Nerd City, USA

I really did not know San Diego Comic Con was the same week I happened to be in San Diego. My wife will go to her grave believing otherwise. I went on Thursday and it ended up being quite a day. I intended to meet up with Scott Phillips and Bill Cunningham (who both did a lot more blogging about the Con than I have) but ended up bumping into a ton of other people instead. I guess that's the difference being in the middle of Indiana and fairly close to LA.
For instance, literally the first person I set eyes on when I walked into the convention was Steve Seagle. Steve used to work as a contract faculty in the Speech Department at Ball State University right across the sidewalk from my office, and we both went to the same (read: only) comic book shop in Muncie at that time. But it was more like I knew of him rather than knew him as at that time he already had a little street cred writing some indy comics and I had done nothing (no, this wasn't a week ago; it was many years ago). He later left Muncie and wrote Superman and Uncanny X-Men and created the popular program Ben 10 under the curious moniker "Man of Action." I have often thought that if only he had hung a little tighter with me, he might have been able to make something of himself. So we are standing there chatting and I forgot to remind him how much I loved Primal Force because suddenly he said, "Hey, there's Grant Morrison," and there went Grant Morrison.
A short time later I am checking out some DVDs at a distributor's booth when I hear a guy talking about a movie that sounded familiar. And I turned and said, "Are you talking about Tomorrow By Midnight?" which he was, because he was the director, Rolfe Kanefsky. It took me a few minutes to remember that his pal Jay Woelfel had sent me this unreleased gem and I told the guy at this booth his company should definitely pick it up. So if it gets picked up somebody should send me 10 percent commission. I'm just sayin'.
That was just the first hour or so. I saw enough of geekdom's finest to fill many more posts, but I will let the reader speculate. I checked out a bit of the independent film festival and stood in a long line to hear J. Michael Straczynski (worth it, I enjoy his work and his writing and found it inspirational, except he said he never had writer's block) but spent a bulk of my time in the Artist's Alley and the few rickety aisles in the back where they stuck the independent comics people, where my heart always lies. This is also where I bumped into some people that knew Sex Machine director Christopher Sharpe who I happened to overhear talking about A Scanner Darkly and can be added to the long list of people who can't believe I never meet most of the people I work with (again, the Indiana thing). I will soon provide a list of what I picked up in Indy Row that was good, bad, and indifferent but am still sifting through it all and will have to report back later. However, my pal The Mighty Caveman has alread inventoried his swag here.
More later; until then, I am at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.