I Survived San Diego Comic Con

So I attended San Diego Comic Con 2008, which was held last week in sunny/hazy/humid SoCal! This was my first year attending the show and everyone I admitted that to made sure to tell me how exhausted and fed up I’d be by the end (”Wash your hands and make sure to get a lot of sleep,” offered one creator. Sound advice for any trip.). Part of that turned out to be true. I did a lot of walking and had to deal with A LOT of slow moving crowds, but I survived and I’m glad I went! I met TONS of fantastic people and saw a lot of cool stuff. My hotel was about 15 minutes north of the convention center (whatevs) conveniently tucked away from all the crazy rooftop parties and rowdy industry types that swarmed around the Gaslamp District every night. San Diego’s rail system was pretty painless though the ticket I was told to buy for the trolley was never asked for by any sort of conductor or rail official. The only BIG panels I went to were Watchmen on Friday and It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia on Sunday. The Watchmen footage was pretty cool and the upcoming episode at the Always Sunny panel bode well for the upcoming season. I also made it out to the Eisner’s on Friday. While I agree it may not be the most enthralling awards ceremony you could attend, I was entertained more than enough. I mean come on, Samuel L. Jackson? That’s awesome!

Enough jibber-jabber. Here are a few (and i do mean few, sorry) photos I snapped during the week.

Here’s the Eisner award winning team of 5, pre-Eisner on Wednesday. Congratulations guys! (L-R: Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, Vasilis “Cool Shades” Lolos, Rafael Grampa and Becky Cloonan) Gabriel, Fabio, Vasilis and Becky were at the show with Pixu, their new self published joint project. Rafael was debuting Mesmo Delivery, his brand spanking new graphic novel.

Here’s Jim Woodring, putting on his “serious face” and showing off some art.

Philip Bond was giving out money at his booth in artist alley.

Paul Pope’s Masked Karimbah toy at Kid Robot.

A big Pokeman.

Here’s what I picked up at the show…
L-R: Always Elwes by Aiyana Udesen (a mini of various portraits of Cary Elwes. It’s as awesome as it sounds.), brilliantly ham fisted, a collection of Tom Neely’s comic strip poems, Mesmo Delivery by Rafael Grampa, which is destined to be one of my favorite books of the year, World War Robot by Ashley Wood, Stay away from other people by Lisa Hanawalt, and Space Girl by Travis Charest.

L-R: Scott Pilgrim: full colour odds and ends 2008 by Bryan Lee O’Malley, Your Disease Spread Quickly by Tom Neely, a bootleg Garfield comic (Garfield without Garfield is just the beginning…), Boys Club #2 by Matt Furie (another “Best of 2008″), PIXU by Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, Vasilis Lolos and Becky Cloonan, Bad Asses by Mark Todd, and The Hero With a Thousand Excuses by Jim Woodring.

L-R: Essex County Vol. 3: The Country Nurse by Jeff Lemire, Stumptown Preview by Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth and Drawing IV: Worf and Wolf by Aiyana Udesen

Finally, while all you nerds were doing who knows what Saturday evening, I was in La Jolla checking out some out of control Seals!

Nice!

So much stuff…

—So some big news coming out of San Diego Comic Con was the title and release date of Scott Pilgrim Volume 5. The next installment of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s much loved series from Oni will be titled Scott Pilgrim Vs. The Universe and is set to debut at New York Comic Con February 2009. Diagnosis: awesome. Check out the cover and click through for the bigger version.

—In case you missed it (because I did), Brian Ralph posted some cover designs for (I think) the next volume of his first person POV, post-apocalyptic free-for-all Daybreak. Daybreak is actually serialized over at new bodega, but if your anything like me, reading comics on the net hurts your eyes, so you’re “waiting for the trade.”
Check this one out and again, click through for more.

