Today started off with excitement and joy as I woke up early and headed to the Convention Center with the hope of getting the autographs of the “Mythbusters.” Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman.  The way autographs work at Comic-Con is a strange and mysterious thing involving lines, bags, tickets & cats.  First you arrive at least an hour before they asked you to so you can wait to see if you are part of the group to get autographs.  This was around 7:45 for me, and I waited with a whole lot of people.  Once the magic hour has arrived you move through the line pulling raffle tickets from a bag.  If your raffle ticket is blank- no autograph, if it has a stamp of a cat on it, you need to return at 10:30 to get in line for the 11:30 autograph session.  Make sense.  So lets say, you were like me and didn’t get a ticket with a cat on it, you have two options, first is to leave muttering under your breath.  The second is to get back in line and try it all again.  That’s what I did… twice.  Finally pulling an elusive cat.  I returned and waited in line (again) to get Adam & Jamie’s autographs. I was (for some strange reason) really nervous, my mind lost in thought when I finally got up to the front of the line.  I realized that yes, that strange man I had asked to get a photo with Cecil who I thought was Adam Savage, WAS ADAM SAVAGE!  I was right!  He even notice Cecil and commented which threw me off.  It threw me off so much that I didn’t pose for a picture and forgot to ask that they make it out to my class. I went to a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund session with Jeff Smith- Creator of Bone in which he outlined his process for doing a comic by roughing out a four panel idea and bringing it all the way to the finished product.  Due to time he only finished two panels, but it was really cool. I then headed off to a session on Using Comic Books in your classroom, which was interesting.  The panel discussed how “Graphic Novels” aka comics have slowly worked their way into the libraries have been successful, and how while many are under the impression that comics are great for reluctant readers when they actually help with readers of all levels.  The thing missing- actual curriculum, in these days of standards.  Hopefully some of these more direct pieces will be addressed in the panels tomorrow.

Another wonderful day without finding a geocache (then again I really can’t say I was looking today).  I headed out with a goal or two in mind- first was to get to at least one session and the other was to pick up some more comics for my classroom.  I did both and now I’m tired… goodnight. Alright a little more detail… headed out and planned that my first panel would be “After the First 1,000 Pages” this panel was great, each member talked about the growth in their drawing style and confidence after finally reaching 1,000 pages of comic book art.  They also talked about some of the pitfalls that they still encounter.  THings like trying to figure out how to draw something and how now as they are sometimes scripting their own comics they still give themselves challenges.  One panelist (and I am sorry for not being detailed, it is late and while I listened I did not take notes) talked about how he hates drawing crowd scenes and then how when he wrote a script for himself it ended up having a crowd scene!  He thought he could avoid it but that’s what the story called for.  Like my first session this was a small gathering, the room was almost full, but there wasn’t much of a line which was nice.  I did some rough calculations and if I continue producing 3 strips a week I should hit 1,000 strips somewhere between 2015 and 2016.  Either I have to speed up the process making it a daily (yipes) which would give me 1,000 strips somewhere around 2013 or just keep plugging away.  That was one thing they did mention which was just having the persistence to keep going and how they learned some of the most important things by being under a deadline and ending up creating shortcuts that worked and altered their drawing technique to create their style… kind of cool. The other session I went to was Robert Kirkman’s session on what he is going to be doing with his comics in the next few months/years.  Since I read both “Invincible” and “The Walking Dead”  I found it really cool to gain a little insight into what the future holds for some of my favorite characters.  I won’t go into much here (sorry… while it was nice to hear it, I know I’ll garble the message like in the game “telephone”) all I can say is I am waiting to read Invincible #64 and curious as to the changes that will happen in “The Walking Dead.”  The big bomb that was dropped was that Kirkman’s “The Astonishing Wolfman” Comic will stop after issue 25.  He will have told the story that he wanted and feels that after the final arc there will be nothing left to tell.  I have picked up a few issues and while good it never really hooked me like his other titles.  The final part was his collaboration with Todd McFarlane (of “Spawn” fame).  They will be working together on a comic called “Haunt.”  It looks interesting but I was unable to pick up a preview today. What I was able to pick up was what seemed like a gazillion pounds of comics for my classroom!  I finally found Jimmy Gownley’s booth and picked up “Amelia Rules!” trades and some comics from Ray Friesen which look very promising. “Amelia Rules!” is one of those comics I picked up at my local shop and shared it with my class… it is a great story about growing up.  I also stopped by Blue Dream Studios booth- Home of “The Dreamland Chronicles” and picked up two of everything that they had.  Scott Sava writes such fantastic all ages stories and they can all be found at www.thedreamlandchronicles.com.

