WIZARD WORLD
CONVENTION REPORT
Parker 's text is BLACK. Lieber's text is THIS COLOR. Don't confuse the two, don't write Jeff and tell him how much you loved an observation STEVE made. Don't later remember the whole thing as if it were YOUR memories. You weren't there. WE WERE.
First, sorry for the lateness of this report. Not too sorry, because it's not like you pay for it. But frankly, these things are getting harder to write. They seem to take longer each time, and it's getting harder to avoid redundancy. We see the same people every show, and we don't want to wear you out on them as if they were recurring fictional characters. We also spend more time working at the table than wandering the show floor. Luckily, weirdness is starting to find its way to us, which helps. In the future we're probably going to mainly write about shows that haven't been done to death, and save some commentary from repeat shows in our respective blogs. If you haven't checked them out, Lieber's is Mercury Studio, which purports to focus on his studio mates' news, but speaks largely of himself. Parker's is Mystifying Oracle, which doesn't pretend to be interested in anything other than its writer. Throw us a link if you have some spare webspace, it will be appreciated. Now let's travel back in time to see Wizard Entertainment dominate the comics convention scene by adding yet another region to it's empire. We open with young Steve in the middle of an unpleasant discovery...
Thursday, Friday
SL: You know your trip's off to a bad start when a woman tells you you're twenty pounds overweight, and that she's going to have to charge extra.
This, of course, is the new baggage restriction at Alaska airlines. It's Thursday morning. I'd been off the major convention trail for almost a year and somehow missed the news that the new maximum weight for checked baggage 50 lbs. per bag, not 75, like it used to be. It turns out that both my bags are overweight, and it's going to cost me fifty bucks. Note to self: Next time, ship the books by UPS.JP: Unlike Lieber, I arrived in LA with too little weight in my luggage-- the books I'd ordered from the printer didn't show up in time. It's more than self-defeating, doing a book tour without the book you're selling. So I started calling up comics stores in the area...
SHOUTOUT TIME!
Thanks tons to Comics Ink, Golden Apple, and Meltdown for letting me take the Interman-s they had on their shelves in exchange for a promise to send more back later! (They're going out this week, I promise) This makes me feel good about the comics business-- how many other professions do you know where storeowners would let you make off with their inventory just because you're in a jam? I should also add that Earth 2 wanted to help, but they only had one copy because "they can't stop sellin' 'em." Back to the continuity...
SL: The flights themselves are fine, and I'm soon met at the airport by Ford Gilmoreand Phil Noto.They've been busy at the Convention Center, setting up the Illuminati Entertainment booth, but somehow find the time to pick up me and my excess baggage at LAX. We run a few errands, then head over to dinner at a place called Don Antonio's. A taqueria with valet parking? Welcome to Los Angeles. We're led past phosphorescent fishes and full-figured floozies into a room that sees to have been mined from porous limestone. Food's terrific. Ford requests "that one hot sauce, you know..." and the waiter returns with a tiny, terrifying bottle. "Be careful, seˆores." I am careful, but within minutes, there's a quarter-inch masonry drill bit boring a hole in my colon."You okay, Steve?" "Fuck. Fuck."
Let's draw the curtain on Thursday evening. it's Friday, and we're heading over to Tomm Coker's house. Tomm's wife Susana is very, very pregnant, as in "any minute now." This means that Tomm will spend the show with one hand on the cellphone, ready to head home at a moment's notice. Parker and his family are already in place at the Coker castle, and the comic book people -me, Ford, Phil, Tomm and Parker- are all heading downtown for an art-pilgrimage. Friday is "Premier Night" at Wizard World L.A., and the show doesn't open until 5 pm, so this will be one of the rare shows where I get to visit an unfamiliar city and actually see the place.
