Pictures from the 2019 Comic-Con International, part 1 (Tuesday, 7/16)

COMIC-CON IS OVER! THERE ARE PICTURES TO SEE! IT'S STILL JULY! LET'S LOOK AT THE PICTURES!

Well, here we are once again. How long will it take me to finish posting this year's set of Comic-Con pictures? If history is any judge, quite a while. But who can say for sure? Let's start out and see where it gets us.

Comic-Con 2019 was once again a complete and wonderful thrill for me to attend. This year, the convention celebrated its 50th year, and I dare say that it's currently in its prime. I flew into Los Angeles the Monday prior to the show and eased my way into convention mode. I stopped at Manhattan Beach on Monday evening; I needed a jacket; the beach volleyball courts were closed. But I carried on.

The Happy Diner in nearby San Pedro is a wonderful restaurant that I discovered last year; it didn't disappoint in 2019. There's even some cool murals in the surrounding area.

There's even one of Popeye's dad, Pappy!

On Tuesday, I made my way down to San Diego. But first I stopped here. If anyone ever wants to question my fandom, please consider this picture of "Weird Al" Yankovic's childhood home in Lynwood. No, I did not knock on the door, nor did I take a lemon from the tree. But I was there, dammit.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, let's see downtown San Diego the day before the big show. It surprises me how signs and attractions are being worked on until the last moment. This new Star Trek: Picard banner was draped over the Gaslamp Hilton, right across the tracks from the convention center.

The first thing I did after entering the building was, of course, take the escalator to the Sails Pavilion to get my bag and program.

There was a new rule that had just come down from the mountain as I was entering the main hall: no open-toed shoes were allowed. I was wearing sandals, and the event staff was emphatic. So I might have borrowed a pair of shoes from someone who was already inside just so I could walk in the doors. You do what you have to do to make it in,

The small press section was waiting, the same as always.

Once again, I shared a booth with my friend and collaborator, Jennie Wood. We got everything set up and ready for Wednesday so that there wouldn't be any rush beforehand.

And then it was time to check out the day-before attractions. I was very excited to see the Star Trek: Picard offsite. I peeked in the window for sure.

The Gaslamp was coming together quickly as I walked through. "The Good Place" had a themed restaurant with pancakes!

The signature banners were back for another year. Even though Avengers: Endgame had come and gone by this point, Marvel still used that for the banner images. I was okay with that.

Hey, look, it's a promo for The Boys, the new Amazon show that effectively replaces The Tick. It's not like I'm bitter about that. Okay, I'm bitter about it.

Some last minute preparations leading up to the show.

Everyone who gets a badge on the days before the convention begins wears it around like a medal of honor. I certainly do.

That Star Trek: Discovery banner is almost done!

This is also about the time that I met up with Tick artist Ian Nichols. Hi, everyone! It's almost time for Comic-Con!

Pictures from the 2018 New York Comic Con, part 1 (Friday, 10/5)

Let's take a deep breath, everyone. I attended the 2018 New York Comic Con for three days in October, and I took a lot of pictures. It's time to look at them. I feel that you're ready! Let's go!

I want to point out that these folks dressed up like this a few months before "Into the Spider-Verse" came out. Good on them for being ahead of the curve!

The first picture I took once I got into the Javits Center was of some guy's sketchbook. I like to think that my two Thing sketchbooks are pretty cool (and they are), but this individual had a Jack Kirby Captain America in his. This is a big deal. Yow!

As I made my way along the floor, I ran into Anthony Del Col, writer of the recently published "Son of Hitler" for Image Comics, which I lettered.

This was my first time seeing the book! It's a really high quality hardcover.

There are two of the best costumes I saw all weekend. Colossus's face paint and contacts are really well done.

I always appreciate seeing older folks taking the time to dress up in costume. I have to imagine that this gentleman dresses up as General MacArthur at times as well. This Popeye has an iPhone in his spinach can.

Drax and Star Lord should switch places, but I get it.

This was an oddly specific Coneheads couple. I remember the wedding dress/flower wreath combo from the movie, right?

The Black Flash has finally caught up to his heroic counterparts.

In every Elseworlds, a Batman.

Group costumes have to be the hardest to pull off, just because if you want to really make it work, you've got to stick together all day. Unity put more work into her costume than anyone else.

Snotgirl is...such a weird concept. But she's got her fans.

Listen, everyone. There were TWO couples dressed as Coneheads at NYCC on Friday, independent of each other. I asked this couple about it and they said they had no idea someone else was also doing it. Madness!

It's the Golden Age Batwoman!

The chest-level video screen on this Armin Zola was really well done. Good on this guy for making it work.

