as we've worked both in front and behind-the-scenes at these events before; a lot can happen within the space of a few hours. As our fate was in the lap of the Comic Con Gods, we took a stroll down Pine Street. Andi warmed to one of the local bars there (see picture above). Much to his disappointment, it was closed, so we promised we would return to sample its culinary delights at a later stage during the show.

Fingers crossed - Registration time.

We returned mid-afternoon, just on the off-chance that we could register, and were a little dismayed to find that the registration desk was still a pile of PVC and screws. So we decided to head down to the floor to see how things were progressing. It was at that moment The Scig walked by. He informed us that our booth was looking great. Thinking he was pulling the proverbial leg, we walked onto the show floor to find that our booth was indeed looking great. In fact, it was the ONLY one that had been erected! That must have been because we employed an external company to work on our construction on our behalf. That's the joy of exhibiting at Long Beach – we were able to employ an external team to build the booth, unlike some other conventions I could name, who make it very difficult for us companies across the pond to coordinate our space at the bigger events.

A sneak peek at the stand. More to follow tomorrow.

Com.x - 1, Rest of Hall - 0

A flurry of picture-taking ensued and emails back the the rest of the crew in England were the order of the day when we returned to the hotel.

Which brings us up to the present. Me updating you via the guys at Broken Frontier. I promise that the rest of our reports will be more convention-specific, but I hope this gives you a little appetiser before the main course that we'll be indulging you with. Our Long Beach convention started two days ago. Hope to see you at the start of yours.

Outside the Convention Centre. From Left to Right – Eddie, Andi, Jon and
Ben.

To be continued...