—And finally, the next issue of Sean Ford’s awesomely bizarre comic, Only Skin is due out at SPX this October. Sean shares some partially inked pages on his website and announces that cartoonist Dane Martin will be writing and illustrating an Only Skin Annual, also due out at SPX 2008. If you haven’t checked out Only Skin I suggest you do immediately. It’s an incredible supernatural conspiracy drama that I’m pretty sure also involved werewolves. I mean, I hope it involves werewolves. If not, it’s still pretty cool.

…check back tomorrow for SDCC photos and memories…and seals. Oh yes, there will be seals.

Look at Jordan Crane’s cover for the Atlantic Monthly 2008 Fiction Issue

I’ll be looking for a better scan (or the actual thing), but in the meantime…

“On Writing” by Jordan Crane

San Diego Dreaming…

So I’m going to be at San Diego Comic Con this week. This will be my first CCI (and my first time in San Diego period).

Check back all week for updates from the con, photos and tales of me visiting a seal beach in La Jolla!

James Jean’s Silk Spectre

Indieschmindie.

Go take a look at James Jean’s Silk Spectre illustration for the Watchmen movie. Jean points out that it’s in the trailer for a second when you see The Comedian’s apartment, but it plays a larger role in the actual scene. As always he provides preliminary sketch material.

Check It Out: Mesmo Delivery

Rafael Grampa is previewing a small snippet of his brand new comic, Mesmo Delivery over at his website. Anyone who knows me also knows I’ve been looking forward to to this book ever since I first saw Grampa’s work a little over a year ago. I think the last time a cartoonist got me this excited was Geof Darrow’s Hard Boiled.

So stop thinking about it and go check it out already! If you’re going to be in San Diego this week, Grampa should have some copies available. If not, look for the book this fall through AdHouse.

Stuff To Look At: Friday Edition

—First, everyone should go watch the animated trailer Dash Shaw produced for his highly acclaimed graphic novel, The Bottomless Belly Button.

It’s gorgeous, and a serious face melter.

—Then, over at the Bodega Blog, Brian Ralph posts some more “Dad” strips. Now I’m no dad, but in my opinion…these strips rule! Also, Ralph thinks he broke his toe. Get yourself to X-Ray city, man. That looks RIPE.

—Corey Lews has a new Zuda comic, called Dead In The Now. Vote or die!

—Brandon Graham did the cover for the latest issue of Hack/Slash. (Lucky #13!!)

—And finally, Bryan Lee O’Malley thinks the Scott Pilgrim Vol. 5 cover and title might be debuted at San Diego Comic Con. Fingers crossed!

Have an awesome weekend dudes and dudettes!

REVIEW: Harvest Is When I Need You The Most

REVIEW: Harvest Is When I Need You The Most
By Various
Website

There was a whole lot of buzz behind this mini at MoCCA 2008 (I heard they ran out of copies FAST) and after finally reading it I can totally see why.
For starters, the title alone of this “Star Wars Fanbook” is enough to tickle any open-minded Star Wars fan pink. Taking such a throwaway line (spoken by the small-worldish and over protective Uncle Owen in Star Wars) out of its original context and turning it to such an agnsty, emotional title was a stroke of genius—especially accompanied by what I assume is an homage to Luke gazing off into the Tatooine sunset on the cover (the glossy inset picture used is a cool aesthetic touch).
The contents of the mini range from the darkly humorous “Biggs In Space” one-pager, the uproariously funny, Tag & Bink-ish “Under 21,” to the non-narrative “Yo-Duh!”, all wonderfully illustrated. AND EWOKS! Heavens are there ever so many Ewoks!
I can’t help but remember that indispensable indie/alternative issue of Star Wars Tales when reading Harvest, and think, “Why don’t they do that again?”
I know Tales is no more, but a one-shot, anthology style issue like this would do the trick. What I’m saying here is I love these kinds of Star Wars comics and wish I could read new ones more often, in a hand held capacity.
Anyway, kudos to the Harvest team for a job well done.