Fiction Friday

Well, I got a single response to last week's piece of unfinished fiction. I decided that was just enough to continue the story.

A few warnings... this isn't a finished story, and I've only got a couple more segments after this one. This has only had one edit; call it a first draft. And if I don't receive any response, here or on Facebook, I won't continue to post these.

Fiction Friday

After the cut, a little piece of unfinished fiction I decided to share. Feel free to comment on it, here or on Facebook.

Links interspersed with Torvald pictures...

Emerald City Comicon's Flickr of this year's convention. In honor of their pictures, I'm going to add a few of my Torvald images from the same convention:

Torvald got to meet Peter David.

I enjoyed these 20 Cool Science GIFs that will teach you something.

It's Torvald and the kids!

I'm not sure I want all the features on the xkcd phone, but I definitely want my phone to scream if it's in free fall.

Don Rosa has been Trolled.

I'm going to link to this text only website, but I warn you to have about ten minutes to spare before you follow this link: Drowning in Problems.

It's Jim Calafiore! And Torvald.

This story from Mike Norton makes me happy. Mike's one of the good guys.

Big Mike Norton and Torvald got along just fine.

Almost as Cool as Bacon-Wrapped Deep-Friend Chocolate-Covered Doublestuff Oreos on a Stick!

Spock is not impressed with Torvald and Wil. I'm not sure how Spongebob fits into the whole storyline. If you click the image, it'll take you to a full-sized version of the original Wil Wheaton and Torvald picture that I took at Emerald City Comicon in 2008.

As for the title of this blog post, that's the new Emerald City Androgums catchphrase invented at Androcon III.

CameraPhone Zen

Updating...

Now that I've got all 200 Torvald Pictures from this year up on his website, I'm trying to edit it to correct spelling errors in names and add in websites. I've found multiple errors so far, and I'm maybe 1/3 through all the cards I collected. I keep stopping to look at the neat webcomics and artwork sites, so it's really slow going. Still, this is WAY more fun than previous years, when I tried to get websites from the convention site, tried to incorporate them into my con reports, and generally burned out within a couple of days.

So, I'll keep at it, putting in all the new websites, as well as updating older pages with websites I collected this year. Heck, I should just make a list of links and start directing you folks to all the places on the web I'm visiting today and tomorrow...


Anyway, go check out the page and visit some of these sites. Maybe I'll try to put together some kind of tour when I get done, but I wouldn't count on it. I'm having a lot of fun just going through everything. And wow, you wouldn't believe how cool some of these business cards are. I have grown to appreciate the art of the business card even more. Don't get me wrong, I love mine (thank you again, Jeff Parker!), but some of these have really creative designs.


So, keep checking, I'll have more links up as I go along.

Emerald City Comicon Day Three - Sunday

Well, this is the first time that the Emerald City Comicon has been three days long, and after the utter insanity of the floor on Saturday I was almost scared to come back and deal with the crowds again. Fortunately, Sunday was much more sedate. Particularly the first two hours. Sunday morning at the con is always the time for zombie-like behavior...

I had a good Sunday. I found a decent parking spot, got up to the waiting area with plenty of time left so I could troll a few folks before going in, and just had a lovely time talking with people and experiencing the con atmosphere. I was finally able to learn how they actually opened the doors without getting people trampled, as I was at the front for the final day. The barriers are taken down with the convention center staff asking everyone to hold the line until they say "GO!" No one is allowed to move until the barriers are all down, so no one will trip on them and fall. It made good sense. Considering how close I came to getting trampled on the first day when I fell over due to being unbalanced by my heavy bag, I appreciated the effort the staff went to in ensuring our safety.

I started off at the Sequential Treasures booth, but didn't stay long as I wanted to see people. I hit every corner of the main floor, talking and trolling, and it was a fun time for me. I prefer to meet people and talk with people and learn about the incredible number of creative works that people are doing. I couldn't bring myself to go to the panels, because that's an hour that I would be sitting still when there are so many people to see and talk to. I kept returning to the booth to refresh with snacks and water, and my evil twin arranged for one of her friends to get me lunch on Sunday (Thanks M!). I will admit that as the con wore on, my feet became bundles of agony at the ends of my legs, and I sometimes wondered if I would be able to walk any farther at all.

I was ready to quit trolling when I hit 80 photos, but Jim at Sequential Treasures kept pushing me to get more, so I did. I eventually ended up with 99, for an even 200 Torvald pictures for the whole convention. It doesn't sound like much until I think about how many times I walked across the convention floor to get all those photos, and the fact that last year I got 99 for the entire convention.

As the con was wrapping up, I got in a discussion about next year, and I have already put in my money for a badge. I will be helping out at Sequential Treasures again, so we'll have to see if I can attract some traffic to their table without taking any table space. Hrm, gonna have to make a plan with this one. Evil twin suggested that I get a digital picture frame and have Torvald's pictures in it for people to look at, and when I'm resting at the table have Torvald and the frame as my bit. I don't want to take table space, so depending on what area we get, I'll work on something like that. I suspect I'll be out on the floor most of the time, anyway.

This year I made a definite effort to get cards from everyone I visited, with the hopes that I can put website links on Torvald's page so I can drive some traffic to the sites of the people I have Trolled. These cards made quite a bundle, and after the con I spread them out along with the Hellboy mask and that book I bought on the first day. Take a look:

If you attended the convention, please fill out the survey form on the website, and when they ask who to bring in, please give them the names of some of the great comic book creators, like Nick Cardy and Ramona Fradon. I'll certainly be doing that. I also want to tell them to keep the media guests separate, as not having them on the main floor made life a thousand times easier this year than last, despite the heavier crowds on Saturday.

Anyway, another year, another great convention. Next year is the tenth anniversary, mark your calendars now: March 30th-April 1st 2012. I'll see you there, and let's all have a great time.

Emerald City Comicon Day Two - Saturday

The crowds were staggering. At times, I heard people comment that it reminded them of the worst of San Diego. Only two things missing. One is the massive media booths that dominate San Diego and the other is that the focus is still on comic books. And that's enough. For now.

I spent pretty much the entire day either walking the floor getting pictures or resting in booth 1007 (Sequential Treasures, get the limited edition Transformers 25th anniversary print tomorrow, last chance!). I did manage to get five sketches to finish off my husband's Oz/Green Lantern sketchbook, and I will be posting images here as soon as I have access to a scanner and the energy to scan them. I will say that the final image is just AWESOME, and it's by a new favorite artist, whose work you can see here. Should I ask her for an Aquaman sketch in my Aquaman sketchbook as well, do you think?

As for Torvald, he got 81 pictures with people, which I'll post as soon as I can get them cropped, labeled, and resized. As always, if you are in a Torvald picture and want an original, please contact me either in a comment on this post or through e-mail if you are clever enough to locate it.

In other news, I was able to take another Torvald picture of Experiment Number One of the Foglios, and he's growing up to look a lot like his dad. I also started off Cheyenne Wright's daughter with a Torvald picture, and maybe we'll have a chance to see her grow up in Troll images as well!

I apparently bought Brent Spiner's Tagalongs from a gal selling Girl Scout Cookies. Rather, I got to them first, and when she went to sell to Spiner, he had to settle for Do-si-dos. I also had a very very brief run in with Bruce Boxleitner on the floor of the con. I saw him, and said "SCARECROW!" He glanced at me, and I smiled and walked away as did he. However, that was a childhood dream taken care of. I loved that show.

