We use to call it the San Diegan, then in the year 2000 Amtrak decided to remain the train and it’s been the Pacific Surfliner ever since.
And so it was the Pacific Surfliner that Shannon and I traveled on down to the San Diego Comic Con International and then back home again.
It is a great way to travel. Sitting back and relaxing, take a nap, read a book or write one. Sure beat being trapped in traffic on the 5 Freeway.
It was also a whole lot less expensive then trying to get a hotel room.
I am my own worst enemy.
Aren’t we all?
I can be extremely shy. Not only with people I haven’t met yet, but also with people I really respect and don’t want to come off looking like a fool. That fear has saved me from time to time, but more often than not it has been a hindrance to achieving what I was really after. Letting great opportunities slip away.
In a Comic Convention setting this can be a real problem. So many people wanting to talk with the same people you want to it is so easy just to chicken out.
As professional animation writers, Shannon and I have been able to attend the Writers Guild of America gathering at ComicCon. Over the years we’ve gotten to know several people in the group, and with some it’s really easy to talk with. However even within that environment it can be difficult to talk with others beyond a few words as more and more people crowd the room. After a while we end up standing off to the side and I return to being my usual Wallflower self for the rest of the TWO HOURS as the event goes on.
There’s where the answer lies.
This year, as mentioned previously, Shannon and I were taking the train back and forth to ComicCon each day. This limited our schedule, but that actually turned out to be something good.
In order to attend the party this year, we had reserved tickets on a later train, but were required to be at the station at least an hour early. (Anyone who took the train will tell you just how long the lines were. You’d think they were waiting to get into Hall H.) Because of this we were only able to stay at the party for only the first half hour.
With only 30 minutes we watched the door as different people signed in. Anyone we knew, or wanted to talk to, we immediately said hi to and began to chat. We only got a few minutes with each person, but they were well-spent minutes.
In those thirty-minute we probably spoke with more people than we usually do in an entire two-hour evening. There was no time to become wallflowers.
What I learned from this night is this: don’t plan to stay at the party all night. Set yourself a limited amount of time and with that deadline talk with as many people as you can. Keep moving around, or find a good position near the entrance where people are forced to walk past you. Quickly say hi, make introductions and chat for a while and then let them get on to the food while you find someone else to talk to.
This may not be what works for you, but it will be how I will fight the Wallflower Wars from now on.
Yes, we did catch our train on time and even chatted with more people in line, but more of than next time.
Many of my professional comic book and animation friends on facebook and twitter have commented how this was one of the best San Diego Comic Cons they have had. Each say this for their own reasons, and it’s up to them to tell you why, but let me talk about why this is one for me.
As I’ve written about before, when I first got into reading comics I discovered the Justice Society of America before I really knew the Justice League was more than SUPER FRIENDS. Soon after that I found a comic called ALL-STAR SQUADRON. This book was written by Roy Thomas, and in one way or another included every single ‘Golden Age’ hero that DC Comics owned.
For many years, Thomas had his hands controlling the greatest of characters from both Marvel and DC.
Because as a kid he grew up reading all the original Golden Age characters he maintained a passion for all of them when he became a professional writer himself. I’d like to think I’m following in his footprints.
At the first ComicCon I attended, I was excited to attend a panel on Roy Thomas and his books. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, he couldn’t make it to the panel but con personnel said he was there. So another attendee and I mustered up enough courage to go to the info booth and ask to have him paged. (Realize I was a very shy kid in my early teens. Of course I’m still rather shy in my mid—never mind.) But Mr. Thomas never showed up. I was disappointed, but didn’t have any negativity against the man who controlled all these great characters.
Years later after getting my first job in the comic book industry, I met him extremely briefly while attending Pro-Con in Oakland. (Anyone remember that?) But he and Marv Wolfman were in deep discussion that I didn’t want to disturb him.
(I lost a lot of opportunities over the years because I didn’t want to disturb people. Finally getting over that. That’s a blog post all into itself.)
Finally we reach this year. Shannon and I attended a couple of spotlight panels. One on the artist George Perez, and the second was on Roy Thomas. The panel was moderated by Jon B. Cooke (editor of TwoMorrow’s COMC BOOK CREATOR magazine), and they talked about Thomas growing up and reading comics as a little boy, on to writing and editing for Marvel, and then doing what he says is his favorite book for DC Comics ALL-STAR SQUARDRON.
