No links this week, sorry!

This weekend is the Phoenix Comicon, and I went down there on Saturday for about five hours just to look around. It's a pretty good convention - it's gotten bigger over the past few years, and the convention center has a LOT of space, so there's plenty of room to grow. Right now the organizers do a good job of making sure there's plenty of space in the aisles, which is nice. I don't have any big scoops about the convention, and I didn't even take too many pictures before my battery died (as I was on the light rail going downtown, I thought, "I probably should have brought the other battery in case this one dies," but it was too late to go back, and lo and behold, my battery did indeed die!), but I'll still show them to you! So exciting!

First, some various "people and things at the convention" photos, like this, right before I picked up my badge:



Various people standing around:



One of the vendors:



Looking down one of the aisles:



Here are some of the creators I talked to. I talked to others, as well, but either I forgot to take their picture or it was after my battery died.

Here's Spike, whose web comic, Templar, Arizona, is quite good and from whom I bought Poorcraft, a book about living life when you don't have a lot of money. I am, of course, loaded, so it probably won't have much relevance to me, but it looks like a fun book.



This is Danielle Corsetto, creator of Girls With Slingshots. I have heard many good things about GWS, so I bought a volume ... and discovered when I got home that I had lost it somewhere. Dang it! I'll have to buy it again, because it looks pretty cool. That just bugs me.



Here's Ming Doyle drawing a bat. Doyle is, of course, the artist on Mara, but she's done a lot of other stuff, too, so you should check some of her stuff out.



Caanan White is on the left, and Kieron Gillen is on the right. They were at the Avatar booth signing stuff and selling copies of Über. I hadn't seen KG in a few years, so it was good to say hello.



There's Joëlle Jones and Jamie S. Rich, both of whom make very good comics. Jones is, of course, drawing Helheim right now, while Rich is writing It Girl and the Atomics, among other things.



Tom Scioli stands next to a poster of American Barbarian, which I inadvertently turned into a J.J. Abrams homage. Scioli told me that the final issue of Gødland will definitely be out in the fall, because they're going to make a bit of a big deal about it and they want to make sure it will be out when they say it will. But they don't have a specific date for it yet. It's coming!



Here's Colleen Doran. The new edition of A Distant Soil will be out next month, and I told her I'm really looking forward to reading it. We also talked for quite a while about Sandman #34, and she gave me a lot of insight into what happened there and why it might have happened. But you'll have to ask her about it if you want to know more!



This is Shannon Eric Denton, writer of stuff. He's worked a lot in animation, too. He's a fun guy who does a lot of kid-friendly stuff, so if you have kids, check out his Actionopolis web site.



Peter David made his first convention appearance since his stroke this weekend, so it was nice to finally meet him. He's going to be working on something for Marvel after X-Factor ends, but it's still secret! That's good to know, though, and it was good to see him looking so hale.



I also talked to John Layman for a while, of course, because it's always fun to chat with Layman. I checked in on Meredith McClaren, because she's awesome. I had nice conversations with Christopher Mitten and Sina Grace (at different times) and Katie Cook was nice enough to give me two issues of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic for my daughter, who's been watching the show recently. I also picked up a couple of comics by Rob Osborne, because everyone should have as many Rob Osborne comics as they can get their hands on. He did mention that he's planning to return to The Nearly Infamous Zango in the near future, which is good because that means more Rob Osborne comics!

The last thing I learned at the con is that John Barrowman is really, really popular among a certain group of people. The line for his first photo op was out the door, and when he added another one later, many, many people screeched with glee. John Barrowman - who knew?

So that's a brief tour of the Phoenix convention. Many of the people that are attending have been posting fun photos on their Twitter accounts, if you're interested. It's a groovy convention, and it would be nice if it continues to grow, because it's always cool to have a good convention in your town!