I did end up buying a book from this fellow, as he had an adventure set in ancient Mesoamerica, Lords of Death and Life. C'mon, I'm a sucker for that background. He had me with the cover alone. Then he went and drew a sketch of Quetzalcoatl in it for me! Totally rocking.

Saw a lot of friends, made new ones, had fun. It was a great con, as usual. I collected a stack of business cards from people I trolled, and I'm going to try to make sure I link back to the websites of Torvald's friends. If you have been trolled and want me to add a link, please drop me a comment to let me know.

And lastly, I swear to you I am not stalking Aquaman:

Kindle and Calibre - Creating EBooks

Something Calibre does very well is convert ebooks from one format to another. And because of that, I've been able to do something that I simply couldn't have imagined doing just one year ago. I've created a couple of ebooks. From scratch.

I'm not going to be sharing these books, sorry, but I can share how and why I made them.

The why is pretty simple, really. I'm going to be headed to Emerald City Comicon this weekend. I've been to all of them so far, and I'm happy to be going to this one thanks to the generosity of my evil twin Lisa (we're not really twins, but people kept asking if we were, so we ran with it). Anyway, to make a short story long, I do two main activities at comic book conventions. I ask nicely for free sketches, and have gotten a few, and I troll people. Both activities result in physical proof, one in the form of a sketch and the other in the form of a photograph. But until this year I've never been able to bring all the proof along with me. Two of my sketchbooks are completely filled and one of them is utterly priceless to me because of the sketches in it. I leave it in my firesafe unless I want to look at it. Bringing it to every convention so I can show off the awesome sketches in it isn't an option. I have scans of all the sketches but I haven't got permission to share them all online, so most people will never see some of the artwork in my sketchbook. As for the Torvald pictures, most of them are available online but I don't have easy access to the internet while at shows. My highest tech portable object is my Kindle. So again, until now, I had to be content with directing people to the website.

A few days ago, though, I suddenly realized that with my Kindle and Calibre, I could create ebooks for both the sketches and the troll, and be able to show them off freely, if in plain B&W, to anyone who wanted to see a particular item. It might be a little tricky to make sure I could navigate to the particular picture I wanted, but I have already played around with the ePub format a little, so I thought I'd see if I could do it.

The ePub format, fast becoming a standard for ebooks, is a very simple one. It's basically a set of html files zipped up. That's it. Now, I've been making webpages for over 15 years, so I have a pretty good grasp of basic HTML. Even better, the Torvald site was already set up in such a way that I figured it would be a piece of cake to convert it to an ePub. So I started with that. I removed all the extra formatting from the page, and simplified the layout a little. Then I zipped up the site and imported the zip file into Calibre. Once there, I converted the zip to ePub and took a look at the result.

It was a shambles. The links didn't work, and the layout was completely different. Oops.

I took the ePub that Calibre had created and examined it by saving it to my disk (right click, save to disk) and then changing the extension to zip from epub. It had a handful of extra files in it, and it had removed all my extra picture folders and put everything in the main folder. I went to another epub I'd already dissected and looked at it to see what I was doing differently. It took a little sleuthing, but I discovered that my internal links were using a different convention than the ones used by the working epub. I'd been taught to make a link to a specific place inside a page by making an "a name" tag and putting it around that place. The working epub's HTML files instead used an "id" tag within another tag. So I changed all of Torvald's internal links to id tags instead of name tags, removed a bit more garbage HTML code, and tried again.

This time it worked. I had an epub book with a table of contents that I could click on a name, and be taken to the picture of that person with Torvald. It was awesome. I converted it to mobi format and uploaded it to my Kindle, and it still worked. It's a HUGE file, 25 megs, but it's there on my Kindle so if anyone at Emerald City wants to see some particular person with Torvald, I can click a couple of times and bring up that image.

The sketches were harder. The website isn't one that can simply be converted, and as I mentioned earlier, all the sketches aren't on the website anyway. Plus, with these, I wanted them to be as big as possible. So I figured out what the maximum size of an image within a book is on the Kindle (520x640), found my raw images, and did a big of cropping, editing to make the contrast better, and some batch resizing and converting. With the images, all 278 of them, ready, I had to create an HTML frame to hang them on.

I divided the collection into eight sketchbooks (three Aquaman ones, an autograph one, one for images not in sketchbooks, a Doctor Who sketchbook, my husband's sketchbook, and my evil twin's sketchbook). Each sketchbook got its own page, and I made the HTML as simple as possible. Just a embedded pictures with id tags so the index could find them. I opened each page in Firefox as I finished to make sure the page were displaying properly.

Then I made two indexes. The first one pointed to each of the sketchbook pages and also to an A to Z index of the artists, which was the second index. I set that one up alphabetically, linking each artist name to the picture by the id tag. It was a bit time-consuming work, but it was to pay off.

Once I was done, I zipped it up and imported the zip file into Calibre, then converted it to ePub. The Table of Contents was a mess. It tried to include part of the A to Z index instead of just the main index.

So I dissected the ePub and copied some of its files over to my original work. There's a toc.ncx file. I edited that one down to just the items I wanted to show in the index. There's a content.opf file. That one just lists all the files in the epub, so I mostly left it alone. I also copied over a META-INF directory and it's sole file as it was, and a mimetype file as it was. Calibre also created a titlepage.xhtml file, and I copied that one over as well, because it's the file that creates the book cover. With the edited toc.ncx file, I zipped up the contents again. This time I renamed the zip file to epub, and imported it into Calibre as an epub file. It worked. Perfectly.

Next job, convert to mobi and upload to my Kindle. And it all worked. I can find an artist name in the A to Z and jump quickly to it.

So I created a couple of books for my Kindle. One from a website, and one from scratch. I'm feeling pretty good about it at the moment, though I'm far from knowing everything. I admit, I can hardly wait to get to Seattle and see my friends and family, and enjoy the convention.

If you happen to be going and want to see my efforts in person, just look for the gal in the Aquaman t-shirt carrying Torvald the Troll in a belt-pack.

Emerald City Comicon Report 2010 - Part II

If you attended the con, be sure to fill out the survey posted at the official website. As usual, I requested Nick Cardy and Ramona Fradon as guests.

Right, where was I? Oh yeah, wandering Artist Alley, away from Angela the Engineer (whose comic has just been added to my RSS reader, yay!). I would love to have a GPS track of my wanderings, as I sometimes turned around on a dime and headed off in another direction. Maybe someday I'll get myself a GPS that works inside and can do the job for me. That would be a fun thing to see after the fact. Anyway, we went to Troll Pete Abrams and then hit that back "corner" of the alley that was a little out of the way. In there we met Bob the Angry Flower, Eduardo Nuñez, Ryan Cody, and Ben Thompson. I really like Ben Thompson's t-shirt in this Troll image.

I then decided to brave the horrors of the media area again, so Lisa and I started to walk over there, past the concessions. In the middle of concessions we spotted the Doctor and a Dalek and I had to Troll them. I gave the Doctor's mother the "You've Been Trolled!" card.

