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This last weekend was Further Confusion 2008. This is usually a good con for us and for the business, and this year was no exception.

Money: Our dealer’s table did very well Friday and Sunday, and was soft Saturday (opposite of the usual pattern). We understand that the dealer’s room did well overall, and we certainly did very well. The art show was soft, and looked to be so for everyone. Many people are blaming the economy, but the strong sales in the dealer’s room seem out of character for that.

Baron had a color pencil demonstration panel that apparently did well, even if it was a bit abbreviated. The entire crew had two other panels. The “Furry Martial Arts” panel (which we also brought in Drew and Jareth for) went very well (despite us losing the handouts for a day). Our third annual “Coffee, Tea and Memes” panel was excellent, we had a good large crowd that generated some truly great discussions, and left me jazzed and happy all the next day.

That was the second best thing about the con.

The best?

None of us were sick during the con. After last year, where Smudge and I were out of it at the end of the con, and the year before, where I had to stay home a day, this was great news. In fact, incidence of ‘con crud’ seemed to be pretty low overall.

On the other hand, the weather was pretty poor. It can stop with the rain any time now. Really.

All the usual things applied. Had a great time, saw great people we hardly ever get a chance to see, and all the rest. Also, the hotel restaurant was back to its usual self after last year’s disappointing performance. Smudge and Baron have been active on Fur Affinity for the last few months, and it seems to have paid off well. BackBreaker saw several new customers who sought us out purely because they knew of us through FA.

Oh, Dusty put together a short live-action furry samurai drama that premiered during the show. I missed that, but did get to see a sneak preview(/quality check), and have to say he and his crew did a great job on it!

Further Confusion is the most important convention for BackBreaker, as it is generally the highest grossing show we have. Even better, it is local, and a grand lot of fun.

However, there’s been a nasty flu going around, and Smudge caught it a few days before the con. I had a couple minor symptoms for a few days, and then they went away. I thought I’d beaten it off, but I started coming down with real symptoms Saturday night, and spent a fair amount of Sunday up in our room trying to recover. I basically skipped our Coffee, Tea & Memes panel that night because I knew I was in no shape for it.

About that room… Baron was the Artist Guest of Honor this year, which meant that he got one of the fancy suite rooms at the hotel courtesy of the con. The room was practically as big as the current place we’re renting. And the bathroom was just silly. We also brought Micca over and set him up in the room, so we never used the TV as Micca’s monitor is so much better….

On the other hand, the normal restaurant in the hotel was big disappointment this year. It’s normally slightly pricey food with quality that varies from well worth it to worth the convenience factor. This year the menu was minuscule (a single page, and half the meals were sandwiches), and food decidedly sub-par. Oddly, we found that room service had the normal full menu….

Generally, the con was very good this year. I had a great time Friday and Saturday. Managed to contribute a bit to the Furry Espionage panel (which is more Baron and Dave’s subject), and the Mad Scientist panel (which was easier, but also right when I started coming down with the flu. We found out later, that apparently the Mad Scientist panel was being broadcast live… if I’d known that, I’d have tried to look a little more intelligent…. -_^ At any rate, both of them went really well.

Spent some good time with several friends. Spent an evening entertaining Gerald in our room, and used the opportunity to introduce him to four anime series we thought he’d like (Full Metal Alchemist, Ghost in the Shell, Planetes, and Utawarerumono), and he enjoyed them all.

Sunday, I tried to keep from getting the flu too bad while Smudge was largely recovered. So I popped into the Coffee, Tea & Memes panel long enough to offer my apologies, and grab some cookies (^_^). The upshot was that I was available to get Diana guilded, so we got that done.

Apparently, on Monday I looked worse than I felt, and I did not feel at all well. Smudge had relapsed and was worse off than I. So, getting the room and dealer’s table packed up and taken back home was quite an undertaking. We owe the con (and especially Carl) a big thanks for being understanding and very helpful during the entire process.

