Broken Frontier

Part 3 - Strange Days

Sunday, July 17, 2005 - 7:23am

Yesterday, security pulled a number on me by opening the main hall early. When I showed up at 9:30am, the doors were way open, and there was no cattle-crush of angry fans. It may have been the smartest move I’ve ever seen security make.

I had a short shopping list, which included more Dazzler, and the remaining issues of Michel Gagne’s space epic Zed. It was pretty easy to find these things, since I knew exactly where to look.

The crowds were much larger, in patches. I found that by moving diagonally through the aisles, and occasionally cutting through the more spacious booths, I was able to make it to wherever I wanted to be in about 10 minutes. Diagonal motion is the best way to cut through the crowds at Con, at least as I know it.

The interview with the Cryptozoo Crew crew, Allan Gross and Jerry Carr went off swimmingly. Mark Wheatley, creator of Frankenstein Mobster, and co-creator of Doctor Cyborg, was manning the booth so he was able to provide a lot of insight (pun completely unintentional)! Towards the end of the interview, the guys were answering a lot of my questions the moment before I’d ask them. Towards the end, the interview went exactly where I’d planned, though my mouth didn’t open a peep. It’s nice when things work out that way.

Yesterday was the hardest day for sketches, even though I finally found Artists Alley. The sheer number of people in the room meant that all the artists were much busier. I ran into a few people who were sad that they were almost out of product early in the day. I still felt kinda bad about having no money to pay for sketches, but I did my best to be clear about the negative budget thing.

Sketchbook highlights from Saturday:

• Mark Wheatley scribbled a cool sketch of Ozmed, the mummy cab driver, dancing on his grave.
• Rich Koslowski drew a wheezing portrait of Allen dancing for free comics.
• Humberto Ramos quickly threw out a powerful sketch of a pole dancer. It was kind of amazing to see the girl appear on the page.

Finally ran into Shane McCarthy and set up an appointment for noon today.

As the hours passed on, I finally gave in and visited A Friend in Knead along the 100-aisle. They do massages for a buck a minute, starting at 10 minutes, and their services were well worthwhile. I may have to carry my computer around today, so all their work will get cancelled out, but I don’t regret going.

Had an awful time waiting for the Nick Brendon signing yesterday. Mostly because I’d waited for hours to find out that Nick wanted twenty bucks an autograph. I’d never paid for anyone to sign my poster before, and it made me kind of angry, but since I’d waited for so long, I quickly borrowed some cash from a friend so that Brendon could scribble an illegible scrawl on the canvas.

I had a much easier time with Adam Hughes, who was eating lunch at his booth and chatting with someone from DC at the time. I was keeping myself busy by starting a conversation with his boothmates (I think it was his wife and a friend, but I’m not sure) and after about 15 minutes of waiting patiently for his chat to end, I asked his wife (I think) if he’d mind signing the piece he’d drawn. He put his signature AH! Somewhere on Buffy’s neck. Pretty cool!

While looking for a way to kill time between the closing of the hall and the meet-up at Lime, I spied The Mindscape of Alan Moore in the program! I’d been waiting and hoping to see the film since it was first mentioned on the Alan Moore fansite so many months ago! The film-makers were on hand to answer questions, and the crowd had a pretty good assortment. It meant that I was an hour late to Lime, and that I missed Brian K Vaughan, but it was well worth it. Any fans of the work of Alan Moore should seek out this film, which has a probable release date of November 5th. It’s a pretty thorough exploration of Moore’s thought process, and it’s about as chilling as one would imagine.

By the time I’d arrived at Lime, Vaughan has left for the Serenity screening. There were a bunch of Caballeros there, including Lagomorph, JeffX, Mindy, Josh, Karakent, and Wolverine. It was nice to actually put some names to faces, and even nicer to have intelligent conversations with great people who happened to know things about comics. Hopefully I didn’t forget any names, but my ears are still ringing pretty loudly from my stay last night.

And then, calamity of calamities, I missed the last trolley home. I should have checked the schedule of course, but really I was expecting an orange line train at about Midnight and a half. The train I needed left at about a quarter after, a few minutes before I left the bar. I have to thank my hosts Jeremy and Michelle, for putting me up and putting up with me year after year. I called them up at about 12:40am, and they kept me out of trouble. Boy do I owe them big-time!

Time to pack and make my meals. More from the train this evening!

Sunday, July 17, 2005 - 11:00pm

I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep, but I woke up on my hosts’ couch about five minutes ago. I’ve got bags under my eyes and luggage, mostly packed, on the floor in front of me. I remember sorting through my comics, to find the ones I’d be ready to read this evening, mostly because the stack is sitting in front of me on the coffee table. I remember Michelle asking me if I wanted a special burrito (which sounds good just about now) and after that, oblivion.

Sadly, I didn’t get to go to the Graphitti party. It’s an exclusive fete, invite-only but I didn’t even know about it until Noon yesterday, and didn’t expect to be invited. It’s probably still going on at the moment, but I’ve been crashed out at J&M’s since at least 7pm.

End Part 3