San Diego Comic Con 2025

 I checked off two items from my bucket list in the past thirty days: attending San Diego Comic-Con and visiting Scotland. Interestingly, the most common question I got asked about each of these wasn't the reason for my visit, nor was it something I did out there. Most folks who have a peripheral knowledge about Comic-Con ("civilians", as my friend the illustrious Satya calls them) asked who I was going as. Most folks who know one particular thing about Scotland asked which distillery I was visiting. While I wasn't there to cosplay or tour a distillery, both trips were amazing, and I'd love to go back.

 My visit to Comic-Con was all thanks to my buddy Satya, who is well-known to pretty much all the dealers out there, as well as to quite a few of the major artists. There was a long line of people, rivaling the one for George Lucas, waiting to get face time with the illustrious one and I imagine offer him multi-million dollar deals for his prized comic art collection. I had to beat them off with a rolled up poster so that the man could negotiate a copy of the first page art for the comic book you've never heard of but would have watched the movie version. To be fair though, Satya says his collection is small fry compared to those of the passionate folks he hangs out with.

Satya negotiating one of his multi-million dollar deals

 

 So anyway, since I had a dealer pass courtesy Satya's friends, I was able to get in early Wednesday afternoon before the civilian throng arrived. This turned out to be a huge deal, as I could saunter along the entire Con (as we in the industry call it) and look at all the unsullied booths without having to fight through hordes of plant zombies. That said, we were asked to not loiter in front of bigger displays like the Star Wars area or the DC booth, and were specifically told not to buy anything as it would put the general public at a disadvantage. However, that changed from 6pm when the hall was open for preview, and the masses started trundling in.

Alright, about cosplays. Sure enough, they were on full display throughout the Con. People outside the venue without tickets like this guy in a Deadpool costume driving around the block every ten minutes, to Ninja Turtles lining up to enter the venue, to these ladies who were apparently a version of Red Sonja far removed from the Brigitte Nielsen avatar I knew from my childhood. And oh, those plant zombies showed up too.

  You also had the usual bunch of religious folks protesting outside the venue, as comics are obviously bad for you and a sure shot way to get you into hell. This cosplay didn't make me smile as much as the others, strangely enough.

What was the best part of the Con? I'd like to think there were two - first, all the panels I attended were awesome, with some great discussions. I loved listening to these artists talk about their inspirations, their creative processes, what worked and didn't work for them. Their interactions with each other, responses to the audience questions, and just being a regular person geeking out at a convention, happy to be among like-minded souls and interacting with fans made them seem approachable and... human.

Panel with Eddie Campbell, Craig Thompson, Lee Marrs, Thien Pham, etc

Panel with David Dastmalchian, Eric Powell, et al

  I looked up books written by authors I hadn't heard of before, and have been reading them after getting back. I loved Thien Pham's Family Style, and was floored by Harold Schechter & Eric Powell's Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? The movie versions of the Ed Gein story (Psycho, Texas Chainsaw..., etc) pale in comparison to his real life.

 The second highlight was one of the main reasons I attended SDCC: getting to meet some of my favorite artists. I loved taking pictures with them, interacting with them, and getting their books autographed. Some of these were easy enough, but others required spending money AND standing in lines to get a chance at standing in lines to get their signature. 

Lunch with the incredibly talented Craig Thompson of Blankets fame

With Brian K Vaughan, he of Saga, Y: The Last Man, Paper Girls, Runaways & more

Daniel Clowes, creator of Ghost World, Monica, etc 

With the awesome Emil Ferris, of My Favorite Thing Is Monsters

 I didn't tell my kids about this earlier as I wanted to surprise them with the actual signed comics. So getting Brian K Vaughan, Bryan Lee O'Malley, and Neil Druckmann's signatures for Rachu, and the legendary Frank Miller for Karan was absolutely the highlight of my Comic Con.

Neil Druckman

After getting Frank Miller's signature

Scott Pilgrim's Precious Little Life! 

