From: [s--n--d] at [aol.com] (Sean Med)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
Subject: FANDOM: Seany's Very First Con (Way too long)
Date: 24 Jul 1997 04:37:21 GMT

This year's San Diego ComiCon was my first con ever, and I 
wasn't really sure what to expect. The reason I went is because 
I'm part of an online group of would-be comics writers and 
artists called the Writers' Bloc (yes, clever), and we somehow 
managed to have our own self-published anthology comic 
ready in time for the con. We're all just sick of trying to get 
our proposals and scripts noticed, so publishing something 
ourselves, with all our contact info included, seemed to be one 
way of getting a foot in the door. The idea was to hand out the 
anthology (henceforth referred to as "the antho") to editors, 
writers, artists, and pretty much anybody else in the industry 
we could think of, and just hope that there'll be some spark of 
recognition the next time we send something. The angle we 
ended up stressing was the fact that most of the guys in the 
group had never met until that weekend, having coordinated 
everything through e-mail and chatrooms. The virtual bullpen 
and all that.

Okay, then. What follows is a more-or-less chronological 
account of the three days I was at the con. I can't believe it was 
only three days! There'll be a lot of name-dropping, mainly 
because I met a lot of people whose work I admire who turned 
out to be really nice.

I arrived in San Diego around 2 p.m. on Thursday and realized 
I didn't know what the guys who are picking me up looked 
like. After 20 minutes or so of wandering around the departure 
lounge and baggage check areas, I realized that the guy 
resembling Grant Morrison who kept glancing at me 
uncertainly was not a male prostitute but Erik Sirmenis, one of 
the other guys in the Bloc. He had a copy of the antho for me, 
which had just arrived from the printer the previous Monday. 
Cutting it close, hey? Everything looked terrific, except that 
two of the pages in my story were switched. (Our fault, not the 
printers. I'm not happy about it, but I've edited enough 
computer books to know that mistakes happen.) Also, the 
photo-cover, which is the logo of our group superimposed on a 
brick wall, ended up looking like... well, I don't want to be 
mean. It was a good effort, and I appreciate the time it took to 
do it, but it just didn't work. Also, the "R" in the "WRITER'S 
BLOC" logo is the Cyrillic character for the "ya" sound, which 
looks like a backwards "A." As a result, our logo ends up 
looking like "WAITER'S BLOC." God, I hope it doesn't come 
to that...

Meeting all the guys in the Bloc was a bizarre experience. I've 
become friends with these guys online, and we've all worked 
hard to get this antho done, but I had no idea what to expect 
when I met them. The writers in attendance were Bloc founder 
Shaun Behrens, from Omaha, NE; Jack Nolan, from Burbank, 
CA; Eric Sirmenis, also from Burbank; and little old 
Indianapolis-boy me. We stayed at the Hyatt with Kaare 
Andrews, from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who's one of the 
artists in the antho; and Pat Quinn, from Gaithersburg, MD, 
who isn't but who I hope will be next time. They met last year 
at SDCC while standing in line for a portfolio review, and they 
were nice enough to let us stay with them. (Six guys in a hotel
room--how do you spell relief? L-Y-S-O-L.) Both Kaare and 
Pat are terrific artists, and I expect we'll be seeing their stuff in 
some of those big-time professional-type comical books very 
soon. In fact, Pat is working on a story for Soulsearchers & 
Co. right now, and Kaare gets oohs and aahs from everyone 
who sees his art for his and Shaun's story, the Gnat. It looks 
sort of like a cross between Chris Warner and Kevin Maguire, 
to me at least.

Within about an hour or so of getting off the plane, I found 
myself attending a panel on horror movies with Erik and Jack. 
Steven Bissette was one of the panelists, and he was an great 
speaker. One of the more eloquent comics pros out there, and a 
funny guy to boot. (His Comics Journal interview is one of the 
best they've ever run, and he's every bit as interesting in 
person.) Jack gave Bissette a copy of the antho just before the 
panel, and it was sitting on top of his hat on the table the 
whole time. Hmm, we should have had him prop the thing up, 
face-out...

