A group decided to step in and fill the void by launching the Long Beach Comic Con. The first convention is this weekend…at the Long Beach Convention Center.

Tonight I drove past a billboard and found out what’s going on this weekend at the LA Convention Center, where Wizard World would have been:

“Adultcon.”

Given some of the opinions I’ve seen expressed about Wizard, I suspect there will be people wondering, “What’s the difference?”

The wind’s changed, the weather’s cooled off, and firefighters are starting to get the Station Fire under control. For the first time in days, we’ve been able to see the San Gabriel Mountains.

The eastern part of the range was clearly visible this afternoon — more visible than it usually is during the summer, with LA’s famous smog. The middle was completely shrouded in smoke. Interestingly, while it looks like the plume is being blown east, visibility seems to be worse toward the western end. Maybe wind near the ground is blowing west, and wind higher up is blowing east?

Compare to this shot of the mountains covered in snow last December:

I’ve been to the observatory once, on a tour my family took on August 8, 1992. We’d just come back from a trip to Florida where we visited Disney World and Cape Canaveral during the summer I was 16. I really wish I could remember more about the trip…but I took pictures and labeled them (though not in much detail). With the observatory threatened, I thought I’d dig them out and scan them**. You can see all eight on my Mt. Wilson Observatory Tour 1992 photoset on Flickr.

The Observatory’s website is apparently hosted on the grounds, so the fact that its fire status page is still responding indicates it’s still there and has power. The latest update says that they’re setting up a backup info page at http://joy.chara.gsu.edu/CHARA/fire.php, but that’s showing a 404 error right now.

*As in the Hubble Space Telescope.

**Scanning them was not a problem. Digging them out? That was a problem. I knew exactly which photo album they were in, and thought I knew where the album was. As it turned out, it wasn’t there. It was in an unopened box shoved at the very back of the long,narrow hall closet, such that I had to move 3 other boxes, several bags, and an unused CD rack just to see that it was labeled “photo albums” on top. Edit: And, oh yeah, the trail of ants along the wall, going after the long-forgotten bag of Halloween candy. The wall I kept brushing up against. How did I forget that part?

That’s the missing piece that makes the classic phrase more than a simple tautology. It’s not just that it’s in the last place you look. It’s that it’s in the last place you want to look.

AMERICAN GLADIATORS Cast Members MAYHEM (William Romeo), STEEL (Erin Toughill), FURY (Jamie Kovac), HELGA (Robin Coleman), LASER (JIm Starr), and TOA (Tanoai Reed) appear to sign autographs from 12:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M. There is no charge if you bring one item for them to sign, but the cast will have a SPECIAL AMERICAN GLADIATORS POSTER available for purchase that they will all sign together. Though AMERICAN GLADIATORS will no longer be seen on NBC-TV, an announcement will be made at the Convention of where new episodes will air. New Cast Members from the new season of AMERICAN GLADIATORS will also appear.

RAY PARK is known for his role as DARTH MAUL in STAR WARS EPISODE ONE: THE PHANTOM MENACE, and this Movie celebrates it’s 10th Anniversary of release during 2009. RAY stars as SNAKE EYES in G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA Movie scheduled for release this summer. RAY will be signing autographs from 12:00 P.M.-3:00 P.M., and while there is a charge it includes a choice of photo.

A set of five G.I. JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA POSTERS will be given away FREE to everyone attending while supplies last.

The LOS ANGELES COMIC BOOK AND SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION takes place at the Shrine Auditorium Expo Center, located at 700 West 32nd Street, right across from USC College. Admission is only $8.00, five years and under are free. A large Dealers Room full of Comic Books, Anime Merchandise, Toys, and other Collectibles are also featured. Call (818) 954-8432 or check www.comicbookscifi.com for more information.

The LOS ANGELES COMIC BOOK AND SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION celebrates 32 years of operation during 2009, with well over 350 shows having been held. During it’s long run, the LOS ANGELES COMIC BOOK AND SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION has provided the public with an intimate forum to meet creators of Comic Books, Animation, Television Series, and Movies.

