It’s been a looooong time since I posted an update, so let’s rehash.

Previously on Monster Menace…

After the birth of our beautiful bouncing baby girl in March (bouncing is one of her many talents), I put her in a rocket ship to escape from the planet's imminent destruction and sent her off to Earth to live with farmers. No, actually my wife and I decided that with a baby, it was high time to high tail it back to Maine, so that’s what we did. But before I get into that, did I mention this is one huge baby we're talking about? She’s in the 97^th percentile! She's giga! She looks like she ate another baby. Forget sugar and spice, this girl’s made exclusively of cheeks and thigh rolls. She’s now 16 pounds of giggling, gurgling, stinky, screaming fun. Extra screaming today since she’s running a fever, which is not so fun. Actually, fevers are not only not fun, but I’m here to report they are just plain terrifying to new parents. You know, it’s hard to remember life without her, and yet I’m still periodically stunned when I remember I’m now a father.

Back to the big move--we found a nice house in Scarborough, about 10 minutes from Portland, where the main export appears to be mosquitoes. We’re surrounded by salt marsh, and perhaps five minutes from the beach. Sometimes I can walk out into my backyard and smell the ocean (high tide, not low tide). My wife now works at a clinic, which is also about five minutes away from the new house (but alas, not on the beach). It’s five days a week, but at least she’s home in a flash. I’ve left Vicious Cycle and now I’m picking up contract game design work here and there and getting back to writing again—and it’s about time I did. The grandparents are helping with the baby, and so far I’ve had a decent amount of time every week to work on various projects. Thankfully(?) work has been pretty constant so far.

I just few back from the ’07 San Diego Comic-Con, and boy are my feet tired (drums). As I understand it, the show sold out Friday through Sunday, which I don’t think has ever happened before. Due to fire code violations, I doubt it can actually even get any larger without expanding to a larger building. Maybe we hit a plateau. Every year I ask myself why I keep mindlessly braving the gazillion sweaty fanboys just to be rejected by a handful of beleaguered, wild-eyed editors who look ready to bolt or fall on their swords if they get handed one more stupid book pitch. And then I get back home and completely forget all the minuses and end up committing to next year’s show. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get time with editors at a show? It ain’t easy, brother. If there’s one thing editors do NOT like to do, it’s read stuff.

Not a bad trip this year, all told. When I got to the hotel, I noticed Aaron Douglas, the actor who plays Chief Tyrol on Battlestar Galactica, hanging out in my hotel lobby for what seemed like hours, but I successfully resisted the urge to go ask him if he didn’t have something better to do, like patching up Vipers or drinking paint thinner or making out with androids. I saw him, he saw me recognizing him, and we decided to leave it at that. The hotel was right across the street from the convention center, which was a HUGE change from previous years. I could definitely get used to that. I split a room with Ben Lichius of BLACK COAT fame, so we had some chances to hang out throughout the show. He spent most of the time at the Ape Entertainment booth signing copies of the BC trade and issue #1 of the great new series that he recently launched. It was great to hear he had four or five producers stop by the table and leave their cards! That’s a book that deserves the Hollywood treatment.  

Most of my time was spent wading through the reeking costumed masses, nudging aside Narutos and shoving storm troopers to reach the nearest editor and pitch my books. Luckily I had some very favorable responses, even from publishing giants Random House and Scholastic, both of which are companies I wouldn’t cry about working for. We’ll see. Both of them were interested in MOSAIC, and I think it helped that the arteest Rob Duenas was onhand at the show to help me pitch the book. He’s a San Diegoan, which doesn’t seem fair. Actually, he was one of many people this year who voiced some negative opinions about the show. Over the last ten or fifteen years he’s watched the show deteriorate from a popular comics event where top talent was there and very approachable, to a pop culture extravaganza that isn’t really about comics anymore. Some of the guys at Ape were saying that it’s difficult to sell books at the show, despite the sea of humanity, and that very few people were there to buy comics. Strangely, they were better off going to Wizard World Chicago and smaller venues, where they’d sell more comics and spend half or less on the same sized table. I’ll continue to go to the show, but I agree that the focus seems to be less about comics every year, and I doubt there’s any chance things could turn around. And you know, it’s really wonderful that manga has caught on in such a big way, and (even better) that girls are getting interested in comics, but unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be the slightest bit of crossover between the two forms of media.

I also attended a DEAD HEAD FRED media event a few blocks away from the convention center and got to reunite with my producer and friend Ryan Kaminaga. I left there with a great new DHF poster that uses the slickly designed European game cover. Woot! Ryan went to the show the next day, and I’m hoping to convince him to go for the whole weekend next time.

By the way, IGN just started posting periodic DHF head descriptions penned by yrs trly. And if you missed them, I wrote a few developer diaries that shed some light on the early formation and evolution of the game. While you’re there, be sure to check out Dave Ellis’ follow up diary about how he crafted his brilliant script for the game.  

Back to the show--I only signed at the Viper booth on Saturday, which really wasn’t long enough, but it turns out I picked the right day to be there. An hour or so into the signing, a camera crew stopped by and asked to interview me about VILLAINS! Deer in the headlights. I’m pretty sure I was too nervous and completely blew the interview, but there’s a slight chance you can catch it on G4’s show Electric Playground in August. That’s what you get for asking the most introverted guy in the world to get in front of a camera. I will definitely do an update if it airs. Ah, well. It was good to see Ryan Cody (VILLAINS) while I was there. I’m a little late writing the new VILLAINS volume and I was sitting right there within arm’s reach, and yet he never strangled me. That, my friends, is a pro.

This year Rob and I tried to get a small press table, but we were eventually denied for some secret reason they didn't disclose to us. The SDCC needs to expedite that process so that people aren’t finding out these things at the last minute. Anyway, next year I’m determined to be sitting behind a table for most of the time. Hopefully it's a table at the convention. My feet won’t stand for less. Until next time, true bee-levers!