50 Things I Love About Comics

So after reading a few posts off of 4th Letter (which in turn David had found from blake-reitz.livejournal.com), I decided, what the hey, I'll jump on the meme.

So here are my 50 Things I Love About Comics. The list is comprised of single issues of particular titles, titles themselves or GN's, comic properties in other media, creators themselves, and a quote that I don't think I'll really ever get tired of. Some of the items may actually cross-over with one another, but whatever. Here's the list:



1. Y: The Last Man #60
2. Gotham Central #37
3. Seven Soldiers #1
4. Gotham Central #12
5. Infinite Crisis #4
6. The Spirit #6 (Darwyn's run)
7. Tiny Titans #1
8. Captain America #25 (vol. 5)
9. Ex Machina #1
10. Solo #10 (Damian Scott issue)
11. Detective #787
12. Captain America #10 (vol. 5)
13. Y: The Last Man #58
14. Batman #603
15. Amazing Spider Man #36 (vol. 2)

16. New Gods/4th World
17. Runaways
18. Teen Titans Judas Contract
19. Pride of Baghdad
20. Black Hole
21. The Pro
22. Scott Pilgrim
23. DC: The New Frontier
24. Transmetropolitan
25. Phonogram
26. Suburban Glamour
27. Astonishing X-Men (Whedon & Cassaday)
28. XXXombies
29. Crisis on Infinite Earths
30. 52

31. “I’m the Goddamn Batman!”

32. Batman: The Animated Series
33. The Dark Knight
34. Spider-Man 2
35. Iron Man
36. American Splendor
37. Superman: The Movie

38. Brian K. Vaughan
39. Geoff Johns
40. Grant Morrison
41. Adrian Tomine
42. Pia Guerra
43. Tony Harris
44. Ed Brubaker
45. Tim Sale
46. Terry Dodson
47. Darwyn Cooke
48. JH Williams III
49. Jack Kirby

50. Twitter (what better way to keep tabs on most comic creators these days)

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: SDCC '08 Pt. 2

Check out my Flickr for photos from SDCC.

Attending San Diego Comic-Con requires an awful lot of energy, and especially more so if you go out after each day’s events inside the convention. By Friday morning of the con, my level of energy was pretty low. In fact, a little lower than I would have liked considering I had just come from spending a few days in New York. But, hey, it’s Comic-Con; you gotta suck it up for Comic-Con, right?

Although there wasn’t really any official Caballero meet-ups with the members of the former Brian K. Vaughan forum (now part of the current Tony Harris forum), I did get to hang out with a number of them here and there throughout the course of the weekend.

On preview night, I had dinner with Carrie and Stephanie and their friends, where Carrie her Ghost Whisperer-comic writing partner, Becky, and I geeked out on Indiana Jones and Star Wars.

Thursday night, I hung out with some friends from San Francisco that I hadn’t seen in quite a while, including my friend David Brothers, who was part of the comics-blogging panel at the end of the day, as well as the Japan-bound Mindy Owens. David may have complained about the lasagna having a little too much meat for him, but I think I was hungry enough, that there was probably too little for me. Anyway, twas a good meal.

Also got to hang out with Mike (Lagomorph), and Nick from the board on Friday night for dinner, before parting ways: they went to the Oni Press party, whereas I went back to the convention center for the tail end of the Eisners, before calling it quits for the night.

On Thursday I had a quick lunch with Capntightpants (David, I swear, I don’t know what it is, I just happened to know a swell of Davids) and his girlfriend. And then I also met up with them for the Joss Whedon panel on Friday. It was a packed panel, one in which I barely made it into, and right on time. Joss actually brought out his family that he worked with to create Dr. Horrible, as well as the cast of Dr. Horrible. The panel was awesome to say the least.

