Monday, March 03, 2008

A couple of years ago I attended the San Diego Comic Con, armed only with a selection of my minicomics, an oat bar and a bottle of water, looking to score some professional engagements in the comics industry. For those that don't know, SDCC (as it is known, affectionately or not) is a four-day beast of a convention with no air conditioning and over a hundred thousand attendees, all wearing Green Lantern costumes that are four sizes too small. The hall is about a half mile long and walking from one end to the other, squeezing through narrow tunnels of green spandex, has been known to take up to nine hours.

The editors at SDCC are generally stressed and tired, and most don't have time to talk to some guy from the UK with a bunch of minicomics. It's easy to get discouraged and I did. One of the few things which lifted my spirits over those dark few days was meeting an editor who was not only happy to speak with me, but was enthusiastic about his work, my work and everything that was going on around him. That man was Mark Siegel and it was his first SDCC...

Mark is the head honcho at First Second, who have produced some of the most interesting English language graphic novels of the last couple of years, and he's also a talented cartoonist. Check out his account of meeting Moebius at Angouleme.
Isn't that great?

I'm in a bit of a Jack Johnson mood at the moment, and I just found this at the Internet Archive: a bunch of live recordings of his shows! (Tomorrow I'll likely be in a Metallica mood, but there's nothing similar for my favourite middle-aged rock moshers).

Some lovely photos at the BBC's Pictures of the Week selection a couple of weeks ago, and if you cycle along to #4 you'll be looking at one provided by FP blogger and all-round top lad Joe Gordon.

In other news, I only just realised that Joe is the same Joe who writes the infamous Woolamaloo Gazette blog... You know - the one that made every UK news outlet in the world when the author was sacked from Waterstones in Edinburgh for mentioning his workplace. Lots of people stopped shopping there as a result.

Bokononism.
Just in case you didn't click on it the last time...


One of my favourite cartoonists in the world, Shintaro Kago, is interviewed in the latest issue of Vice magazine. I couldn't find one (and I'm not sure if it appears in the UK version anyway) but luckily someone has scanned it and popped it up online.

This story about a new technological breakthrough meaning the end of the perpetual painting of the Fourth Rail Bridge gave me deja vu - it is the premise for Tom Stoppard's 1967 radioplay Albert's Bridge. I wish I could find that online somewhere...

Elephant Words since the last post : Mycophagist and Petrified Norman.
Hope you've been reading the rest of the entries though!

No comments:

THE BLOG IS DEAD (I mean the blog as a medium. This blog is merely sleeping.) I really miss writing the blog so I'm determined ...