It’s damned good, isn’t it?

I spent most of Monday working on it and I spent most of Tuesday morning finishing it. And it shows. I also shrunk it by another 100px, which isn’t a lot, but I kind of like it. I’ll let you all know what I decide later about size.

My resolution to you guys is this: I’m going to do my best to do justice to this comic. I’m going to spend as much time and effort on each page as is necessary to give you the finest story and images as possible.

And God knows I’ll try.

Anyhow, COMICCON!

Met all my favorite Web-Comic folks. And they were all really, really nice people. Not an ass-hole in the group. The Zap! pair were awesome and were two of the nicest people I’ve met. I picked up the second book and gave them my fan-comic, which, like I said, they seemed legitimately happy to have. Pascalle (the artist) said they’d put it up on their site, so I don’t want to post it just yet. But if it’s not up in a week or two I’ll stick it up here. I’m not going to bug them about it, I was just happy to meet them.

I also went to the AppleGeeks’ meet and greet. It was cool meeting Hawk and Ananth, they were interesting to talk to. And a few people mauled Hawk for sketches, I didn’t bug him as he signed and sketched in my AG book the day before. But he could draw stuff in all of two seconds. Some one even had him draw a little Hawk on their Mac-Laptop…

From there I met Chris Daily and Aeire from Punch an’ Pie, I picked up their book and Chris did a fantastic drawing in it, I also picked up a ‘read’ poster…Which amuses me. And Randy Milholland from Something Positive was, despite what he’ll have you believe, an extremely cool guy. I picked up Super Stupor one and two, which he personalized.

Honestly, it was really, really cool to meet the people I’ve been following for five years. And once I got past my initial ‘oh dear god, I know these people’s work’ I’d like to think I didn’t make a total dick of my self.

Seriously, Zap’s Chris Layfield and Pascalle were the first people I met and I nearly fan-boyed on myself. It was quite embarrassing when the only thing you can think of is “I love your comic”. Which is a good place to start…but the ten seconds of awkward silence that follows isn’t exactly a winner. Haha. But I recovered damn it!

I also went to the Neil Gaiman panel on Coraline (I’ve been pronouncing his name wrong for years, apparently. It’s ‘Gay-man’ not ‘Guy-man’…oops.) and it was quite awesome listening to him speak. He’s a funny dude, I’ve gotta say.

I didn’t get a chance to shake his hand, but it was cool listening to his stories…Also, he’d like to see an American Gods Movie made. Which frightens me…But if they do it as well as Coraline, I’d be cool with it.

I also went to the ‘how to layout a page with panels’ panel with Jeff Smith…Who as you all know, is my favorite comic book guy ever. Seriously, I’ve re-read Bone more than I care to think about.

It was really inspiring to see how amazing he really was at drawing. He free-handed shit like you wouldn’t believe.

He drew and inked a whole comic in all of ten minuets. Holy @#$%.

I also saw the panel on ‘Batman, Arkham Asilum’ which honestly looks pretty awesome. But it’s still on my ‘rent’ list. Still I did see Batman and Joker…Well, their voices anyhow, which I grew up with:

So that was pretty cool. They were actually really funny, Hamil kept hitting on this one woman dressed as Harley Quinn…But slightly more…Slutty than the cartoon version. Haha

And the Watchman Panel was interesting…I didn’t stick around for the movie though. The trolleys stopped at 1am and the movie was shaping up to go until 2…Ah well. It was good enough to see the pre-show stuff.

There were two guys dressed as Rorschach who asked questions, they ended up dueling voices with the actor…Which was hilarious. The whole thing was quite awesome.

I’ve never been to a convention before, so this was a hell of a place to start. I had fun…I don’t know if I’ll be doing it again next year…But who knows.

Maybe I’ll have a booth an you guys can come visit me.

Well…I can dream, can’t I?

-Peace

(HOLY SHIT this was a long post. Sorry…But I figure a con-report has to be a little long.)

Books.

I LOVE my books. I love my comic books. But I really, really love regular old books. I’ve got a small library of things ranging from fantasy to suspense to horror, and a smattering of non-fiction for good measure. Sadly during the school semester I hardly have time to read (Or when I do it’s school related, or very short lived) but at the end of winter break I opted to finally sit down a read an author I’ve heard nothing but good thins about: Neil Gaiman.

I picked up ‘Neverwhere’, and devoured it, despite a few complaints it was fantastic, but a few days ago I picked up the book I was looking for when I walked out with ‘Neverwhere’. ‘American Gods‘.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to tell you this, but READ. THIS. BOOK. @#$%. I haven’t finished it yet (It’s only been a few days, give me another week since school’s started) but I have to say that it’s absolutely amazingly well written.

It follows the story of ‘Shadow’, a recently released convict who get’s hired by a man calling himself ‘Wednesday’…from there his life falls apart and he ends up involved in something that he’s fairly certain is out of his league…yet he’s not a whiny little @#$%er.

This is something that bugs me with books, and movies, and comics (even my own…which I’m trying to fix): The main character ends up in an impossible situation and spends the whole time doing nothing but bitching and moaning about how unlikely the whole thing is until the end when they start bitching and moaning about how they hate their old life.

Thus far Shadow hasn’t complained (expressed confusion and disbelief, sure) and he’s taken the whole thing in a combination of amusement and ‘sure what the hell’edness. I’ve gotten to really like Shadow (don’t spoiler it for me if he goes bitch towards the end) and the way each character is written is amazingly fantastic and unique.

Neil Gaiman may be my new favorite author.

I was worried that he would follow the same formula every time, as ‘Stardust’ and ‘Neverwhere’ were the same basic story: Boy falls into shit, boy climbs out of shit, boy learns life lesson and everything works out…and no this isn’t a spoiler as you don’t know how it works out and that’s the lesson. At first I was worried that ‘American Gods’ would follow this same formula, which would have made me sad. But so far Shadow hasn’t started to do this…and I’ve only got a few more chapters to go, so I don’t see this happening.

Because I got mighty sick of Dan Brown’s: Open with murder, have series of plot twists (that after two of his books you could guess the whole thing), then end with a big reveal that is ultimately covered up and the main character getting laid.

I read four (is that all he’s done?) of his books; ‘Angels and Demons’, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, ‘Deception Point’, and ‘Digital Fortress’…all very good but all the same damned thing. I should have given up after ‘Deception Point’ but I just started on the last and I hate to give up mid-stride.

The best part of the book is probably the ‘coming to America’ side stories, where Gaiman discusses how the gods found their way to the new world…they range from funny, to spooky, to outright @#$%ed up. And they’re fantastic.

Ok, That’s it. I’m done. It’s nearly a @#$%ing paper here.

Comic on Monday will explain a little about the green guy’s reappearance. As will the blog.

I don’t think I can think of something interesting to say all the time.

I don’t roll like that.

-Peace

PS: Anybody have any suggestions on what I should get of his next? I know there’s a seaqual to ‘American Gods’ but I’m open for anything…