I mentioned in yesterday's report what happened when I met with Leonard Nimoy's rep, who explained that part of the agreement they had with the convention was that there would be NO candid shots of Nimoy at all. The con staff had their hands absolutely full trying to prevent people from getting those shots, despite the signs posted everywhere stating the policy. After my depressing conversation with the rep, I headed down to see if I could get a shot of Wil Wheaton in his jersey for Carolyn. As you have seen, I got the shot. I called out to Wil to ask him to turn around so "I can get a picture of you in that jersey for my Canadian friend!" You can see his resigned reaction. I wasn't the only person standing there. Another half-dozen got pictures of him at the same time.

At this point, Lisa and I lost each other for a short time. I wandered by and met Keith Knight before finding Lisa near Kurt Busiek's table, which was our designated meeting spot for the con. We decided it was lunchtime, and pushed through the crowds, stopping at the Fantagraphics booth to Troll Gilbert Hernandez.

Lunch was chicken sandwiches (thank you Mom!) and bananas. We enjoyed our high-class parking garage meal while Lisa started reading her Linear Algebra book, which she then carried with her for the rest of the convention and read any time she stopped for more than 10 seconds. I ditched the Aquaman Hoodie because it was so warm on the con floor, and left evil twin reading her homework in the car and went back up to the floor to try to get some more images. It was time for my annual picture of Greg's Middle School Students.


An aside... Greg has requested fan help in keeping the program these kids are in alive. I donated a little on the last day, and I'll mention it again when I get to that point in my adventures. But This is a program worth saving, so if you have a little to spare, consider sending it their way.

About this time I decided to try to get a pic of James Robinson with Torvald. I'd already walked by his table earlier, when I Trolled Keith Knight, so I headed back there. The table had Keith Knight on the right, near a support column, next to Danielle Corsetto, who had a crowd much of the time I was there. Then James Robinson's table, then Kevin Maguire sat drawing mostly alone, with fans coming up to visit him every few minutes. Barry Kitson was at the end of the row. The DC Panel with Robinson had just ended, so I figured if I waited long enough, he would show up. What no one realized is that he hadn't had lunch, and decided to take a long break. So I Trolled Gavin, the Emerald City ComiCon staff member who was assigned to that section of the floor. And I Trolled Kevin Maguire, who did some Aquaman covers and whom I had talked with the last time he was in town. Barry Kitson was Trolled last year. I people-watched while standing in wait. And standing. And standing. Evil twin wandered by, then away again. People lined up behind me, then gave up and left. I persisted, mostly because it was a pretty good place to watch people from and because I was extremely tired. If I'd realized ahead of time the problems it would cause my feet, I may have given up standing as well, but I stayed until Robinson finally showed up an hour later and Trolled him. Then I Trolled Danielle, whose line had kept getting longer and longer as I waited for Robinson.

Barely able to walk now, I wandered with Evil Twin around the convention. We saw an awesome orange Aquaman shirt, and Lisa said that if I had that on she wouldn't have to worry about finding me now that I wasn't wearing the hoodie anymore. At this point, I was wearing my Best Ever Aquaman Panel t-shirt. We stopped by to see Kurt again, and he pointed out my shirt to Len Wein, who agreed that it was the best Aquaman panel, and that was hands down the best killer shark he'd ever seen.

As an aside, I did hit the ECCC Booth to get an Owly T-shirt based on the awesome Owly in Seattle drawing that I actually use as a desktop image whenever con season rolls around. But the pink ladies design was a massive turn-off for me. On the website it didn't look so bad, but in person I realized that I wouldn't be caught dead in it. So I got an XL Child's size, which was in a better color. I don't know how much I'll wear it, though, because it's VERY tight on me. Even if I lose a lot more weight it'll still be pretty tight.


Moving on, I Trolled Renee Witterstaetter, but never did manage to Troll Mark Texeira next to her. I had a chance on Sunday, but he was drawing and it wasn't a good time to interrupt. I'd already Trolled Michael Golden in 2007. I also stopped by John Aegard's table and giggled a bit and Trolled him. I need to buy some of his pamphlets, but I'm not sure what to do with them. Certainly put one in my car, I guess. Probably the pirate one.

We visited and Trolled Susan Tardif and Rich Ellis of Periscope Studio and Evil Twin picked up Cat Walk (a preview) by Susan Tardif and Mike Cassella. We then met Stephen JB Jones (designer on Batman: Brave and the Bold) and Trolled him with some difficulty. Then we visited and Trolled Jeff Ellis at the Cloudscape Comics table. I'm going to say now that for the first time ever at this con I ran into a person who was genuinely afraid of Torvald, like little-hubby-Eric was so long ago. In fact, I ran into two people who were frightened, though one overcame it long enough to be Trolled. This isn't a surprise to me, as Torvald can be a little creepy in person. But there is a reason I try to ask nicely before I hand over the troll. I don't mean to scare people!

Right... moving on, we wandered a bit more and found the Boom! Kids booth so I could get a Muppet Show special comic with Miss Piggy in front of the Space Needle. The artist for the cover was Amy Mebberson and I got my book signed and Trolled her as well. She was drawing the COOLEST little cards, each with a muppet on them, for $10 a pop. While I watched she drew a fantastic Animal. Lisa noticed that she had business cards with art on them, and I snagged a fourth Doctor one. I spotted an art card with a muppet version of Death on it (as seen in this blog entry). Then Evil Twin Lisa and I started talking about the Doctor as a muppet. Amy looked up long enough to say, "stop giving me good ideas!" and then got back to drawing. If I should see her at a future con, I think I may have to indulge in an art card. Amusingly, hubby-Eric thought so too, because when I told him about her art he expected me to pull one out to show him. D'oh! Missed opportunity!

I went back to the media area for one last look. The crowds weren't so bad for a moment, and Erin Gray was completely alone. So I wandered up and asked if I could take a Troll picture. She explained that she was charging $10, and her keeper chimed in to say it was for charity, so I agreed. Actually, I would've agreed even if it wasn't for charity, because $10 is a reasonable amount to charge for a photo op. And Erin Gray was one of my childhood heroes as Colonel Wilma Deering on Buck Rogers. And she continues to fight the good fight with charity work against domestic violence, so she's still my hero. If each of the media guests were only charging $10 for a photo, I might have been able to Troll more of them. *sigh*

Another wander brought me back to the Periscope Studio area, where I Trolled Jeremy Barlow. I was feeling a little down and out, but managed to Troll Brian Azzarello, who was talking with a very high class woman, dressed as snazzily as I've ever seen anyone dressed at a convention. This turned out to be Heidi MacDonald, who I had to Troll.

In the meantime, Evil Twin Lisa found some cool buttons (including an Einstein button) for herself and a friend, and debated getting a book from the Wasted Talent table. She lamented that she couldn't find a Newton button, because a friend shares Newton's birthday. When we happened by the table that was selling the science buttons I asked if he had Newton. He said he was sure of it, and started digging until he found one for Lisa. For my effort, Lisa bought me a couple of new buttons to add to my con bag. Then we learned that the buttons were drawn by Angela the Engineer, so Lisa finally decided to purchase the anthology that Angela had contributed to (since the Wasted Talent book isn't out yet). We went back to Angela's table to buy it.

I'm sure I'm leaving lots of stuff out...

I finally had enough at about 5 pm, with an hour of con left to go. I was invited to a dinner, but I would have to take a bus back since Lisa had the car. And one of these years I'm going to have to attend the masquerade somehow. Maybe I'll have to figure out a way to take the bus, or actually stay at a local hotel instead of the next town over.

