Designosaur

Another early morning. We went back to Buster's for a better serviced breakfast, and then hit the ground running in the dealer room.

We passed by the DC Comics panel and saw a line forming. We found that all the people assembled there were waiting for Mark Buckingham, illustrator of Vertigo's excellent Fables comic. Sitting behind the table was Bill Willingham, the comic's writer, looking very much like he wanted something to do. I dashed over (and believe me, I was running) to scrounge up a copy of Fables Vol. 1 for him to sign. He was more than happy to sign it for me, and then we decided to wait in line so we could get Mr. Buckingham's signature as well. Turns out that Buckingham is just about the nicest guy you'll ever meet, and he did extraordinary sketches for most of the people in line. I didn't have a sketchbook, and he was running short on time, but he gave me a fantastic sketch he had done of Rose Red. The creative duo also hooked me up with an amusing pair of signatures on my trade.

After that, I jumped over to the other line in the Vertigo area (after running to track down a copy of the first Y The Last Man trade) for Brian K. Vaughn and Pia Guerra, who had appeared while I was waiting in the other line. We were the last two in line (lucky!) and I begged Pia for a sketch of Yorick and then, greedily, Ampersand, which she obliged with great quickness. I was amused that Brian inscribed my copy with "your pal, Brian K. Vaughn" and will now claim to be his friend until the end of time.

I went over to the Archaia Press booth and pored over Mark Smylie's gorgeous art from Artesia and other commissions before running over to the Battlestar Galactica panel. Unfortunately, due to incompetent crowd control, I was unable to get in, even though there was space. I was forced to cool my heels in the big Hall H until checking out Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men, which looked very cool, despite looking like the first movie to truly be inspired by video games (long, uncut camera takes looking like an FPS).

After that it was the Star Wars Spectacular, which was so unbelievably unspectacular, it made me sad to have gone to it, instead of going to see Bruce Timm (where they apparently teased a Death and Return of Superman cartoon). After that it was motherfucking Snakes on a motherfucking Plane (after suffering through Final Destination 3, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and to a non-suffering extent, Tenatious D and the Pick of Destiny). Samuel L. Jackson appeared to answer questions (which was completely hilarious and priceless). He was definitely in rare form.

I then went back to the Archaia Press booth and haggled with Mark over the price of three pages of original Artesia art, which I purchased and am now glowing with pride over having ownership of them.

We followed that up with a painful thirty minutes at the Klingon Lifestyles Presentation and dinner at Mister Tiki's Mai Tai Lounge. Our sushi chef was completely obsessed with SoaP. We missed "Worst Cartoons Ever," but the loss was cushioned by the fact that most can be found on YouTube. After that, we picked up Stephen's girlfriend and checked out Spike & Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation, which was pretty much universally horrible (and has been for the last few years).