Steve Lieber, Wondercon diary1997

Convention report-Wondercon 1997

A fairly typical convention: shilling and schmoozing, followed by several hours of fruitless grubbing. There isn't all that much actual -comics- content here, so if you find name dropping and anecdotes annoying, skip this.

The trip started off hectic, as most conventions do. I stayed up the night before to finish a page, and had to scramble to get packed and ready and to get various packages xeroxed and mailed. The bonus to this was that I got on the plane, closed my eyes and woke up in SFO. I must've snored really loudly because my seatmates gave me their angriest glares.

It was surprisingly easy to get to the Oakland convention center by bus and BART. And even though it was a crowded rush hour, people on the subway were happy to make way for the lurching, maladroit six-two unshaven tourist with morning breath, backpack, and a sixty pound duffel bag.

The Marriott was clean and comfortable and (sigh) costly. Next year I'm either spliting a room with a couple of other attendees or staying in one of the nearby flophouses. There are a couple of places near the Vietnamese grocery stores that look scary and cool, and it's a given that breakfast will be a lot cheaper. (Not that I actually ever ate at the hotel; there were a bunch of fun, cheap restaurants in the surrounding area.)

Matt Hollingsworth, Heidi Macdonald and Anina Bennett were all wearing clothing that appeared to be absolutely waterproof. Really. You could've turned a firehose on them and they'd just laugh at you.

Sadie O. provided the ride to the Comics Experience party and I shared the back of her van with Carlos (Buritto) Saldana, Matt, Doselle Young, Pat McGreal and Pat McGreal's guitar. Brian Hibbs's store is as cool as I'd heard and the drinks and food were plentiful. I was entirely sober, but managed to step on a shoelace and came within inches of spilling a plate of chicken curry on Neil Gaiman, who had his back turned and didn't notice a thing.

On to the con. My first impression of the Wondercon staff was that they seemed to be really well organized. They were efficient, friendly and able to answer every question I had. The show itself was decent sized, and very low stress. The PA was just loud enough. Several companies had music at their booths but the accoustics of the room did a good job of muffling it and no one was screaming like a maniac trying to get attention. Convention heaven, as far as I'm concerned.

I was seated near Peter Gross and Joe Staton, both of whom are really great guys with big fan followings. I spent the three days bs-ing with them and luring stragglers from their crowds. I was supposed to be sitting next to Al Gordon, but he opted to attend only as a guest rather than set up in artist's alley.

A heavy set guy, at least ten years older than I am, told me that he loves my comics and grew up reading my work.

I offered a ten year old one of my free quickie sketches. He asked if I can draw Venom. When I replied, "How about a Batman?" he squinted at me suspiciously and walked away. Something like this seems to happen at every con I attend, actually.

It's Passover, and throughout the con I found myself sharing "what can we eat" tips with Meloney Chadwick, Nat Gertler and several others. While I expect it to take time to explain concepts like "chametz" to newly arrived Vietnamese and Cambodian waiters, I didn't think that the holiday would be that obscure to the California-born cashier at the Italian deli. For a culture that's supposed to control the media, we're sure doing a lousy job at getting the word out.

Mark Fossen, having been advised by me and others to start his sketchbook with a really impressive piece, asked -me- to do the first one. Pressure. Not wanting to disappoint or make the people who suggested me look bad, I did the most labor-intensive con sketch of my career, and developed a minor case of crosshatcher's shoulder. Less is more, and less is less painful, too.

As if this wasn't stressful enough, I looked up from my Hawkman sketch to notice that Joe Kubert had sat down next to me and was watching what I was doing. That handshake of his can still grind your knuckles to dust, and I swear to god he's getting younger.

At the Homage tables, Brent Anderson was showing people the gift that Alex Ross just gave him--an Astro City cover painting, and jeez was it gorgeous.

I showed up at the Harvey's, and Matt Hollingsworth lured me over to where he was sitting. Doselle was there, as were Patty Jeres and Bob Wayne. Jerry Robinson's emcee-ing was corny and sweet, and he managed as best he could with tough names like Mark Wald and Kurt Boo-sek. Gary Groth got one of the bigger laughs of the evening with his "Jerry, you are no Jim Steranko" line, and the Fantagraphics creators did quite well. Dan Clowes was obviously embarassed to receive a plaque for best lettering. He stopped as far from the podium as possible, leaning in to say "I'll take it," before fleeing the stage. Later, he was visibly shocked when Eightball won two other awards, beating some stiff competition. He remarked that he didn't know who to thank because he does the whole damn thing himself- "Gary's the editor, but he probably doesn't even read it until it's published."

Kurt Busiek seemed to be the only award presenter who actually took the time to come up with a well-phrased intro to his catagories, though several others managed to vamp entertainingly.

On Saturday, I passed up the RAC get together and instead went to dine on a publisher expense account. Twenty minutes after we had ordered, the RAC group entered and sat down next to us. About an hour later, they were served, and half an hour after that, we were. Tom Galloway observed that we were starting to look like the Donner party. Our waitress had a voice like Jennifer Tilly, and at the seventy-five minute mark when we asked how our food was doing she just said "oh, fine..."

Later that evening, I took the Bart to San Francisco, and after a wait in the station where I watched a drunk jump down to show that the third rail didn't scare him, I found myself sitting on the train next to Al Gordon. Al and his girlfriend told me how to find the CoCo club, where my friend's band "Pucker" was playing a gig. The club was great, as was the band. Beautiful women at the table next to me stood up and danced with broad emotive gestures and professional movements. (The bassist lost her place a couple of times watching them.) A fat guy with a beard and a Johnny the Homicidal Maniac t-shirt sat passing a candle from one hand to another, and a drunken bleach-blonde with a ravaged face and remarkable thighs yelled out for one more song, even though the band was only about halfway through their set. After the set, I joined the band in the alley behind the bar and helped them pack up. While we did this, a tall crossdresser stepped over a sleeping homeless man, got on her motorcycle and took off at about seventy. I missed the last train back to Oakland and had to crash at my friend's and his girlfriend's place, where I slept on the floor sandwiched between a bunch of drying canvases and a really cluttered computer workstation. In the morning I stood in a crowd of elderly Chinese women to catch the bus that would take me to the Bart which would take me to Oakland. Was this an authentic bay area experience or what?

For the record, Mark Badger's baby is really cute, and his new book from Caliber looks pretty good too.

I spent the better part of Sunday trying to cadge a ride to SFO, putting innumerable creators, editors, publishers, retailers and fans on the spot before I finally bit the bullet and paid for a shuttle. Farid, my driver, wanted to know "what sort of a convention they are having here, that people dress as they do." I told him that it's a comics convention. When that rang no bells, I explained that it's a meeting of creators, editors, publishers, retailers and fans of comic books -things like Superman and Donald Duck. "And you are involved with this?" he asked. When I said yes he gave me a fearful look in the rearview and remained silent for the rest of the ride.

Sara picked me up at the Detroit airport at six am on Monday. She had good news about the graphic novel we're pitching, and we shared stories of our respective weekends. Then she went to work, and I, exhausted, to sleep.