A certain kind of failure leaves Los Angeles for San Diego. You can spot them close up, the Hollywood Dream’s dispossessed. I saw it in the face of my 11am bartender– his mean eyes squinted when I ordered a Diet Coke and then came a long, digressive monologue about who had produced what movie, who had directed what, and the best film of the year. He was a failed actor, someone who’d waited tables for too long with too little talent. Four years ago, the deepening grooves on his face had forced a reassessment. If he was to die in this state, he might as well get away from the Hell of Los Angeles and grab hisself a piece of the good life. An ocean mist clouds out San Diego mornings, but when it burns off, you can almost taste the sweetness.

But these, of course, are the inspirations of California– a sunblasted uniformity of the dumb and the deranged, where no youth fashion ever dies and where you can sit in a bar watching Soul Coughing, Kid Rock and 311 videos before the noon hour and never once does anyone blink at the sheer horror playing out on the plasma display. So no surprise that the most SoCal of SoCal locations hosts the Comic Con, a mass hysteria in which media properties are hand crafted and enacted in the human drama, writ large on willing bodies. I hope that future scientists and magicians will create the ultimate Cosplay/Masquarade costume– a psychic cloth that projects into the minds of the spectator the image of their favorite media character. You’ll be manga with the manga kids, Spidey with the nerds and children, Slave Princess with the sexless and every possible permutation thereof; you’ll be Gay Mario with the homosexual crowd and Latino Mario with the Guatemalans. All will smile in joy, except perhaps the wearer, who will lose the personal connection betwixt theirself and their favorite property. After all, ain’t that really what it’s about? Demonstrating your deep relationship with the Form of Green Lantern, and letting, for a day or two, the Idea overtake you? I suppose blankness can’t reflect in blankness– so perhaps my idea has flaws.

In any event, today I did the poster panel on Romance Comics. The CAC people paired me up with Jacque Nodell, who does the blog Sequential Crush. Recommended reading. The panel turned out interesting– romance comics people found us and listened and then posed questions and all was hunky dorky. I’d read Jacque’s blog even before I saw the list of presenters, so it was fascinating and bizarre to meet someone else interested in the same period. Even better, she’s given the matter an enormous amount of thought. A lady with a future, and anyone with decency would seriously consider giving her a forum to collect and document this material.

Our pal elly, now grown increasingly ambiguous, slummed down at the convention center for another day running. I realized, welling with sympathy, that no one has my infinite tolerance for repetitive tortures. I don’t like Comic Con but I damn well will go for four solid days; poor elly was knocked about by the middle of her second but soldiered on like a Christian.

Somewhere after the panel, she got a text message recommending that she scum around with some Hollywood dude. I amscrayed at the merest mention. Los Angeles filth is my demesne, so I know the score– one coked out C-list superego is indistinguishable from the next. A person should always have the good taste to stick with the talented or the beautiful. Mere competence is a common coin.

I wandered for a while, thinking about comics on my mercurial want list but getting none. The day before I scored a dirt cheap copy of Rory Hayes’s Bogeyman #1 and John Thompson’s The Book of Raziel. I got tired and sent elly an sms insisting that we leave. By then she’d had her fill of ever-so interesting Hollywood hilarity and quicksilvered out the door. We hit up a cab and wandered around the city for a delightful few hours, getting some food and walking the second malicious dog of my visit.

More tomorrow.

elly showed up. That’s roughly it. Also a dog ate my hat.

The day’s first visible sign manifested as an alcoholic 21 year old girl. One of my fellow passengers. In our three hour train journey from Los Angeles, she consumed a bottle of Heineken, emptied a small flask of Yager into Redbull over ice and downed a can of Bud Lite. Her unlucky travel companion, thrust by fate beside her, was a Genuine Hollywood Agent, wheeling and dealing into his Blackberry whilst the creature to his right grew increasingly soused. He thought the outlines were funny, a little like Noises Off. Farcical, if you will.

She conversed into her iPhone, most of which went like this: “Yeah like you had your arms around her so I was like fuck you, like why am I going to stay at this party for him, like am I retarded?” or “Yeah, we should totally move to San Diego. I know this guy who is six feet six, Justin and I broke up the day after I met him at a party. I will totally share a room with you, I am not even lying. I will strip for the money if I have to do. OMG dude, do you know what I was doing last night? I was totally up on the bar and my skirt was so short. OMG.”

I contented myself with our old friend Harry Paget Flashman. These last few days I’ve spent some time giving ‘em a squeeze for Flashy, so the old rogue’s company got us a little misty eyed at the thought that soon I’d be in the middle of the best working example of the overly-precious and barely comprehensible theories of Guy Debord. But, really, what truck does any American have with theory? I’m here down in the gutter of San Diego. As I write, a 400 pound Bangladeshi admires his fat in the mirror, pointing out the folds.

This is how the day went: I got off the train and immediately discovered something awry with my mate Arafat Kazi, whose over generous cousin is giving us shelter and safe harbor– but, I figured, perhaps only his flight was delayed. I navigated to the Convention Center and registered as a Pro, taking advantage of my new found status amongst the few and mighty to also snag badges for Arafat and my ever ambiguous pal, elly jonez.

