Your Out of Control Quizo Update

WARNING: LENGTH! Though this is still a pretty good story, I think. Definitely worth reading, but at 1800 words I’ll understand if you aren’t up for it, so:

TLDR version: This week’s clue is “Jaws!” Comic conventions are fun! 80’s music is nice! Hipsters should all be killed!

JLK

The full version follows:

As I said at one point this weekend: there is my scene, there is not my scene, and then there is the anti-matter equivalent of my scene, which, should it ever intersect with my scene, would cause the total annihilation of everything in the vicinity.

I spent most of this past weekend at Wizard World Philadelphia, a situation which can comfortably be labeled “my scene.”

Now, if you’ve never been, understand that generally speaking there are four things you can do at a decent comic convention:

1) Meet professionals/talk to professionals/express your undying quasi-sexual love for professionals.

I don’t really do this. Over the years you may have noticed that I am not the most outgoing person on Earth and talking to strangers, even strangers whose work I admire, does not exactly float my boat. In point of fact it rather sinks my boat. When it comes to social interaction, I am the Orca and talking to strangers is Jaws. The boat is clearly of insufficient size. Besides which it’s really somewhat impossible to have a meaningful conversation with someone in a loud, hot, hangar-sized room with 15,000 other people milling about, so actual face time isn’t really a consideration for me. I spend maybe 5-10% of my time at these things doing this. It does, however, lead into #2, which is...

2) Get sketches/autographs.

This is the big one for me. I just started the sketchbook two years ago and I tend to get sketches from guys who spend inordinate amounts of time on them so there isn’t a whole lot in there - I’ll bring it tonight if you want a look-see - but I have a collection of autographed books going back a LONG ways.

Upon reflection I’m really not sure why I do this, let alone spend so much of my time at conventions (roughly 75% of it) pursuing them. My pursuit of sketches and autographs is the direct cause of the one major downside of comic conventions: the intense, severe pain going to them creates. I am not making this up. As we are aware a back injury from the ancient mists of forgotten time (i.e. high school) has turned my lower back and left leg into largely-useless slush.

The problem comes from the fact that in a strictly technical sense I don’t buy “comic books” any more. The flimsy little things that cost 3 bucks (THREE DOLLARS!) and can be rolled up and used to lightly whack people in the head? Yeah, I get maybe 10 of those a year. What I do buy TONS of, however, are what we in the business call “trades,” i.e. trade paperbacks, which are permanently-bound collections of several comic books that are far sturdier and can go on a bookshelf. I have lots of these. LOTS.

Most people bring individual comics to conventions to get autographed. I bring trades. Lots of them. Basically the obsessive-compulsive part of my brain - which is almost all of it - has decided that IF a writer or artist is going to be at Wizard World I MUST bring EVERY SINGLE TRADE OF THEIRS THAT I OWN to get autographed. And, in recent years, due to some kind of strange economic quirk, more and more trades are being published in hardcover and I am an absolute whore for a hardcover book.

They are quite heavy.

Lugging around a bag full of hardcover books for 8 hours will do a number on a normal back, let alone the jellyfish that is the spine of yours truly. So, every day when I come back from the convention floor I pop a giant handful of painkillers, which tends to make me a little unbalanced mental-wise, and continue to slowly turn more and more into House every day.

Still, I do have a giant collection of autographed trades, and a book full of pretty sketches. What do you have? A family who loves you? HA! Fucking loser.

3) Socialize with other fans.

I have a handful of friends, maybe a half-dozen, who I only see at Wizard World Philadelphia anymore. Guys I knew in college, guys I worked with at old jobs years ago, stuff like that. And the best part is that not only do we KNOW we’ll see each other we don’t even PLAN it. Every year we just randomly run into one another at the convention center. EVERY GODDAMN YEAR. It’s pretty funny. This is basically how I spend the remainder of my time.

I do also occasionally break out of my introverted shell and talk to other fans, usually when I’m standing in line waiting for something and the pain in my legs and feet and back is crossing the wires in my brain. At one point on Saturday I was waiting in line to have Ethan Van Sciver autograph my copy of the Sinestro Corps War - which came out FREAKING AWESOME, I’ll bring that tonight too - and I hear this girl behind me going through her sketchbook with a guy I later learned was her (much) older brother.