Yay, me too.
Here’s the cover of the very first Issue I bought:
Getting to hear him talk about all that was really good, but the day wasn’t over. After a dinner at the hotel before heading to the Writer’s Guild of America gathering, we were coming down an escalator and knew we had a limited amount of time. Standing in the corner by the Starbucks in hotel’s lounge stood Roy Thomas.
What feels like the first time in my life, I didn’t hesitate or think about what I was doing, and just went up to Mr. Thomas and introduced myself.
He was extremely friendly as I told him how ALL-STAR SQUADRON not only got me into comics, but also into enjoying history of World War II. That pleased him, because he was always incorporating history into the stories.
I told him how I later worked for Brian Murray who had been one of the artists on the follow up series YOUNG ALL-STARS.
Shannon spoke up saying how as an editor at Marvel, Roy had given a writing assignment to Christy Marx who later became a mentor to her which lead to her own career in animation.
I thanked him and his wife once more and headed off to meet more of our fellow writers. I was walking on cloud 9 almost crying with joy. Nothing could have made this Con better, and yet there were other things that we will be talking about for a long time to come.
Though most of those ‘golden age’ characters have dropped back into the shadows as new generations of writers and characters take over, Roy Thomas and the ALL-STAR SQUADRON will forever be the heart of what makes comics special to me and why I write and draw them.
Thank you Mr. Thomas.
Well, I’m back from ComicCon and survived being one in 130,000 people on the convention floor.
I won’t tell you how many conventions I’ve been too, and have only missed one in all that time, but what I can say is this may have been one of the most productive cons so far.
Over the next week I plan on writing short blogs about different parts of the con that I experienced. I hope it’s worth the reading.
Shannon and I road the Amtrak Train “Surfliner” down to San Diego and back home again each day. (We didn’t go for Sunday. We needed the rest.) It was a relaxing way to do it, and actually get some writing done. On Saturday we met someone at our hometown train station that was also going to Con, and saw again when we got back late that night. It turned out we had other connections, and this chance meeting may lead into some positive networking with companies down the road. We can only try.
Each day was crowded with people, and sometimes that can be frustrating when you’re trying to keep up with your partner salmon swimming up stream, but it is still fun.
The TV news kept going on about the costumes (or cosplay), but there was so much more to it than that. Though there were some really great costumes. The ones that really got to me were the families. Not just a group of people together, but families. A family that was dressed as Superman/Wonder Woman and Supergirl/Superboy. Another family that was the main pantheon of Star Wars characters. Do what you’re children love, and your children will do what you love.
As stated in my last blog we were going to avoid Hall H and Ballroom 20. However we did make one attempt to get into 20, Steven Moffat was there about the TV series SHERLOCK. The line which began at ground level near went up a long set of stairs and then Disneyland Lined back and forth. We spent 40 minutes in the line, but once the actual program began we knew we’d never make it inside. A friend of ours spent 3 hours in line for the same panel and still never got in.
We never even contemplated going to see DOCTOR WHO in Hall H. Not only getting in line itself can be bad, but also a lot of people decided to camp out in line or in the Hall itself once inside. The simple concept is that you go into see one panel even if you’re not interest in it and stay there until you see the panel you want. Sometimes if you sit in an earlier panel you might discover something new that interests you. Sounds like a good plan, but then you decide to do it for Hall H. Waiting 3 hours might be okay for some, but would you be willing to camp in the Hall our outside the convention center all night long? Well a lot of people did. Not me; no way!
Even avoiding the masses, we did end up in some very good panels. We sat in on one about writing for television and the experience in the “writer’s room.” It was fun that one of our friends was on the panel, would be even more fun if we were friends with the rest of the panel. We got in but the line beyond use couldn’t, this was a much smaller room.
Shannon really got a lot out of a panel on Digital Comics in Schools and Libraries. She’ll be writing her own blogs about that.
There were also a couple of spotlight panels that we attended. Those were cool to hear the people we look up to talk about their careers in their own words. I’ll be writing about one of those later. Of course it was also great to meet people on the floor, in artists alley, they we’ve worked with in the past.
We also attended the Writers’ Guild of America gathering, but could only stay for about half an hour, as we had to get to the train station.
It doesn’t sounds like a whole lot, but the little things are what matters. Each a small part of my #Mission818
We really had a good time.
More Con Blogs to follow.
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