Classic Everything But Imaginary #88: Things to Do in Dallas If You're a Geek
EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY 11/10/04 -- THINGS TO DO IN DALLAS IF YOU'RE A GEEK
Well friends, as you no doubt noticed, I was missing for a few days there. AWOL. MIA. Gone bye-bye. Well, I had a pretty good reason. I spent the last few days in the Lone Star State for a front-row seat (metaphorically) of Wizard World Dallas 2004. This is only the second major con I’ve ever been to, the first being Wizard World Chicago back in 2002, and I can tell you that it’s a unique experience.
Now these cons really do substantiate the theory “the more the merrier,” but almost none of my friends I would like to take to this con could make it. Mike had “work.” Chase is “getting married next month.” James is “stationed in South Korea.” Lame excuses all. Only Ronée had a legitimate reason to stay home - she has two kids to take care of (three if you count her husband), but I still spent most of the convention wishing I had my best friend and agent there.
So I rolled out with my uncle, Joe Bourgeois. Joe is one of three uncles I credit with turning me into the geek I am today - my uncle Todd gave me my earliest superhero comics, some of his old Green Lantern and Legion of Super-Heroes issues, and my uncle Wally is the one who taught me to appreciate it as an artform. Joe is the one who first started bringing me to the comic shop with him before I was old enough to drive. From that point, the hook was set.
I also had a mission at this con. With a lot of help from my agent (and the printing place near my office) I made my own “Ashcan” book - info on my books and play, a script sample and a resume. The plan was to get a copy into any pair of hands that would take one. Like nearly everyone at that convention, my dream is to one day be on the other side of that autograph table.
So for those of you who couldn’t make it, this week’s super-sized Everything But Imaginary is about life at a comic convention. Just sit back and pound your feet repeatedly with hammers. It’ll be the next best thing to being there.
November 4, 2004
7:05 a.m. - We leave home in Joe’s SUV full of pep, vigor and excitement that lasts almost all the way to the first traffic jam.
8 a.m. - Traffic grinds to a halt outside of Baton Rouge. Joe observes, “this must have been what it was like when they were evacuating [for Hurricane Ivan]. There must have been a wreck.” Just then, a wrecker zips by.
8:27 a.m. - Still outside of Baton Rouge, we hit construction. Somehow, I am not surprised.
1 p.m. - We stop for lunch in Marshall, Texas. Although I am certain, at some point in my life, I must have needed to pee worse than I do right now, I cannot immediately recall such an occasion.
4 p.m. - We arrive at the Arlington LaQuinta. The sign on the marquee reads “Welcome to Fun Central.” Armed with the knowledge that we are, in fact, in Fun Central, I feel greatly relieved.
November 5, 2004
8 a.m. - We go to the hotel’s continental breakfast, where we are greeted by a plethora of comic book, cartoon and anime t-shirts. I am horrified to realize that, by most conventional standards, I am one of the most grown-up people in attendance.
9:20 a.m. - Arriving at the convention center, we get our badges and wait in line to get in, which is approximately long enough to be seen from space. I pick up my press badge only to discover that the press does not get the goodie bags at the door that regular ticket holders get. On the other hand, I don’t need to pay to get in either, so I can live with it.
10 a.m. - We enter the hall. I quickly realize that the publisher’s section is not as big as it was in Chicago two years ago, the only other major convention I have ever attended. To console myself, I purchase the Adventure Kermit the Frog Action Figure from Palisades Toys. My theory is that Adventure Kermit can make everything better. I am proven correct.
10:20 a.m. - I see the first press badges other than my own. The people wearing them go up to the DC Comics booth and start hugging the exhibitors like they are best friends. I have catching up to do.
10:35 a.m. - I strike up a conversation with Dan DiGiacomo at DC Comics. We talk about new titles and I tell him about my Comixtreme Column. He, like I, is irritated by the impending cancellation of H-E-R-O, and he confirms that Bloodhound will end with issue #10. Damn. On the plus side, he tells me that Jill Thompson is working on another Death comic. This is cool news. I give him one of my ashcan books.
10:50 a.m. - I wander through the dealer’s section for the first time, including a large group of dealers selling DVDs. As always, I am sad to see how flagrant the bootleggers are and disgusted that there doesn’t seem to be anything anybody can do about it.
