Which is—I never get enough sleep at them.

I always knew I didn’t sleep well at cons, but when I say “knew,” it was more an anecdotal gut feeling than anything backed up by statistics. But as I look at what my Fitbit Flex reported about the quality of my four night’s sleep during San Diego Comic-Con (which for some reason is reflecting East Coast time, rather than West Coast time), all I could think was, man, you do get lousy sleep at cons.

Of course, my sleep in San Diego may have been poorer than usual, since I was trying to work, work, work as many waking moments as I could, on one day pounding away at my laptop nearly every waking moment from 6:00 a.m. until 10:45 p.m.

Whatever the reason, it’s good to be back in my own bed. Because another day of Comic-Con might have killed me. And you wouldn’t want that, would you?

I’ve taken restaurant advice from Man v. Food plenty of times. Last year, I took restaurant advice from Food Wars. But it wasn’t until Comic-Con 2012 that I ate at a restaurant I learned about from boingboing.

Slater’s 50/50 is known for its signature burger made of 50% ground beef and 50% ground bacon, but what attracted my attention was the Burger of the Month for July (covered with astonishment by boingboing, The Huffington Post and a ton of other sites)—The ‘merica Burger!

Why were they all so aghast? Because The ‘merica Burger—as you can see from the sign below, which is hung between the restaurant’s restrooms—is composed of “100% ground bacon plus thick cut bacon, a sunny side up egg, our new ‘bacon island’ dressing all topped with bacon cheddar cheese.”

Yowza!

When I read the article, I wondered where the restaurant serving this limited-time burger was located, and after seeing it was in San Diego, I thought—Wait a minute! I’ll be in San Diego this month! So you know I had to try one. After all, when Kraze Burgers, a Korean hamburger chain, opened its first location in the U.S., I was there.

So late last night, once I was able to take a break from covering Comic-Con, I headed off to Slater’s 50/50 with frequent foodie adventurer Mike Willmoth at the wheel and his artist friend Franchesco riding shotgun. (more…)

Those of you who know that I’ve attended every Readercon since the first in 1987—I believe I’m the only person to have done that save for a few of the committee members—will understand the sadness I felt when I learned that in 2012, it would conflict with the San Diego Comic-Con, which I cover each year on behalf of Blastr.

A Readercon without Scott Edelman? Inconceivable! (Well, to me, at least.) Something had to be done … but what?

This!

One of those two men above is now in San Diego, filing copy, while the other is whooping it up in Burlington. I leave it to you to decide which one of us is where.

If you run across me at Readercon, you’ll see I’ve asked attendees to snap photos with me and either email them or tweet using the hashtag #ReaderconScott.

And what do you know, the first sighting of Edelman in the wild has already occurred … (more…)

Considering I spent about 13 hours yesterday either in my hotel room or the hotel lobby prepping Comic-Con stories for Blastr, it’s amazing anything strange was able to happen to me, since what kind of strange stuff could likely happen while I’m alone in my hotel room? (Please … don’t let your minds go there.)

In any case, when I finally made it more than 100 yards from my laptop and over to the Random House party at Bootlegger, I ended up in a conversation with Vladimir Verano of Third Place Press, who at one point looked at my badge and wondered why he knew my name. Then the proverbial light bulb went on over his head, and from his bag he pulled a galley of Sean Howe’s upcoming history of Marvel Comics in the ’70s, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story.

That’s coincidental enough, but the really strange thing? From the placement of his bookmark, I could see that he’d just, and I do mean just, gotten to the part where I came in.

At Vladimir’s request, I autographed the page where I first appeared, even though my desire to read Sean’s book and find out what really happened back then when I was too busy living it to pay attention is so great that I’d rather have created a distraction (Look—George R. R. Martin!) and then dashed from the bar with it under my arm. But I behaved.

So is that serendipitous enough for you?

I’ll be heading off to Comic-Con tomorrow, which I’ll be covering on behalf of Blastr, as I’ve been doing since 2007. (Covering Comic-Con, that is, not covering it on behalf of Blastr, since at times I was doing it for the previous incarnations of either SCI FI Wire or Science Fiction Weekly.)

Each of those years gave me the gift of an encounter that stood out above all others, a special moment that had to do with the kid inside of me, and not with the me who was there reporting to the world what was going on in San Diego. (Not that those two me’s can always be separated.)

Here’s a photo a year, capturing those moments.

2007

Catching up with former boss Stan Lee, who dubbed me “Sparkling” Scott Edelman back in the ’70s when I worked for him in the Bullpen—because everyone who works at Marvel needs a nickname, right?

(more…)

2011 is over and done with, so I thought I’d look back and see which of my posts were read the most last year.

One thing that’s clear is you’re all as interested in the issues raised by those Sharon Moody paintings of comics books as I am—my initial commentary on the matter was my most-clicked post of the year (almost virally so), and 3 of the top 10 posts were directly related to the case. (Which means you’ll want to check back in a week after I see the paintings in person Saturday.)