In fact, had I made it into the Watchmen panel, I definitely would not have made it into Whedon’s panel. To which, I was so fuckin close to getting into the Watchmen panel before being turned away because Hall H had reached capacity. And despite not making it into the panel, I had found a fellow complainer in Whitney Matheson when she told me that she didn’t get into the Watchmen panel either while we waited for the Entertainment Weekly: Filmmakers panel later in the day. Although we shared that in common, the fact that she still got to meet Zack Snyder, and I didn’t… well, one of the perks of being a member of the press.

To start things on Saturday morning, I went to the Black Panel, and there I found out about Method Man’s graphic novel, which I still gotta check out. Someone was dressed as Captain America at the panel, and I wish had gotten a photo of him, too. But I did take a picture of this person as bumblebee. Absolutely awesome! I missed out on getting into the writers of The Office panel, but I did make it into the Grant Morrison and Gerard Way panel, which was… well, do you need to know anything else other than Grant fuckin Morrison? And my favorite quote from the panel came from Gerard: "I don’t know what a Grammy means anymore, but I know what a Eisner means." Gerard and Gabriel Ba, of course having just won the Eisner for Best Limited Series the night before.

I ditched the last few hours of the con on Saturday to go to the Whitney Matheson / PopCandy meet-up at the Marriot’s roof-top Altitude bar, and for those PopCandy readers that rsvp’d for the meet-up were given Whitney’s Twitter-mini-comic. Online version found here!

I don’t leave any comments, and mostly ghost through the comments on Whitney’s blog, and didn’t rsvp for the meet-up, but being the kind and super-cool person she is, Whitney handed me the Twitter-mini-comic to me anyway.

After the meet-up, I grabbed a quick dinner by myself before crashing in my bed in my hotel. That is until I woke up around 11:30, and on the verge of stir crazy. Luckily, Lagomorph (who was still recovering from the previous night) was also getting a little stir crazy, and we met-up at Lime, and hung out for a few hours.

Sunday morning, I went to the Jack Kirby panel, and the last DC Comics panel of the weekend. It was actually the first DC panel I had gone to all weekend. It was a good one to go to since at the end of the panel, DC announced that Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert are gonna be doing a little Batman story early next year. After that panel, I spent the final day of the con roaming around the exhibit hall. Where I got a cute little sketch of Nightwing from Art Balthazar. I still have to scan it, though.


At the airport, a few San Francisco friends had their flight delayed, including my friend Aaron Farmer. I showed him my Noir Sketchbook, and since his flight delayed, he did me this sketch of a noir Starscream. Epic.

There’s a bunch of other things I did while in San Diego that I’m sure I didn’t even get to in these recaps that I’m just remembering now, like the Ed Brubaker panel, or Geoff Johns panel, the Boom Studios Drink Up / Gay Pride Party. Like that Starscream sketch, the whole con was just absolutely epic!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation: SDCC '08

Well, this month has been a blur. I went and visited New York for the first time a few weeks ago (which I’ll elaborate more on in a later post), and had just gotten back from San Diego for Comic-Con. In general, the San Diego convention really does seem to get bigger with each and every passing year. Says the guy who has now attended SDCC a grand total of two times.

Preview night seemed to have gotten bigger from what I remember. I wish I had gotten to swanky booth# 2207; otherwise known as Darwyn Cooke, Cameron Stewart, and David Bullock’s booth, as they had a few giveaways, including some postcards and such to promote Darwyn’s new work at IDW, and David was giving away limited prints of the first issue cover of the Sentry mini series that he’ll be doing covers for at Marvel. In fact, I didn’t even get a chance to say hey to David all weekend until the last hour or so of the convention on Sunday, the whole weekend was just that crazy. However, I was able to get to write in one of the three notebooks that were available to everyone to write their thoughts and feelings to and about Michael Turner. As most of you that are reading this may or may not already know, one of my best friends, Justin, had suffered from Osteosarcoma, and I actually shared this bit of information with someone from the Aspen booth when he approached me while me and some other folks were writing in the notebooks. It wasn’t til near the end of our little conversation that I realized that I was talking to Vince Hernandez, Aspen’s editor in chief. I thought putting those notebooks out for everyone to write in was a lovely idea, and as the rest of the con played out the rest of the weekend, I smiled each time I passed by the Aspen booth and saw more people writing in the notebooks.

