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in another life because she was really working the crowd selling those bot tles of Dr. Larry’s patented and square-bound graphic novel elixir."

I really liked that one.

Anyway, that was just our booth. That’s not even mentioning every one of the Sky Ape lads who signed autographs for us all week long… …or the Sixties Batmobile, or Dan Brereton’s Nocturnals set-up, or the cool cats at Oni Press, or the Cyberosia booth sporting the new Frightening Curves , or the Battle Pope guys, or Bendis, or Dwyer, or McKinney, or… or… or… I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the tireless efforts of David Glanzer, who is the Public Relations Director and Marketing guru of the show. That guy loves comics, he loves his job, and he loves San Diego. And if he doesn’t… well, he’s fooled me. No matter what time of day or night I was up and working, David was there making sure everything was running smoothly. Perhaps the most impressive thing is he was always nattily attired, with nary a hair out of place. If you’ve ever worked any sort of industry trade show, you realize what an amazing feat this is. One a.m.? Dave looks like he’s stepped off the cover of GQ . Four and a half hours later, at five-thirty the next morning? A different suit, a hot coffee, and a pleasant demeanor. A quick smile… a jaunty wave… the nature of these things is such that there is absolutely no way that there won’t be some sort of foul-up some where… but to those of us on the floor the whole thing was a seamless week-long paean to our love for comics, and David Glanzer, and his able team of Eddie Ibrahim, and the improbably-named Mark Yttralde, and Brett, and… well, Fae Desmond… and John Rogers… and I’m naming my first-born after Greg "pronounce the K" Knuth… and… well… …if you don’t know the names of all these folks, it’s because they did an incredible job of having everything run so smoothly that you’d never notice the bumps and could enjoy the show with no trouble at all. And a hecku va job they did, too. One of the new wrinkles this year was to hold the retailer-centric Comic Book Expo after the convention proper. The thinking was that, during that part of the week, the retailer would be able to afford time away from his shop, instead of missing a new-comics-day-Wednesday as he would under the old schedule. Well, you get the idea. A lot of really cool stuff was going on at San Diego.

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