11 a.m. - I chat up the good folks at Beckett Comics and purchase some issues of The Ballad of Sleeping Beauty and they give me a bag to hold the stuff I’m beginning to accumulate. A girl at the booth named Mandy asks if I’ve read Fade From Grace. When I tell her I haven’t, she implores me to try it, saying it’s a wonderful “superhero romance.” I have to give Beckett credit, getting someone this genuinely adorable to pump the book. Mandy is the sort of girl that, upon saying the word “romance,” has the mutant ability to drain every ounce of cynicism from your body. She gives me a copy of Fade From Grace #1. In return, I give them one of my ashcans.
11:05 a.m. - After introducing myself as “Blake Petit from Comixtreme.com,” the people at Silent Devil Productions hand me about $30 worth of comics and trade paperbacks for free. Craig Reade was right about the power of the press badge.
11:20 a.m. - I get in line for Michael Turner’s autograph, using the logic that, while I am in line, I cannot spend money. After a few minutes, I learn Turner will not even arrive at the booth for another 40 minutes. Checking the schedule of the panel I want to attend, I bail.
11:30 a.m. - I am recognized as being from Comixtreme for the first time, by Jessie Garza of Viper Comics. He gives me a copy of the Convention Exclusive Edition of Dead@17: Revolutions #1 and tells me to come back later and he’ll give me a sneak preview of upcoming Viper Comics. If being a reporter for the newspaper that gives me my paychecks were this cool, I wouldn’t complain about my job so much.
11:55 a.m. - I meet Scott Kurtz of PVP fame. Once I introduce myself, he immediately starts thanking me for my reviews of the books. “These guys make me out to be an F-ing genius!” he announces to the woman working the booth with him. I try to act humble, then I realize I’m sounding like a yutz, so I just ask him to sign some issues of PVP and the Star Wars Tales he did a story for.
1:15 p.m. - I have spent a long time talking to DC editor Stephen Wacker, as well as Mark Waid and Barry Kitson about the new Legion of Super-Heroes comic. Wacker tells me that the kid in yellow and red in the preview, the one nobody I have spoken to can identify, is in fact Element Lad. In gratitude, I give him a copy of my ashcan comic.
1:45 p.m. - I break down and pay the preposterous convention center prices for a burger and a bottle of water. As I eat, I see a guy outside I initially mistake for a homeless person. I realize it is, in fact, Jason Mewes.
1:50 p.m. - As I sit down to wait for the Legion of Super-Heroes panel, the bag I was graciously given by the Beckett Comics people breaks on me. I curse the universe out of general principle.
2:05 p.m. - Mark Waid arrives ahead of the other people on the panel, so he chats about Fantastic Four for a while. He is gleeful that Galactus now has “the most annoying herald ever” upon choosing Johnny Storm, who will keep chirping “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” Waid says the two characters are very similar in that neither of them think any further than “What’s for dinner?” Someone asks him if there will be a movie tie-in for the Fantastic Four comic. Waid says he’s not planning anything, and adds that, “I’ve seen footage of Fantastic Four and I’m telling you, The Incredibles is gonna be the greatest movie of all time.” I cringe.
3 p.m. - The Legion panel concludes with Waid revealing that Saturn Girl is Gwen Stacy’s daughter and Colossal Boy is the killer in Identity Crisis. I think he’s kidding, but you never can tell these days.
3:15 p.m. - Returning to the dealer’s room, I conclude that there are only two kinds of DVD on sale here: bootleg and porno.
4 p.m. - I cruise back to Viper Comics, where Jessie Garza gives me the lowdown on the Viper projects for 2005, including a few I agree not to include in my convention report because the contracts aren’t inked yet. As a token of my eternal affection, I give him a copy of my ashcan.
5 p.m. - Joe and I pack up and head for the shuttle bus back to the hotel, but not before I peek into Artists’s Alley, where small press publishers, individual artists and models have booths. I am in awe of the fact that we live in a country where you can walk up to a woman, purchase a naked photograph of her and then ask her to write her name on it. God Bless America.
5 20 p.m. - We’re still waiting for the shuttle back to our hotel. Walking would have been faster.