All I hear from behind me is this little girl saying, “here’s Lee Weeks... Walt Simonson... Neal Adams... John Romita Senior... Jim Lee... John Romita Junior... Art Adams... Frank Miller... Matt Wagner...”

I turned around and said to the brother, “oh my god HOW OLD IS THIS GIRL?”

She looked up at me and said, angrily, “I’m ten!”

If you’re not a comics person understand that sitting there hearing this litany of artists who contributed to the sketchbook of a ten-year-old girl is roughly the equivalent of on the first day of your senior year of high school meeting this kid in your class who talked about how he spent the summer time-travelling back and forth between different eras in Hollywood having wild sex with Jayne Mansfield and Sophia Loren and Jane Fonda and Grace Kelly and Lana Turner and Marilyn Monroe and, yeah, that scene with Sean Young in No Way Out, she got the idea after we did it fourteen times in the back seat of my car.

Her brother informed me that she knew who all those guys were, that even at her age she was a big fan, and that I shouldn’t feel too bad about it since little kids will always have better sketchbooks than grownups.

You think going to a comic convention is sad? Well, if you think that you’re a gigantic douchebag, but try going to a comic convention and envying a ten-year-old girl.

4) Attend panels.

I don’t do this at all; in the past I didn’t go because the 60-90 minutes I spent in the big conference room listening to people ask the STUPIDEST FUCKING QUESTIONS you’ve EVER HEARD was time I could have spent getting sketches and autographs, and the actual information content of the panels could be gotten on the internet the second I got home. Now that I am in possession of the super-phone I can actually get the same information off the tubes 2 minutes after the panel ends while I’m waiting in line for sketches or autographs. Panels at comic conventions are not an efficient use of your time. Do not go to them.

That’s pretty much everything important; there are activities I haven’t mentioned but if you indulge in those... oy.

There are, of course, things to do outside the convention. I have almost never done such things, but this year I broke the mold and, for the first time, went to an official “after-party.” This is where the scene-difficulty begins. When I was first invited to this “party” I was told it would be at a bar in Olde City.

Strike One.

As it got closer to it I was told that, in addition to being hosted by friends of mine, an independent comic company who I shall not name but whose books are across-the-board absolute trash would be co-hosting, and that they would be bringing their “booth girls.” If you don’t know, “booth girls” are a step up from prostitutes the way that Penthouse is a step up from Hustler.

Strike Two.

When I arrived I found a club roughly twice the size of the main bar at the DH with precisely two functioning light bulbs full of barely-legal children drinking Red Bull and vodka - or, as I call it, THE DUMBEST THING IN THE FUCKING WORLD YOU CAN DRINK - listlessly swaying to bad techno music spun by a prematurely-balding 20-something deejay wearing a Japanese baseball jersey and sporting oversize thick-framed hipster glasses that I realized, after inspecting closely, were not prescription. I ordered myself a ginger ale and the bartender gave me a dirty look.

Ooh, just missed the edge of the plate with that slider, Ball One.

I only stayed after the encounter with the bartender because I caught Alex Maleev walking around, looking about as happy to be there as I was, and we headed outside where I smoked and we talked about the upcoming European championship. Alex is a great guy. He hooks me up every year with a painting because I wear a Chelsea kit to the con.

After Alex headed back in I finished my smoke and started back inside. When I opened the door I heard that the current song was Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” only with a really, really, REALLY bad techno beat tossed under it. As I stood there the DJ scratched the hell out of the track - why I cannot fathom - and it transitioned into the Outfield’s “Your Love,” again with a bad beat under it.

Understand that I am a person who LIKES techno music. I do not, however, like BAD techno music, and I really don’t like the combination of bad techno with classic 80s anthems.

Strike Fucking Three.

I can’t imagine I would have enjoyed a night like this even when I was as young as these people. This is so not my scene it isn’t even funny. I headed from there to the other after-party at the actual comic shop, which was much more my scene - i.e. a smaller-ish bunch of people hanging out, talking instead of shouting, mellowly drinking a beer or two - and had a hell of a great time there until an incredibly-drunk Mike Oeming decided to take everyone to Sugar Mom’s for shots and I decided that was my cue to go home.

It’s true - watching people drink in a comic shop IS more fun than watching them drink in a club.

I think it’s time to wrap this one up, and as a reward for reading this whole thing, one of the questions tonight will be, “what is AT&T’s symbol on the New York Stock Exchange?”

See you tonight, with my cool stuff in tow.

JLK