Zan's Little Comic-Con Diary: Saturday
by Charles "Zan" Christensen [Print-ready Version]
The penultimate episode! Come and join me as we relive the halcyon days of Saturday at Comic-Con. (Well, the halcyon day.) There's not much time left, but you can use the Gay Agenda to plan the remainder of your weekend in San Diego.
The folks from Lucky Legendary were on hand in the morning at the Prism Comics booth, basking in the glow of the LGBT comics community. Tommy Roddy (Pride High) and Tony Lawrence (Western Nightmares) got their picture snapped with one of the Legends.
There were these guys with lizard abs and breasts bigger than most women at the Con, and they were dressed in animal skins and saying things like, "We will make your our slaves!" and "We will eat you!" I think they were promoting something, but I was kinda distracted and forgot what it was.
Steve and I took a trip around the convention floor looking for hats (there are always great plushie hats with faces and ears and stuff), but couldn't find anything suitable. I did find this kicky Wonder Woman belt, though!
And what convention would be complete without an appearance by the one and only Caveman Robot! He paused his wanderings only briefly to pose with an ultra-fabulous Wonder Woman, and I managed to cop a feel, pretending to be a damsel in distress. Than animal pelt is so soft! Such a contrast to the steely exterior of this Cenozoic Champion.
I finally managed to make it over to the booth that Paige Braddock and Tim Fish shared this year and bought some books to catch up on what they've been up to. Paige came out with a great compendium of her Jane's World series that packs a lot of story into a hefty paperback. Makes a great gift! And Tim Fish recently came out with the full color Young Bottoms in Love collection benefiting a lot of groovy charities, including the one and only Prism Comics!
Back to the Prism booth I went to check in on Alonso Duralde and Dave White. I picked up a copy of Dave's book, Exile in Guyville after being told by a reader that he started reading it and couldn't stop, even though he was at a sex club and was getting hit on left and right. Any narrative that can hold your attention in those circumstances must be pretty engaging.
The Prism booth is a total LGBT-magnet! Just hang out there for any length of time and you'll run into a who's-who of queer comics. Small Favors creator and Banana Sunday artist Colleen Coover stopped by and checked in with Prism's Patty Jeres, who was resplendent in lavender and pink.
While I must say that I totally dig my fancy new iPhone, and have been getting a lot of use out of it this Con, if you push the device and do too much fancy stuff with it in a day, the battery will die on you. My battery expired just before the big Gays in Comics panel, and I unfortunately got zero pictures of the event. (Moral of the story: always pack a backup!)
Several people told me afterward that it was one of the best, if not the best, Gays in Comics panel that Andy's done, which was great to hear. No doubt a big contributor to that success was the big "surprise guest" that Andy Mangels had been hoping for; it turned out that our "token straight panelist" was none other than DC Comics President Paul Levitz, who spoke eloquently and humbly about DC's progress toward being a company that treats every person decently.
Alison Bechdel was the smart one, with a note pad and a pen handy to jot down high points and return to important points when her turn came around. As for me, I remembered just a few things, and a lot of them were supplied by Paul. One point he made that stuck with me was that he said he was mostly oblivious to LGBT issues, but hoped that his obliviousness resulted in neutrality rather than inadvertent harm. As anyone who's followed the progress of the major publishers over the years can attest, DC has shown example after example that proves the latter.
Chuck Kim fielded some inevitable questions about the here-today-gone-tomorrow gay character on Heroes, and promised that the show would do a gay storyline and do it well, though there was nothing imminent.
Alonso Duralde touched on the theme that success in representation had to mean major gay characters on network TV, or big budget movies, or comics from the major publishers. Are we relying too much on big, mainstream sources to reflect our lives, and not turning enough to independent voices who are already doing so?
Megan Gedris sung the praises of webcomics once again, and celebrated the fact that the accessibility of web publishing allows people to write and draw exactly what they want, without having to filter through an editor or a publisher, and how this is great news for LGBT creators and storylines.
Alison Bechdel said that her next project will be different from Fun Home in a lot of ways, and probably more difficult. Expectations are high since the success of her first memoir; she has a finite time limit (less than 3 years, as opposed to the seven it took her to complete Fun Home; and she will be working on a book about past relationships— living people as opposed to deceased— and will have to reconnect with a lot of people in the course of working on it.
She got some laughs when she said the best way she can go ahead and work on it and not worry about it is to assume it will be a failure. That's one way to deal with pressure!
I got to speak a little now and then about my book The Mark of Aeacus, as well as about how Prism Comics got started and my experiences volunteering with the organization.
Shortly after the panel and just before the Prism Comics Fan Mixer got underway, Roger Klorese announced that Patty Jeres, formerly on the Advisory Board, will be joining the executive board as our talent and industry liason, and that I will be rejoining the board as our web coordinator. We spent a lot of the day cooking up some great ideas for the coming year and getting ourselves all psyched up.
We ran some silent auctions on some fantastic donated items (including a Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman statue signed by none other than Ms. Carter herself!) and gave out a lot of fabulous raffle prizes. I thanked (and you should thank) DC Direct, Clayburn Moore, Lucky Legendary, Wizard, Van Eaton Galleries and Baby Tattoo Books for their generous donations and ongoing support of Prism Comics.
And I also sent out a big special thanks to Ted Abenheim, our Events Chairperson, who coordinated all the volunteers, creator signings, raffles, auctions, and basically helped turn chaos into order every day at the Prism Comics booth. There's so much to do every year, and without someone giving their all to make it happen, it simply wouldn't. Thanks for coming through for us again, Ted!
Even after all that, there was still more. Aman Chaudhary once again hosted the fabulous Big Gay Dinner at Bandar Grille, giving us all the chance to have cocktails and some incredible food and have some great facetime.
Several of us trundled off to Pecs for some more drinks, and then finally made out way back to our hotel for a little rest and recuperation. Expect Sunday's blog to be short, short, short! 
Charles "Zan" Christensen was the Founding President of Prism Comics. He lives in sunny Seattle with his fiancé Steve and their two cats Noblet and Geoffrey.
Prism Comics promotes the works of the LGBT community in comics. It does not implicitly endorse any other material or products associated with those works. Any opinions expressed are those of the author(s).
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