SDCC, Day the Third pt. 3
After the Defending Manga panel, I made my way to the 3rdand final pitching panel for me: Proper Pitching and Promoting Yourself. This panel was being done by Bryan Tilman. He’s a professor at an art and design school in Washington D.C. He is quite the popular panelist. The room was packed for him… and I understand why. While the information that he was giving us wasn’t exactly something I hadn’t heard before; he did it in a way where I wanted to hear more. He was incredibly entertaining to listen to. He gave us 5 rules that should help when pitching and promoting oneself. Like I said, it wasn’t particularly unique information, but it was fun hearing it all the same.
Vash the Stampede and Nicholas Wolfwood. Picture by Craig Gordon
After that panel I had some time to hit the dealer’s room once again. It’s interesting the things you’ll see in the dealer’s room. It’s a great place to scout out costumes (well, one of them). It’s one of the few places where you’ll see plenty of men in line to buy themselves some My Little Pony toys. It’s also a great place to see celebrities. When I went by the Tokidoki booth, Seth Green was there doing sketches and signing stuff. I was surprised that I might just be slightly taller than him (and anyone who knows me knows that I’m not all that tall). It was neat to turn around and think, “Oh, look, there’s Seth Green.” I also saw Gene Simmons doing some autographs at another booth. One of the funniest celebrity moments was Shia LaBeouf. Shia LaBeouf was supposed to hand out a free comic that he was involved with at Keith Knight’s booth in the indie section (which was also a lesser populated part of the dealer’s room). Once people realized that it was Shia LaBeouf it’s like the room converged on that booth. Keith Knight wrote a comic about it here: http://www.kchronicles.com/2012/07/17/labeouf/. While going through the dealer’s room, I made a personally exciting discovery of a LGBT comic consortium known as Prism Comics. It was neat to see a pretty much one-stop shop for LGBT comics. The slight problem being that there’s only two comics that are about bisexuals.
Harley Quinn and Catwoman at DC booth.
After a brief dinner break it was on to another panel about the best and worst manga of the past year. It was an interesting panel. I do love me some manga. We have a nice little manga collection going here. So, hearing about some new manga to check out is right up our alley. We were also joined by a couple of our friends who were at Comic Con for this panel. I got some interesting manga suggestions from it. So, it looks like I’ll have plenty of manga reading to do for the next year. This isn’t a bad thing. There are some manga titles that I’ve been curious about and it certainly to help hear people talk about what they liked…. and in a few instances what they didn’t like. It was a fun panel and incredibly useful.
After that, it was an across center dash to get to the Gays in Comics mixer. It came right on the heels of Gays in Comics 25thAnniversary Celebration. We actually saw the end of the celebration as it overlapped a lot on the mixer. It was interesting to see all the people who make it happen and to see all the panelists for the past 25 years. It was also a bittersweet celebration as the person who had done the LGBT comic panels stepped down. After they checked the time, they realized that they were running a little late as people had already started to filter in to watch the Masquerade. They had a raffle which they gave you ticket as you entered the room. I actually managed to win the raffle. I rarely win anything. I can’t remember the last time I actually won anything. I got a sweet reusable bag, a stack of comics and an awesome Walking Dead figure. It’s pretty sweet and a pretty big thing for me.
Wonder Woman. Picture by Jennifer Bevan
After the Gays in Comics mixer was over, we had an after party to hit for Racebending.com. We went down to the bar and heard a couple of awesome bands while having a couple of drinks. The best part was talking to one of the bartenders. He was a pretty cool guy and was incredibly friendly (you know, like a good bartender). He was interested at how me and my SO had met, so we told him through Burning Man. That seemed to blow his mind. He was actually a pretty cool guy. While we were there, we received an invite for the Dark Horse after party on Sunday night. Once it got towards midnight, we headed back to the shuttle. It was time to get back to the hotel and getting some sleep for Sunday.
Prism Comics: http://prismcomics.org/
Keith Knight: http://www.kchronicles.com/
(The final part of my Comic Con adventure will be posted tomorrow)