Random notes from Comic-Con 2015…
- Out on the streets of San Diego, I felt I had to keep moving. I was afraid that if I stopped for ten seconds, someone would wrap me in an advertising sign for Conan O'Brien. That guy's ads were everywhere.
- Josh Robert Thompson, who was so brilliantly funny on our Saturday Cartoon Voices panel, was busy at other times cosplaying as George Lucas. Read all about it.
- Speaking of which: I spotted someone cosplaying as an exaggerated caricature of a certain older comic book creator and thought, "Look what Fake Stan Lee started!" Then I looked closer and realized it actually was that certain older comic book creator.
- Speaking of which: Where the hell was Fake Stan Lee?
- A lot of people who want to meet you think they haven't really met you until they have the selfie to prove it.
- An awful lot of panel attendees have adopted this rule: If you want to make sure you have a decent seat for a panel, go to the last half (at least) of the panel before. Meanwhile, an awful lot of people on panels see crowds streaming in halfway through and think, "Ah, more people have come to hear me!"
- There's a thriving industry out there in buying Comic-Con Exclusive items on behalf of those who cannot attend to buy these things themselves.
- It used to be that everyone who wanted comics signed wanted them signed inside with pens that didn't bleed through. Now they all want them signed on the cover with a Sharpie.
- They could easily fit 40% more people into that hall if they banned swag bags larger than 2' by 2' and backpacks.
- The more popular a party is, the less likely I am to be able to find a place to sit or to understand one damned thing anyone says to me. And why, if we can't hear each other, does there have to be music?
- I actually had a discussion with someone over whether Al Capp was the Bill Cosby of comic strip artists or Bill Cosby was the Al Capp of stand-up comedians.
- One guy tried to scold me for saying on this blog that Donald Trump has no chance of getting the Republican nomination. Apparently, Trump's candidacy is so fragile that bad press on a website run by a guy who works on the Groo comic books could doom it.
- You could spend a lot of time at the DC and Marvel booths and not know that any of those characters had originated in comic books.