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Oh, maaaan. What a weekend... Where to begin?

Friday was a mad-scramble to get everything together for the Con. I finished painting the Weregeek sign while Layne ran around and finished the stand for it. The paint was barely dried before we packed everything up in the car and set off… very slowly. It took us two whole hours just to get out of town, thanks to a freak 2:00 traffic jam.

Luckily, once we got past the city limits, it was smooth sailing. We reached Calgary safely and stopped by the Round-Up Center to set up our booth. To my surprise and delight, we found that all of the tables came with a full tableskirt and tablecloth! That made set-up infinitely easier.

Afterward, we met up with Todd at Layne’s cousins house. I was greeted by Todd pressing a freshly minted copy of my book into my hand, since he was the one who had brought the shipment up from the printers in Saskatchewan. (I hadn’t wanted to risk it being shipped late, and he was coming to the con anyway, so it worked out nicely.) They turned out beautifully!

After much discussion of the book, we hung out with Layne’s family and then turned in for the evening.

Saturday:



Saturday started off a tad rocky. I failed my Use Shower check on the ridiculously minimal shower head, and ended up having to take an impromptu bath instead. (I <i>like</I> my morning shower. It wakes me up!) Still, we managed to get underway in a reasonable time and got to the con

I set up the few things that I hadn’t wanted to leave out the night before, and then wandered around before the doors opened and talked to some of the other people in my area. There was a great turn out of webcomic people – Tarol (Goblins) and I were sitting right next to the guys from Fluent Gibberish, Jennie Breeden of The Devil’s Panties was two rows over, and Ed from Geek Tragedy was two rows back. For such a new con, (this was its third year) it had a great turnout of webcomic folks!

The day was steadily busy. I was glad to have my faithful assistants (and occasionally, some gaming friends!) there to take over when I needed a bathroom break, or needed to get some food. The aisles of Artists Alley were fairly open, which meant I had an excellent view of all of the costumes that wandered by. And man, there were some great ones!! I love cons. Where else can you see Clark Kent interviewing the Joker, or take in a scene that includes furries, Klingons and thePredator?

There was a booth nearby that featured the Calgary branch of the 3D animation school I used to go to. They had a big projection screen, and were showing a bunch of their students work. I would glance over at it from time to time to see what kind of stuff they were doing, and I saw two very surprising things: One, some of the work was stuff that I had done! And, two: That my old instructor from a different school was at the stand, waving at me! He came over to the booth to check out some of my work, and I spent a few minutes catching up with him again before we both got back to work. It was cool to see him again!

In the last hour or so of the day, the crowds had slackened off a bit and all of the panels had let out. I was working on some sketches to display the next day, when all of a sudden I hear someone say, “Dragons? I know dragons. I’ve fought a few.” I looked up, and there was Kevin Sorbo wandering Artist’s Alley. (Hence, Monday’s comic.) He gave me a wave, and then continued on. By all accounts, his panel was wonderfully informative and quite funny, and I’m quite sorry I missed it.

At the very end of the day, I managed to park Layne at the table so that I could talk to the other webcomic folks some more. I had a great chat with Ed from Geek Tragedy about his coloring work on Evil Inc, and joked a bit more with Jennie. Somewhere along the line, supper got suggested, and a bunch of us ended up out for dinner together.

Our choice of establishment was… interesting. There was much debate as to whether it was a Chinese restaurant with diner food, or a diner with Chinese food. It certainly seemed like a diner, with the 50s tables and milkshakes served in metal containers. But the whiff I got from the kitchen seemed to suggest that ordering Chinese would be a smart move… Luckily, the wait staff were quite unruffled at having 14 people suddenly show up, and were friendly and quite entertaining all night long. We actually ended up keeping them open past their closing time, which they didn’t even bat an eye at.

It was a wonderful evening of visiting, with a variety of wonderfully geeky topics discussed. At the end of it, Layne, Todd and I decided to try and hit a local goth club with Jennie and her friend. There was going to be some sort of special show on that they both had tickets for, and I’m never one to turn down an opportunity to go dancing.

Oddly enough, when we arrived at the club there was a man in full plate armor heading towards the line up. We gave each other questioning looks, tossed around a few D&D jokes and bad “Metal” puns, and then lined up ourselves. Unfortunately, it didn’t look lie we’d be able to get tickets for the three of us, so after a while of visiting, we said our goodbyes and went home for the night.

Sunday:

Sunday morning felt very, very early. Luckily, I had the shower explained to me, and so was mostly awake by the time we arrived at the con. I knew the Con had started in earnest on Sunday when I heard the stampede of people running to line up in front of Bruce Timm’s table. I’m not joking about the stampede, either. By the time I had turned to look, there was already about forty people in line. Yikes.

Sunday in Artist’s Alley wasn’t quite as busy as Saturday, crowd-wise, (though I think it had better attendance overall) but I certainly had my share of traffic! I got to chat with several fans over the course of the day, and even did a few sketches! Jennie borrowed Layne for bits of the day, which meant he got to chat with her a bunch while Todd helped out at my table. Having multiple "booth babes" = awesome.

The day went by in a bit of a rush, and by the time 5:30ish rolled around, the crowds through Artist’s Alley had pretty much thinned out. I saw some people starting to pack up, and I knew that Todd and Layne wanted to get back early to have dinner with their relatives, so I packed up a little early. I went around and said my goodbyes to everyone I’d met over the course of the con, and then the guys and I hauled a load of boxed out to the car… or tried to.

At each one of the entrances, a security guard in a cowboy hat (it was on the Stampede grounds, after all – the site of the world’s largest rodeo) stood to bar any of the exhibitors from leaving. Apparently, “they had their orders,” and if we left before 6:00 “we’d just have to forfeit our profits”. Umm... Really now? What are you going to do, steal the cash box from under my arm. It was really hard not to get ticked off with them. I mean, I understood that the con wanted to keep all of the booths open right up until the end of the event, but really. I’m not one of the big vendors. All of my fans had already come and gone, and no one was even coming through Artist’s Alley anymore so it wasn’t like I was going to make any more sales for the day… It just wasn’t worth it to me to stay. So, feeling both grumpy and rebellious, I parked myself just short of the security guard and sent the boys off to see if they could find an unguarded entrance.

After some time, they did manage to find a way out, only seconds before the guards relented and decided to start letting people through. We managed to get out of there before everything bottlenecked as the big exhibitors battled over the limited number of trolleys, and made it back to Layne’s cousins in time for an excellent BBQ dinner.

We visited with his family for a few hours, and then the three of us packed up our stuff and said our goodbyes. They were excellent hosts (complicated shower aside), and I was happy to have met them. But our evening was not over there! We had made plans with Jennie and her friend to meet up for drinks before we left town. We met at a great pub called the Kilt & Bear, which had these incredible little tortilla tidbits. Yum. We spent a ton of time geeking out, and even shared our LARP experiences! (For those of you who haven’t heard of Jennie’s other comic, Geebas on Parade, you should really check it out.) I had such a great time!
By the time we finally left the pub, it was well after midnight and we had a three-hour drive to look forward to. Luckily, I managed to sleep in the car on the way home, and wasn’t tooooo exhausted for work the next morning.

So, bottom line – Calgary Comic Expo was a ton of fun, and I’m totally going back next year. More pictures from the con can be found here!