Friday, July 28, 2006

2006 Comic-Con report

Where to start...?

At the beginning! Lisa, Andrew, and I arrived Monday night and spent the day Tuesday at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. Very hot, but we had a great time.

Brad Mengel got in Tuesday night, but understandably was too exhausted from traveling the better part around the world, so we met up with him for breakfast on Wednesday morning. Dennis Power arrived a few hours later and we had a great time chatting and getting to know each other.

Later we made our way over to the Con itself to pick up our badges and get ready for Preview Night. We met up with Henry Covert and Rachel, and the “getting to know you” continued. Eventually Chuck Loridans, John Small and Family, and Pete Coogan arrived. We also bid our greetings to Chris Roberson of MonkeyBrain Books and solidified the plans for the Myths for the Modern Age book signing the next day.

Dinner was had and Wold Newtonry was discussed! Various permutations of this group of folks met for breakfast and dinner on Thursday (including late arrivals Chris Carey, his pal Karl Kauffman, and their very nice writing colleague, tcastleb) over the next few days, so I won’t bore everyone with that.

The Wold Newton panel kicked off the Comics Arts Conference presentations, and went well. In fact, there’s a nice report on it here.

From there was the Myths signing, and we sold all the copies that MonkeyBrain brought to San Diego.

After that, our time was our own, and we spent long hours discussing our various Wold Newton projects and theories, other writing projects, and Philip José Farmer.

Along the way I picked up the first new Shadow pulp reprint, signed stock of Tarzan Alive at the Bud Plant booth, picked up some beautiful prints of The Shadow by the legendary Steranko (who also signed them, and is a very nice man), chatted briefly but productively with Joe Gentile of Moonstone Books, picked up some very cool pulp magazines, attended a panel on thriller writing (featuring Paul Malmont, who also signed my copy of The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril, and Max Allan Collins, among others), attended the Lost panel (which had some great meta-fictional moments, including a "protester" accusing the show and its creators of fronting for the very real, evil, Hanso Foundation), hung out with Jason Robert Bell and the other great folks at Caveman Robot, and the panel featuring the legendary Forry Ackerman, Ray Harryhausen, and Ray Bradbury.

By far the best part, though, was hooking up with old pals and making new friends. The panel and signing would never have come off without their help, so I'd be remiss if I didn't thank Chris Carey for putting together some very nicely done flyers to promote the Wold Newton panel session; his pal Karl Kauffman for handing out said flyers at the door; Brad Mengel for bringing us all some truly invaluable shoulder bags emblazoned with the word "Pulp" for hauling stuff around; Chuck Loridans, John Small, Brad Mengel, and Pete Coogan for helping put together a great presentation (and for traveling from around the world to give it!); my wife Lisa for setting up the computer at the panel session while I was scurrying around, and for taking pics; Lisa's son Andrew for running the video camera and doing a great job of it; Henry Covert and Rachel Kadushin, John's family (Melissa, Joshua, and William), Dennis Power, Jason Robert Bell (Caveman Robot!), Karl Kauffman, tcastleb, and Chris Carey for showing up at the panel and lending much-needed support; and Chris Roberson for holding the book signing afterwards.

It was a great time and I’m hoping to see everyone again soon. I still haven’t got my Con pics ready, but I’ll post those next.

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