Also, I got to bug and pester Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie for the better part of the weekend at their section of the Image booth. To which, I got Phonogram and Suburban Glamour t-shirts they had for sale, a postcard each promoting Kieron’s Busted Wonder web-comic, and the upcoming second series of Phonogram, as well as getting Jamie to add to the noir sketchbook on Saturday.

But before Jamie did his Astrid sketch, I got a noir sketch from Amanda Connor of The Pro. Although getting a sketch from her took a longer considering the amount of people she had to get through before even getting to mine. But it came out great. Then after Jamie’s sketch, I handed the sketchbook to fellow Caballero, Stephanie, also of Conjoined Comics. She sketched me Emogician, a creation of her and other Caballero, Carrie’s mini-comic creation.

Then on the con’s last day, I got a quick sketch of Ampersand by Pia Guerra while at the DC booth. Of course, I just had to congratulate her on the pair of Eisners she won two days earlier. One for winning Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller and Inker team with Jose Marzan Jr., as well as for Y: The Last Man winning Best Continuing Series. Unfortunately, I didn’t make it to the beginning of the Eisners, and didn’t see those two categories announced, but Pia did tell me she had a good time celebrating the win after the ceremony, and that although she and Brian (or BKV to some of you) hadn’t yet actually talked to each other about the win, they played phone tag with each other’s voicemail.

Well, I think that’s where I’ll leave things for now, because as I said earlier, this convention was just too big to try to worm my recap of it only into a single post. Come back tomorrow, and I’ll have more good times to share, which of course, will include photos, too.

Peope are Fascinating

By far and away, what fascinates me most in this world are people. We are all different in our personalities, our wants, our dislikes, our geography, education, religious affiliations, ethnicity, history, everything. The people that I've met in my life so far are inspiration for what I'm trying to do with my life, which is write.

Last month, there was a week in which I encountered three situations that interested me to no end. I can't exactly remember in what order these instances happened, but the first instance to mention was when I was waiting outside the restroom in the food court in a mall here in San Jose. The janitor was already in the process of cleaning up the men's room, and a couple other guys came by after me looking to use the bathroom as well. One of them some teenager. First thing I noticed was his uniform; he worked at the mall's theater above the food court. Then he asks me if "this the line?"

I look at his face, and his left eye is absolutely red. As if he popped a blood vessel within the last day or so. I was taken aback, but I quickly answered that it was, or is, in that instant. Then he walked back into the hallway meant only for mall employees, and came back a minute or two later. As he walked by me, he whispered, "Have fun waiting in line."

I wanted to slap that kid upside the fuckin head.

Then I wondered if he was acting dickish because that's who he is, or if it was because he noticed my surprise when first I saw his eye. Either way, I hope his eye specialist/doctor overcharged him for treatment.

Another instant was when I was an a comic shop, and overheard a couple looking for two issues of a particular Star Wars comic series for their son or nephew.

"Two-ninety-nine?" He said to the girl. "That's cheap!"

I smiled, and tried so hard to keep from rolling on the ground, and laughing out loud.

Then that leaves a time when I was an another comic shop, also in San Jose, and the employee at the shop was talking to a friend of his, and not a minute after I walk in, the friend blurts out the fate of a character in There Will Be Blood. And I assumed the character they were talking about was "character x." I hadn't seen the film yet, and I wanted to wring out both of their necks. Fast forward to today. I finally got to see the film.

I walked into the theater anticipating the fate of "character x." Low and behold, "character x" was not who the employee and the friend were talking about, but another character. Even though everything turned out okay, there's still a little part of me that feels the same way that I felt that day in the comic shop: there are people in this world that just don't have any common courtesy or sense of urgency. The two people in the shop that day likely have more courtesy than most, but damn if I didn't wanna call the two of them a pair of asses when I left.

All in all, people are fascinating.