Otakon was, dare I say, delicious.

The con report is also going to be the singlegreatest undertaking I have ever done for thisrantspace. So it will be up later. When it’s done.Soon, I hope. UPDATE: DONE

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Damn, there’s a lot to get through … let’s seehere. I’d better start with some requisite linkage - we met some cool cats, saw some familiarfaces, and allied ourselves with various forces of darkness. Here’s the links, in noparticular order:

DominicDeegan
ParadoxLost
BlissStudios
Seraphic
LittleGamers
CtrlAlt Del
InstantClassic
FrozenReality
SomethingPositive
Dub This!
Avalon
Schism
Mac Hall
VG Cats

Okay, so that’s outta the way. Let’s see here …I suppose I’ll just start from the top.

THURSDAY

We came in Thursday evening; Timgraciously put us up for the night. We got to meet Mookie and BrianCarroll, both of whom are very nice and very funny. We also got to meet Brianna andMatt, who run Connecticon, as well as Brianna’s sisterBritanny, who were also awesome - they gave us some insight into what it takes to run aconvention, and it’s no walk in the park. Props to you guys! Later that night we hooked up with Joy, and thefour of us hit up some restaurant and talked. Was the first we got to meet Joy in person, so that was pretty cool. ^_^ We walked her back toher hotel afterwards, and then Hawk stayed up with Tim, Brian, Mookie, Matt, Britanny,and Brianna - I believe they played some Halo, but Emily and I were passed the hellout. Oh, Timalso gave us copies of his new book, which look fan-fucking-tastic - seriously, gobuy one and take a look for yourself, they are hot.

FRIDAY

Friday … man, there’s this big gaping hole in mymemory for Friday, so I’ll do my best to get everything in here. First we moved over to ourrooms in the Renaissance with Booj, Jamie, Justin, Ace and Dave. Afterstashing the goods, we got ready to truck over to theconvention center. This brings us to a fun little story: when we got to the convention center, weasked a staff member where the Artist Alley was. We got sent to the actual oppositeside of the building, and spent a good 45 minutes going up and down escalators. Eventuallywe ran into staff members with a better knowledge of the layout, and they got us pointedin the right direction. As a sidenote, all of the Otakon staff was very very helpful! Justyou, yes you, misdirection guy! I’m shaking my fist at you right now.

Anyway, fast forward to Artist Alley. We shared atable with Dave, and wewere adjacent to Mac Hall and Jes. Here’s my next sidetrack, so bear with me.

Jes of MacHall is the one who hooked us up with our posters and prints. She also helped us get ourtable. This woman is really, incredibly helpful - she helps other peoples’ lives becomemore stress-free for these conventions. She’s always watching out for other people andmaking sure everyone is doing alright. On Friday night she stayed at the Mac Hall tabletill midnight (and watched our stuff) while we went outto the guest dinner (which is another story). On Saturday, when Em and I skippedbreakfast and were ready to pass out at our table, Jes asked us if we were okay - we told herwe were brutally hungry, and she whipped out like thirty million granola bars. She hadclips for us to put up our signs and sample prints. When we needed rubber bands for someposters, she handed us a whole bag of them. I have a theory that Jes has a dominant MacGuyvergene, but the results are still pending. Seriously, Jes, thank you so much! You madeeveryone’s con experience more enjoyable, and you get mad props for sticking it out all thosehours despite the fact that you were sick. We at Applegeeks salute you!

We were actually pretty shocked at how many peoplecame by our table this year. At the previous Otakon, only a few people seemed to knowwho we were; this time, a lot of readers stopped in to chat, and it was great! We can watchthe hit statistics for the site, but to actually experience the increase in our readershipover the past year was something else. I actually managed to recognize a lot of faces fromthe past Katsucon and Otakon too, so we said hey again and chatted it up. The middle ofthe day is sort of a blur, but I do remember a few key things. First of all, thanks to Joy for wandering around the Artist Alley and pimping ourstuff! Next, I want to thank a guy named George, who was part of the Mac Hallentourage. George is the very, very nice guy who took food requestsfrom everyone and ran out to get them at the various establishments that people orderedfrom. He even came back and managed to get everyone their correct change; then, if he couldsave them money by getting them water out of his own cooler, he did so; and finally, on thelast day of the con, he gave us free choice out of a box of stuff that he hadaccumulated from E3 and past cons! Let’s just say I’m a few manga TPBs richer. So, again, George -we at Applegeeks salute you! Thanks so much for helping us out!

Later on I took some time to wander the ArtistAlley and check out some of the other tables. There was some pretty amazing stuff. Prior to theconvention Hawk and I printed up some signs, and one of the realizations I came to wasthat that was probably a little overboard, especially since the signs get blocked out theinstant someone stands in front of your table. Oops. Oh, we also went to say hey to Nakuand the LittleGamers! We said hey and talked a bit; Madsen andChristian dropped me a copy of their book, which I was told had a limited run of 50 (Italked to Naku - apparently she made all 50 books herself, so mad props to her!). Thanksguys! But I still don’t want any hot Swedishlove … sorry dude …

The only other thing from Friday@Artist Alleyworth mentioning is the friendly little rivalry that Hawk and Tim got going. Let’s justsay that we sent a few fans to relay some messages to each other … messages involving thewords “you” and “suck” … this all culminated in a mysterious “Macs Suck” sign, whichwill probably appear somewhere on the internet, and I will subsequently link to it.