Okay, okay, I’m wayyy late on this. Best I can say is that I’ve only seen one real con report on my friends list, so I’m ahead of the curve.

As traditional, me and drove down to San Diego for a weekend in a nice hotel with no spending money to speak of. However, since it was just the two of us and not a lot of luggage, we took my car to save on gas prices. This turned out to be a very good idea, as the heat wave that hit that weekend seems to have also spiked gas prices ($3.29/gallon was the best deal I saw the entire trip, I filled up last night at $3.05).

I’d like to get back to a smaller car again, but I was very happy to note that no matter what I threw at it (heat wave, AC, driving too fast up the Grapevine) the engine temperature stayed rock-steady at its normal spot. Nice.

Spent a bit more in the dealer’s room than I should have: Inverloch (my main goal: support a web comic that’s made it to print), PvP, Flight Volume 1 (yeah, I’m behind, what else is new?), Space Cadets 1.2, an art book from Diana, and… uh. I know there was more, though that’s the bulk of it.

And I barely saw a fraction of the floor this year.

Things not gotten: A Winry figure to go with the Al and Eric Elric figures Smudge got last year. Didn’t see any in small area I managed to search. Music: despite much-touted raids by the RIAA earlier this year, the major place I saw still had Taiwanese rip-offs. Frankly, this is something I support the RIAA on, and am disappointed that they skipped ComicCon.

Smudge and I relaxed, talked to friends, and ate well. Wednesday: Buster’s Beach House, a very nice ‘surfer’ restaurant that she introduced me and Baron to a couple years ago. Thursday: Panda Inn at Horton Plaza. Friday: Castle & Elephant a good English Pub-style restaurant across the street from Anthony’s (which had a 45 minute wait when we arrived). Saturday: Samba Grill, a Brazilian steakhouse in Horton Plaza. Very nice, you get some serve-yourself salad and the like, and then people wander by and offer fresh cuts (that is to say they cut it right there) of meat of different types and styles. Sunday: went to a nice Irish Pub with Diana, Michele Light and her husband.

This was Diana’s first time out for the con, and she was obviously very happy, which was great to see.

The con was big again. No, bigger than that. We attempted a few panels, but could only get seating room at one. The San Diego Union was advertising front-page coverage of the con. I also saw an article that mentioned that they don’t know how much money the con is putting into San Diego. It’s a large amount, but they can’t track it. The point is, they’re starting to think about tracking it. If a person we overheard is to be believed, it is known to be putting 5 million dollars directly into the pocket of San Diego City (and then there’s the businesses). We also heard that the city is buying land to expand the convention center – for the express purpose of hosting ComicCon (here’s hoping someone will notice they need more hotels too).

An interesting contrast to the ever-expanding size of ComicCon is that E3 announced that they are going to cut down to a much smaller size. Going from 60,000 to 5,000 while ComicCon is pushing towards 200,000…. The companies are complaining over the bill for floor space and building giant display booths. One potential problem I see, is that without a giant US expo to show off at, all the game companies may flock to ComicCon to show off to the fans (and end up spending just as much money).

Actually, finally, attended the Eisners this year. Very nicely done, I’m very happy we made it. Also, we went to the Friends of Lulu awards banquet Friday night, that was also nice, if tiny.

Well, Further Confusion has come and gone…

Thursday was, for me, mostly hearing about eBay being slow about getting out of the hotel, and causing all sorts of havoc to FurCon’s schedule in the process. Me and Smudge‘s biggest contribution was getting BackBreaker’s custom set of panels set up for use as the charity auction’s display.

Friday started poorly, I just didn’t want to wake up properly, and my nose was a bit drippy. This got worse throughout the day.

That night was the first of three nightly panels featuring me, Smudge, Baron, and Dave. Friday’s panel was Getting Ready for the Con, or as the schedule renamed it, Con Prep. Overall, it went well enough, but attendance was very low. We narrowly avoided panel-itis. By the end of it I was doing pretty poorly, and I did my best to hold together through the night.

