Day 2 was officially Day 1 of the con and there were plenty of sights. Highlights included the one-legged Grindhouse girl, the Pirate Ship, the Jabba The Hutt throne that you could sit on, and IRON MAN! Search flickr for lots of good stuff. The scale of the booths was a lot different than ten years ago when I was impressed with Dave Lap ham for making a Stray Bullets sign that didn't look like it was foam core hand colored photocopies.







Tim with the Ugly Dolls.

Tim and Yui took off to visit the Zoo and I wandered around to see comic-book folks before things got too crazy. Tom Spurgeon gave me a formal introduction to Dan Nadel whos Picture Box booth had loads of treasures. (...and recommended a great Persian dinner that I wish I had skipped lunch for.) I did most of my gift buying at Picture Box and discovered (through Julia) Jon Vermilyea's work. He's got a book coming out through Picture Box soon but the talk of the con were his pop-culture art prints:


I love things like this for taking me from who I was to who I am. I kept dragging people to his booth.

I also picked up a few hand-made books by John Broadley, some basement tapes from Brian Chippendale, and a Gary Panter shirt that is now my favorite T. Picturebox is sickeningly ignored by team comics..and puts out the occasional too preciously indy crap..but their gems are real gems and I hope to see them at future conventions where I'll try to bring a lot more cash...and for god sake Comic-Con..give them a better spot.

I also saw Jeffrey Brown, Rene French, a bunch of people from The Engine, Jordan Crane, Johnny Ryan, Steve Lieber, Chris Pitzer, Stuart Moore, and was complaining to Jim Ottaviani and Heidi McDonald about certainly not being able to run into Jeff Parker since he didn't have a table when they did that "uh..he's right over there" nod. Oh, and ran into Chris Jones and Melissa because I always do.

Welcome google artist's name searchers!

After the Persian feast we went to the CBLDF party where we ran into ol' studio mate Brian Ewing and Andrew Bawidamann, bought expensive beers, and joined in the "Drink and Draw" for charity. Which was a lot of fun and we might join Dave Witt in the local version some time.

Here's Yui completely unaware that he's drawing with Jim Lee and Dave Johnson.