Phew! We made it! I have to admit, I had second thoughts about booking two cons two weeks form one another. I've definitely done worse before, but I didn't ENJOY it as much as I could have/should have, and that's the dilemma I face.
I do have to say though, despite the fact I was completely worn out and tired as hell throughout this con, I still managed to have a great time. WHY was I tired as hell though? to know that, we have to go back... to the BEGINNING!
South City Comic Con is a one day show, only Sunday, so naturally I had to find something fun to do on Saturday as well. Enter my dear friend Joen Jien, who's been my table buddy MANY times before, and agreed to help me out on this one too. They've been wanting to introduce me to their new friend Christina for awhile now, and well, this felt like the prime opportunity. Issue is, Christina lives way, way down near Santa Cruz, and the con was all the way up in San Mateo. I don't need to tell you that that's a lotta drive time. "No problem", i said to myself, at the time, "we'll just make sure we go to bed early!"
Nope!
NOPE! NOPE! NOPE! NOPE!
Turns out, when you're hanging out with your best friends and THEIR new friends, going to bed early is an IMPOSSIBILITY!
Lemme tell you a little bit about Christina.
So she's an engineer, a musician, and all around just pretty interesting person. We hung out for awhile in the afternoon learning about each other, and in no short order, i discovered that Christina is a HUGE fan of the HBO series "Westworld". I... am a person who's never SEEN Westworld, and when that fact dropped in conversation, her mode changed directly into "OH MY GOD YOU HAVE TO SEE WESTWORLD!!" So we pretty much dropped everything and began doing exactly that, and buddy, lemme tell yuh... I was completely hooked by the first 20 or so minutes of the first episode. I didn't want it to stop, we only BARELY stopped long enough to eat dinner! It was amazing, it was perfect, and it was only heightened by the fact that Christina paused it every once in awhile to point out fun, interesting trivia about the series to help provide context to what we were about to see.
I did not want to stop, but it was well passed midnight by the time we wrapped up the 5th episode, and i knew that me and Joen had an early day and a long drive ahead of us by morning.
Now... deciding to go to sleep was the easy part. GOING to sleep was the hard part. I was a fool and neglected to pack myself any pajamas for the evening so i slept in my clothes. That was strike one. trike two was the fact that I was attempting to fall asleep in an unfamiliar place on my bean back. The third and final strike wad the fact that it was sweltering hot that day. I have no idea how long I managed to sleep, but I know it wasn't for very long.
Thankfully, I was not the one doing the driving in the morning. Joen graciously offered to cart me around this weekend, and lemme tell yuh, that was VERY much needed. If i had to drive on that little amount of sleep, something real interesting mighta happened.
either way, we got to San Mateo in a pretty good amount of time, considering how early in the morning we left. We had a little time to stop and get breakfast before heading right to the convention center, and managed to walk in without much trouble.
So i spoke a little bit in my last blog about what my expectations for single day shows are like. I did not have exceedingly high hopes for this show, and I was absolutely correct not to. It was teeny. Itty bitty, I would even go as far as to say. There were two rows of three clusters of tables each, as well as some tables lined up along each side wall, and a selection of tabled against the back wall, which seemed to be reserved for celebrity autographs and pictures. During the first hour or so of the con, it felt like there were more vendors than attendees, and no one seemed like they were very interested in seeing anything. I was mentally ready to write this event off as a loss, not worrying too much about it, considering how cheap the table was, but things really turned around at about lunchtime.
I did not sell out of graphic novels like I had predicted, but I did sell quite a few of them, and I managed to bring a few of them home for the odd online sale that might still occur. The most delightful and surprising occurrence of the day was when my old high school friend Lizzie showed up at my table! I don't think I've seen Lizzie in over 5 years. It felt like it was longer ago at first, but I do remember briefly reconnecting sometime in 2014. The interesting thing about Lizze is that she served as inspiration for the TransCat character Zoe. I flipped through some of the pages and showed her what her inspiration had produced out of me. She happily got one of the graphic novels, and I warned her not to be TOO mad at how I depicted Zoe, and reminded her that the kernel of truth is in there, but it's mostly fiction and silly jokes. I've YET to hear her critique, so fingers crossed!
The evening wound down slowly. We got a small surge in attendance but it wasn't too big. the whole con was pretty sparse and chill. I got to look around a little bit and find some action figures I wanted, then we headed back to MV to get to Pho and it was delicious.
I'm gonna go on an extended hiatus for the rest of this year and maybe some of next year. I gotta lotta material to work on, and I'm hoping to have it all done and ready for you by 2020. Wish me luck, guys!
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