Next was the Helix panel. We arrived a few minutes early and I 
saw Garth Ennis talking to a crowd of fans. I got in line, antho 
in hand and heart in throat. The guys in front of me, who I 
believe were from Italy, talked his ear off. "Geet on weeth eet, 
man!" I was just about to sit back down when there appeared 
next to me an exhausted-looking man with a long ponytail and 
the darkest eyes I've ever seen. I realized it's Warren Ellis and 
introduced myself. I've talked to Warren several times in the 
DC Online chat room, and he recognized my name or at least 
pretended to. (The first of many people I'd never met who 
recognized my name, which was very new to me.) He looked 
like hell, having just arrived after a 12-hour flight. I was 
expecting some of the misanthropic public persona that he's 
created for himself, but he was actually very polite. (In fact, I 
don't think he actually shot anybody the whole time he was 
there...) I stuttered out something about jet lag, he asked if the 
antho was his to keep (why, yes!), and then it was time for the 
panel. Ennis, Ellis, Michael Moorcock, and Christopher 
Muller, with Stuart Moore as the moderator. There was 
discussion about Moorcock's Multiverse, Transmetropolitan, 
and the second and final Bloody Mary miniseries. (Crap, I 
can't remember what Muller talked about. Sorry, dude.) Ennis 
said the Major will be back in the sequel, but he didn't foresee 
a Major miniseries. However, someday he would like to do a 
WWII story with similar British "wizard prang, old bean" 
characters. There's probably a name for that sort of character, 
so chime in if you know what it is.

After that, it was off to the convention floor. This being my 
first convention, I wasn't really prepared for the sensory 
onslaught of all those freaks I mean people. I'm a borderline 
agoraphobe, so it took a while to get used to the press of the 
crowd. I spent most of the afternoon just wandering the floor, 
both by myself and with the other guys, getting a feel for the 
place. I also finally met Shaun, who was a hell of a lot bigger 
than I ever imagined him, and also a hell of a lot funnier.

That night, we wandered between the con and the Hyatt to look 
for whatever parties were going on. There was some literacy 
foundation party at the con, which we ducked into and quickly 
left. The 2nd-floor lounge at the Hyatt was dead. We were just 
about to leave the Hyatt to go downtown when Shaun overheard 
Alisa Kwitney talking to someone about "heading up to the 
40th." And sure enough, once we got up there, I couldn't swing 
a dead housepet without hitting someone whose work I admire, 
or at least recognize. I talked to Stuart Moore, Steven Grant, 
and probably a lot of other people. The details are a little hazy. 
Wait, I do remember introducing myself to Grant Morrison. He 
seemed to recognize my name from a letter I once sent to the 
Invisibles, in which I described masturbating at Thanksgiving 
dinner and putting out the dinner candles (you Invisibles 
readers might know what I'm talking about). He looked to me 
like a Frank Quitely drawing; specifically, a younger, balder 
version of the old man in the first story arc of 2020 Visions. I 
did not tell Morrison this.

They started herding people out of the bar around 1:30 or so. 
Luckily, we had plenty of beer back at the room. Most of us 
drank heavily. This was to become a recurring theme. Hit the 
sack around 3:30, I think.

I woke up at 6 a.m., which is 8 a.m. Indiana time, and never got 
back to sleep. My hangover didn't kick in for several hours.

Let's see, Friday, Friday... I seem to have lost my convention 
schedule, and everything's sort of jumbled together, so I'll just 
talk about stuff that happened over the next few days as it 
comes to me. Anybody still awake?

We rode down the elevator at the Hyatt with Devon Grayson. 
She was wearing a black leather vest, and so we compared it to 
Jack's black vest, which had a built-in backpack where he 
stored his copies of the antho. I said, "Betcha don't have one of 
*those*, huh?" She got a big kick out of it, and we pulled a 
copy of the book out of it for her. She's one of the people we 
might have gotten a little too fanboyish with, though. She's just 
so cute, you know? (Don't tell her boyfriend I said that.)

Several of us attended Steve Seagle's seminar on comics 
writing. He showed us some of the proposals he's submitted in 
the past, all of which did something different with design or 
layout to catch an editor's eye. Most impressive was one for a 
character named Nine, which folded out horizontally like an 
accordion, with a panel of the character on each section. I 
would never have thought to do something like that. Steve's a 
great public speaker, and he sounded like a radio DJ or 
something. He's also got a very pragmatic view of the industry 
that I appreciate. Talking to him afterwards, it also turned out 
he used to live in Muncie. As an involuntary Hoosier myself, I 
expressed my sympathies. He got a copy of the antho, which 
follows one of his pieces of advice during the seminar: "If you 
want to get noticed, publish something yourself."