Saturday, I planned to stay home for the morning, get extra rest, and then come in for the rest of the day without totally KO’ing myself. I realized I was running a fever, and did my best to stay warm. However, I just couldn’t get truly warm, my toes insisted on sending ‘I’m freezing’ signals. Around 3:30 I awoke from a nap, cold, with a sore throat and slightly achy. I decided that the sore throat was probably from laying on my back and coughing. It was also possible that I was overheated from being in a warm bed next to a heater. So, I got up got on WoW with another heater nearby (and bundled up) to see if I could pull myself together. The sore throat faded, showing my diagnosis was right there, but I was still extremely hot when feeling my forehead and cheeks. By five I had admitted I wasn’t going anywhere for the day. Around about nine, I realized I was warm. Too warm. My toes weren’t cold. My forehead felt normal. Half an hour later I realized I was hungry.

The real bad news about the above, was that at seven we had another panel. This one on medieval history (our title, Between the Ancient and the Modern, was dropped). A subject I could really discuss, and not feel like I was a panelist because I knew all the other panelists. I had spent the last few months rereading books to try and have a few things more current in my head. And I was too sick to go. T_T I understand it went well, and I had been missed.

Sunday I took the morning easy again, and went in just after noon. I grabbed the two books I’d meant to get the day before (one from each bookseller present), and helped around the table. I carefully avoided promising that I’d make it to tonight’s panel, because I was still stress testing myself. Breakdown of the table and the associated workout didn’t slow me down at all, which showed I was pretty well recovered.

Sunday’s panel was Coffee, Tea and Memes (Smudge’s idea) where we sit around and yak about a subject (supplied by the audience) for about a quarter hour and then move on to another subject pulled out of the hat, while everyone in the room nibbles on cookies, coffee and tea. The last step of getting ready was picking up the order Baron had placed with Starbuck’s. Baron called to tell them we were on our way and we set off. When we got there, we didn’t even get to the door before we were intercepted by an employee and told ‘your order’s waiting’. That’s service.

The rest of the panel went just as well. The audience was a little small, but still a good size. They all reported being very happy with our experiment, so we will offer to do it again next year. The bad news was that Smudge has come down with what I’m recovering from.

Well, we’re back. Four days of craziness, business, and hotel food. And, most of all, fun. I’ve been to ConiFur five years ago, but its events which have kept me away in the meantime, not a lack of desire to go.

The trip up on Thursday was also the first time I’ve ever been on an airplane. With my odd and unpredictable acrophobia, I wasn’t entirely sure how I’d react. The good news is that it didn’t bother me. Not even in the jetway which was bouncing up and down and side to side a bit (which is exactly the type of thing to set me off). On the other hand, the seats were tiny and cramped. CalTrain is a lot more comfortable, which is a good thing, since I have to do that trip five times a week.

So we got in early Thursday, and got settled in pretty quickly. We met up with Gerald and went on an outing to the Woodland Park Zoo. We got through maybe a third of the place, and got real lucky. We arrived at the Raptor Center just in time to see their hunting birds/raptors put through their paces on free-flight exercise.

Friday morning, Smudge finally got the final word on the Ebin & May graphic novels: Go. Despite a regrettable single-page snafu, the graphic novels were as good as they were going to get. We got everyone’s names, and will be shipping out corrected pages to be slipped into the book. Sales on the GN were strong, with somewhat less than a third as many coming back with us as we took to the show. In fact, table sales and the art show were pretty good for us overall.

The hotel was nice and close to the airport. In fact, it was in easy driving range of a lot of things. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a car with us, and it wasn’t really in walking range of much. So, we ate at the hotel restaurant (decent) a bit more than we would have liked. The hotel staff was very nice and cheerful, so full marks there. However, it’s due to be demolished for a mass-transit station in a couple months, so ConiFur will be starting the search for their fourth hotel.

