Eh.

To be fair, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, in terms of the Collinses' ability to enjoy a comic book convention. Some personal/professional setbacks on my part and the overall stress of leaving a therapeutic live-in women-only program for the boy-filled irregularly-scheduled chaos of the real world on her part led to some very down-in-the-dumps moments for the two of us.

I don't think it's fair to blame it all on us, though; coming as late as it did in the convention season (hell, I myself had already been to MoCCA, San Diego, and WizardWorld Chicago), there weren't many interesting debuts or must-haves left to buy. (This isn't true if you hadn't yet been to one of these things this summer, I suppose, but still, books like Blankets, Kramers Ergot 4, Teratoid Heights, The Frank Book and Quimby the Mouse had been available for at least a couple months. (The delightful new real-life smut anthology, True Porn, was an exception, at least as far as I was concerned--I got the last copy!) Then there was the group mentality, which wasn't so much Team Comix as it was Scene Comix: if you weren't part of some anthology-producing collective with a snappy name and a handful of barely-legible minicomics (or at the very least didn't bring a huge group of fellow fanboys/girls with you), it was easy to feel out of the loop. This was true despite the relative ease-of-access of the con's big nightly party (it's right there in the hotel lobby, for pete's sake!).

On the other hand, it is easy to see how inspiring this con can be and has been for so many cartoonists. There's a general can-do spirit, a do what thou wilt and damn the sales levels joie de vivre that you simply can't find at the big cons. It's certainly cool to attend a con where saying The Big Five means Fantagraphics, Drawn & Quarterly, Top Shelf, Alternative, and Highwater. There's also the oft-mentioned fact that looking around at the majority of the tables, it's easy to say to oneself, "Oh, I could do better than that." Finally, there's just the chance to get to hang out and chit-chat with friends in the biz. When they're doing great work, that's inspiring in and of itself.

Special thanks to TCJ messboard alums F.C. Brandt, Leland Purvis, and Zack Soto, who were kindly enough to walk right on up and say hi; to Wayne Beamer, Nick Bertozzi, Victor Cayro, Tom Devlin, Sara Edward-Corbett, Gary Groth, Dean Haspiel, Danny Hellman, Matt Madden, Anders Nilssen, Lark Pien, Eric Reynolds, Josh Simmons, Bwana Spoons, Kim Thompson, Robert Ullman, and Matt Wiegle, for talking shop; to Diana Schutz, who I never got to introduce myself to but who nonetheless tried to steer me and the Missus to a decent breakfast; to Jim Henley and Eve Tushnet, for trying to meet up with me even though I didn't even know they were there till yesterday; to Frank Miller, for getting to see the end results of his love advice to a drunken yours truly a couple years ago; to Chris Staros and Brett Warnock for the time, advice, and attempts to score me free food and booze; to Jeffrey Brown, for having an extraordinarily high tolerance for shenanigans; and especially to Jim (& the future missus Rachel) Dougan and Craig Thompson, for being superfriends.

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