I saw a guy at the DC booth who was taking pictures of Stuart 
Moore and wearing a pair of sunglasses just like those worn by 
Transmetropolitan's Spider Jerusalem. It turned out to be 
Darick Robertson, who I've talked to quite a bit on AOL. I've 
been trying to get him into Usenet, actually, but he finds it too 
chaotic. (Imagine that, huh?) We chatted for a bit. I forgot to 
ask him where I can get a pair of glasses like that, and whether 
it would be a good idea to get them with red and green lenses 
just like the comic. Probably give you a headache, don't you 
think?

What night were the Eisners? I'm so brain-fried. Well, we all 
went. And guess who sat down right behind me? Elayne! We 
chatted about this and that, although I was still so hung over 
>from  the night before that now I can't remember most of it. 
Most of the Eisners are a blur, actually, although I remember 
liking both Frank Miller's speech and Kevin Smith's schtick. 
Not many other people I talked to seemed to agree. I was also 
hoping Matt Hollingsworth would win the Eisner for Best 
Colorist. Not only for him, but because I've become e-mail pals 
with him but had no idea what he looked like. He won but 
didn't show, and I figured I wouldn't see him this year. More on 
that later.

Garth Ennis bought me a beer and thanked me for some very 
long all-rhyme letters I sent to The Demon over two years ago. 
I was very flattered. Must have made an impression. He 
introduced me to John McCrea, one of the nicest people I met 
at the con. I talked to John for quite a bit, and his enthusiasm 
for his work really shone through. What stands out in my mind 
about that conversation is that he and Grant Morrison may 
possibly do a Scooby-Doo story for the Cartoon Planet comic. 
Yep, that's what he said. I don't know if he had me confused 
with Rich Johnston or what. (Just kidding, Rich.)

The Writers' Bloc sort-of stalked Dan Thorsland over the 
course of the con, but all in all he was cool about it. He joked 
about his resemblance to Billy Corgan of the Smashing 
Pumpkins, and just generally kept things light. We gave him a 
personalized Writers' Bloc badge just like the ones we were all 
wearing, and he seemed to like that. He put it on and said he'd 
wear it at the DC booth. Everybody send out your psychic love 
vibes to Dan, because he's doing a great job there at DC. (Just 
spell my name right on that check, Dan!)

On Saturday night at the Hyatt bar, I was talking to Stuart 
Moore when I was suddenly bear-hugged by a man I'd never 
seen before in my life. I remember thinking, "Hey, at least I'm 
finally getting some action at this con!" Then Stuart said, in 
that quiet voice of his, "Sean, this is Matt Hollingsworth." I 
was all like, "MATT!!!!" He and I have become pen-pals on 
AOL, and he was one of the people I really didn't want to leave 
the con without meeting. I was really bummed when he didn't 
show up to accept his Eisner for Best Colorist, as I said. 
Anyway, we talked about all the fun times he's had on racm 
(cough, cough), and he threatened to hurt me when I asked him 
if anybody's ever told him he looks like Pauly Shore.

Later that night at the bar, Mark Millar was beaten in an arm-
wrestling contest by... A GIRL!!! Morrison was cracking up. I 
made an Andy Kaufman joke, I think, but I'm not sure it went 
over. God, that place was crowded.

Have I mentioned that the we were interviewed by Nick from 
the Anti-Gravity Room? We had shown the producer a copy of 
the antho, and he was impressed by the fact that we'd done 
everything online and had never met until the con. People rip 
on the show for being "Wizard TV," and on Nick for being a 
geek who changes his hair color more often than his socks, but 
I think it's pretty cool that he's parlayed a local cable-access 
show into the only show on TV that covers comics. Plus, he 
seemed genuinely receptive to what we were doing, and I 
appreciate him taking the time to talk to a bunch of complete 
unknowns. I'm skeptical about whether it'll actually air on the 
show, a one-hour primetime special on SDCC that'll air in 
three weeks, but it was nice to be interviewed for TV during 
my very first con. If you see the show and we're actually on, I'll 
be the guy standing next to Nick and doing a lot of the talking. 
My extreme hangover and general state of exhaustion actually 
came in handy, because everything had such a feeling of 
unreality anyway that I didn't freak out over trying to hold a 
conversation while this big TV camera zoomed in on the zit on 
my cheek.

