My short visit to Comic-Con

Saturday was my big day for visiting NYCC, but I didn’t really have much to do there, with no official presence.  I hung out with David Mack and Keith R. A. DeCandido at the BOOM! Comics booth, where they were selling their Farscape comics.  I talked to other friends and colleagues who showed up, like Marco Palmieri, Michael Jan Friedman, and Greg Cox, along with Alan Kistler, who writes the “Agents of STYLE” columns I enjoy over at Newsarama, and whom I’d forgotten that I’d met before.  And I handed out a couple of my new business cards, though not as many as I’d hoped.

I also managed to get into the panel about the new Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes cartoon from Marvel just in time to see the premiere episode, though I had to stand the whole time and peek around the edge of a column.  It was pretty good.  Some of the action was way over-the-top with too little payoff; they kind of wasted a really monumental event on a minor action beat rather than really doing anything with it.  But the animation was quite well-done (though I’m not crazy about the design style) and the characterizations weren’t bad.  Most interesting is their approach to the Hulk, who’s more intelligent than he’s been portrayed in film or TV before, much like in the earliest Hulk comics.

Eventually I had to get out of there — the con was really jampacked on Saturday, as much as I’ve ever seen it — so I walked over to Midtown Comics to get some stuff with the coupon they hand out at the con, then walked back.   I wish I’d found a shuttle bus or something instead, since my shoes are old and worn out, and by the end of the day I had blisters on my feet.  Kara was working late, so Dave and I just had some leftover pasta Kara had made, without even reheating it, but it was very good.

On Sunday, Dave pointed out that I didn’t really need to go in with him, so I stayed in for a while, thinking maybe I’d go later.  After a good breakfast of Kashi cereal with banana and pumpkin bread with cream cheese, I tagged along with Dave’s wife Kara as she did her shopping for the week, and by the time we got back, there was so little time left before the con floor closed that there was really no point in my going in at all.  So I stayed there and spent an entertaining afternoon watching Kara cook, something she loves and is very good at.  They have good food there.  I skipped lunch, so after shopping, I got to snack on havarti cheese and kalamata olives on garlic crackers.  I’ve never had havarti and kalamata olives before, and they were excellent.  Dinner was chicken breasts stuffed with arugula and goat cheese, rosemary potatoes (a specialty of Kara’s), and pan-roasted broccoli, and dessert was apple-carrot muffins (I helped by licking the spatula!).  It was a wonderful meal, especially the potatoes.  And it was fascinating to watch the whole process of baking/cooking all these things.  It was a nice change of pace from the con.  Though after talking all day with Kara about food and the science and art of cooking, it was nice when Dave got home and we could talk shop for a while.  He gave me some things to think about which hopefully will help me refine the spec novel I’m working on revising (and hopefully finishing before too much longer).

Now it’s Monday morning and I’ll be leaving for home soon.  Luckily, I’ll be taking four of the apple-carrot muffins home with me.  It’s been a good visit, and a fruitful one, even though the con itself was not that major a part of my weekend.  If nothing else, I’ve been very well-fed, and I’ve hopefully made a couple of promising business connections.

At Keith’s recommendation, I’m going home by I-80 to avoid tolls on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  It’s a less direct route, but since I’ve spent more than I intended, the savings are appreciated.