On the way out I Trolled an Ewok, who was posing for other photos. Then Lisa and I headed to Hotel Mom&Dad for a home-cooked meal. Lisa surprised me, as well. She left to grab some snacks for us and bought that bright orange Aquaman T-shirt for me, which I wore the second day of the convention.


At some point I talked with Brad Guigar at the Halfpixel booth who saw the Troll and said, "Now I know I'm at the Emerald City ComiCon!"... Dave Kellett drew me a pug sketch, which was one of only two sketches I got at the con... The crowds were so insane that we didn't actually get to many booths on the media side of the con... The last Stan Lee signing was apparently moved to another room, giving those of us left a chance to move around... Lisa and I had trouble finding Heidi and James, but we did find the HERO Initiative booth eventually... There was a very long line for Geoff Johns all weekend... I missed Joe Quesada entirely... I missed out on a lot of chances to get really good costume pictures on Saturday. I should've been more bold, because there were some truly awesome costumes around... Tally for the day: 32 Troll pictures, 31 of them with people for a total of 35 people Trolled, and one sketch.

Ok, that's it for Saturday's reports. Next up: Solo Sunday at the con!

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2010: part I
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Emerald City Comicon Report 2010 - Part I

I can't believe it's actually been eight years. Eight years since that first show at the stadium, bigger than the ComiCard shows, but not yet giant. Seven years since I met Kurt Busiek and many others at the second year of ECCC. In year three I missed the first day of the con, the only day of ECCC I've missed so far. I started bringing Torvald in 2006, and also wrote a four part convention report. Three years ago, I trolled many people and wrote another four part convention report. Two years ago I continued to Troll people and wrote yet another four part convention report. Last year I Trolled Battlestar actors and Bacon, and yes, wrote another four part convention report. Wow. Eight years.

This year I took Torvald the Troll again, and the pictures are up on his site. Anyone who has been Trolled and wants a larger size of their image, please contact the troll at Torvald at Gjovaag com. The more recent the picture, the sooner I'll be able to find it. I do not have originals for some of the oldest images, sorry.

As I still live three hours away from Seattle, I did the over-the-mountains and through-the-woods trip to Hotel Mom&Dad again this year. I came over on Friday and rested up from the trip so that Saturday wouldn't be too hard. Sadly, a bit of bad news on Wednesday had taken me down emotionally, so it was extremely difficult to get into con-mode this year. In addition, my husband did not attend this year, so I was solo on Sunday at the con. Add in problems my evil twin is having in one of her classes that turned her into a truly grumpy evil twin on Saturday, and I wasn't at my best for the first day of the convention. I only broke down once, but it was fortunately in front of Suzanne and Karin, and they helped cheer me up a bit.

Anyway, Lisa and I headed out with plenty of time to spare and made it easily to the convention center. Parking was a breeze, but Lisa noticed a spot that she could've parked in that she missed. I promised myself that I'd get that spot on Sunday. The walk into the center was easy, and we quickly got up to the holding pen for fans. The convention staff learned from last year and directed people to different spots if they were pre-paid, buying tickets, or exhibitors. It all worked out. Those of us with our lovely badges were put into one of the conference rooms until the show floor opened, allowing free access for the dealers to get in without having to pass by the lines. All said, much better than the first day of last year.

Once the doors opened, the main problem for Lisa and I was staying together long enough before someone stepped between us. Lisa was often blocked off by a stormtrooper or fanboy while I zipped along. Luckily, I was wearing my Aquaman hoodie for the first couple of hours, and the bright orange made me easy to find.

I found Stan Lee's rep quickly, and he was very negative about the Troll. To be fair, he was also being buffeted by about a zillion eager fans, so it wasn't easy for him to stop and talk for a second. As it turned out, I never even saw Stan Lee during the con. Not even from a distance. So, no Torvald pic. I believe I could have done it, but the odds and my mental state were against me.

As for Leonard Nimoy... well, I'll just jump out of order for a moment. I managed to find and talk with his rep later in the day, and he was very clear that I needed to pay $60 for any picture with Nimoy, period. I did not have that much money in my con budget for one picture, so I did not get a Nimoy pic. I did, however, get to see Nimoy several times from a distance. No, I never got to meet him. Right when we got in, the crowds were so insane I didn't get very close at first. In fact, I had to get out of the media area because I started having a crowd-induced panic attack.

Lisa and I wandered a little to get the lay of the land... or rather pushed through the dense crowds trying to keep together and yet still make progress, and ran across the Girl Genius Booth, where Cheyenne and Alice were settling in. Cheyenne, I am happy to say, looked very much alive though distressingly pale. He suggested I start the day's trolling with the Hugo Award for Girl Genius, and I took his suggestion quite seriously.

After Trolling Hugo, we continued to wander until we found Kurt Busiek, and Trolled Len Wein who was sitting next to him. I'm still stunned that Len wasn't beseiged by fans the entire con. C'mon, it's freakin' Len Wein! This is one of the first times I was disgusted that there weren't crowds around a creator.

Lisa and I then wandered down Artist Alley to figure out where everybody was located. I spotted Jill Thompson, but she was still setting up. So we moved on. We stopped by and said hello to Greg Hatcher and his students. We both checked out a lot of books and artwork, but weren't buying yet. Eventually I got up the nerve to take out my camera again, and the next victim was Dan Wickline, writer on Grimm Fairy Tales. Then I went back to Troll Jill Thompson, Scary Godmother.


I first met Jill at San Diego 2000 when I went to commission a couple of sketches from Mark Crilley. It was great to finally see her for her, and not while hunting for somebody else! We've made watching Scary Godmother a regular Hallowe'en tradition.

Next up we headed to the Periscope Studio part of the alley, looking for old friends. I've met most of the gang at one time or another, and Jeff Parker both drew the illustration on my business card and wrote me into a story as a dual race of aliens. This weekend when I chatted with him about it and told him how hard it was to find the book, he teased me about it, saying that I couldn't find it because it had that unfamiliar "Marvel" in the corner of the cover instead of "DC". The first order of business was to take another Troll picture of Colleen Coover to replace the not-terribly-flattering image of her from a few years ago. She was happy to pose, and this image turned out great.

The real goal of visiting Periscope was to meet Erika Moen and let her know that hubby-Eric really enjoyed Dar and read it in one sitting. I got a picture of Erika and Matt with Torvald. Evil Twin Lisa got an unexpected compliment when I said that Lisa wasn't likely to enjoy Dar, and Erika gasped and asked if Lisa was under 18. Nah, she just likes her entertainment PG.


We wandered into the next aisle where we met Angela Melick, who, as it turns out, is an engineer. Just like evil twin Lisa wants to become. Working in a very similar field, even. And writing a webcomic about her adventures. Lisa was impressed by Angela's professionalism, and delighted about the upcoming book. She walked away gushing about Angela and wishing that she could have that book right now. I'm going to stop here, and jump forward to Saturday night. Lisa needed to study a little more of her Linear Algebra, but the instant we got home she popped open her computer and started reading Angela's webcomic Wasted Talent. And giggling. For the first time since I'd arrived on Friday, Lisa outright laughed in real joy. For that alone I feel a great deal of affection for the webcomic and the creator who made it. Go, take a look.

