On the other hand, I met some cool new folks, completed my long-worked-on collection of MST3K signatures, got a ton of development work done on the new comic, and took part in a World Record attempt (for largest collection of steampunk costumes in a photo).

As you can probably tell, I spent a lot of time in the steampunk track, where apparently I fit in like the proverbial bug in a rug. Having hitherto not been much involved in the contemporary steampunk scene, I spent most of the time simply going to panels and soaking up what people had to say, but I was pleased to discover that a lot of the people in the fandom have similar opinions to mine in regards to such things as the preponderance of brown, the rather silly nature of goggles on a top hat, and the fact that “steampunk” is kind of a crap term. It was fun to sort of come into it as an outsider (Technomancer’s Toybox and similar things notwithstanding) and still feel like I had something to offer. One of the editors for Kerlak Publishing, when I mentioned that I’d be starting a steampunk(-ish) comic early next year, perked right up and was eager to be in the loop about it.

As for Dragon*Con itself … it’s suffering from growing pains in a major way. The ratio of costumers to non-costumers took a serious nosedive this time around (particularly as many members of the 501st Legion didn’t come this time around, I hear); and there were entirely too many panels that you simply couldn’t get in to see. I’m seriously worried that Dragon*Con will fall prey to the famous Yogi Berra quote, “Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded.” If I wanted to go to a con where I couldn’t get into any panels, couldn’t navigate the dealer room for the crowd, and couldn’t see any costumes, I’d go to San Diego Comic-Con. There are also way too many non-geeks (who don’t buy badges and don’t support the con) crashing the party. One commenter I heard referred to it being like “Nerdy Gras” — partiers with nothing better to do are coming to get trashed and get free entertainment by looking at the geeks.

The good news is, people are starting to recognize the problem; what steps can reasonably be taken to deal with it, have yet to be seen. Personally, I think we should start a major advertising campaign talking about what a bunch of totally uncool nerds the people at Dragon*Con are and how unless you’re the kind of person who thinks math and historical romances make an interesting combination, you’ll be bored stiff there.

Anyway! I did have a very good time, down to sitting right among the MST3K cast members in the audience of the “Servo vs. Servo” panel and heckling Kevin Murphy and J. Elvis Weinstein with them. Got a lot of work done, met a lot of cool new people, and generally had a ball, so overall I’d say it was a smashing success.

-The Gneech

Then Laurie fell down on the escalator. -.-

STOP IT, CON!

Laurie’s okay, just some bruises. And once I hit the bar, I should be fine.

*thud*

-The Gneech

I mean, seriously, when your plane arrives early but can’t open the door because the caterpillar walkway mysteriously breaks? Then the automated check-in kiosk fails, gives you a ticket that says “Take to any Hilton partner,” but the concierge is just snarky and sends you through the long line at the hotel desk (which was the whole reason for going to the automated kiosk in the first place) … and then you’re given not one, but two sets of keys that don’t work?

Yeah. There’s something up with this con. I’m keeping my eyes open!

-The Gneech

“PEAK” is the top of something, usually a mountain.

“PEEK” is a quick, furtive look at something.

So if you SNEAK PEAK, you are stealthily climbing to the top of a mountain. If you are getting an illicit preview of something, that is a SNEAK PEEK.

Please stop getting this wrong. It is beginning to walk up and down on my spine.

Thank you.

-The Gneech

Edit: And of course, I get a typo of my own. Pfui! That’s how thrown off I was. Bad grammar is contagious! Stop using it!

I’m working on the main cast of my new comic; it’s a lighthearted fantasy adventure story following a trio of troublemaking heroes-for-hire. The leader is a suave trickster type, the second is a cute and perky gal who has a propensity to blow things up, and the third is a big and scary-looking strongman who covers up horrible scars with a Phantom-Of-the-Opera-esque hooded mask, who actually has a squooshy nougat center and loves to pet kittens. (Anybody remember the phase-through-walls guy on Buck Rogers In the 25th Century? He’s sorta like that, but more brawny and less brooding.)

The trickster isn’t human at all; in point of fact, he’s a white-and-black-furred fox-morph. The bomber-gal has red hair and freckles. The big scary strongman is an imported character from an earlier project I worked on, in which he was a big ol’ cueball — think “Mr. Clean” meets “Two-Face.” However, when I was importing him into this story, I thought that in an effort to keep the cast from being too monochromatic, I’d make him black instead.

This is where I run into a catch-22 … now instead of an “all-white” cast (if you take a white-furred fox thing as being “white” in the same sense), I’ve potentially got “black man = big, ugly, and scary.” That’s not the intended message by any stretch — this character is a doll and the scariness of his exterior is intended to be a subject of pathos rather than revulsion — but it is something I worry about people taking away from it.

So rather than just bat this one around with my beta readers, I’ve decided to toss this issue out for more general discussion. Am I just overthinking the whole thing? The comic is not about race in any sense, and is not a defining aspect of this character. I don’t want what was basically an aesthetic choice causing anybody grief.

What do you think, folks?

-The Gneech

The strip conversion for Childproof the Unicorns is at almost exactly the 50% mark. It would have been farther along, but some of my decade-plus old files were not readily accessible and I had not only to find the CDs they were on, then use IsoBuster to make the CD readable again, but then discovered they’d been saved as flattened .tifs (for some reason knowable only to 10-years-ago me) and had to have the text typed in again. Fortunately, it only seems to have been a few of them, so it won’t throw a giant spanner in the works.

That’s not all, tho. This weekend I also did up roughs for the cover of Attack of the War-Cats and sent that off to Sue, decided on the title for my new comic, registered some website URLs and did some major character development sketches, and of course did a lot of the prep work for going to Dragon*Con next weekend. I’m all energized now — if it weren’t for the fact that I have to be at work in the a.m., I could happily keep chugging away for at least another couple of hours. But that would mean a Monday of dragging at work, which would in turn leave me totally unproductive tomorrow night, so I have to break it off and go get some sleep for the greater good.

So! Lots of cool stuff. I said back in January that 2010 was going to be an exciting year, and tho it’s taken a little longer to get rolling than I expected, it’s still turning out to be true!

-The Gneech