Time to Go Home...

By Tony Lee

For more on his adventures at San Diego Comicon, see Tony Lee's LiveJournal.

So this week’s column is a little late as I’m writing it in an airport bar while waiting for a flight. It’ll also be a little shorter than usual as, well, I’m writing this in an airport bar while waiting for a flight.

San Diego in a nutshell? Fun. This was the first year that I’ve not been desperately pitching, it’s the first year that I actually took a chunk of a convention day off and it was the first year that I was surrounded by dozens of Doctor Who cosplayers.

Doctor Who cosplayers by the way? Nicest guys on the planet. Always good to talk to, enthusiastic and eager to listen to new things in the Whoniverse. I think a couple of them might even buy the comic when it comes out next week.

That said, the comic (and if you’ve been living under a rock, the comic I mean is Doctor Who: The Forgotten, out from IDW in August) wasn’t there this week, although there were a couple of copies that Chris Ryall, officially the nicest EiC in comics gave me and Pia Guerra – sorry, the two time Eisner award WINNING Pia Guerra – to keep for ourselves. And these seemed to go down quite well.

A lot of my talks this week were Doctor Who related, it being the big thing to talk about. And to be honest, I don’t have much else hitting America soon – although I believe 2000 A.D. is getting bigger over there. But you know? This year I was happy to just chat, hang out with friends and attend incredibly swish showbiz parties, where I hung out with people like Mick Foley, one of the nicest guys in Wrestling. Of course I also hung out with a lot of creators including showbiz chums Neil Kleid, Kevin Colden, David Gallaher and his more talented missus Valerie D’Orazio, Ben Templesmith, Rich Starkings, Darwyn Cooke, Joe Hill, Pia Guerra – sorry, the two time Eisner award WINNING Pia Guerra Jacen Burrows, Jazan Wild, anyone else who can’t spell Jason – hell, I hung out with a lot of people – even Grant Morrison was around on the Sunday.

I think the one thing I learned this weekend however is that I suck at small talk. There’s only so many times you can ask the same person how they are when you walk past them in a crowded bar, but I find that the best way to avoid this is to be sleep deprived and twitchy. Makes conversations a whole lot more fun.

So, several things I learned during the convention include –

1. Tenth Doctor Cosplayers come in both sexes. Many are authentic copies, but a brown pinstripe basque on a 'Doctor' is a little strange when you see it for the same time.


2. Staying in Coronado is nice, but stupidly expensive.


3. If you are a hot and sexy female, the safest place in the world for you is a convention bar – four girls, a room full of men and not one was approached.

Ah hell, William Christensen and Jacen Burrows have just walked by. I’ll have to say something nice about them. They were chick magnets all weekend. There you go. Anyway...

4. Spandex in fat people JUST DOESN’T WORK.


5. You could kill half the people in the movie area on a Saturday and the world would not weep.


6. Nick Barrucci is the best person to have a meeting with as he gives you beer.


7. The ZUDA guys party like animals.


8. Pia Guerra is really seven feet tall.


9. Ben Templesmith is actually from France and has been lying about being Australian for years.


10. Larry Young has no baby photos. At all. Ever.

And with that my flight’s been called. I’ll leave you all with one piece of wisdom from the convention –

HAND SANITISER.

More next week, children...

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© 2008, Tony Lee

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