The center of our trip is a visit to the L.A. Public Library, where we're joined by Jeff Johnson,who I've only met briefly before now. Great guy. The goal here is the central rotunda, where, beginning in 1927, our hero Dean Cornwell painted four murals depicting "four great eras of California history, including discovery, mission building, americanization and the founding of Los Angeles, the beginnings of arts and industry, and conquering of the elements in California." We're humbled. We all gawk and point to elements we find particularly impressive, noting compositional strategies that we might incorporate into our own works. Phil's positively reverential, carefully taking dozens of digital photos. Tomm tells us that Cornwell received fifty thousand dollars for these magnificent works, which took him five years to complete and cost him ninety-thousand dollars in out-of-pocket expenses. As we ponder what an illustrator will do in the pursuit of immortality, a tour guide enters the room, gesturing upward, toward the murals, informing an elderly Asian gentleman that "In 1927, they hired an artist to do pictures to match the ceiling." We say nothing, though Tomm's eyes bug out. Jeff J. shakes his head. And me? I'm feeling something like the return of the quarter-inch drill bit.
JP: Let me add to that Library visit. We were all impressed by the children's section of the library, which looks like a study room at Hogwart's. And in the back is a puppet theatre, so there's that.
We lunched at Grand Central Market, one of the coolest places in downtown, nay, all of Los Angeles. You can get really cheap food and see all kinds of strange, dried creatures hanging in coolers. I had a big fried fish with the head still on it, and it was quite good. Mercifully they took the eyes out, I thought, but then again maybe the things just pop when the fish is fried. Noto was miffed at some lousy pizza he'd gotten, even though he knows full well there's no such thing as good pizza in LA. I picked up some fried plantains to share with everybody, but someone had located a cheap ice cream vendor and now they were all licking cones like a bunch of stooges.
I had already picked up copies from Comics Ink in Culver City the day before, and now I needed to get to Hollywood so I could stop by Golden Apple and Meltdown. Lucky for me, Tomm didn't want to go down to the evening part of the convention, so I could bum a ride from him. So we split from the group and caught a ride with Jeff Johnson, who was parked back at the library. Years ago, I followed Jeff on the book Solitaire from Malibu Comics, and ever since I've had people bringing me his issues to sign at shows. They can't be bothered to read all the way to the last name, I suppose. Anyway, Jeff's recently defected from Florida and just moved to Pasadena. I told him about Bill Stout's Sunday life-drawing sessions, which I could never wake up in time to get to, but maybe he will since he's in the same town. Jeff got the shock of his life when we exited the garage and found the rate was $3 each 15 MINUTES. I remember years ago this happening to me when I moved to LA, and I haven't recovered from it yet. Tomm and I kicked in what money we had to lessen the blow, and Jeff took us back to the house. Every conversation we started from that point always made its way back to the $33 parking bill.
So I have no idea what happened Friday night at the show, you'll have to go to Lieber for that kind of information.
SL: Ford, Phil and I arrive at the con at 4 pm, leaving us plenty of time to set things up. My space in artist's alley is near the rear wall, about as far from the entrance to the con as one could possible manage. Ah well. It's near the concession stands, though. The honey-roasted nuts smell good, and oddly enough for a major con, there's a bar. It's not something I'd seek out in artist's alley, but I guess it's nice to know that I'll be spending the weekend within a few short steps of an eight dollar bottle of beer.
Chip Zdarsky is setting up nearby, spreading out copies of Prison Funnies. God knows how, but I recognize him from his message board icon. He's the rare cartoonist who understands that if you're going to set up in artists alley at a convention, you should make an effort to be interesting.JP: Hey, wait, I want to break in on this Zdarsky spiel, though I wasn't at the show yet. I was trying to convince Susana Coker to hold her baby in all weekend so I could ride with Tomm to the show. But I later got a batch of Prison Funnies from Chip and just read them the other day. I laughed out loud, and I don't ever find humorous comics funny, except for maybe Evan Dorkin's stuff. I can't believe this grew out of a college comic strip. I hope Chip lets me do a guest strip if he keeps doing the book. Who knew Canadians were funny? I wonder if he'd help us with these damn reports...
Thumbs up on Canadian Prisons!
SL: It's five pm. I've set up and started doing my thing - signing, sketching, critiquing, explaining how I got a certain ink effect. I'm chatting with Shooting Star Comics' Sarah Beach, and I'm pretty sure that about eight minutes have passed when Ford comes by the table and reminds me that my signing at the Illuminati booth was supposed to start about ten minutes ago. "But that's not 'til seven." "It's ten after." "Fuck. Fuck."JP: Well so much for Friday.