There's a lot more, but I'm tired and ready to stop for the day. So that's it for the moment. More coming soon.

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I, part II, part III, part IV.
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Rain

I braved the passes today to reach Seattle. I'm all set for the Emerald City ComiCon, which you will no doubt be reading about on this blog over the next few days as I write up my adventures.

I have no super-modern tech, so I won't be tweeting or blogging from the show itself. I'll try to write something once I'm home Saturday and Sunday, but no promises. It all depends on how wiped I am.

Good thing I'm not headed back until Monday. The drive out here was wet and a little dicey at the height of the passes where the storm was hitting nice and fierce. Not as bad as a real winter storm, but enough to make driving next to semis a little scary. Oddly, as I look out the front window of my parents' house, the sky is completely clear. Talk about odd weather!

If you want to see me at the con... I'll be wearing an Aquaman T-shirt and carrying a Troll. The rest may change without notice. I plan on wearing my Aquaman Hoodie (me in the Hoodie with an Emmy) for a little while, but how long I wear it depends on how warm it is in the convention hall.

Updating the Troll

I've been a little busy over at Torvald's page tonight trying to get it updated and ready for the influx of new images that will be added when I go to Emerald City ComiCon 2010, including (I really hope) perhaps Stan Lee and Leonard Nimoy!

In any case, I've got a lot of work to do to add all the missing images from various events that I just haven't had the energy to edit and post yet. I've only managed to add one page, and most readers of this blog will have seen the paltry few images on that page. Except maybe this one:

I've also been careful to make sure that the friends page is up-to-date with all the folks Torvald has met.

I was hoping to make some "I've been Trolled!" buttons, but I saw how much I'd have to pay for them and realized that it really isn't an option. Maybe someday. In the meantime, I'll have the little half-cards I gave out before.

In any case, there should be a few more images showing up over the next couple of weeks as I get this done. Including images from an incredible road trip Torvald took without me OR Eric. In the meantime, here's one more of the "new" pictures:

Emerald City Comicon Report 2009 - Part IV

I'm going to pause again in my reflections to go back to events that happened on Saturday with evil twin Lisa. She wanted to buy me an Emerald City Comicon t-shirt (which is her way of repaying me for the tickets I guess), so we found the ECCC booth and asked about t-shirts. They were busy, and the guy who talked with us said that they had no t-shirts this year, which surprised us a little. He looked around and said he'd give Lisa a free t-shirt if she came back a little later. She was confused, but we wandered off.

We passed the Sofawolf Press booth and I spotted something I'd been wanting for awhile. The first three volumes of Digger by Ursula Vernon. I made a little noise and rushed to the table, which amused Lisa greatly. Unfortunately, I'd already spent my money for the con, so I had nothing to buy any of the books with. Lisa, in a moment of clarity, got me volume one of Digger instead of that promised t-shirt. Heaven! Now I need to get the next two volumes, but I am patient and willing to wait until the opportunity arises.

Incidentally, I did go back to the ECCC table on Sunday and talked with the same guy, and he gave me a t-shirt from a previous year to make up for the fact that he had none for this year. The reason they had none was because the artwork they wanted to use originally for it featured Hal Jordan Green Lantern, and apparently DC protested or asked for a fee. They said it meant they'd finally "arrived" on the convention scene, but it also meant that they needed to be even more careful in the future.

Speaking of DC, on Sunday morning, hubby-Eric and I walked by the DC Booth. No, I wasn't able to get any of the GL buttons (they were quickly gone on Saturday) but I did score a couple of Wonder Woman tiaras. One for Lisa and one for me. Later I picked up another one for Heidi. One of my penguins is now happily wearing the one I kept, waiting for me to watch the movie it promotes.

Right... moving back to Sunday afternoon, it's time to talk about Art Baltazar and Franco again! Today they were wearing matching purple shirts with vests (if you'll note their Troll pic, they were wearing white with vests on Saturday). Art took off from his table to find some grub right before we got there, but Franco said he'd be right back and to wait. So we stood around talking until Art returned and I asked him for an Aquaman sketch in my third Aquaman sketchbook. He agreed for the price of $1, and asked what I wanted. Hubby-Eric, seeing the cover of Tiny Titans #14, suggested a box of Aqua-Ohs. And OH what a great sketch Art turned in for me! SQUEE!!


Hearing that I am a big Aquaman fan, Art told me that I had to wait while he found a piece of artwork to show me. He was trying out with Goldfish Crackers for a job, and drew a piece that will never see publication but is WONDERFUL. I snapped a pic of it with my cameraphone, and Art said I could post the picture on my blog. The piece was for sale, but was out of my range.


After Artman, I visited Franco's table and Eric said he would pay for me to get a $1 sketch from him as well! Ah, this is the life! The result was a distinctive version of Aquaman that I'm proud to add to my collection.


Well, let's see if I can remember what else happened... I visited and Trolled quite a few more people. Steve Niles, Barry Kitson, Jaime Hernandez, I kept my eyes out for costumes and other things as well. Spider-Man, Mojo Jojo, and a bunch of balloons (those were some freakin' cool balloons, by the way). Hubby-Eric spotted a sign for "Free Sketches" and we visited the artist Manny Trembley, who sketched one for both of us (Scarecrow for Hubby, Aquaman for me).


After a lot of walking, we sat in the Hero Initiative Booth and I attracted people to the booth by saying "hello!" as Dan Brereton sat next to me sketching. I put Torvald out on the table to people-watch. I helped sell a few buttons and prints, and talked with a few people about the goals of organization. I listened to a very long and involved discussion about the merits of Wild Dog while hubby-Eric snoozed in the back of the booth. Brereton was very convincing.

Eventually, hubby and I realized we weren't going to do much more at the con, so we headed out to Evil Twin's place for an excellent dinner. All told, a fantastic convention. I got 92 Torvald pictures, and 4 sketches. Eric got a sketch. I met several folks I'm currently watching in Battlestar Galactica. I renewed a lot of old friendships and teased Kurt Busiek (yay, more Arrowsmith!). I "ran into" Mark Waid. I got to do some Booth-sitting.

What can I say? I'm already looking forward to next year's con.

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I, part II, part III.
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Emerald City Comicon Report 2009 - Part III

A link to the annual survey is up at the Emerald City Comicon Website, so go put in your two cents if you attended. I suggested a LOT of guests, including Hiro and Ando from Heroes, and anyone related to Doctor Who. I also suggested Nick Cardy and Ramona Fradon. It would make my 2010 to see one of them again. Next year's con is going to be held March 13-14, 2010. I will be there unless disaster strikes.

A note from Saturday that I forgot to mention... Brad Guigar recognized me when I went by the Halfpixel booth, and even remembered that I had asked him for a higher resolution image of myself from last year. I've already e-mailed him to see if I can get that, but Brad, if you are reading, no sweat! Don't worry about it. We also discussed his book, "Phables" and I said I would buy a copy after consulting with my hubby. I walked away, but then went back and bought one anyway. Hubby-Eric got that print, I deserved a book!

Earlier on Saturday I also chatted with Scott Kurtz and his wife about moving to Seattle. I warned them that Seattle only has two seasons: The Rainy Season and The Construction Season. I also said that, having just left the area for the desert, I didn't miss the traffic at all.

