When cosplay goes bad ...

I guess I haven’t actually even mentioned this on here, which is a bit odd, but if anyone’s looking for me over the next four days, I’ll be in San Francisco. We’re meeting up with friends old and new, both SF denizens and parties coming from distant points. And … going to Wondercon, the smaller, less insane, but just as geektastic comic book convention being held at Moscone Center Friday through Sunday.

The last pop culture convention I hit was San Diego Comic-Con in 2007, which I covered for Racket magazine (and by “covered,” I mean took pictures of cosplayers and wrote mocking captions about them). It was also the first one I’d been to since I was 13 or 14, when I attended a relatively small convention in Philadephia, where I only recall a) buying Avengers #28 (to this day, the only comic book I keep in a mylar sleeve) and b) meeting inker John Beatty, who signed a bunch of Batman comics on which he worked.

Comic-Con was fun but exhausting — I spent two days there with about 8 billion people*, bought a bunch of $1 comics, a sketch or two, took a lot of pictures and ate too many pretzels. Oh, and met Henry Rollins, attended a preview of Reaper with pilot director Kevin Smith and … um … got free hugs.

We’re only hitting Wondercon for one day — tomorrow — and I plan to attend only one panel, “It Was the Age of Marvel Comics,” moderated by Mark Evanier. Otherwise, I’m going just to go, you know, take in the sights, snap some pictures and maybe stalk an editor or two (a writer has to keep his options open, you know?). Given the “big day” of the convention is Saturday, it should be pretty chill. In theory.

Surely I’ll be randomly updating Twitter throughout the weekend, but don’t expect to see any photos, videos or reports from SF until next week, as I’m not taking my laptop to the Bay Area.

Oh, and if you haven’t bought tickets to my band’s next show yet, they’re going really quickly, and I would strongly recommend doing so now. Thanks.

*Estimate only.