A few weeks back, when I mentioned that some recent work was going to be available first at the San Diego Comicon, a number of organized types asked if I would myself be attending said convention, hoping to figure out their travel arrangements accordingly.

I will, in fact, be in attendance at varying times Friday through Sunday. Sure, this information comes just mere days before the con, but I’m doing my part to keep the channels of communication alive, dig?

The con experience, in general, has always been something of a surreal, slightly unnerving thing to me, as I only started attending them when I got published with JTHM and, before that, was never the sort of person who wanted anything signed or ever conceived of creators of anything I liked as human beings I wanted to meet so much formless brainclouds that generated interesting matter.

Dan Vado, early on, warned me that comic book artists aren’t quite like authors, musicians or other sorts of creators making appearances to sign “stuff”. There’s something terribly accessible and open to the audience about sitting at a little table, everyone looming over you, you’re forced to look up and feel like you’re under a microscope. Then you’re expected to draw things for people, which I rarely ever do even for friends, and sometimes draw requests, which is even more stressful as I’m never comfortable just doodling things without getting them just right. Now, an author isn’t expected to write lil’ stories for each visitor, and a musician doesn’t sing a small tune for everyone that asks, but I have to draw GIR riding a pig dressed as Santa Claus with elves that look like someone’s personal character?! MADNESS!

Okay, actually, I do like doodling and I do think that most of the people that show up are super nice, but it’s still quite alien to how I do things. Thing is, often there are restrictions made on the lines at the booth, so the guys running things tell me not to do drawings, because they know how long it ends up taking me, and when one person sees I am doing a drawing for someone, they pull out their sketchbooks and start thinking of what they will have me draw for them, and the line simply stops moving. It’s awesome that that’s even a problem, but it’s also pretty horrible in terms of crowd management, and we have lots of other people signing at the booths, and it’s not cool when they get buried in someone else’s line with no way for their fans to get through the mess. Crowd management also means specific cutoff times for actual signing, and this one usually gets me the worst looks because people think I’m just walking off, hating them. But if I stay to sign that “one last book” then nobody goes away and the mess just gets worse, and then the booth gods start yelling at me to flee. This usually results in very angry people saying what an asshole I am on the internet, with stories of how I laughed at someone, kicked them in the neck, fucked their girlfriend, and refused to sign their ass, and that’s funny enough, but it’s also kind of depressing to think that that’s the kind of person that’s standing in line for me.

So I’ve submitted some designs to Dan for a future convention setup, and it’s very exciting. In the future, the artist no longer has to endure having people stand, looking down on them, feeling small and crowded over! The future has the artist sitting atop a slick metal ziggurat, perched at their signing station with everyone climbing steps below them, their heads significantly lower than the lucky artist’s! The metal is slick to make it dangerous to keep your footing, ensuring that only the most dedicated readers make it, filtering out the scum that just want to be jerks. The slick surface also makes it hard to for the vidcam wielding ones to spend their entire time with you holding a camera to your face, never actually making eye contact because it would mean not watching the preview of how this life-experience will look on Youtube.

Of course, those types will loiter about the bottom steps, acting too cool to loudly show how not insane and crazy they are to the fans they label crazy and insane. This is where the spinning circular saws come into play, traveling around the perimeter, cutting off the legs of anyone that is just hanging around to be creepy as fuck, or to squeeze squeeky toys right next to the ears of someone that is just politely waiting in line to get something signed.*

Still working out the rest of the setup, but trust me, it’s going to be incredible. There’s this bit with a jackhammer that you’d dig.

See, I get a lot of shit not for what I do, but for some of the ghoulish fans that sorta ruin the image for any of the many decent ones that show up to these things or just mail me to say a kind word or two about my actual work. So this Ziggurat thing is a step in the right direction, though it might actually only leave a certain rabid, survivalist faction of my audience alive to get stuff signed. I’ll fine tune it…eventually.

But until the plans are completed, if you attend a convention, for me or for anyone, but ESPECIALLY ME, just try to be cool, yeah? Don’t stalk anyone, snapping pictures for an hour while you think you’re being covert, hiding behind that fat lady, and giggling when you see that you’ve annoyed someone, thrilled that you were acknowledged in some way. Being crazy or scary or annoying isn’t really the best way of being memorable. Hell, I’m usually freaked out when someone ISN’T any of those things these days.

*(Rikki Simons, pointing out that SLG might not foot the bill for saws, suggests wasps in their place, but that brings up issues of containment and control)