The con is over. I’m watching a legion of people walk across busy Harbor Drive from my hotel window. This is such a good vantage point for me. These are the folks I want to speak to, entertain in some way. How will they react to what’s inside my head? There’s a terrifying question. The mistake would be to try to please all of them. The challenge is to please enough of them.

I’m sad that the con is over. I learned so much about self-publishing and talked to many wonderful fans, retailers and professionals. I think I have a plan. I’m not far away from a concept too.

Great time here, and I need to thank Cartoon Books for letting me stay in the Steve and Tom room. The laughter ensues uninterruptedly.

Sorry no pictures today.

Tom went down to the convention early this morning, so no back and forth between Oscar and Felix to report. That’s okay, I think we’re all pretty tired.

I think this is the last year I’m going to attend Comic Con in the capacity of spectator. The panels have been great, and I’ve been fortunate enough to meet a couple of neat people, but I’m ready to start creating. I’m going to check into tables for 2004 today. I heard you can get an artist-alley table for free. That might not be the best placement, but it certainly is the best price. So here’s my plan. Pick a story/character and stay with it. Do one single issue and then a 72 page trade. Have the trade ready by San Diego 2004. I’ve said it, it’s in print, so it must come to pass.

Good times with Chad, Lashara, Tom and Steve. I finally got my reclusive self into “The Field”, a very … cozy … Irish pub in the gaslamp district. Many people go there each night, in fact, that’s the place where Steve saw Judd Nelson last year. Great fun, and the lamb stew was killer.

Hey I forgot to mention 2 celebrities I saw. One was Brian Posehn, comedian and actor on Just Shoot Me. He was walking by us as we left our restaurant. Then, I’m not totally sure, but I think I saw Lou Pearlman at Joe’s Crab Shack. He’s the guy that “discovered” the Backstreet Boys and N’sync. It may have been just another balding chubby white guy, but he was definitely smooth talking some Asian couples and interrupting his trophy wife, in the parlance of our times.

Check out Saturday’s photos!

Friday came upon me like a gentle french vanilla mist and settled. Then, when I thought it couldn’t get better, it got really better. Lemme ’splain.

First, something weird happened that still defies explanation. Steve was gone, so he couldn’t explain this. Tom found the shirt that Steve had on Thursday, balled up and laying on Tom’s clothes. Tom was elated, thinking Steve and purchased a shirt for him, and surprised him with it. But upon closer inspection, Tom found a boomerang-shaped, lime green booger hardened near the sleeve of the shirt. Steve denied putting the booger on the shirt and throwing the shirt on Tom’s area. He has a theory that one of the visitor’s to his booth heard something Steve said, thought it was funny, and did one of those nose-laughs, throwing a booger onto Steve’s shirt. We may never know, but the Mystery of the “Snot-Tee” has been born.

The con was a good geeky experience. I attended the “Self Publishing 101″ panel. Probably the best thing I heard was advice to do single issues at first, not to just jump right into a trade. Makes sense from the consumer’s point of view. I took lots of notes. I’m very motivated to work on a book. Now, Darnit.

Andy Serkis, the actor who played Gollum in LOTR, signed a photo for me and had his picture taken with me. He said he worried that he may have ticked a lot of people off when he did the MTV Gollum speech.

I met Duncan Fegredo, artist for lots of great stuff (Here’s a Spider-Man cover he did recently). He’s a friendly english type, who forms sentences like this: “you do, do you?” He has a very energetic and dynamic style. I had a ton of questions for him, but I hated monopolizing his time, so I’m going to go back tomorrow and talk to him some more. Probably ask for a sketch.

I picked up a bunch of industry how-to type books. Mostly about Self-Publishing, the creative process and cartooning techniques. I don’t know how I’m going to fit it all in the suit case.

More tomorrow. I’m keeping the lads up with my typing.

View my Friday Con Fotos, okay?

From a spacious Hilton hotel room in San Diego’s Gaslamp district, I say hello. FREE BROADBAND. That’s what I’m talking about.

I am happy to say that my ears and I survived 2 plane rides today to get here. Woooo, serious head implosions happened when we started to make our descent. And then, for the next hour or so, I was deaf. So much pressure builds in my ears that I can hear very little after a plane ride. I was standing in the convention registration line, hearing nothing but my own head noises, and I plugged my nose and blew. After a high-pitched squeal, my hearing came back in anger.

Nothing remarkable about the plane rides to report. It’s just a different kind of feeling to look down and see the houses and buildings so small, and to know that there are cars and people there, but they are too small to be seen. And of course, there are the mountains and canyons and rivers white with foam.

I’m in California for the big Comic Con. This is the big one. This is the one where the big kids show up. Tonight as Tom (Gaadt) and Steve (Hamaker) and I (Smith) walked back from a Pat & Oscar’s Pizzeria, we passed by STAN “CREATOR OF ALL THINGS MARVEL (along with Jack Kirby)” LEE. You might remember Stan Lee from Mallrats? He gave Jason Lee advice about his relationship with Shannon Doherty. He walked right by us on the sidewalk, talking to the president of Wizard magazine about the history of comics (I think. he mentioned something about DC.) This guy is not long for this world, and he is the creator of some really big heroes (spidey, x-men, hulk, striperella *snicker*). It was cool to see him. Tom wanted to say something cheesy like, “hello, true believer…” but thought better of it, and we thanked him.

Speaking of Tom, I’m already in hysterics about his repoire with Steve. I’m sharing a room with Oscar and Felix. More about that as the weekend goes by.

Tomorrow, I will attend a program about self-publishing, comic book legal stuff, and perhaps a panel with just about the entire cast of Farscape.

Not many photos to share today. Click here to see my photos from today, and if that doesn’t work try clicking here. (I’m using Kodak’s Ofoto service, which is free, but requires everyone to setup a free account to view photo albums.) There is a photo of The Captain and one of me with my favorite sneaker.

More tomorrow!

I turned down a trip to the theater to stay home and work on stuff. Terminator 3, even. No doughy Ahnold for me tonight thank you.

I’m going to be working on a short story for Steve’s Fish N’ Chips. It features Clave and Jaxer as fantasy-based heroes fighting a band of orcs. Hopefully, it will make it into the trade paperback he’s making sometime this fall.