2001-07-23 2:07 a.m.
back from abroad

Well, fuck me. Not only did I survive San Diego, but Dan and I rocked the house in as many ways as possible.

We went out with what we thought were four proposals, ending up bringing up three others (one previously abandoned — file under "reasons you shouldn't work with friends"), and came up with a few more. I'm going to have to sit down and figure out how the hell all of this works out into actual contacts, editors and artists, and what kind of followup we're going to need to do with each. It's a gigantic undertaking by any stretch of the imagination.

Beyond that, any worries I had about working with Dan were washed away by the euphoria that was the Brothers Goldman kicking everyone's ass with ideas and more ideas. We were charming, fun, and genuinely excited (which we are) about what we were writing...and the energy was infectious.

What gave me the biggest tickle was a posse of artists coming together who want to work with us. I mean, who the hell are we? But we've shopped ideas, talked schedules, and generally had fun getting to know these crazed visual storytellers. If we end up working with all of the guys we met, that'll create a web across the US from San Antonio to North Carolina to Seattle to LA. Pretty amazing.

We also sat in on the Art in Digital Comics panel, which was intense and amazing. The quality of work by people like David Gaddis, Cat Garza, and Demian5 was impressive, given that most of it shied away from the flashiness of animation or 3D rendering. Cat's work focuses mostly on presenting and then breaking comics up in strictly HTML-based formats. Gaddis' work is straightforward comic art, digitally presented, but his line work alone (reminiscent of Paul Pope, David Mazzucelli(sp?), and Kyle Baker (who he worked as an assistant for)) was engaging, working from a simple color palette to tell a story about a coffeehouse obsession. Demian's story about a king with no pants...well...just check it out. You'll laugh even if you're not impressed by the kinetoscope feel of his strips.

We wrapped up four days of meeting, greeting, walking, talking, and immersing ourselves in this pool of all that is comics by strolling and crashing around downtown San Diego. It's a bizarre city, all told. The Gaslight Quarter's a lot like Riverwalk or Coconut Grove in Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, but the further we walked, the more it reminded me of Austin or Athens, GA...chill yet somewhat rough small town vibes. We ate at a place called Poke's...one of my best meals ever. We gorged on simple, great Mexican food, the waitress (Lupe, a serious cutie) gave us sangria on the house, and we decompressed hard from the con.

It's hard to explain to someone who's never been in something like this. Imagine having to sell yourself in any way you've ever imagined: name, ideas, attitude, timing, grabbing the attention of editors... it's very draining, like converting your body into a 200-watt bulb of warmth and enthusism and leaving yourself on for four days straight. Now that it's over, though, I'm elated and exhausted and dying for all of this to pay off.

left turn:

I'm sooooo happy to be going home. I miss my bed, though I loved the posh relief of being in a nice hotel, having free breakfast every day and clean sheets/towels swapped out for you. It's a low-responsibility kind of existence, and after the past year's heaviness, I couldn't get enough for a day or two.

But now I need to get back to life. I haven't hung out with Tabi in weeks, my room's still a shambles, despite the fact that I moved in a month ago. My bills are a mess and I'm dying to refertilize my brain with new words and ideas.

Most to the point, I need to get back to writing all of the time, for me, for my peace of mind. Back to yoga, back to dancing, back to city life. Find a new path perhaps.

I'm very tired now.