There would have been more on this blog the last few days were I not scurrying to finish assignments and prep for Comic-Con — two time-fillers which will persist for a while. The convention starts Wednesday night and I'll post my ridiculous schedule again here on Wednesday morning. Obviously, I'd like to lure you to events I'm on but my main recommendation to attendees is to study the entire schedule and make a list. List the events you want to go see and list some alternates if you can't get into some of your first choices.
I also recommend taking it easy, not trying to see and do everything and accepting the simple reality that there's no way you can see and do everything. Whoever's The Flash this month might be able to manage it but not you.
This is my 55th one of these and it took me until around #20 to realize and learn to live with this. I had a much better time there once I didn't think I had to be everywhere and see everyone…especially as the convention expanded and there were a lot more everywheres and everyones. I also learned and accepted this for Disneyland the second or maybe third time I went there.
People keep writing and asking if my Cartoon Voices panels are still going to happen as planned. As far as I know, they will. I expect my convention to be pretty much like they always are. Your convention, if it centers around seeing TV and movie stars promoting their upcoming projects, may be a little different. Honestly, I've never had the slightest interest in previews of any kind. If I'm looking forward to a movie, I would prefer to experience it when it comes out with no idea of what I'm going to see.
But that's just me. And that's one of the great things about Comic-Con. You can ignore 90% of it and still have plenty to do. The folks who complain that there isn't enough there about comic books haven't done what I recommend above and read the schedule. I think some of them are really complaining that the mainstream press pays more attention to the movie stars…and they're complaining to the wrong people about that.
And then every year, I seem to hear from someone who's upset that I no longer host panels of the great writers and artists who did comics in the forties or fifties. Apparently, we should not let a little thing like these people dying prevent us from having them appear at the convention. I sometimes feel that if we all sat around in a circle and held hands and I could find the right magic words, we could maybe get Jack Kirby to show up for a few minutes. There certainly is enough of his spirit in that convention center when we're there.
So I gotta go pack. I gotta finish my notes. I gotta think of more silly challenges to put to our dueling cartoonists in Quick Draw! I may even finish a paying assignment that an editor of mine wanted to have today before he leaves for Comic-Con even though he's not likely to do anything with it — not even read it — before he returns home. I could probably rename an old PDF and send it to him and he wouldn't notice until a week from tomorrow. Since I don't think he reads my blog, I just may.