All in all, a good show for BackBreaker, and a nice chance to relax and see some out-of-state friends.

Well, this started out as a really poor time. In years past (way past), an upcoming ComicCon was about as close to the feeling I’d get waiting for Christmas when I was little. This has been steadily fading, with the expansion of the con making it too much to absorb and the slow weighing down of other worries on top of the con. This year though, I was somewhat scared.

Money isn’t exactly a new worry right now, but I was worried about not breaking the bank. The real worry generator was getting notified that I had jury duty – that same week. This left me uncertain as to whether I was going, and while I let it prey on my mind, I didn’t exercise some of my options, and ended up not finding out until the day before I left, that indeed, I could go. So I resigned myself to the inevitable and packed to continue my unbroken attendance of ComicCon since I started going in… 1989(?).

As Smudge reported, the van was in good shape and ready to go, with a new industrial-strength AC unit. This allowed for a really pleasant trip down and back. I napped pretty much the entire trip down, which says I must have been even more worn down than I had realized/suspected.

Loot-wise we did pretty well. One gaming store was trimming back its GURPS 3rd Ed stock and had a table piled full of $5 books. (I noticed a few copies of those same books on shelves for full price, so they really were just ‘trimming back’.) I spent more money for more RPG-product than I really care to at a comics convention but, hey, I always succumb to the temptation of a great price. So I got GURPS WWII, Arabian Nights, Traveller: Alien Races 4, and Traveller: Ground Forces as well as a little mini-supplement for WWII on the Italians ($2). I couldn’t really justify spending more money despite missing out on some other good titles.

So, other shtuff for those bored by the last paragraph: I picked up the final volume of Gremlin Trouble by the Bryans (great people), a couple of cute keychains for Smudge, and the third DVD of Giant Robo (so now we won’t leave everyone hanging in the middle on Thursday-night Anime). Smudge and Baron also got a couple Usagi graphic novels, Pervert Club (from our friendly publisher Radio Comix), Space Cadets (a new series from the Bryans), the latest couple of issues of The Dreamland Chronicles (which has changed publishers, and we’re wondering what happened to Astonish Comics/Herobear and the Kid) and the deluxe 1st DVD (with soundtrack CD) of Stand Alone Complex. Smudge also completed her quest for a new pocket watch (a fairly solid one based off of Full Metal Alchemist), got a couple of Full Metal Alchemist action figures, and a Usagi Yojimbo calendar for next year.

Our sales were light. We knew it wouldn’t be as good as last year without Lance’s GN or the Ebin & May DVD, but it was light even accounting for that. Last year we got several people seeking us out after seeing Smudge and Baron’s work in the art show and business cards evaporated from our panel there. This year, I don’t think we got more than one or two people at the table from the art show and the business cards moved slowly. However, it seems a lot of booths had problems with sales, and most of the time the crowd wasn’t as thick as you’d expect, unless you ventured into the part of the hall with all the big booths. It seems that Hollywood’s influence is starting to overwhelm the comics aspect. I mean I don’t blame them for coming here, I don’t blame them for wanting to show the fans what they’re doing better, but it’s getting big enough that it might be worth a spin-off convention.

But we did some important things. We did some hard thinking about the BackBreaker site. We got to talk to people we don’t see nearly enough of. We generally relaxed and took it easy. We saw the great masses of geekdom strain San Diego to its limits. (It really sounds like the Chamber of Commerce is trimming the leading ’1′ off of the estimated number of attendees and tell the businesses numbers like 30,000 instead of 130,000.)

I only really attended one panel (on web comics), but it was a good panel, and hopefully Smudge will get good use out of it. I spent way too much of Sunday morning finding out that yes, Advance Wars is a game I’d like. (I need to find money for a GB Advance or DS… that’s three games I’d like to play on it.) Unlike the last couple of years, I actually managed to find the time to at least skim the entire
ComicCon floor.

Two weeks ago, I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to go at all. Now I can’t wait for next year!