I seem to be doing more blogging than usual during this con. Maybe because I’m an old man and I’m spending more time back in my hotel room than I usually would at a con. Anyway, I gave up on the con a bit early today, so here I am.
I got to the Tim Sale and Peter Tomasi spotlight panels this morning, as planned. Both were good. Sale mostly talked about his past DC work. He seems to have mellowed a bit since the last time I saw him at a con. I guess that was at least ten years ago, now that I think about it. He didn’t talk about any new or upcoming work, which was a little disappointing. I was kind of hoping he’d announce that he was working on something new. But I guess he’s mostly just doing covers these days. (Which is fine. I can always go back and reread Long Halloween if I need a Tim Sale fix.)
Tomasi also mostly talked about his DC work, though he did mention The Bridge, which I read recently, and is quite good. I’ve missed out on most of Tomasi’s DC work, since he started writing when I wasn’t actively buying books and his Rebirth-era work has all been on books that I’m not reading. But he started writing Detective recently, so I’ll be reading his work on that. I think I also have some of his New 52 Batman & Robin stuff in ComiXology, waiting to be read.
Later, I went to the DC “Meet the Publishers” panel, which was fun, but mostly just a reiteration of stuff I’d heard on DC panels yesterday. After that, I thought about staying in that same room for the Batman birthday panel, followed by Quick Draw and Cartoon Voices. But I decided I needed to get some air, so I skipped the Batman panel and walked around a bit. I thought I’d be able to come back for Quick Draw without too much trouble, but when I got back, the line for that panel was (literally) out the door and running along the outdoor balcony. So it didn’t look like I’d make it into that one. It was a big room, so maybe I would have, but it didn’t seem likely. So I gave up, and here I am back in my hotel room eating dinner and writing a blog post.
Again, I didn’t buy much today, but I did pick up the trade collection of Groo vs. Conan. It occurred to me yesterday at the Mark & Sergio panel that I’d never gotten around to picking that up. And, since Dark Horse lost the rights to Conan, I wasn’t going to be able to pick it up digitally, which is how I’ve been getting most of the recent Groo books. So I found somebody with a copy at half-price and bought it. Mark, Sergio, and Tom Yeates are all at the con, so theoretically I could get all three of them to sign it tomorrow, if I can find all of them. I probably won’t do that, but I’ll keep an eye out and see if I can.
It’s only 5:30, so I could go back to the con now and do some more stuff, but there’s not really much I want to do. The big event tonight is the masquerade, which would be fun, but it doesn’t start until 8:30, and I’ll be just about ready for bed by then. At this point, I think I’ll just do some reading and maybe watch a movie or something. (I wonder if the WiFi here is fast enough for Netflix…)
Tomorrow, I have a handful of panels I want to see, then after the con, I’m going to meet some old friends who live out here for dinner. So that’s cool.