Oh man, the worst part about that interview... We set the thing 
up at about 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, and they told us to 
meet in front of a certain booth, I forget which one, in 45 
minutes. The problem was, we couldn't find Shaun, the founder 
of the whole group. We knew we had to have him there, so we 
split up and scoured the convention floor. Keep in mind that 
this was on the busiest day of the con. I figured he wouldn't be 
too hard to find because he's like 6'7" or something, so I just 
scanned for heads rising above the crowd. My less-than-
optimal physical state and extreme dislike of crowds didn't 
help much, and by 4:30 I was aching for a flamethrower. No 
Shaun to be found. Well, we had to do the interview without 
him, because they weren't exactly going to wait around for us. 
We had to strike while the iron was hot, you know?

Well, who do you think showed up about 10 seconds after we 
got done? I'll give you one guess. Turned out he had been 
wandering the convention floor too, and he had no idea where 
or when the interview was. He was pretty ticked off, but he 
understood that we did the best we could to find him. And just 
like everything else we did at the con, anybody's efforts could 
only benefit the whole group. Jeez, I'm sounding sappy now. 
Anyway, I really wish we could've found Shaun, because he's 
the one who started the whole thing.

Plus, looking for him made us miss all but about 90 seconds of 
the JLA panel. Damn it.

What else... I met Bob Burden and bought the trade paperback 
of the first few issues of Flaming Carrot. If you buy something 
>from  him, he rolls this big pair of wooden dice and uses that to 
decide how much to charge you. I don't know how he 
computed that, because he rolled a seven and took a dollar off. 
Something like that, I don't remember exactly. But it's so 
Burden, you know? I gave him a copy of the antho, and he 
asked me to sign it for him. (I'm just glad that that minor 
earthquake hit right when I started signing it, because it sure 
wasn't *my hand* that was shaking. No, don't be ridiculous!) I 
also talked to another guy at the booth (whose name I can't 
remember!) and he showed me an ashcan of the upcoming 
Screwball one-shot. It looks terrific. Burden's writing it, but 
someone else whose name I can't remember is drawing it. It 
looked terrific. I remarked that the guy at Cartoon Planet who 
does the voice of Brak must be a Screwball fan, and he told me 
he knows all those guys. Atlanta's a lot cooler than I thought!

Scott McCloud was also great to talk to. He's so smart and has 
such visionary ideas for the future of comics, and he's also very 
friendly and enthusiastic. Quite a combination. I gave him an 
antho and sort of segued it in with his interest in the power of 
the Internet, which I'd read about in the Comics Journal. He 
seemed impressed. (A good reason, among many, to read TCJ--
the more you know about a person, the more you can tie in 
what they do with what you do, and the more likely they are to 
remember you. God, that sounds cynical, doesn't it? I don't 
mean to sound that way. It really was a genuine pleasure to 
meet him. I didn't even get too tongue-tied! If there's another 
panel on the future of comics next year, do yourself a favor and 
don't miss it.)

How could I forget? Shaking hands with Will Eisner was a 
thrill. I was with the aforementioned Shaun, who's built like a 
house and works as a bouncer in a bar as one of his jobs. (The 
other job is in an art store. Can you say "dichotomy?") This 
veritable mountain of a man stammered something about how 
we could never compare to Eisner's impact on comics, but 
here's a copy of our anthology, and, and, and... Eisner gave us a 
big grin and said that it gave him such a thrill to hear stuff like 
that, he just wanted to rush right back to the studio and get 
back to work. Me, I just stood there and somehow contained 
my bladder. Will Eisner!

I think that's about all I can remember. That's probably enough, 
huh? I'll tell you, I had very low expectations going into this 
past weekend--about the antho, the other guys in it, the con, 
and basically life itself. But it turned out to be probably the 
best three days (three days!) of my life. I've never been one for 
shmoozing or marketing or any of that crap, but it's a lot 
different when it's something you care about, and that the 
people you're talking to care about as well. Right now I'm just 
waiting for any feedback on the antho and trying to figure out 
what to do next. It's been a long time since I've had anything to 
be excited about, so I'm sort of freaking out. That was my first 
con, but it definitely won't be my last.

So, to sum it all up, here are some steps to making your next 
con an experience to remember:

1. Have a comic to show to people.
2. Meet as many writers, artists, editors, and other industry 
people as possible. Be nice!
3. Find out where the party is each night, then go rub elbows 
and drink like Jan-Michael Vincent with the big shots until 
they throw you out.
4. Sleep. Four hours max.
5. Repeat.

Well, see you next year!

Sean Medlock