I attended my first San Diego Comic-Con in 1988. Back then, it was a show about…comics! Mostly, at least. Today, it’s a show about comics, movies, TV, toys, science fiction, videogames, and a bunch of other topics…and it’s hard to walk for more than a few yards across the insanely crowded exhibition floor without bumping into someone dressed as Bart Simpson, Darth Vader, a Smurf, Poison Ivy, or (most often) the Joker.
There’s also some tech here–especially tech relating to drawing, painting, and animating. At the booth of graphics software maker Smith Micro, I chatted with cartooning legend Dave Gibbons, who’s best known as the co-creator of Watchmen. He knows pencils and brushes as well as any cartoonist alive, but he uses Smith’s Manga Studio package–which, despite the name, is for drawing comics of all sorts.