So what else did I do all day? Besides running around with Cecil and getting more pictures of him (While it was Star Wars Day there were more and more people in costumes of all variety) I also spent a good deal of time in the morning chasing down an illusive Mythbusters bag.  As I walked into the convention center I saw all these people with gigantic Mythbusters bags.  I asked someone where they had gotten it and was told that someone was handing them out on the street- so off to the street I went looking for the ones with the bags.  Nope, all I saw were more people with Mythbusters bags so I finally just gave up and pulled out the Dark Horse Comics bag I received at preview night and used that.  The funny thing is I must have had Mythbusters on my mind because when I headed to Room 29 to pick up my 40th Anniversary History of Comic-Con book, I was walking by the always packed Ballroom 20 and I could swear I saw Adam Savage of Mythbusters!  So confident was I that this must be Adam Savage I boldly came up and said “Hi!  Could I get a picture of you with my monkey?” As I was focusing the camera I noticed the name tag which did not say Adam Savage, but I politely said “Oh I’m just picking people at random and getting their picture taken… Thanks!” I keep going back to the photo and don’t know, but think it is a pretty amusing anecdote dealing with the power of Cecil once again getting me to do something I normally would never have done. Finally as the day drew to a close I had to make a decision do  I stick it out and go to the Eisner Award Ceremony or do I just say I’m tired and head back to the hotel with my metric ton of books.  I chose the later convincing myself that I would probably have to wait in line for hours, then not get a seat and it would be a waste of time.  I finish this post and the Eisner’s will have just concluded and my only thought is I guess the next time I try to attend I’ll either have a professional badge or I’ll be nominated for the award.  What’s that quote? “Reach for the stars- you may never touch them, but you won’t end up with a handful of mud either.”

After being sore and tired and worn out yesterday I experienced one of the great bonuses when it comes to traveling west-  I got to sleep in without sleeping in.  My body thought it was 10:00 AM but the clock only said 7:00! I headed out knowing that there was very little on my plate when it came to sessions I wanted to go to so it would be an easy day enjoying the exhibit hall and maybe, just maybe finishing off some of the must do shopping.  I started in the typical overwhelmed state trying to figure out where I needed to go and stopped by “The Prisoner” booth to see what was going on.  “The Prisoner” is a cult classic from England and it is being rebooted (Hollywood’s new term) on AMC (didn’t that used to be American Movie Classics?).  It does look interesting and I went ahead and gave them my email address so I could become 234 and a citizen of the village.  I decided that it would be cool if Cecil had one too.  So knowing that all they wanted was to reach their quota of collected email addresses I asked if the monkey could get one and since he does have his own they went right ahead (after some some slight Jedi mind tricks) and took his photo.  The funny part was when the gut who does the cards got to that picture you could just see the confusion on his face. So then I took my time on a quest to get some things done.  Get “Winter 1152” from David Peterson and get my copy of “Fall 1152” signed. Find Chris Giarrusso and see if he was still doing his really cool crayon drawings and get one.  He was and I did.  Then I was determined to find Scott Sava’s booth WITHOUT consulting my program.  This was a bad idea.  I remember seeing it Wednesday night and not going over (don’t know why, just didn’t).  I now wanted to make sure I knew where it was and see what stuff he had (Scott does the webcomic Dreamland Chronicles and a bunch of all ages stuff that is really great).  I would hate to have seen my trail as I kept looking and finding nothing…  I found a bunch of other cool booths and kept ending up in some different places.  Finally after a quick break I gave up and looked in my guide.  I’ll be back sometime before Sunday to pick up the books I need. So I’m wandering around and there is Andy Runton’s Booth.  