Hello!
This is a funky thing, but welcome to an abridged blog?! This won't usually be the case, but if you want to know more about my time at SDCC, including a couple lightly funny stories and a LOT more pictures, the full thing is up on my Patreon.
What do you do during SDCC?
Doing things around the show is very hard!
I was up by 6 and out of the house before 8 most every day of the show and--while we took it pretty easy with our after con events--besides the shorter Preview Night, they were 12+ hour days! Also complicated by having a friend staying with us, which was lovely, but complicated because we were not on the same schedule!
But what does someone like me do during SDCC? Why would I have 12+ hour days?!
I am at a point, where thankfully, my conventions where I'm working on IDW's behalf are often self-directed. As you can see in a few of these photos, I had the Sonic the Hedgehog: Racing into the 900th Adventure panel that I moderated for IDW on Sunday morning, but most of my other time was spent taking meetings I had set up ahead of time and impromptu meetings that naturally occurred over the course of the show.
Ahead of time, I had set up around 6 meetings a day, with a lighter Wednesday and Sunday. And that's about what I was hitting every day. A few times, due to the natural course of events, things got cancelled at the last minute or folks got trapped in the wrong place and couldn't get to where we were supposed to talk before I had to run to my next commitment, but almost inevitably, those times were then spent talking to other folks.
While I probably can't talk too much about the content of any of these meetings or who all I was talking to, as an editor, I mostly met with creative talent and a couple of licensing partners. To break things down a little bit further, there are a few broad categories most of my editorial meetings fall into: Project-Specific - I want to work with person X on thing Y and this is a chance to meet face-to-face about it; Introductory - Person X and I are aware of each other's work, but haven't previously had a chance to really talk, so this is a chance to get to know each other and for them to share samples; Relationship Management - I, or someone else at IDW, have worked with person X before and would like to again, but maybe don't have a specific project in mind, so this is a chance to catch-up and explore what our options could be, as well as just make sure they know they're on the company's mind.
And while many of my meetings were very enjoyable because there are a lot of excellent folks working in comics who wanted to make the time, I also got just a little bit of time for my own fun stuff!
Highlights included the Junji Ito exhibit, where I got to see original art pages from the course of like a 40 year career, attending the Best and Worst Manga Panel (which got cut short due to a false fire alarm!) and the Magma Comix panel right afterward, and getting to try the food and enjoy the atmosphere of the Sonic Speed Cafe! And Becca got to meet and get a little sketch from Matt Groening in the booth they were working at!
What I enjoyed this week:
Blank Check (Podcast), Craig of the Creek (Cartoon), Honkai Star Rail (Video game) Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links (Video game), My Adventures with Superman (Cartoon), the beach, The Broken Room by Peter Clines (Book), Crime Scene Kitchen (TV show), Dumbing of Age (Webcomic), SDCC which kept me from most new things!
New Releases this week (7/19/2023):
I didn't have any new releases this week! Hope you picked up something else cool!
New Releases next week (7/26/2023):
Godzilla: Monsters & Protectors Summer Smash (Editor)
Final Order Cut-Off today! (7/24/2023 - AKA Preorder Deadline)
Godzilla Rivals: Vs. SpaceGodzilla (Supervising Editor)
IDW Endless Summer: Sonic the Hedgehog (Supervising Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog: Scrapnik Island TPB (Editor)
Sonic the Hedgehog's 900th Adventure Special (Editor)
Announcements:
I'm tired! But no big disruptions in the foreseeable future! I'll only plug that I do have a webstore and the Patreon now, as well as things like Becca's Patreon, webstore, and Twitch which I mention because we also got the fun news that our rent's going up! I'm also gonna see if I have anything else I can throw up on my Kofi so you can get some rewards besides just tipping me!
Pic of the Week:
This R2-D2 looks like a trash can, but I think it's actually maybe an electrical thing? Whatever it is, it was on the street during SDCC and seems like it might be that way year-round and I thought it was funny! 