a final comment on the San Diego Comic Book Convention.
I've been having an uneasy relationship with the world of comics over the last few years. It's a world I had never intended to engage with. I had always wanted to be an artist of a serious sort, offering my observations and commentary on life as it is lived in our times, an author sought out for his wisdom and insight. How I came to get mixed up with this subculture of the fantastical I cannot now recall. The medium of the cartoon strip has been inexorably drawn into its vortex though I have protested the trend at every turn. I had lofty aspirations, even when I was I was the last in the bar in Dallas with Lou Ferrigno and the first Klingon, or in Brisbane when I phoned the wife of my bosom to get the okay to invite Darth Vader and his wife to dinner.
As a four day convention wears on, my capacity to embrace the incongruities weakens and I start to think of the convention and the whole world of comics as 'an exrtravaganza of baloney.' I actually said that in an interview, somewhat shamefully since I was a guest of the show. I had cut out as the event closed down to do a half hour interview by phone from my hotel room for Comic Book talk Radio. That one's fine and you can listen to it there I guess, though I haven't checked to see whether I'm an idiot in it. After completing the task, I couldn't find any of my pals in the hotel bars around the place and never said cheerio to them. We only meet once a year or two years or more. Tumbling into the bar at the Marriott I found myself accidentally doing yet another interview, caught out and about without my soundbites, and in a mood going sour.
Oh well.
7 a.m. flight. At least I got to avoid that state in which I often find myself on the Monday morning after a con, in a collapse of depression, partly chemically induced I admit, in which I kill time before my flight by watching the next wave of conventioneers arrive in town, all suits and business and orderliness, with their spiral bound programs and severely cheery welcome wagon. Gone are the rebel x-wing pilots who swarmed the breakfast bar the day before, beautifully imperfect in their gaudy orange suits, the zombies, the cartoonists who got in a punch-up (I DID give you the color guides!), and the spiderman doggie, gone back to their humdrum offices or to slouch under the old tree, or to put that autograph on ebay.
By the time I'm in Chicago a pressing sadness has fallen upon me.
I forgot to go down the far end of the hall to look at the owl ship.


(photo source)