Andy does the wonderful comic “Owly” which is a great book and was my very first geocache.  The cool ting about it is any kid can read it since it has virtually no words!  The story is told entirely through pictures it is so cool, so I picked up a complete set of his books and some other stuff.  Andy was so nice he even gave Cecil a pin on Wormy (if you had read Owly, you would know WHO wormy is) that Cecil has been wearing since. I also picked up the DVD of the Jeff Smith documentary, before heading off to my only panel of the day.  Jimmy Gownley does the comic book “Amelia Rules!” which is about the life of a girl and her friends… its about growing up, its about being a kid, its just plain cool.  I have a bunch of copies in my classroom not because I like but because it has a strong female character that kids relate to (and because I like it).  The panel was on self publishing, but really it was the story of how Jimmy started creating comics and how he (and his wife) got people to read the comic. Inspiring, and since it wasn’t about Twilight (Jimmy started off with something about “Thank you attending this panel on How Twilight has impacted American goth culture…” or something like that) it wasn’t full.  And I feel that most of the sessions I will want to attend will be like that.  I really don’t care too much about the latest Hollywood blockbuster that just got announced.  While I love Disney & Tim Burton’s work, I didn’t really want to wait hours in line to try to get into Hall H to hear about “Alice in Wonderland” although the net was abuzz over Johnny Depp showing up for that panel.  James Cameron is a fantastic filmmaker and I’m sure Avatar is going to be a great movie… again did I need to be there?  Some girls on the Trolley back had waited a couple hours to get into one of the main halls and finally gave up when they realized that there were still about 1,000 people ahead of them.  That has been something I doubt I have heard the last of- overcrowding.  There are a lot of people here!  trying to move in the exhibit hall in some places can be almost impossible.  This does not bode well for my plan to attend the Eisner Awards or the Masquerade, but if it happens great, if it doesn’t, so be it.  I will at least have tried there are other things going on or I could maybe get some of the comics done for next week. Today though, was not just for shopping, or learning about one of my favorite comics… it was for Cecil and taking the time to let the monkey help me break down some of the barriers that keep me from actually being more outgoing.  For some people this may seem a shocking statement, but I am an introvert.  Talking to people and being outgoing are against my nature.  I don’t know if it was something that happened in my dark childhood (maybe the butler told me to shush too many times) or what, but anytime I’m in a new situation I have to push myself to be social.  Cecil has helped- I’m not self confident enough to come up to a girl in a metal bikini and ask if I can take her picture… even if thousands of other guys are.  But to chronicle Comic-Con I wanted to really help everyone understand what was happening, so Cecil has to be the one to get me to push beyond and ask “Can I get a picture of you with my monkey?” Be it an artist I admire, or a guy in a crazy costume or a girl in a metal bikini, Cecil does get the photo because he is one spoiled monkey that no one can refuse.  So check out the Flickr account and see Cecil’s latest photos.  Friday is Star Wars Day so I’m sure he’ll get his share of Stormtroopers and other inhabitants of the Star Wars Universe.  Saturday is the Masquerade so there will be a lot more costumes then.  The cool thing is these are people who are enjoying themselves taking some time from their hectic lives to be someone else to escape.  Having Halloween in July, and that is so cool. Final note:  Geocaching wise- I looked for three different caches today and found none.  Mostly (I know this will come as a shock) because of muggles (and muggles dressed as wizards, and super-heroes, and zombies, and vampires, and… you get the picture), but some because I may not have been looking in the right places, I’ll keep trying hopefully finding a few before I leave.