Later on Saturday Lisa went with me to the Halfpixel booth and we bugged Brad Guigar again. I told him my Phillie Phanatic horror story from 2001 FanFest, and he offered to tear out the Phillie Phanatic page from my copy of Phables. I declined the offer. He told us about trying to get a good story out of the Phanatic, which was, in itself, a good story.

Eric and I got a decent start on Sunday, and parked in the garage again. Today the people who had badges were penned into a giant corral on the skybridge. The pros/guest/exhibitors walked by on the west side and folks who still needed badges got them on the east side. I snuck over and took a picture of Torvald with the view. It didn't come out nearly as well as I would've liked, but at least it came out.

I stood on the edge of the west side of the corral and chatted with pros as they went by. I gave Kurt Busiek a "terrorist fist bump" and talked with a couple of other people as they walked in, including Heidi. We also noted a couple of furries, and when they entered the corral, I Trolled them. Both had tails.

Our first mission for the day was to attempt to get the last two media guests that I had missed on Saturday: Ray Park (Darth Maul) and Jewel Staite (Kaylee). I hoped to get to their lines quickly enough to get in and take the pictures before the keepers got too determined to stick to the rules.

As Jewel hadn't arrived yet, I got in Ray's line. He was prepping for the day with music from Rocky, and he joked and chatted with the folks in line while he got ready. We kept assuring him that he could take his time, but he wanted to get us through the line, so he set up as quickly as possible. Then he said, "Let's crack this line open!" about ten minutes early. The guy at the front of the line said, "Really?" then moved forward and bought a couple of pictures. I was about 5 people back. The guy in front of me just wanted to show off pictures of his Darth Maul carved pumpkins from Hallowe'en, and the folks in front of him were just getting autographs, so the line moved quickly. Ray happily agreed to pose with Torvald.


After Trolling Ray, I moved over to Jewel's line, where I became either the second or third person in line, depending on who you asked. The same keeper from Saturday was there, but he was busy checking on arrangements and discussing security and such with another ECCC person. It looked like I might be able to get my picture after all. Hubby-Eric joined me in line when Jewel arrived, and sure enough, I managed to get the picture. The keeper noticed me about the time I took the picture, but said nothing. Whew!

On Saturday night when I looked through the list of people I had trolled, I was rather surprised to find that Stan Sakai wasn't on the list. I've met Stan, even gotten a fantastic sketch from him, but he'd never experienced Torvald. So after finishing off the media guests, Eric and I headed up to Artist Alley to find Stan. I had seen him on Saturday, he was opposite the Middle School Students. I've seen him at plenty of conventions, so it never occurred to me until I printed out that list that I'd never Trolled him! He was happy to oblige, and did a nice little pose with Torvald.

Since we were so near, I figured I would Troll Sunday's shift of Middle School kids, and did so:


After that, I consulted my list and decided to see if I could Troll Rob Liefeld. I won't say much about his art, but the man himself was ok. He seemed a bit taken aback at the request, but he posed nicely. We then walked around the tables and ran into Quenton Shaw who greeted me enthusiastically. We chatted a bit, then I Trolled Joe Jusko, who was just a little way down the line from QEW. And then hubby-Eric wandered off to "see who that big line is for" and didn't come back. Quenton, who is much taller than me, said he spotted him chatting with Heidi's husband, so I wandered over to them and learned they were in line for Humberto Ramos. Aw, what the heck? I stayed to Troll him, too.

After Trolling Ramos, I stuck around in Artist Alley for a bit and Trolled a few more folks... both folks I already knew and some I didn't. I was now able to check people's names against my list, and confidently Trolled them if they weren't on the list. Of particular note were Corey Lewis and Becky Cloonan, both of whom were great fun to chat with.

But the winner of the day had to be Gene Ha. One or two people have recognized the Troll when I wandered near them, mostly from seeing him around at past ECCC. But Gene Ha's reaction was both priceless and encouraging. He not only recognized Torvald, he immediately pulled out his phone so he could show me that he used Torvald's pictures to help him remember names and faces! He has trouble with remembering people's names, so he has a file on his phone that pulls up photos of people so he can zip through and be reminded of their names quickly. A great many of those photos also had Torvald in them. I need to get myself a phone that can do that... I'm really bad with names. Amusingly enough, Gene Ha's photo isn't likely to help people keep his name and face together:


After Gene's reaction, we headed back into the exhibitor's tables and met Doug Sneyd. Doug is a Playboy artist, and had many examples of his work at his table. I Trolled him, and met Heidi Hutson, the keeper of his blog, who insisted on a picture of Doug and I with Torvald for Doug's blog (pictures will be posted starting April 22nd, according to the blog). Doug was very sweet, and reminded me a bit of Nick Cardy. We spent a bit more time at Doug's table than I expected, but he was great.

Moving on, we went back to the Heroes Initiative booth and freed Heidi from her servitude long enough to go walkies about the con. She made me take my sketchbook, since hubby-Eric was determined to get me an Art Baltazar sketch regardless of that expensive $1 fee. First I Trolled Stuart Immonen, then we wandered over to Artist Alley and Heidi made me Troll Jennie Breeden of Devil's Panties. Then I visited Ben Templesmith and Trolled him. Heidi spotted Quenton, so we headed over there and chatted with him and artist Zeca Teixeira. Quenton saw my sketchbook and suggested that Zeca do a sketch for me, which he was more than happy to do. Halfway through his sketch, it occurred to me that I ought to Troll him, and he agreed to that as well!

Randy Kintz wandered by, and although he was sure he'd already been Trolled, and I was sure I Trolled him, he wasn't on the list so I Trolled him again. When I got home and checked I discovered several directories worth of Torvald images that I just haven't put up online yet, including the Tri-City Comic-Con. Randy was Trolled there. That's a situation I will have to rectify, but I want to finish writing this con report first, so I don't mess up my brain any more than I have to. But in the next few weeks Torvald's page is going to expand by quite a lot.

Ahem. Once Zeca finished sketching Aquaman, we moved on and got a few pictures with some costumes, including a wookie. About this time we also visited Franco and Art to get my $1 sketch, but that story is going to have to wait until the next report.

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I, part II.
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Emerald City Comicon Report 2009 - Part II

Let's see... where was I? Oh yes... standing in front of the Heroes Initiative booth with a dead camera, trying to decide what to do. Brian Randolph said he thought there was a store down on the ground floor that sold batteries, so I considered for a few moments then decided to go for it.

The exhibition halls are on the fourth floor. The retail space is three floors down, a nice group of escalator rides away. Each level of the North lobby was filled with tired fans sitting against walls. There was not enough seating within the halls for people to find a place to rest. It was, in fact, not a friendly convention for people who can't remain on their feet all day. In past years, the organizers seem to have made a special effort to make sure there was plenty of spaces where fans could sit and rest. This particular layout didn't really allow for it, so people were sitting where they could in the lobbies and even the restroom.

As I got off the last escalator and stepped into the retail space, I spotted a Kinko's and a couple of restaurants. I headed for the Kinko's, and sure enough found some batteries inside. They weren't cheap, but were close to what I figured I'd be paying for them, so I wasn't disappointed. I ripped open the package right there and replaced the batteries in the camera to make sure they worked. All was good! I thanked the Kinko's guy and headed back up to the convention. Whew! Disaster averted. Thank you, Brian!

