Live from Comic-Con 2010

Well, here I am in beautiful and sunny clammy and rainy San Diego for Comic-Con 2010. The weather is suppose to improve as soon as this afternoon, but it looks like I might get wet on the way to the convention center this morning. I’ll be blogging from the convention floor and you have my promise: No “BIFF!” “POW!” or other sound effects will be lazily used in any headlines or posts.

I’m not sure exactly why I ever go to comic book conventions. As I have written here before, MAD is sort of the red headed stepchild of comics… yes, it’s got plenty of comics and cartooning in it but it’s still a fringe sort of thing, especially today. Whenever I sit at a table at a comic book convention and, when asked what I do I reply “I draw for MAD Magazine”, I always get the same few replies:

“Wow, MAD!… That still being published?”

“I used to love MAD… haven’t read it in 10 years!”

And my personal favorite:

“My grandpa loves MAD! He’s dead now, but still…”

That’s an exaggeration… but not much. I do have a few folks who drop by and actually have recent copies of the magazine for me to sign for them… and many are young kids. MAD isn’t entirely lost from the younger generation. That’s what makes the upcoming Cartoon Network show so exciting. I hope it brings MAD to a whole new generation of fans.

I’ll be signing free copies of MAD at the DC Comics booth (#1915) from 2:00- 3:00 pm today.

A little later today I will probably know my schedule at the National Cartoonists Booth (#1307), which is where I will be doing all my caricature drawing and hawking MAD originals. I brought a limited number of them this year, but they are all comic-book related… pages from the parodies of “The Dark Knight Returns”, “X-Men 2”, “Spiderman 2”, “Superman Returns” and “Watchmen” as well as a few pages from “The Big Bang Theory” and “30 Rock”. Ridiculously exorbitant bargain basement prices.