Here are the stories you read the most:

1. A few words in defense of Jack Kirby, Sal Buscema, Irv Novick, and other anonymized artists

2. Optometrist says blonde drivers “much more dangerous” than brunettes

3. Win $200 by making my zombie play into a mini-movie

4. Brian Bolland’s brilliantly blistering rebuttal

5. A few further thoughts on the artwork of Sharon Moody

6. It’s not too late to attend last weekend’s Nebula Awards

7. Can you identify this romance comic?

8. My favorite photo from San Diego Comic-Con: Pat and Dick Lupoff

9. Can you recognize this face?

10. Wall Street architect literally occupies Wall Street in 1931

I’ve never thought of myself as an oblivious kind of guy, but I guess I must be, as the following anecdote will prove …

I was traveling home from last weekend’s World Fantasy Convention, and as I passed through the San Diego International Airport skybridge that connects the rental car shuttle drop-off island and the terminals, I noticed a life-sized Steve Canyon (alongside other cartoon characters) decal on the glass. Nearby was a stand stuffed with double-sided cards promoting an ongoing exhibit of cartoonists celebrating flight. I picked up one of the cards you see below, and then, since I was a couple of hours early for my flight, tried to track the thing down.

So I went to an information booth and asked where I could find the exhibit referred to on the card and advertised on the decals. Clueless volunteers sent me from one terminal to another in search of an alcove where the exhibit was purported to be, until someone finally figured out that those initial decals I saw weren’t an ad—they WERE the exhibit.

For those who won’t be passing through the San Diego Airport, here’s how the six panels looked from ground level.

You can find photos of the individual panels—featuring Canyon, Snoopy as the Red Baron, Comic-Con cofounder Shel Dorf, and more—over on Flickr.

So where does my obliviousness come in? Evidently, the passageway was decorated like that prior to Comic-Con, and so I would have passed by it back in July both coming and going … and never noticed it!

I’ve been attending Readercon since it began in 1987. I haven’t missed one yet. It’s my favorite convention weekend of the year, the place where I hang with my tribe and recharge my creative batteries.

I’ve been attending the San Diego Comic-Con since 2007. It’s the most important pop culture gathering of the year, and since I’m the editor of Blastr, there’s no way I can miss it. It’s a must-see event.

During most Julys, Readercon has been two weeks prior to Comic-Con. Last month, it was one week before Comic-Con. In 2012 … well … see for yourself, via screen grabs from the two cons’ sites.

To say that I’m heartbroken is an understatement. But I don’t see any way around it. I’ve got to cover Comic-Con. My unbroken string of Readercons … has come to an end.

If I’m wearing black the next time you see me, it won’t be because I’m channeling Neil Gaiman. It’ll be because I’m in mourning.

Calling the image below my favorite photo from San Diego Comic-Con might seem like faint praise, considering how few pictures I snapped this year, so busy was I with getting content online for Blastr (this post about the DC reboot protest being my favorite example of that). But I have a feeling that no matter how many photos I might have ended up taking had I the free time, I still would have liked this one the best because of the way it marries the past and present.

To celebrate 50 years of comics fandom, Comic-Con threw a party Saturday night, “for fandom’s founders and early participants, including folks who were active in the 1960s, and 1970s, whether producing fanzines, writing LOCs, selling comics, or putting on conventions.” I was only able to attend briefly because the event conflicted with the party Syfy was throwing, but during the time I was there I was able to speak with George Clayton Johnson, Doug Fratz, George Olshevsky, Jim Salicrup, Greg Bear, Astrid Anderson Bear, and others, plus the stars of my favorite picture&#8212Pat and Dick Lupoff.

What you see in their hands is the back of the program Jackie Estrada had printed for the occasion, which features a photo (one you may have seen before) of Pat and Dick from 51 years ago dressed as Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel at the 1960 World Science Fiction Convention in Pittsburgh.

Dick said he still owned that red shirt emblazoned with Captain Marvel’s lightning bolt, and threatened to wear it to the convention Sunday. I don’t know whether he did so or not … but man, if only I’d gotten a picture of THAT!

I’ve been so busy preparing for, reporting on, and recovering from Comic-Con that I’ve had no time to share my thoughts about it here, so why not let a picture stand in for those thousand words?

One afternoon, as I was racing from one end of the humongous exhibit hall to the other, I spotted a dealer selling the original art for the cover to an issue of Doorway to Nightmare I’d written long, long ago. (Make that long, long, long ago.) So I stopped my power walking and asked, “How much do you want for the Kaluta?”

The dealer’s answer? “Thirty.”

You do realize I was meant to add three zeroes after that number, right? There was of course no way I could afford to own the drawing, but I figured I should at least get a picture with it.

And so:

Here’s the cover as it was originally published.

Time flies. Money flies, too.