Entering the lobby I spied a giant slice of bacon walking around. Well, naturally... have to Troll the Bacon! The thing that really really amuses me about BaconSalt is not the name, the concept, or even the giant walking slice of bacon. It's the fact that the stuff is Kosher.

Ahem. Moving on, I stopped briefly at the Dark Horse booth to Troll Lisa Petrucci, then back to the Heroes Initiative booth where I got Brian Pulido's attention again (he was in the booth next door) and finally got the cool shot of him! Yay!

I headed back to Artist Alley and stopped a Cthuloid with wings long enough to Troll her. Then I noticed that Mike Mignola's line was missing, so I wandered toward his corner to see if he was out. He was just leaving, sort of. He was still talking with a woman, and when he turned away for a moment I asked her if it would be rude of me to ask him for a troll picture. She was enthusiastic, Mike was ok with it, and so I managed to Troll Mike Mignola, who had lines half a mile long the entire convention.


An aside. Saturday morning as I skimmed Facebook, I came across a message from Kurt Busiek that said "Kurt Busiek slept like The Thing That Does Not Sleep But Badly Needs It. Bah. This will be a long day." I determined from this post that he needed a hug once we got to the con. Thus early in the con, Lisa and I went and offered him hugs at his table. He growled menacingly at us. We feared him and fled. Later we spotted him on the floor and I offered hugs again. He growled menacingly at me. I feared him. After Trolling Mike Mignola, I headed up to his table. He was eating lunch and MUCH more mellow. He did not growl, but then, I did not offer further hugs.

Another Kurt incident happened some time during that day. Kurt was sitting next to Gail Simone, and every once in awhile Gail's gorgeous husband was at the table. At one point I was standing there "making them look more popular" when Gail's husband suddenly said to me, "I just realized you always wear an Aquaman t-shirt!" Kurt and Gail both laughed, and I think I tried to explain that I'm the Aquaman fan, so yeah, I always wear an Aquaman shirt at cons.

After Mignola, the next five Trollings were all costumes, and most of them took place along section L. I trolled The Comedian, The Wonder Twins, Batgirl, a Warrior who I seem to recognize but cannot quite place, and Poison Ivy and Jade hanging out together.

I went back to troll the Middle School students again, and got a couple who weren't terribly enthusiastic about the troll. The young gentleman was fond of his Wonder Woman tiara, however, which was a very popular piece of memorabilia that I saw all over the convention floor on various heads of both genders. It wasn't until Sunday that I figured out where they were coming from and got one for myself.


I went down the line and visited Tony Harris, who did a lovely Aquaman cover that still makes me happy to think about years later. I told him so, and Trolled him.

Back at the Heroes booth I Trolled Daniel Way, who seemed more bemused than most and seemed to think the whole Trolling thing was some sort of exhaustion induced illusion. I then Trolled a Nightcrawler who happened to walk by. Heidi decided that she needed to learn how to use her iPhone to post images to her blog, so we headed over to Jimmy Palmiotti's table because Jimmy had helped her out before. When she got there, Jimmy had no idea, but suggested that the guy sitting next to/behind him was the guy to ask. I think it was Brandon Peterson. He and Heidi huddled over her iPhone and eventually figured it out, as you can see on her blog. She even posted a picture of me. For information's sake, the app that she installed is called Blogpress and worked well.


While they worked on the phone, I wandered to Siya Oum, who drew an Aquaman sketch for me but hadn't been Trolled yet. As I stood at her table, an INCREDIBLE double-costume came along, of Hellboy and Abe. The detail was amazing, and the girl in the Abe Sapien costume was clearly suffering but MAN it was a fantastic costume. The parents said it was the girl's idea, and that she'd had to convince her brother to be Hellboy. But they got a lot of attention.

Then I Trolled Mouse Guard creator David Peterson, and moved down the line to Jeremy Bastian. I'm not entirely sure who the next couple I Trolled are, but they made for a great picture. Then I headed over to the Girl Genius booth to troll Experiment #1 again. Experiment #1 is one of the first ever Trolled people. He's also probably in more Troll pics than anyone else. In any case, I decided to continue documenting his growth in the true spirit of a Mad Scientist. I swear he looks more like his father every year.

I stopped a Bat Family to Troll them, and headed over to the Heroes booth to Troll Brian Denham. While still near the booth, I also Trolled Nightwing and Huntress, then Clayton Crain... who just happened by. Got to be careful where you walk at a con, somebody might just shove a Troll in your hand and take a picture!

I decided to make one more effort at the three media guests I hadn't yet Trolled, so Lisa and I headed back to that area of the con. We spotted a battle royale between Captain America and an Anime-dressed guy that I swear I nearly recognized, but couldn't name if I tried. Even a Google search didn't help me much. I Trolled them both.

The lines for Jewel and Ray were overwhelming, but there was almost no line for Michael Hogan. I learned why when I got up to there, as he was about to leave for the day. The line keeper let me in when I said I just wanted a quick photo. The people in front of me had a baby in a stroller, and Michael shamelessly flirted with baby and ignored all the adults nearby, much to the adults' amusement. Finally, baby or Michael got tired of the flirting, and he signed the photos that the proud parents had gotten... of Michael and the same baby! The father suggested that Michael do a USO tour, which surprised Michael. The father admitted he was shipping out to Iraq in a few weeks. Michael said he'd see what he could do. He said that he and "Eddie" (Adama) could do a mean stand-up if they tried.


When I got my turn Michael got the best expression ever on his face for the photo. Then I handed him his "You've Been Trolled!" card and he decided to go a little over-the-top, shouting, "I've been trolled!? Why didn't anyone tell me I was gonna get Trolled!" Helo, sitting in the next booth, looked up and grinned, and I made my escape.

Lisa and I wandered back to the Middle School table, but the students had scattered to the winds. I got a picture of their artwork instead of them. Then I noticed that Bruce Timm had no crowd for once, and immediately went over and Trolled him.

We had about an hour left in the convention for the day, but both Lisa and I were completely wiped. So we headed out, slowly. We stopped by the Halfpixel booth on the way out, and also found the DC booth (far too late to get any of the GL buttons). The parking was way too expensive ($14 for the day, ouch) and we went the wrong way when we headed out, but we eventually got to Hotel Mom&Dad and got a nice comfort food meal (thank you again, Mom!). A nice night helped me to recover, and I planned for a new day with hubby-Eric along. Before I did anything else, though, I made and printed a list of everyone that I was sure had already been trolled. Armed with that precious knowledge, I was able to target my paTrolling a little better on Sunday.

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV
2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2009: part I.
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.

Emerald City Comicon Report 2009 - Part I

Whoa. Seven years. That's how long the Emerald City Comicon has been held. And I've been to every single one of them.

The first year was short and sweet. Year two allowed me to develop new friendships. Year three we hung out with the Dorothy folks. I brought Torvald the Troll to the con for the first time in year four, and wrote a four part convention report. In year five I trolled Margot Kidder and wrote another four part convention report. Last year I met and trolled Atlantis Chronicles artist Esteban Maroto and wrote yet another four part convention report. This is my report for this year (in case you already hadn't figured that out). As usual, I'll have forgotten the exact order events happened, and no doubt will forget people who I really ought to mention. I'm sorry in advance for any inaccuracies in this report, and please, if you see an obvious mistake feel free to correct me. This con report is more for me, so I can remember what happened, than for anyone else. You just get to peek at my thoughts.