It seems that every year, there's a symbiote meetup at NYCC, and every year, the costumes get more elaborate.

This Carnage is apparently steam powered.

I guess if you've got the body type, you can pull it off. This was a great Malibu Ken, mint in package!

That is...a movie quality MASK, uh, mask. He's been waiting 25 years for this moment.

I will never not take pictures of full-size Krang, this one with clever face place-age.

What is Steel's hammer made of? A suitcase?

Static Shock!

This was a father-daughter combo dressed as The Tick and Miss Lint. Lint even got the buttons on her outfit correct. Needless to say, I was very excited too see these two.

Ben Edlund stopped by the New England Comics booth later in the day. I always appreciate getting to talk to him, and this time, I got a pretty wonderful Thing sketch from him, too.

This picture was obviously taken later in the day, because when else do you see the walkways in the Javits Center so relatively empty?

I saw this walking video game cabinet at several points during the show. The game was playable, too. There's a joystick joke out there somewhere.

Good on this guy for having the courage to dress as Jubilee - and to pull it off pretty well, too!

The last panel of the night was Adult Swim's Venture Bros. panel! It was mostly held to promote the new "Art of the Venture Bros." Dark Horse book, but there were a lot of questions and a lot of topics covered.

And also at some point there was ice cream.

This was a pretty great (if not weird) Brown Recluse costume.

Just like at SDCC, attendees here were given animation art from the show! It's hard to express how much I appreciate stuff like that - because these would be expensive to get otherwise (and I really like them!). This one is from the "All This and Gargantua Two!" episode, with Professor Impossible's stretchy arm winding its way from one side of the page to the other.

Lots to see on Friday. More to come from the rest of the weekend!

Nuclear Winter!

Well, hello, Internet. It's been several months since I've posted anything. Has anyone noticed? Maybe Larry noticed. Anyway, I had to take a break for a couple reasons, both mostly accounting to the excuse "I'm busy". This isn't a great excuse, because I love you, Yeti blog. I think I've had this damn thing for nine years. But the spring brought about some new online classes that I signed up to teach, which meant a lot of content design, and it also brought some new comic book work, which is by far more exciting and enjoyable. I'll try to update more often, but maybe not as often as in years past, because a lot of my time is not going toward making comics, and that's, I guess, pretty neat.

So let's try to spend a few minutes going over what's going on here in whatever year this is now:

Probably the biggest news is that the first volume of Honcho is finished and has made its way back from the printer! It topped out at around 120 pages and, if I can say so, it looks really great. Everyone did a really nice job with it. Jeff McComsey and I are trying to find a publisher for a wider release, which I think the book deserves, so we'll see how that goes.

Free Comic Book Day 2017 has come and gone, and with it, a new issue of The Tick! This is actually the fifth year in a row that I've been able to write a story for FCBD, and as in previous years, I was able to travel to Boston to sign some books at a few different New England Comics stores. This will be a big year for The Tick, as the first season of the new television series officially premiers on Amazon's streaming service in August. I wrote a new story for this year's San Diego Comic-Con, where there'll be some surprises in store regarding the show and a few different items related to it. Let's take a tiny peek at one of the panels from that new comic:

How tantalizing! What could it mean??

I had a short story published by the newly launched AR Comics. Ian Nichols (who drew the above Tick panel) invited me to contribute to the geographically-named "New England Tales of Terror", which premiered at a local New England comic convention in February. My story was drawn by none other than Joe St. Pierre, formerly of Spider-Man 2099 fame, so I was pretty excited.

This hasn't been formally announced yet, so keep it to yourself, but I'm lettering an original graphic novel that has been picked up by Image Comics. I can't really talk about it at any length, but I lettered a pitch for the book in 2015 and we recently got the go-ahead to produce the full-length story. If all goes well, this'll be my first work under the Image banner, which is very exciting. I hope I'm not jinxing it by talking about it.

I'll be at Comic-Con in San Diego once again this year - my sixth year in a row! I'll have copies of Honcho with me along with the aforementioned new issue of The Tick. I'll be sharing a booth with the very talented Jennie Wood in the small press section. I'm a little surprised with how excited I still get for Comic-Con. I'm in full preparation mode over a month away. This should be a fun year. Oh, and if all goes well, I may have something that looks similar to this with me at the booth:

Let's keep our fingers crossed for this one.

How many new Thing items have I gotten since I last posted an update? LOTS, including this incredible (and ugly) bootleg Thing toy from Mexico. What's up with his mouth? Wow. Anyway, I've landed quite a few items that I would love to show off, if only I had a blog or something to post them to - oh, wait. I guess that's what this is for.

I'll post again soon. Not too soon. Soon-ish. We'll all do what we can. Take care, folks.