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Welcome back to the 4th installment of My First San Diego Comic Con! To date you’ve waited in line with me prior to the Con, met X-Men god, Chris Claremont, and ran into our first group of Cosplayers. Today, we hit the Con floor and meet the other amazing people I ran into in the comic book industry; from writers, to artists, PR people, and new friends, these are the folk I just had to meet while attending my first ever SDCC!

Our story picks up directly after The Movie Lady and I’s adventure winning our wristbands to attend the Chris Clarmeont signing. We finished with all that hoopla at around 10:35 am, which meant we still had time to make the Dan Abnett signing that was scheduled until 11. Lucky for us, it was literally just across the way from where we were in the Pavilion! One of our writers here on ComicAttack.net, Billy, is a HUGE Abnett fan, so I had to meet the man for his sake. Plus, I think his Marvel Cosmic stuff is pretty damn rockin’ (The Thanos Imperative, Realm of Kings, War of Kings, Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova, etc., etc.).  He’s a chill guy and was more than willing to take a picture with us and sign a few card thingies as souvenirs (he even signed one for Billy too)!

After our meeting with Dan Abnett, we finally hit the Con floor and let our jaws drop to the ground in bewilderment. My friends, walking through those doors for the first time in my life was an experience I will never forget. I felt like I was 11 all over again, and that I was in a place where everything I ever imagined was real and the world was my playground. We waltzed around for a long while, just taking in the sights and the people with these dopey grins on our faces. I was bumped into a bajillion times for walking so aimlessly, but I didn’t care! I was at Comic Con International!

Eventually though, I remembered that I was also there on business, and that I wanted to meet some of the people I communicate with on a weekly basis via e-mail, but have never met personally. People like the publicity coordinators for comic book companies who send us awesome stuff to review on the site. This is what eventually led us to stop by the Dark Horse Comics booth and meet their publicity coordinator, Jim Gibbons (@EnemyofPeanuts). For almost the last year now, Jim and I have pinged each other back and forth with e-mails at least 2-3 times a week as he sends us review PDF’s, PR announcements, exclusives, and whatever else comes up related to Dark Horse. In short, Jim is the man, and we finally got to shake hands at SDCC!

After chatting it up with Jim, The Movie Lady and I moved on to meet another dude whom I frequently e-mail, only this time it was at the Zenescope Entertainment booth. He’s the man who gave us a pull quote on the cover of the 4th issue of his series, The Waking, executive editor and writer, Raven Gregory! It was great to finally put a face to the name of the man who gave us such an honor!

At this point The Movie Lady and I felt the urge to meander some more, and we hit up the retailer section of the Con, scoping out all the awesome deals from the sellers there. Believe me, we found some pretty cool stuff at some pretty cool prices- but more on that later this week. In the same area as the retailers were the indie publishers, and we met a bunch of creators who were more than willing to talk with us about their work. Some even gave us free copies of their book to review, and we’ll be posting pictures of those in a future segment of My First San Diego Comic Con (along with the reviews!). But one indie creator in particular really left an impression on me, and his name was Stephen Notley, the creator of Bob the Angry Flower. Stephen was quite the character to talk to, combining his sales pitch with becoming the role of his title character. The series focuses around Bob the Angry Flower who, as you could have guessed, is sarcastic, crude, and absofuckinlutely hilarious. Stephen graciously passed off a copy of his work to me, and I’ll be posting a review of Bob the Angry Flower: Rothgar in a future segment of Wacky Comic Wednesday!

After talking to Stephen, my eye caught a glint of something awesome. “Holy crap!” I said out loud as I spontaneously bolted to a booth in the retailer section. The Movie Lady had to break into a light jog to catch up with me. “I used to have that!” I exclaimed ecstatically, pointing to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers original Megazord action figure, still in the box, hanging on a hook against the back wall. “Woah! And I had all those original Power Rangers too! The ones in the triangular boxes! And that Dragonzord!! And the white Tigerzord!!!! Rad!!!” I was geeking out so hardcore on these old Power Rangers toys (that I later gave to my next door neighbor when I was 15- damn my eyes!), that I didn’t even notice who was sitting at the table in front of me with her numerous headshots strewn about her: Aisha Campbell, the second Yellow Ranger! When I realized she was there I was like, holy shit! I was so wrapped up in the stupid toys I didn’t even notice that one of the actual Power Rangers was sitting right in front of me the whole time. I felt like a gooftard. She was just smiling politely at me, probably running an internal monologue about how much of a dumbass I was. I tried to make up for it by talking to her about the show, and said something along the lines of, “Yeah, you did a great job considering the bad luck your predecessor had.” And she was like, “What do you mean?” And on the inhale of my answer, my brain made the connection with what I was about to say, and all the censors went off screaming, NO! DON’T SAY IT MAN!, but it was already too late, the words were already on their way out, “Oh you know, she died.”

Yeah. I’m surprised I’m even allowed to talk with people sometimes. There was an awkward beat, but Aisha took it in stride. She smiled and we talked for a minute or so more about the show before I got the hell outta there. I wanted to get a picture with her, but after that moment, I thought it wasn’t a great idea. Plus she was charging $5 per photo. Right after I left, Walter Emanuel Jones arrived at the booth and I managed to sneak in this blurry tabloid shot of the two of them:

At this point I checked the time and realized we had an appointment to make at the Shocker Toys booth to meet our good friends Stephen Stern and Dan Cote, the creators of Zen Intergalactic Ninja! Old school ComicAttack.net followers will remember last October when I ran The Wacky Month of Zen feature, which spotlighted various Zen comics and interviews with Steve and Dan. These two fine fellows have been incredibly supportive of our work here on the site, and now I finally had my chance to meet them; and you bet your spaceship that I wasn’t going to pass up the chance! I gotta say, Steve and Dan are two of the most inspiring entrepreneurs I’ve met in this industry. They have self-published Zen since the late 1980s, and kept him a prevalent character in the medium ever since. They’re fan boys at heart, and their energy and enthusiasm really shines through. The duo is always trying new things with the character, and this year’s San Diego Comic Con was no different! Steve and Dan were passing out Zen prints that stretched the limits of depth in 3D printing. The picture below doesn’t really do it justice, but trust me when I say it’s freakin’ awesome. Oh, and they also signed mine!

While at the Shocker Toys booth, Steve introduced me to Connie W. Siu of The Graphic Novel Company. TGNC’s focus is to bridge the gap between film makers and comic book creators, giving them a platform to springboard their movie through producing a graphic novel first. It’s a cool concept and one we’ll be exploring more here at ComicAttack.net, so stay tuned!

This is where we’ll leave off for today my friends. Be sure to tune in tomorrow as we showcase our second grouping of Cosplayers from the Con! If you missed Group A, be sure to click here and vote for your favorite. Also, check back all this week for more photos of signings, cosplayers, merchandise purchased, and much more from San Diego Comic Con 2010!

For previous installments of My First San Diego Comic Con visit this link!

Andy Liegl
andy@comicattack.net