San Diego Comic-Con: Friday

Well, day two turned into a lot of waiting in line for events I wound up missing. The baby and I dropped Scott off at the WildStorm booth for his morning shift and headed up to Ballroom 20, where the Caprica/BSG line was already hundreds deep. We joined the throng, but before long, word came that too few people were leaving the previous panel, and the Caprica panel was already at maximum capacity.

Ah, well. The baby was hungry anyway, so we found a nice bench and people-watched for a while—which really is one of the best parts of a con.

Think that backpack is full of Wonka bars?

Then we spent some time wandering the main exhibit hall. The display of Mouse Guard books at the Archaia booth reminded me I wanted to hit the Archaia panel—

—so we headed back upstairs and joined that line, which was nice and short because we were early. Alas, we had to slip out of the panel after only fifteen minutes because the baby was feeling chatty. Actually I had kind of a mortifying moment. I was standing in the back of the room with the baby in the sling, bouncing him a bit to keep him happy while simultaneously typing one-handed notes on the presentation into my Blackberry. And now and then the baby would make a little happy noise, but it really wasn’t loud enough to disturb anyone (yet). But suddenly I realized Mouse Guard author David Petersen was looking at me and what he saw would have been a woman with a wiggly baby, a woman staring intently at her cell phone, appearing not to be paying attention. Horrible. Probably looked like I was texting someone. How could he know that I was faithfully chronicling his own words? It was right about then that Sean’s soft-happy became edging-toward-loud happy, so I slipped out the side door.

But we were there long enough to hear from David Petersen about the publication, at last, of the second volume of his beautifully illustrated graphic novel series. My kids (especially Beanie) are big fans of the first Mouse Guard book, Fall 1152, and I’m looking forward to reading Winter 1152. Also full of promise: the Mouse Guard roleplaying game, the discovery of which inspired a couple of excited tweets yesterday. The rules are published in a gorgeous hardcover book. It’s thick. Possibly complicated? Might be fun to find out.

Mouse Guard author David Petersen (left) and Archaia Studios Press editorial director Stephen Christy

We had to leave before I got to hear about Archaia’s recently announced partnership with the Jim Henson Company, but I gather there are plans to publish comics based on such Henson classics as (oh boy oh boy!!) Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal. (Unabashed Fraggle Rock fan here.)

Loads more to tell, of course (for starters, there’s the smashing karaoke performance of “If I Had a Million Dollars” by writer Mike Costa and my very own husband), but the kids are waking up and it’s about to be busy-Saturday-morning around here. Friday summary is:

Having a ball—

Wish you were here.