So of course, the day wound down, and we allheaded to the Green Room, which is where guests are supposed to meet for events. I hung out withIan of Mac Hall for a little bit, and he showed meWorld of Warcraft (The Green Room has wireless). We all know Ian is a rather quiet guy(there was the business of signs at Connecticon, I believe), but if you get himtalking about a game he likes, he suddenly becomes a wellspring of information. All this hasled me to the inevitable conclusion that IAN REALLYLIKES TO PLAY GAMES. This comes as news to no one, though … in any event, I might bechecking out WoW in the future, so credit goes to Ian andhis pure and untainted love of the pixel for that.

The guest dinner … dear lord. Good times,stretched thin over 3.5 hours. This wasn’t the Otakon staff’s fault at all - like I said, theywere very accomodating and friendly. The restaurant just … gave us a little bit to eatevery 45 minutes. Given there were a lot of people to feed, but if you’ve got that many tablesthen you ought to be able to deal with the number of customers that might fill thosetables. It shouldn’t take 3 hours to get the main course out. Unless that’s something thatclassy restaurants do? Beats me. Ian whipped out Matt’s laptopin the hopes that there was wireless in the restaurant, but no luck. Naku came from anothertable and we hung out a bit; she dashed back to eat her meals whenever one finally came out.Oh, and Hawk sat in a corner, that angry look of instant death in his eyes, as every trayof meals went sweeping past us to another table. Suffice it to say, the man was hungry.Well, we finally ate and went back to the room, where Emily and I promptly passed out.

SATURDAY

God this report is long.

Saturday was the panel, which Emily, Dave and Ialmost got late to because I fell asleep in the shower. Yes, I do that. I have asneaking suspicion that this is going to show up in a few con reports, so I wanted to confirm thetruth of it here. If Emily hadn’t knocked on the door, I MIGHT HAVE DROWNED!
The panel itself was called the Webcomics vs.Webmanga panel, but there wasn’t much of a versus in terms of what actually happened (thebigger competition turned out to be who could bash Hawk more for liking Macs). Apparently therewas no planned format, so after introductions the panel obviously went to q&a. Itwas a pretty good time - mostly people asked questions about various aspects of “doingwebcomics”, although we had “when does it mean someone has sold out?” and “what is yourfavorite type of pie?”, which I suppose were as appropriate as any. Oh, and someone asked aboutthe Shotgun game, so thank you to the guywho asked about that. That’s a story I like totell. ^_^

We headed back to the Artist Alley after that; therest of the day till we closed up a 8 PM was just a lot of hanging out and meeting readers,new and old. Hawk went out to lunch with Naku, and Emily went back to the hotel to take anap, so I spent a few hours hanging out with Lem. Lem isone of the coolest people you will ever meet. His accent, incidentally, is also veryfucking cool, and exponentially cooler than any actual person. I wanted to get him a megaphone sohe could walk around the convention talking … THE WORLD MUST KNOW! I also boughtcopies of his story, which can be found online by going to hissite. Look for Alice’s Story and Sleep’s Story. Other things thathappened, let’s see … oh, I got to look at some of the pages from a side project that Joy and I are working on - one day you guys will get to see it,whenever we get it done. Oh, and we had a lot of people come by asking for Underpower- we missed Vaztoo. ;_; They love you man, they really do!

Like I said, things slowed down a lot on Saturday,so there’s not much to say. We chatted with some readers that came by, met some new ones,and everyone sketched a little bit here and there. We closed up at 8, and went out to eat.Finding a place for dinner was a quest of epic proportions … after scouring Inner Harbor,we wandered towards a sushi place. We came upon a Fuddrucker’s instead, and dinner was had byall. Lem wasstaggered by the size of the portions … poor starved British boy. I mentioned that findinga place to eat was a quest - that’s because the final boss was the Fuddrucker’s staff,who we had to fight to get our meals. Talk about powertrip … but we finally ate, andit was good.

SUNDAY

I’m sure by now you can tell that the con reportis progressively becoming less detailed. I’m pretty sure no one is reading by now, so itdoesn’t matter. ^_^;;

On Sunday we loaded up the car and checked out,and then headed back to Artist Alley. This was the slowest day by far, but we still talked toa few readers who took the time to stop by. My close friend Archer and his girlfriend Cattcame by, which was very cool! It was good to see some of the FKNOP. Archer is also theinventor of the Shotgun game. Rumor has it that my comrade-in-arms Christian was around as well,but I didn’t run into him.

We did a staff signing at (I think) 12, and I raninto someone I knew from high school - hey Kristina! *waves* I sat next to Madsen, and wepretty much sat around like dumbasses and drew on index cards. Incidentally, he wants youall to know that your collective mother is a hamster.

After that we packed up and said our goodbyes.It’s always a bummer to see everyone go, but there’s always the next con. We ran into a readeron the elevator, and then ran into Mookie on the way to the car. We’ve been stalking him, itseems. We loaded up the car and drove home, and that’s the end of that.

Real quick, this is a shout-out to Jekka, Ace, Crowie, Moony, Pocky, Nami,Massive, Redliner, Mookie,Joy, Lem, Dave, Timand everyone else who came and hung out. We’ll seeyou guys next time! ^_^

And to everyone who bought some of our swag -thanks for supporting us! We appreciate it.^_^

You can (obviously) check to the left for photos.

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