I realized, staring into the gaping maw of the floor show, that I was about to enter the malestrom carrying 40 pounds of luggage. Ho, ho, says I, better not. Rather I shall sally forth to a restaurant and wait at the bar until I figure out what’s up with Kazi. Needless to say, one hour and a broken iPhone later, my luggage was in a car with the man and I wandered by my lonesome in the Gaslight District. There wasn’t much on the streets– just the usual mishmash of riffraff dressed like zombies– so I traversed inward.

Once on the floor, I noticed two things. First: the retreat of the Big Media Million Dollar Display. (Best example: our old pals from the SyFy network, who last year gave us harbor inside their spaceship display, don’t even HAVE a display.) Second: the reemergence of the weirdo back issue dealer. I’ve pawed through more underground comix in the last 12 hours than I have in the last ten years. One I truly wanted, but I punked out, knowing that buying on the first day is a slippery slope. Keep purchases to as late as possible, kemosabe. If the book is gone, it was not meant to be. Don’t be a loon. In any event, I got the general impression that this is the Recessionary Comic Con. Still big, still full of shit I don’t care about, but not the balls to the wall extravaganza of the two years previous.

After a handful of hours, my mouth grew sour. And then I realized: dude, you’ve got 3 more days. You’re in San Diego until Monday. Why did you think this was possible? You’ve only ever managed six hours. And now you have days. And you are actually, you know, part of the machinery. You’re a pro, you got a laminate badge holder that proves it. So I took a break from the floor and caught the Top Shelf panel. As far as these things go, it was much less embarrassing than usual and surprisingly detailed about the mechanisms of the company’s editorial process, apparently one that is considered very hands-on. The crowd asked decent questions, but no one had guts enough to pose the most logical extension of this idea: if you’re so up on editing your writers, can’t you tell Alan Moore to stop writing sex? I mean, please.

Speaking of things beyond the pale, my brain snapped like a rubber band against the nape of a nerd’s neck when I saw an overly-tanned girl dressed as Slutty Pikachu. I’m sure there’s pictures on Flickr, if you care to find them. Anyway, I’m far from a prude– I ain’t a mullah– but lord, no. It’s gone too far. Something about cheddar colored flesh contrasting with the blazing lightning yellow of the Pikachu costume. It made me a little nauseous.

And that, really, is how the day played out. It wasn’t particularly eventful, but it had shocks and horrors. Enough to prepare me for the dawn of the weekend. So we’ll see what happens.

Over and out.

A thing to do:

Saturday, July 25th, 2009. San Diego Comic Con.

2:30-3:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #12: Poster Session — Want to go in depth with a comics scholar? On Thursday, Friday, and Saturday the PowerPoints of the poster presenters will be available to read in printed “poster books” and then the scholars will be available in this session to discuss their presentations in small-group and one-on-one discussions. Matthew J. Brown (University of California, San Diego) explains how psychologist William Moulton Marston used his creation Wonder Woman to enact his project of emotional re-education about female love-domination. Erica Ash (Henderson State University) explores the circumstances in the 1980s that lead to real world vigilantes and a violent breed of fictional heroes and anti-heroes. Jonathan Brewer (Henderson State University) demonstrates how comic books can assist students in the study of not only American history of the 1900s, but also helps them to understand political atmospheres and cultural trends. Thad Allen (Henderson State University) uses modern science and technology to examine whether some of the ways in which superheroes have gained their powers can actually occur. Marko Head (Marko’s Corner) explores the incorporation of cinematic storytelling techniques into sequential art. Thomas Sepe (Henderson State University) looks at the history of comic books being used as a venue to communicate political propaganda. Evan Moreno-Davis (University of California, San Diego) analyzes the implicit value system in hero narratives that valorize individual achievement as a force for good. Carly Cate (Henderson State University) examines how story-driven characters such as Batman have been usurped by commercial creations like Hello Kitty. Ariel Schudson (UCLA) focuses on the Jon Favreau Iron Man film as a palimpsest for the adaptation and re-adaptation of the Iron Man mythos. Law professors Jamie Cooper and William Aceves (California Western School of Law) show how comics are being used in legal education.

Trauma Poster Panel: Sabrina Starnaman (UCSD) draws on disability studies to see how the facial disfigurement of figures like the Joker, Two-Face, and Jonah Hex makes meaning beyond the stigmatized existence of the impairment. Richard Harrison (Mount Royal College) finds Bill Finger’s hand in the transformation of the destruction of Krypton and Superman’s origin. Fans Poster Panel: Nick Langley (Rocket Llama World Headquarters) examines which personality traits are needed in order to succeed at pursuing a “dream job” such as creating comics. Alex Langley (University of North Texas) assesses addictive behavior in gamers, comics lovers, and other pop culture fanatics. Batman Poster Panel: Tommy Cash (Henderson State Univeristy) asks why the Dark Knight needs a Boy Wonder and finds that the Dynamic Duo exemplify Aristotle’s ideal of the “Friendship of Virtue.” Geri Lawson (CSU-Long Beach) examines how The Dark Knight Returns subverted the dominant voices of 1980s patriotism and the normative rigidity of the superhero’s sexualized body. Romance Comics Poster Panel: Jarett Kobek (www.kobek.com) explores the effect of the counterculture on romance comics and the tendency of American commercial art to easily commodify even the least likely sources. Jacque Nodell (Super Human Resources) unearths the forgotten romance comics work of artists like Winslow Mortimer, Don Heck, and Jim Steranko who breathed life into the beautiful women that grace the pages of romance comics. Room 30AB