5:30 p.m. - We finally get on the shuttle. The guy behind me asks if we’ve ever been to this convention before. I tell him no, but I went to Chicago two years ago. “It’s truly sad that Marvel doesn’t have a booth here,” I said. He chuckles.
“That’s why I’m here,” he says. “Marvel sent me to see if a booth would be a good idea.”
I reiterate: “Tell them I said, ‘It’s truly sad that Marvel doesn’t have a booth here.’ Even two years ago they didn’t have much of a booth - a table, some posters, a couple of previews...”
“Yeah, well, try getting anything out of our owner,” he grumbles. I laugh as I realize he is sitting behind me and cannot see my press badge. I wonder if he would be saying these things if he knew it was going to be on the internet.
DAY 1 HIGHLIGHT: Having Scott Kurtz shout out that I make him sound like “an F-ing genius.”
November 6, 2004
7 a.m. - I begin my day by dropping my t-shirt in the toilet while getting dressed. You know this is a good omen.
8:30 a.m. - Having surveyed the parking lot yesterday, we decide to drive to the convention center rather than deal with the shuttle again. We can come and go as we please and, more importantly, we can dump stuff off in the car rather than lug it around all day. We arrive an hour earlier than yesterday, thinking we’d get a jump on the line. We wind up farther back than the day before.
11: a.m. - Again, using the “I’m in line, I can’t spend money” logic, I get in the Michael Turner autograph time. I can’t punk out this time, though, because Ronée asked me to get his signature for her. This is utterly unfair, because she knows I can’t say no to her. The worst part is, she also knows I wouldn't have it any other way.
12:15 p.m. - I finally get Turner’s autograph, including getting him to personalize it to her. I then run across the center and make it to the Blade: Trinity panel just in time, I think. I am wrong. They still take 20 minutes to start.
12:40 p.m. - The Blade: Trinity panel, including director and writer David Goyer and stars Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel is very cool. They show the trailer and about three minutes of new footage from the film, in which Reynolds gets to be surprisingly funny.
The panel goes along well until someone mentions that you need a separate ticket to get autographs from the panelists later, and the tickets are gone. One guy shouts out, “Yeah, I paid $50 for this poster and I can’t get it signed!” My thought is, “Well, you’re just an idiot then, aren’t you?”
1:25 p.m. - The panel over, I get in line for a smoothie behind an Imperial Stormtrooper. Try as he might, he just can’t get his straw into the lid.
2 p.m. - I loop right back around to the same room for the Marvel Comics panel, with Dan Buckley, Andy Schmidt and Joe Casey. They let a few interesting things drop, including the news that there will be an Ultimate Iron Man next year drawn by Andy Kubert. When asked who the writer will be, Buckley just says it’s someone who has never written comics before and asks if anyone has ever read Ender’s Game. I have. My jaw hits the floor. Twice.
3:45 p.m. - I finally grab something to eat. I see someone reading the Harley Quinn: Our Worlds at War special. I wonder why, out of the hundreds of thousands of comic books here, he would have bought that one.
4:45 p.m. - Joe and I call it a day. He has achieved his number-one goal of the convention, getting Erica Durance’s autograph. His number two goal was scoring an autograph from Jessica Biel.. Number three was Jim Lee. I wonder how Lee would feel knowing he came in third on that list. I suspect he would have understood.
DAY 2 HIGHLIGHT: At the Marvel Comics panel, Dan Buckley mentions “decompressed” storytelling, but Joe Casey tells him that term is out of vogue. When Buckley asks what a better term is, I shout out, “Glacial!” The term is used by disgruntled fans for the remainder of the panel.
November 7, 2004
9 a.m. - We leave the hotel to wait in line. The doors don’t open until 11 a.m., but this will be our last chance to get special event tickets for the Erica Durance signing. I do not consider myself the sort to normally get all goofy at the prospect of meeting celebrities, but as we all know Durance is destined to one day be studied in history books as the hottest woman ever to play Lois Lane, I feel I would be doing my eventual grandchildren a grave disservice if I told them I passed up a chance to meet her when it came.
9:15 a.m. - This is the earliest we have arrived yet. This is the farthest back in line we have been.
