San Diego Dreaming

It's a sickness really...

The prep begins almost as soon as the last edition ends. That doesn't include the virtual scrums that start taking place around the new year as the general public, press and professionals try to secure their badges (pro credential renewal year for me this year. Bah.) and hotel rooms. Each one of those the online equivalent to those wedding dress sales you see on the news where the department store cuts the prices so low that women are camping out waiting for doors to open and actually get in fist fights trying to save money on a dress...some of them not even engaged. It's San Diego. Comic Con International. The pop culture version of a $25 Vera Wang.

Got my badge back in January. Booked my room at [REDACTED] the weekend before Hotel-O-Ween. When the tax refund comes in, I'll book the flight. (Though there's a new fare sale from Southwest that might mean at least the flight out will be booked this weekend.) I'm in, God help me.

It really shouldn't be this hard. Any other convention you can still get a badge and a room in the weeks before the show. No other convention has "start walking now to get in condition" in the preparation tips. Any other convention that fills you with equal parts dread and anticipation, with the dread sometimes edging the anticipation, would be dropped without a second thought by a sane person. Life's too short to be so stressed out by something that is supposed to be "fun."

But it's San Diego. Nerd Prom. Geek Vegas.

Since my first SDCC in 2005, I've only missed one year. To be honest, that year I missed the show my withdrawal pangs faded by Friday, but they were still there. Much like my annual trip to Metropolis, IL renews my fire to create comics, San Diego has become the place that fire gets focused. It is there I first got to become friends with Tony Lee, who has given me some of the best advice on both writing and getting out there to promote my writing I could ever receive. I got to not just see the first in person meeting of Ray Dillon and Renae DeLiz, but attend their wedding in the amphitheater in back of the convention center. It was here I made the contacts that led to 51 DELTA seeing print, my first editing credit on FRACTURES and two of the three books we're waiting on the art for can be traced to SDCC. Every year I've attended, new doors have opened for me.

I've watched the show go from being tolerated by local businesses to being embraced to essentially taking over the downtown and Gaslamp areas. I've seen the Navy and the Padres start scheduling to avoid "con week." I got to meet Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's 2007 and we made Variety's 2009 photo recap. (Not vital to the comics thing, but my inner 13-year-old is still giddy over that one.)

In between lettering pages as they come in and trying to get my newer pitches lined out, I find myself checking my "Con Sites." Not unlike my political season browsing, I have my places I check a couple of times a week. The "unofficial" convention sites that keep track of the events in AND outside the con that Bleeding Cool and The Beat might miss. The Gaslamp business association site to see what regular haunts might have closed and what's new as food and drink options. The Union-Tribune just to see what we are flying into. It's March, I have at least 3 other shows planned and I'm trying to get projects together while running a radio station...but July 16th is calling to me, and not just for the All Star Game.

Summer is coming.