Hubby-Eric and I moved away from Seattle since the last Emerald City Comicon, so the trip this year involved a three-hour drive to the Seattle area and several nights at Hotel Mom&Dad. Luckily, my parents had room for us and were willing to put up with us... er, put us up for the duration. We arrived in the Seattle area on Thursday, ahead of a storm in the passes that would've made driving difficult, and stayed with hubby-Eric's parents the first night. On Friday, we were treated to a birthday party for my niece which included dinner and a movie. Saturday morning, my evil twin came to get me while hubby-Eric wandered off to Oz. Lisa and I headed down to the Convention Center, and got there in good time.

This year the con was again held in the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, but in the North exhibition halls (4E and 4F) instead of the South (4A and 4B) like last year. This meant the convention used the skybridge as a registration area, so fans were treated to this gorgeous view of Pike Street while we waited to get in (click for full size):


The lines on Saturday to get in were pretty long. The problem was that the convention center staff decided to mix the lines of people who had already bought tickets with people who hadn't, which meant that those of us with tickets in hand had to wait just as long as people who didn't plan ahead. It was a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless. There needed to be three lines (Pro/Exhibitor, Pre-Paid, and No Tickets), but there was only room for two.

Lisa and I had one main mission to start the con, and that was to get a Lisner Dawn/Oz print for hubby-Eric. So our first action was to try and find Lisner... who was in section L. The problem was, we couldn't find section L on the map. Sections A through J were clearly marked, so we headed out to section J, figuring once we were in the area, we'd spot something that would lead us to L.

As we wandered, I spotted Bob Schreck, whose first Troll picture was... a little undignified. He saw me, saw the troll, rolled his eyes, but then happily took my offer of a better picture.

About this time, I overheard someone else wondering where section L was. Then I noticed that the map showed a section K along the North wall, and ... well, section L was along the West wall, it just wasn't as clearly marked. I told the folks I'd overheard, and all of us happily trooped over to find who we were looking for.

Joseph Michael Lisner had plenty of the prints, so I bought one for Eric, and then Lisa and I headed for the media guests. Having finally started watching Battlestar Galactica, I really wanted to get those guests. On the way, we passed the Suicide Girls booth, and I just had to Troll them.

The first media guest victim was Noel Neill, Lois Lane from The Adventures of Superman. She was bemused to be trolled, and gracious. She had a book for sale that I wish I could've gotten, and I noticed she was sold out by Sunday. She never had a huge crowd like Wil Wheaton, but she always had a few people hanging out with her.

Next up, Lisa and I got in line for Jewel Staite, but when I got near the front, the ECCC keeper of Jewel refused to let me take a picture with the troll. So we just said "Hi!" and shook hands, then moved along. I got in line for Aaron Douglas while Lisa hovered. Aaron was fantastic! He loved the troll, and was totally into getting his picture taken with Torvald. His keeper attempted to be stern, but couldn't manage with Aaron's upbeat attitude. I thanked him profusely, and moved on to see Tahmoh Penikett. I had to talk Helo into the photo, because he'd been cowed by another keeper, but he agreed when several other people in line behind me started to say, "do it!" and so we took a quick picture and I gave him his trolled card.


A quick aside about the "trolled" cards. They consist of a close-up of Torvald with the words "You've been trolled!" and Torvald's URL. I printed 60 of them before leaving Churchville. I didn't think I'd use all of them... but I really should've checked my previous years and done some math. I ended up with 92 pictures, and I probably could've handed out 100 trolled cards easily. Next convention I'll be more prepared.

Lisa and I looked at Michael Hogan's table, but passed by because another stern-looking keeper was sitting there and the line was huge.

So we wandered. Lots and lots of wandering. I checked with a couple of artists about sketches, but it looked like everyone was charging for sketches and even the inexpensive ones would add up too quickly for my strained budget. Technically, I shouldn't even have come to the con this year for our financial woes, but I did anyway because of tradition and my love of this convention. But I digress.

I'm skipping around a bit in time, because my only guide for when anything happened is my pictures. So sometime during our wanderings, we stopped by the Hero Initiative booth to see Heidi and get our Hero buttons. I got a hand button, and I wore my button on my lanyard for the entire convention.

We eventually ended up in front of Patrick Gleason's table, another Aquaman artist. I trolled him, but I didn't gather up the nerve to ask for a sketch. We chatted a little about Green Lantern Corps and the fact that I just don't like the book that much. I talked about Soranik's fate... as she's not long for the DC Universe if she's dating Kyle. Patrick disagreed with me. He asked what he could do to make me like the book, and I had to confess my problems are all pretty much with the writing and the overall status of the GLC, not with the artwork.


When Lisa and I entered the convention center, we ran into Greg Hatcher, who told me that I must get a picture of Rachel this year with the troll. So we headed over to the Madison/Aki Kurose Middle School booth and found Rachel and Aja and Trolled them.

In artist alley we visited Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti and Trolled both of them. Amanda drew an Aquaman sketch for me WAY back, but she'd never been Trolled. So I dealt with that discrepancy. It's a little odd. There are a number of artists and writers I know on sight, and to my surprise quite a few of them have never been Trolled because I was more focused on getting sketches back in the day. I've been doing what I can to rectify the situation, but as the day wore on it became increasingly clear that I needed a guide to who had been Trolled and who hadn't.


Two guys I knew for sure I hadn't Trolled were Art Baltazar and Franco, the tag-team dynamic duo behind Tiny Titans, one of my favorite books on the shelf. They were also sketching, but charging a steep $1 each for a quick sketch. I was tempted, but decided to just Troll the pair. They need to do a stand-up act together, the two of them were funny, gracious, and just plain neat to be around. I later directed some of the Middle School Students to them, but I don't know if they went or not.

About this time, Lisa was collapsing from the strain of a tough work and school schedule, combined with a hyperactive evil twin (me) and so she took a break from me. I went off and Trolled James Kolchalka. I mispronounced Eli's name (argh) then tried to explain myself (double-argh) and felt like an idiot. I'm a fan of Eli's Monster Attack comic and particularly pleased that Eli is an Aquaman fan, too. So, off into the ether of the internet: I'm so sorry Eli! I hope you'll forgive!

Right... in disgrace I tromped down to the lower lobby and met the tired Lisa, and we both went down to eat lunch in the car. The sandwiches my mom made for us were satisfying (thanks, Mom!) and we both felt a little better after chowing down. Lisa decided to stay in the car and nap while I paTrolled some more, so I headed back up.


I wandered to the Heroes Initiative booth and was cheered by being able to troll Alan Porter. Then I attempted to Troll Brian Pulido again, and something very annoying happened.

Hubby-Eric and I bought my current camera many years ago. At the time, we also purchased two sets of rechargable batteries to go with it. They've served us well, but I've noticed recently that the batteries hold less and less of a charge. The batteries that were in the camera gave out completely, and when I put in the batteries I'd freshly charged Saturday morning... they didn't work. I was up a Troll without a working camera. I figured that was it for trolling the con, but I didn't really want to stop.

However, I do want to stop for the moment in recounting the convention. So look for part II maybe as early as tomorrow.

Emerald City Comicon reports: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2007: part I, part II, part III, part IV, 2008: part I, part II, part III, part IV.
All my blogged con reports and San Diego 2000.