Would you want to ride with this guy?

Fortunately for me, a lot of people riding BART Friday morning answered no and left me alone. It must have been the glasses. After discovering my giant white suit for my Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" costume was neither giant nor white and was vaguely a suit, I chucked that costume and opted for the sermon speaker version of David Byrne during "Once in a Lifetime." I might have pulled this costume off had I bothered to turn on the closet light when picking out a shirt. Out of all my gray or white dress shirts, I grabbed the one with the bloodstains on it. As usual when attending a convention in an overly obscure costume, I packed a prop service pistol (Sig Sauer P230) to double as the armed K Valentine that conventions have grown to love or at least allow to bypass weapons check-in. I guess this would make me a Psycho Killer. Besides my pistol, I packed my Press credentials, camera, rations, and the field book. After its limited usefulness at Animation on Display, I hoped to find more use for the field book at WonderCon.


I arrived at the Moscone Center and stood in line at the Press section after playing a quick game of catch up with my old and tall acquaintance Moo. I was impressed with the range of Press outlets. Online, television, print, and even some who flew in from Italy arrived to give WonderCon its deserved coverage. After a quick identity check and flash of the credentials, I received my Press Badge. Thankfully, I preregistered as Press and they had a pre-printed badge with my name on it. It was not only spelled correctly, it was the correct name that I want people to know me as. Imperial Stormtroopers played guards and bouncers for the predicted waves of WonderCon attendees.

I transitioned from "Once in a Lifetime" David Byrne to "Psycho Killer" K Valentine about five seconds after running into Jonas and remembering a certain game about a certain boy wanting to be The Guy. I checked out the San Francisco International Children's Film Festival for some information.

Craig finished his shift as a WonderCon volunteer and he helped me shoot a a couple of pictures for my Talking Heads theme before exploring the Dealers Hall. We discovered that the Moscone Center had Wi-Fi access and thus came the first Traveling Valentine convention field report, which was primarily a webcam and microphone test. Hopefully as I learn to use the netbook and its features, the field reports will be more than just quick blurbs.

"Stop Making Sense" cover image An interview with David Byrne, except done by a person who isn't David Byrne "This Must Be the Place," a love song dedicatged to a lamp post.

Costumes at the Dealers Hall were sparse and I wanted to conserve my money, so I aimed to buy nothing except volume one of the "Girl Genius" omnibus. Yeah, I know it's an online comic, but I prefer having a print edition in my hands when I'm bored and want to read comics in the BART train. Visiting the Charles Schultz booth resulted in me buying one of the few dogs that does not give me allergies: Snoopy.


The gaming booths impressed me at the Dealers Hall. It's surprising to see their presence amid a comic book crowd. I suppose there is a link between reading about the hero in comic books and playing as the hero in the video games. And episodic gaming series like "Strongbad's Cool Game for Attractive People" and "Sam & Max" from Telltale Games play like interactive comic books.



I found a few costumes among the oddities of the Dealers Hall. One of the most popular booths was the DC booth and its freebies. The line was long and their pins were cool. The only pin missing was the "Watchmen" smile with the bloodstain.







Seeing one of the networks covering WonderCon showed that perhaps the comic book and geek subculture is started to gain acceptance. Then again, the potential Hollywood blockbusters previewing exclusive footage at WonderCon would have been a bigger clue. I ran into EB dressed as someone I can't spell or pronounce, and we dived into another field report.


With the scouting of the Dealers Hall complete, I decided to hit the panels. I learned a bit about comic retailing at its respective panel. One main difference between general bookstores and comic book stores is that while comic sales are potentially refundable, comic sales are not and a sold comic remains sold. Comic book stores may be able to sell exclusive subsrciptions, but still require a good and varied stock of product for the impulsive purchases from the casual visitor like myself.


After visiting the retail comics panel, I visited Disney's Art of 2D Visual Effects panel with Marlon West. Marlon worked on Disney 2D hits like "The Lion King" and was now effects supervisor of Diseny's upcoming return to 2D animation "The Princess and the Frog." Click here for the details of that panel.

I caught the tail end of "The Once & Future Star Trek" panel dealing with the original "Star Trek" series and was in time for the Bandai Entertainment release schedule panel that Vince recommended. The details of what's coming up from Bandai are available here.

Attending the writing for animation panel at Animation on Display got me interested in attending the "Spongebob Squarepants: The Art of Writing" at WonderCon. Having only experienced "Spongebob" in passing, I had trouble believing the show had writing. But seeing the panel and Tom Kenny, voice of Spongebob, I realized my folly. Despite the seemingly random comedy that ensues, it takes a team of writers to come up with characters and situations. It is not an easy process. So I now appreciate the hard work and teamwork needed to put together a decent comedy. I do give exception to "Family Guy," where the jokes consist of throwing darts at a wall full of Post-its with random words written. Peter... falls in love with... a bag of Skittles.

With a few minutes to kill, I ran into a few Yelp! themed promoters promoting nearby local restaurants. Had I not made dinner plans with EBK Al and all, I might have sampled some of those hole in the wall restaurants.

While it was only the first day of WonderCon, I felt that I did a lot and could call it finished. But my contractual obligations require me to cover an entire span of a convention unless I am sick, killed, or arrested. I was close to the first and nowhere near the second. Oddly enough, despite Jonas being a tempting target, the third did not come to pass.

Pictures are copyright by Traveling Valentine. If we took your picture, feel free to use it on your site or cosplay gallery. While you're here, do sign the guestbook. This site was brought to you by a font of some sort. Many thanks to Chaz Boston Baden for the image resizing and watermarking program.