Okay, read it?

Anything else you’d like to know about the convention? You’ve got a guest list, a location, admission price, some of the swag, anything else?

Like, oh, I don’t know, the date and time?

Fortunately we have the Internet to answer that question, as a quick trip to their website reveals that it’s February 15.

Now if they’d just make an effort to post a schedule more than one month in advance…

(I was so tempted to call this post “Press Release Fail,” but I think there’s too much Fail on the Internet as it is.)

Amazingly, I got to see something similar again today. In a way, even better, because this time the sky was clear, providing better light and an unimpeded view.

After yesterday’s rain and a prediction of more showers today, I was surprised to see empty blue sky this morning. While driving over a bridge I looked out the window and saw the mountains just coated with snow. As soon as I dropped Katie off at her office, I made a beeline for that spot near The District in Tustin that (for now) offers an unimpeded view of the mountains that dominate the skyline (on clear days) of Los Angeles County.

By then a few clouds had begun to swirl around in the distance.

San Gabriel Snow (Section 1), originally uploaded by Kelson.

I couldn’t tell at the time whether Saddleback had any snow or not, since it was still backlit (this was around 8:20 or so in the morning), so I didn’t take any pictures of it.

Here’s a panorama of the mountain range. Click on the image below to see the full thing.

First, here’s the view from the camera, at 3x optical zoom, to give you some context.  This is looking northwest from the park.  (It occurs to me I could probably have checked the direction with my phone’s GPS info.)

Everything’s flattened out near the horizon.  Near the right you can see the MCAS Tustin blimp hangars, with Santa Ana beyond them. The area I’m looking at is too small to see at web size, on the left side right near where the hill cuts in front of the horizon.

Here it is zoomed in and enhanced.

I gave it a shot with the digital zoom out to 12x, but it was way too fuzzy.  It worked out better just to crop the file and look at its native resolution.  Someday I’ll save up and get a nifty digital SLR that will save raw images instead of JPEGs, and let me swap out lenses for serious telephoto work, but for now, this is what I’ve got.

Actually, looking at the picture, I’m no longer convinced that it’s actually downtown Los Angeles.  What I can see doesn’t look clustered enough, and the buildings look shorter than I’d expect.  But I can’t think what else has a bunch of buildings tall enough to see at that distance and in that direction.

It could be that only the tops of the building are visible, in which case that black rectangle bordered in white, roughly in line with the top of the light pole, could be the top section of the Aon Center, the second-tallest building in the city and the one that’s mostly black with white corners and white around the top. But in that case the US Bank Tower (the tall round one) must be completely faded into the haze.

Or it could be Century City, which is a few miles to the west of Downtown LA, and has a couple of similar buildings (black with white outlines).  If that’s the case, though, downtown should be somewhere to the right and taller, and I just don’t see it.  And Century City would be closer to 45 miles, rather than 40.  Maybe the smog’s just thicker around downtown? Edit: This does seem more likely (see comments).

Anyway, I took some more pictures to make a panorama, which I’ll stitch together at home when I have a chance and see if it’s worth posting.

Update: The photo gallery is up!

The Floor

I spent most of the time on the main floor, hunting down back-issues, bargains and autographs. A lot of dealers had brought their bargain bins (some of them, thankfully, alphabetized!), and a lot of them had trades and hardcovers for half-off or close to it. There were also the booths selling high-grade Silver-Age and Golden-Age books, toys and collectibles, and at least two booths selling swords. Yes, swords.

At one point, I overheard two comic-book dealers discussing whether the show was worth it. One of them said that people here tended to be looking for bargains, so it was hard to sell anything else. They agreed San Diego was a better bet.

I’ve been joking that the logo design for this year’s con (see above) was inspired by the gigantic auto show that shared the convention center witl last year’s con. So I was surprised to find a mini-auto show here: Marvel-themed cars, including Iron Man and Punisher SUVs.

There was a stage set up for Guitar Hero. At one point, I noticed the music was Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.” It seemed appropriate.

Costuming

There weren’t quite as many people in costume as I saw at WonderCon last month (also a Saturday). But there was a large contingent of people in Jedi costumes, some of whom seemed to be sparring with lightsabers every time I walked down the right edge of the dealers’ room. And there were Imperial Stormtroopers directing traffic, making sure people could find the one large panel room that was half-way to the other end of the convention center.

They held an informal costume contest at 1:00, with winners chosen by applause volume. To avoid interference from the “awwww” factor, they held two: one for kids, and one for adults. The kids’ entries consisted of two groups, one of DC characters (Robin, Harley Quinn, and someone else), and one of Star Wars characters (a Jawa, Leia, and someone else. Gee, my brain’s really working here). The Star Wars group won handily.

The adult costume contest had closer to a dozen entries, and came down to two: A very detailed, complicated Optimus Prime, complete with working taillights and light-up Creation Matrix, and a pair dressed as Mario and Luigi. The Mario Brothers won. (IMO, Optimus Prime was robbed.)

The weird thing is that the prizes for the kids’ contest were the same as the prizes for the adult contest: mini-statuettes and busts of characters like Hulk, Venom, etc. I can’t imagine the two-to-six–year-olds who won were terribly pleased with their prizes. The parents have probably listed them on eBay already.

Signings and Encounters

At the Avatar booth, I talked with someone who I took for a sales rep. But when I paid for the books I picked up, he offered to sign the Anna Mercury preview. It turned out he was Jacen Burrows, who’d drawn the cover. (Interestingly, over half their table space and nearly all their shelf space was devoted to Warren Ellis books.)

Once again, there were no placards provided in Artist’s Alley, but a lot of the artists had made their own. I finally managed to track down Josh Middleton, whom I’d looked for at San Diego last summer, and got him to sign my copy of All-Flash #1 (the new one, obviously!) We agreed it was really disappointing that DC had printed it so dark, but he said my copy was actually in the middle of the range! Some of them were even harder to see! I seriously considered buying a print (not that I have anywhere to put it), but while I was there he told someone else that only the pieces up on the board behind him were available—and it wasn’t on the board. Though I have to admit considering his River from Serenity: Those Left Behind.

While looking for Marv Wolfman (since I missed my chance to get the Crisis on Infinite Earths novel signed two years ago, I’ve been unable to catch him again at a signing), I saw recognized Mark Evanier standing on the other side of the row, talking to someone who I thought could have been Peter David. I walked around, saw it was him, and pulled out my copy of Fallen Angel #1 to get signed. He asked me if I was still reading the series at IDW. I said yes, I was, and he pointed out that J.K. Woodward was at the table next to him. D’oh! I hadn’t realized he was coming, so when I was putting together stuff to get signed, I only grabbed the first DC issue of the book, instead of the first IDW issue! We talked a bit about the current storyline, and I got to see some of the original art for the next issue. It turns out he’s doing a couple of signings in the next few weeks, so I might try to catch him at one of those.

I met John Wesley Shipp, who played the Flash on the 1990 TV series. After kicking myself for not bringing the Flash TV Special which I’d gotten signed by the show’s creators at another con, I just bought a photo for an autograph. I also got my picture taken with him. (The guy who was with him handling the money took the picture. When I handed him my camera, he asked whether the flash was on.)

I’ve noticed some common threads among the celebrity signing areas. Lou Ferrigno seems to do a full circuit of cons, as does the actor who played the original Boomer on the 1970s Battlestar Galactica. Several of the contestants from Who Wants to Be A Super-Hero seem to be making the rounds this year.

One set of autographs I wanted to get, but couldn’t, was Seth Green and Hugh Sterbakov. I’d brought my copy of the first Freshman trade, and went over to the Top Cow booth 10 minutes before the signing. Only one problem: The program book had neglected to mention that the signing required tickets, which had been handed out at the Top Cow panel 2 hours earlier.

Added: I did, however, find myself walking past the Golden Apple booth during the Pathology signing. I wasn’t sure whether Katie was in the incredibly long line (she wasn’t, as she’d had the same problem with unpublicized tickets that I later had for Freshmen), but I figured I’d try to snap a couple of shots of Milo for her as I walked past. Or, more accurately, shuffled past. The crowd was so thick that I basically couldn’t move for five minutes. I could barely see him, and couldn’t see anyone else at the booth. At least Michael Weston was supposed to be there, but I couldn’t tell. (Not that I would have recognized him.) (Edit: Apparently Alyssa Milano was sitting right next to him—probably straight through that other camera—but I couldn’t see her at all, even in the photos.) But one nice thing about digital cameras: you can afford to take pictures without aiming. It seemed like everyone in the crowd was reaching up with a camera.

Knowing is Half the Battle

The main problem I had with the convention was hidden information. I’ve mentioned the lack of placards in Artists’ Alley two years running, and the unannounced signing tickets. There weren’t any placards at the panels, either, so if you didn’t recognize someone by sight and couldn’t catch their name at the beginning of the panel, you were out of luck trying to figure out who they were.

Another problem was the map: it showed the dealer’s room in great detail, and the hallway with most of the panel rooms, but it didn’t show how to get from one to the other. It also didn’t show how to find Petree Hall, which turned out to be not only halfway to the other convention center, but directly above a street.

And then there’s the schedule. Most cons I’ve been to will put out a flyer with any changes to programming. Even small fan-run cons will sometimes put out a daily newsletter. Wizard World LA just posted changes on their website and in front of each room. So if, for example, you wanted to go to the Heroes panel, but didn’t know it had been moved from 6:00 to 5:00 in another room (probably to accommodate more people and Milo Ventimiglia’s schedule), and you hadn’t looked at the website at home, there were two ways you could find out:

• Check the website on your cell phone, assuming you’ve got an iPhone or Opera Mini or something else that can handle it.
• Scout out the old room more than an hour before you thought the panel was going to start.

We were fine, but there must have been a few people who showed up an hour late to the wrong room.

In Closing

While I was wandering the floor, Katie went to the Pathology and Lucasfilm panels. We met up for lunch (well, her lunch; I’d eaten an hour earlier), and again for Heroes. (Yes, I passed up DC’s “Countdown to Crisis” panel again.)

After the Heroes panel, we did a quick circuit of the dealers’ room. I wanted to pick up the Anna Mercury book (success) and check one more time for Marv Wolfman (no luck). We left around 6:30, during some sort of giveaway at the Marvel booth.

The door guards asked us two questions: “Did you have fun?” Yes. “Did you find great stuff?” Yes on that one, as well. Despite the convention’s flaws, it was more fun than last year’s, and definitely worth attending.

Not just the tops of the mountains on the eastern half of the range, but everything, even the lower parts you can just barely see by the Cajon pass, and this huge expanse north of Los Angeles that I’m not sure I’ve ever seen covered.

I pulled over as soon as I found a spot I considered safe, then walked back up to the top of the ramp. I talked briefly with the man I’d seen taking photos, and he said he’d lived in the area for 50 years and had never seen the mountains like this. He also mentioned he had a friend who had served at the base*, and he was going to send him the pictures.

I ended up taking a 12-photo panorama (zoomed) spanning at least 120° from the blimp hangar on the left, across the San Gabriels, past the hills above Orange and Tustin, the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, on to Saddleback, which had a few bits of snow clinging to the mountainside.

Click to view panorama (424 KB 6648×500 JPEG)

*This is the location of the former MCAS Tustin. The Marine base was closed in the mid-1990s, and the land is only just starting to be developed—notably The District in one corner, which is what brought us to the area yesterday.

UPDATE DECEMBER 18, 2008: This post is getting a lot of traffic today, but it’s from last winter. If you want to see photos from this week’s snow, check out Misty Mountains: Another San Gabriel Snow Panorama from the same spot on Tuesday, December 16, and my Snowline photoset on Flickr, for those pictures and several of Saddleback and the Santa Ana Mountains on Thursday, December 18, 2008.

I found this photo while looking for the UCI Student Center pic. This was taken on the way back from a camping trip with UCI’s Campuswide Honors Program in the Angeles National Forest in April 2000. IIRC it was along Angeles Crest Highway.

A permanent sign isn’t necessarily the best way to indicate a transitory condition.

The convention itself did turn out to be a nice, low-key experience, and I found some interesting stuff, but getting to the convention was a bit of an adventure.

Getting There

The drive up to LA wasn’t bad at all, though I made one critical mistake. Instead of getting off at the first exist that said “LA Convention Center,” I waited for the next exit: the 10W-110N off-ramp to Pico, where the traffic slowed to a dead stop. I’m not sure anyone actually made it to the end of the ramp. It’s possible I only moved forward when someone ahead of me gave up and tore off to the 110 South. After 25 minutes, I got close enough to see a glimpse of the street in front of the convention center… with a line of people stretching around the block.

At that point I decided to bail. If that many more people were there this year, it would be like trying to buy tickets at the door for San Diego. It wouldn’t be worth waiting for three hours just for two hours looking for books that I probably wouldn’t find anyway. I ducked into the next lane and onto the 110 South, took the first exit, and decided, you know, I drove up here, I may as well try to get in. I made it to the parking garage easily via surface streets, thought the Central City sign was appropriate, and headed out to look at the line.

That’s when I noticed three things: First, signs directed Wizard World to West Hall. Second, I was parked next to South Hall. Third, the people in line didn’t look like comic book fans. I walked the entire length of the convention center, eventually discovering that the South Hall was hosting the DUB Auto Show.

By the time I got past the Bride Expo and American Inventor, and finally found Wizard World itself, it was nearly 12:30. But there was only one person ahead of me in line, and there were two clerks selling tickets. I had arrived!

On the Floor

I didn’t attend any panels, since all the interesting stuff was on Friday and Saturday anyway. The main floor was much like the floor at Comic-Con, with a trade-show area, a dealer’s area, and an artists area, only a lot smaller, and a lot less crowded. Actually, I’d say there were about as many comic dealers at this con as there were at San Diego last year. Memorabilia and general pop culture has really taken over the CCI floor space.

As I walked in, they were setting up the Heroes autograph table. Zachary Quinto (Sylar) was the first one to arrive, soon joined by James Kyson Lee (Ando).

Oddly, there were no Heroes T-shirts to be found anywhere. It’s NBC’s biggest hit (Jeph Loeb joked that they refer to it as, “Save the cheerleader, save the network.”), we’re almost to the end of the season, and there are no T-shirts out?

There weren’t too many costumes. A couple of booth babes, one guy in a Transformers costume that I couldn’t place, and, bizarrely, an Alien who was helping to hand out promotional flyers at the entrance.

I wandered through Artist Alley a couple of times, mostly because I’d read that Humberto Ramos (the original artist on Impulse) was going to be there. One thing I found frustrating was that there were no placards identifying the artists. With very few exceptions, I don’t know any of these people on sight. I know their names, and in some cases I can recognize their art style. A few artists had brought their own signs, but surprisingly few of the rest had drawn up their own placards.

The Hunt

My main goal was to further the Golden-Age Flash hunt, which failed. I wasn’t expecting to find anything. Dealers seem to mainly bring their high-grade Golden Age books to conventions, and I’m not looking for collectors’ items, I’m looking to read them. The one low-grade book I found was a rare enough book (All-Flash #32*) that they wanted $200. Though I have to admit I enjoyed the chance to gawk at a pair of 9+ Flash Comics #1 and All-Flash Quarterly #1.

There were a few newer things I was looking for, and skimming the $1.00 and 50¢ bins reminded me of more. Around mid-afternoon, the cries of “All books, half off!” started reverberating through the hall, and I pored through several dozen boxes of 50%-off trade paperbacks. One booth had 5-10 copies of the first Fallen Angel TPB, a fact that came in handy when I overheard someone who was looking for the book.

In the end, I managed to find a full set of JLA/Avengers and a missing issue of Robin with Captain Boomerang, Jr.. The bargain bins helped me fill in the Seven Soldiers issues I hadn’t read, plus Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating JLA and Crisis (I read them tonight—the Crisis book was terrible, and not just because he made Crisis a villain instead of a concept), and a bunch of random Sergio Aragonés stuff.

I left around 4:00. The Pico off-ramp was still backed up, and getting to the freeway was a challenge.

Overall, not a bad day. Maybe next year I’ll try to attend on Saturday. Update: I did. You can read my 2008 WWLA Con Report.

*All-Flash #32 is not only the final issue of the series, but the three stories in it feature big-name villains: the Fiddler, the Thinker, and the first appearance of the original Star Sapphire. The Fiddler and Star Sapphire stories have been reprinted, but the issue contains the one Golden-Age Thinker story I haven’t tracked down.

We were up in Los Angeles for a wedding on Wednesday and Thursday. Since we were both involved, we stayed in a hotel instead of driving up and back two days in a row. (I’ve made that drive in 40 minutes. It took us nearly two hours on Wednesday.)

First up: the hotel. You may recall we found an interesting combination in the nightstand drawer the last time we stayed in Las Vegas. Here we found another combination, somehow appropriate for LA:

The Bible, of course, had been provided by the Gideons. The name plate on The Teaching of Buddha indicated it had been placed there by the Society for Buddhist Understanding.

Then, of course, there’s this place. We’ve been told that “Happy cows come from California,” but they never tell you where they go…

I had a few hours free the morning of the wedding (the bridesmaids had an earlier call time), so I walked around downtown Los Angeles a bit. The Disney Concert Hall is weird, of course, but it’s well-known weird.

Now, to a fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, the name “Angelus” has a somewhat sinister connotation:

Finally, you may think you’ve seen truckloads of FUD coming from places like Microsoft, but we actually saw a literal truckful of FUD.

It turns out to be a Mexican company that sells meats, playing on the pronunciation (“fud” in Spanish would sound like “food” in English). They’ve recently licensed the brand in the US, focusing on “areas of heavy Mexican immigration where the brand name is already well known”—in other words, areas like Southern California.

That’s it for now. Maybe I’ll post some of my sightseeing photos next year (i.e. tomorrow).

Spotted along the freeway in Los Angeles several months ago. I wonder if their lawyers are Wolfram and Hart?

Granted, I doubt it looks like this very often (the mountains only get snow in winter, and you can only see them like this on a clear day). Source: public domain photo on Wikipedia.

Update: I see this post is getting a lot of attention with the recent snowstorms. I’ve posted a panorama photo of almost the entire mountain range from January 2008.

I looked through the first few pages of Otherworld #2 in the comic store yesterday. As at the end of the first issue, one character made a big deal about how it never rains in L.A.

Admittedly, people drive as if it were true. It starts drizzling, and people freak out. Three days of rain is billed as Stormwatch 2005 on the TV news. Some years we don’t get much rain at all.

But every 7 or 8 years, we get drenched.

I’ve heard people cite this year’s near-record rainfall as an example of the extreme weather that climate models predict for global warming. While I do think there are plenty of valid examples, this isn’t one of them. We got just as much rain in 1997—eight years ago—when the UCI campus flooded, stairs turned into waterfalls, streets and underpasses became rivers, and one student infamously bodysurfed naked down the hill next to the Student Center. (A yearbook(?) ad later remarked, “Who says nothing happens in Irvine?”) We got nearly enough rain two years before that. I knew someone from Vermont who brought friends out to visit during the heaviest period of rain. They got their preconceptions handed to them.

Every once in a while the cycle skips. Those skips coincide suspiciously with droughts. I remember tons of rain and the occasional hailstorm in the early 1980s, then it was all dry until 1995.

The thing is, while a very wet winter is uncommon for Southern California, it’s not unusual. In fact, it’s very regular. I recommend looking up El Niño as a starting point.