Brian K Vaughan apparently knows me very well

With Tom King, writer of the Vision books and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

Jeph Loeb signing (and doodling) Hush for me

The doodle bit is interesting, as it's an additional little gesture from the artist towards the fan. As I understand it, the vanilla signature on a book is the baseline. Artists often prefer that you ask to make it out to someone, as then the chances of you trying to sell the book with the signature on eBay are low. The next best thing is to get an additional little doodle on the page, which adds pizzazz. You can see some of these in the pics above.

The artist who drew my favorite Alan Moore comic, From Hell, Eddie Campbell

 I got back home with a suitcase full of books, a long list of comics to read, and a heart full of thanks to Satya and his friends, who were kind enough to accommodate a wide-eyed civilian in their midst for a few days at this mecca of geekdom.

A Love Reaction

 What compels me to write? When do I put fingers to the keyboard and start typing with gusto, words flowing out like water bubbling through that broken pipe which you've been meaning to fix but never got around to and now it's too late and your kitchen is flooded and oh, hell. 

When I was young, it was mostly love. The feeling you feel when you are going to feel a feeling you've never felt before. I wrote pages after pages, not necessarily about love but because of it. Because of the high I used to feel after meeting her between scoops of ice cream, meeting her between rows of books, meeting her at bus-stops, walking through narrow streets sprinkled all over that tiny hometown of mine. 

If not love, it was reading. Which is a kind of love too, of course. Love with words, with dialog, with the process of creating worlds which take you away for a few hours. Worlds of horror, of mystery, of intrigue, of castles filled with incredibly funny Earls, secretaries, and butlers. My writing at the time echoed Stephen King, Robert Ludlum, Agatha Christie, Arthur C Clarke, and every Indian english reader's constant source of amusement, PG Wodehouse. It was terrible writing, now that I look back at it, but it flowed. 

It changed later though, after several years. Especially after my daughter was born, which was peak blogging era (LiveJournal, sigh). I wrote about emotions, about her growing up, about what we learned, my wife and I. Strangely enough, my son's birth a few years later was peak social media. It was Facebook, it was Instagram, it was Twitter, and Whatsapp. Which meant I have fewer videos and pics of my daughter compared to my son, but more words for Rachu than Karan. Not quite sure how I feel about that now.

So, what compels me to write? At this age, at this moment, I think it's the opposite of love. Not quite hate, but anger. Bitterness. Sadness. Frustration. With the world, with politics, with the irrationality that surfaces every day. With the unfairness of it all. And the realization that it's here to stay and there's little I can do about it. 

Other than write.

Karan

So, I became a dad all over again last Monday. Thanks to technological marvels such as Blackberry, Facebook and Twitter, I could take pics and let people know within minutes of my son's birth. Felt weird, felt good too. Feb 23 was an amazing day for a lot of happy Indians, it became even more special for me.

The baby is doing just great. He keeps us awake most nights as any newborn worth his salt would. His mom is also fine and well, recuperating faster than most, thanks to an excellent gynaec whose only advice after the Caesarian was to run up and down four flights of steps. My wife being who she is, loved the advice and proceeded to do exactly that. She's almost fully back to normal now, within just a few days of the operation.

The big sister went through a mild patch of severe stomach ache and vomiting, which started curiously enough the day the baby reached home. She got a lot of extra attention the next couple of days and is back to normal now, thankfully.

We have named him Karan. Karan Madhav. You know he's going to steal your daughter's heart one day, don't you?

Our first choice of name was Kabir, though. It's sad that we live in times when we had to rule out a child's name, for fear of giving him an unnecessary handicap when he grows up. Kabir, you see, is perceived as a Muslim name in the south, especially in Kerala. Sindha and I thought of conversations which would go:

- "What's your name, smartass?"
- "Kabir"
- "A-ha! What's your father's name?"
- "Madhav"
- "Oh! We have a live one here. What's your mother's name?"
- "Thomas"

This would ensure him getting beaten up by all three communities. The Sikhs might also join in, given the importance they give to Kabir's poems. As much as we both loved the name Kabir, we just didn't want to setup our son for trouble later on in his life. The above scenario could very well turn out true, the way things are going these days, especially in Karnataka. I'm not very proud of it, but we chickened out finally.

At any rate, the baby is here and all of us are happy and well. We are four now.