10:05 a.m. - Still in line. An interesting phenomenon occurs at comic book conventions. You tend to accumulate what the movie Fight Club calls “single-serving friends,” people you talk to and goof around with for a time while you’re in each other’s company due to circumstance, then never speak to again. You need to pass the time somehow, after all, and if the person next to you is also willing to wait in this absurd line, you know you have something in common with them. Unlike on airplanes, though, chances are you’ll see your single-serving friends again over the course of the convention: “That’s the guy I talked to at the Waid/Kitson signing;” “That’s the family I sat next to at the Blade: Trinity panel,” etc. While you don’t really know these people, they aren’t exactly strangers anymore either. As a result, the convention floor is a place you see a lot of the classic “smile and nod.”
11 a.m. - The doors open. Miraculously, Joe and I each get tickets to the Erica Durance signing. Joe also gets the last Jim Lee ticket. The people in line behind us begin plotting murder.
11:15 a.m. - Finally inside, I decide to spend the day trying to hunt down my personal Holy Grails, including the last three comic books I need to complete my run of Don Rosa’s brilliant Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck series. I ask a vendor if he has any Gladstone Comics, not seeing any on display. He spends the next five minutes digging around like a groundhog, frantically searching, finally producing a longbox of Disney comics. The box doesn’t contain any of the comics I need, but I’d feel awful not buying something after watching him make a fool of himself, so I pick out a couple that look like they have Carl Barks covers and purchase them.
11:30 a.m. - I get in line for the Erica Durance signing. It doesn’t begin until noon, but I figure I would rather be really early at the front of the line than on-time and at the end of the line. There are already nine people ahead of me.
12:10 p.m. - I get Erica’s autograph and a photograph with her. As I retrieve my camera from the volunteer who snapped the picture, I tell her, “I have some friends who will despise me for this picture. Thank you so much.” She laughs. She has a nice, effervescent giggle. Mark, buddy, eat your heart out.
12:30 p.m. - I locate two of the last three Uncle Scrooge comics I need. I tell the vendor of the quest for these 12 issues which has lasted at least five years. He understands - he enjoys Don Rosa’s work too. He still doesn’t cough up the last issue.
1 p.m. - I find a vendor who has marked his books down to a quarter. These same books were marked at 50 cents yesterday and I barely gave them a glance, but now I begin rummaging through them as though I’ll find buried treasure. A quarter seems to be that magic line where you decide you will purchase anything that is even remotely amusing, because even if it sucks, you’re only out 25 cents. I walk away with seven dollars worth of books that will only cost me 25 cents if they suck.
2 p.m. - You see some weird things on the convention floor.
3:25 p.m. - I sit down on a bench and flip through some of the comics I’ve scored, marking off the ones that are on my “Want List.” There are a surprising number of them. It’s a nice, needed recreation. The last day of a con is rough. You know that your time is now measured in hours, if not minutes, and you want to squeeze every bit of life out of the convention while it lasts - especially if you, like me, don’t know when you’ll actually get to do this again. On the other hand, you’re tired. Your feet and back ache. You feel like you’ve been doing this since approximately 13 minutes before you were born. And there aren’t even any good panels left to break up the day.
4 p.m. - On the other hand, there are some great deals on the last day. For only $1500, this bad boy could be mine.
4:45 p.m. - With just 15 minutes left before the doors close, Joe and I call it quits. It was a good con, it was a great time, and the only question left is how on Earth I get everything I bought home.
DAY 3 HIGHLIGHT: I got my picture taken with Erica Durance, what do you think is the highlight? That’s just a silly question, friends.
In conclusion, guys, conventions are a good thing. A very good thing. Every comic geek worth his or her salt should make an effort to attend one every two or three years, at least. Bring lots of money. And shoe cushions. And snacks. And a pillow. And take a week off work afterwards, because you’ll need it to read and recuperate.
But guys, it’s worth it.
FAVORITE OF THE WEEK: November 3, 2004
Superman/Batman #13, the end of the “Supergirl From Krypton” storyline, the last issue with Michael Turner as the artist... it was beautiful. Perfect. An incredible conclusion to a fantastic storyline. This is the sort of issue that makes comics worth reading.
Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes and the upcoming suspense novel The Beginner.. He would reply to you, but he’s taking a nap. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms.