Back from San Diego! Here's what happened...
WED, 7/23/03, 4:53 a.m.

Back from San Diego Comicon!

Wow! This was the best San Diego Con ever! Tons of stuff happened everyday.

I had such a great time there with my friends. The MOB booth (Mack, Oeming, Bendis) was there with Andy Lee and Anh Tran also set up at our Powers & Kabuki tables. We had a great time at our MOB panel (and Angelina Jolie and Halle Berry’s panels didn’t even cut into the turnout that much J)

Hundreds of brand new Kabuki readers picked up Kabuki trades for the first time.
Each day was a whirlwind of adventure.

I talked with Quentin Tarentino. I had a fascinating Frank Miller & Will Eisner experience.
Bill Sienkiewicz stopped by the table and gave me a wealth of kind words and encouragement and we had a great talk.
Had a great time at the Eisner Ceremony. Brian Bendis won 2 more Eisners and I was honored to hear how many times he acknowledged me in his speeches!

Did some charity sketching for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
Saw thousands of long time Kabuki fans (I must have the coolest, hippest, smartest, artiest readers at the whole con). I got a lot of comments about how my section of the booth always has the most women and coolest artists hanging out!

I was asked to do a story with Alan Moore. Anh Tran sold tons of her hand made BunnyZ. Toy developers were constantly interested and discussed possibilities with her. Giant Robot Magazine (which I have read since the beginning) took an interest in her creatures and is now selling them in their Los Angeles Giant Robot store.

She gave one to Craig Thompson cause she loved his book Good Bye Chunky Rice. He said he was a big fan of Kabuki. We read his new book called BLANKETS on the plane ride home and it was amazing. My favorite recent comic. Buy it from Top Shelf Comics and tell them you heard it here. It is by far, my favorite recent read. My fave book pick of the show.

The MOB crew and I had a great Image dinner. Had a Great Amano dinner. Jeff Amano, Brandon Amano and the lovely Mandy Amano and Claire Beckett who work for Beckett Entertainment (they publish the Terminator comic of which Anh Tran is the main character, and they are publishing RUULE in NOV for which I did the covers.

Bendis and I had some good meetings with Quesada in his hotel Suite. Lots of news to update you on in the future.

The SCARAB ACTION FIGURES ARE AMAZING!!! There was a Diamond Select party to promote the new Scarab Action Figure (Diamond Select will be making all the new Kabuki figures, starting with Scarab) and they gave out free Scarab action figures to the first 100 retailers. Andy and I went there to get our figures and sat at the table and played with them with the other retailers. Retailers Brian DePadro of Classic Comics in Atlanta, Lee of Lee’s Comics in Mountain View and San Mateo, Joe Ferrara and Dotti of Atlantis Fantasy World in Santa Cruz, and Bill and Sharon Liebowitz of Golden Apple in LA enjoyed our antics!!!
Seriously, these figures are amazing with WAY more articulation and playability that the previous Kabuki figure. And Andy and I were amazed at how much we could take the figures apart and re-arrange them in new ways. We disturbed all the other guests with this talent.

The WIZ KIDS booth had the Kabuki HERO CLIX on display. They come in the Indy Hero Clix and are: Kabuki, Scarab, Tigerlily, and Siamese. Five Kabuki characters to start with. And I think they also have Akemi and Keiko as a sort of secret chaser figures to follow up.

I saw Jubal Faircloth from this board. He and his friend drove from Ky to SD for the con! What a road trip. Saw lots of other readers from this board like Michael Goodman.

I saw a lot of my readers that I met in Australia! And many of my friends and readers from France!

Talked with Josh Middleton and mentioned that he was spoke of well on this board. Talked to Kent Williams. Ash Wood stopped by. Greg Spalenka. John Woo’s company asked me to do some stuff with them.

Did tons of interviews. And lots of other stuff I can’t remember. I’ll have to follow this up with it as it comes back to me.

Lots of cool stuff going on that I will continue to update you with. Was a great con, with a great energy from the readers and the creators I associate myself with.

David

PS, I still need to tell you about my POE experience from a while back. Do any of you listen to the singer POE? If so, remind me to tell you about our Kabuki encounter with her.

I love this book too. Yep. It's Poe's brother, the guy from the video where he reads a passage from his book.

I felt like he was doing stuff with prose the way I try to do in kabuki with type and image, in terms of the story telling, rythm, and page layout.

Love it Love it.
I'm a big fan of Poe. She is a real sweet heart. I'll give you the detailed story, but the high points of it are that Poe was dancing on stage at her concert with my girlfriend Anh and then Poe held up my Kabuki books and said "Kabuki by David Mack" and showed the pages to the live audience at the concert.

More details to come.

I also noticed that my lawyer's name was mentioned in the thank you section of her album and in the thank you section of Tenacious D's album. I mentioned it to him and it turns out he is also Jack Black's lawyer and he used to date Poe. Or was it the other way around? Joking. I joke because I love.

Yeah that was my favorite book for a while. Mark Z Danielewski (sp?) is the author, and the guy who reads that one scene in the Hey Pretty song. Definitely the most unique book I've ever read...very multilayered. The book is based around a famous photo journalist named Navidson who decides to make a documentary of his family moving into a house out in the country. He then quickly discovers that a closet in the house keeps growing until it leads into this impossibly huge, dark labyrinth that changes as you walk through it. And his film is about his explorations of it, and how it affects his family. So that's the film the book is based around: The Navidson Record. The actual bulk of the book is an ultra detailed, somewhat anal retentive analysis of the film by this blind guy named Zampano, who is found dead amidst piles of papers written about the film...which doesn't actually exist. It's interesting going through all the footnotes that lead to supposed "Aritcles" written about the film, from some magazies that are real, and others that aren't. Some of the footnotes you realize don't need to be read, but become part of these funky page layouts that story goes through. Some parts you have to turn the book upside down to read what's going on, or flip ahead 10 pages to read a small part of a page only to flip back again...

Then you have the narrorator...this 20 something named Johnny Truant, who finds all of Zampano's research on the Navidson Record and begins to put it together into a book. Johnny's portions get really poetic, sometimes so much so that I lost track of what was going on, but it's all still incredible writing. He talks about his life (lots of graphic sex scenes,) and how Zampano's research is affecting him mentaly and physically.

THEN you have all these appendixes, like this whole section of letters from Johnny's mother from a mental institution, where you see her gradual emotional breakdown...

Just an awesome book. It's a commitment, but well worth it.

~AB

The Mack booth...where cool artists hang out...to meet women? Hmmm...

Yeah David, maybe you could do the last 9 issues of Big Numbers!!! Heh, of course then we'd NEVER see new Kabuki...

I"ve been waiting to read this one since I heard about it earlier this year. It's out now, though I'm a bit low on disposable income at the moment... It sounds incredible.

Man, you're such a name dropper . I would definitely love to see your cameo in a John Woo or Tarentino film. Is "Kill Bill" finished filming?

I'm holding so much in that it hurts! TIme enough for that in my memiors! I'll tell you more stuff when we are older.

I got a "Blue line" newsletter in my email mentioning that it was going to be pushed back until 2004, and now the website is listing the same thing.

Well, that certainly sucks.

Oh well, if David is still having the exhibit that weekend, I'll try my best to make it up there.

~Dave

That is too bad because NKU set my gallery show opening on OCT 3 to time with the con.

I'll see if I can arrange a bookstore signing at the main Comic Book World that is my local comic shop. Maybe I can have some other artists there, and do our own con and signing at the store in the day friday, and then do the gallery show opening 7-10 that night.

I'll update you with details.

Hi Marty!

I totally remember him and the book I signed to you. He was a very nice person. We talked a bit about when I visited Sidney and how much I loved it.

I'll be happy to visit again if /when I am again invited as a guest to the convention. It was a lot of fun. I'll post the news if I hear of another trip there.

It was actually very cool, because for years I have recieved a lot of mail from Australia. I've printed a bunch in the letters collumn. Particularly from two guys who write a response to every issue. I don't think they ever expected to meet me, but sure enough they made it to the con and we had a laugh about it.

I'll keep you updated.
Tell your comic shop owner that I say hello!
David

David,

The owner of my local comic shop got back to Sydney, Aust. yesterday with a signed copy of the first Kabuki tpb. Geez he's a top bloke.

I'm sure you met thousands of people but I'll describe him anyway. His name's Chris and was with a younger guy names Jason, both would have had Aussie accents, both have big guys (large frames) and shaved heads. You signed it "To Martin" and did a small drawing like Akemi does on her origami notes.

Just wanted to say thanks for the signature as well as the Kabuki bookmark and WFC sticker.

Just like Dillinja ask, when you coming to Australia again?

Regards,
Marty