Anyyyyyway, I’m regathering the Tales from the Boneyard crew this Saturday from noon to 3 p.m. for a signing/meet-and-greet at Alternate Reality Comics (4110 S. Maryland Parkway #8). Almost all of the creators should be there, including myself, Jarret Keene, Victor Moya, Warren Wucinich, Deryl Skelton and Danny Roberts. It should be good times. If you haven’t gotten your copy of the Boneyard comic, well, it’s the perfect opportunity, and if you can’t make it, rumor has it you can buy a copy from multiple comic shops in Vegas, plus directly online. Remember, all proceeds go to a good cause!

Other stuff you missed while I was away:

• Total, epic fail on National Novel Writing Month. I stalled out at about 6,000 words two weeks before the end of the month and gave up. It’s kind of a long story why, but basically, I did exactly what you’re not supposed to do: got caught up in the structure and plot of the novel instead of just writing what came to me. Also, I chose a genre in which I have little experience (political science fiction), and to make things worse, I realized I was writing a bad Nineteen Eighty-Four knock-off.
• Went to Disneyland. It was maddeningly busy for the Monday before Thanksgiving. We figured it would be slow, with kids still in school and people not traveling until the following weekend. Boy, were we wrong. But it was fun regardless, especially with the weekend kicking off in Los Angeles with dinner and drinks at the Magic Castle.
• Um … I think that’s it. Like I said, took the month “off,” sort of. But now I have deadlines again and am actively pitching stories again, so expect to see more of your favorite person named Pj Perez soon.

All right. Bye.

If you’ll be in the neighborhood (i.e., attending the damn thing!), you can find me in Artist Alley, at booth/table #2104. Need directions? OH LOOK I GOT YOU COVERED:

Click on the map to make MACHO SIZE

So, yeah, looks like I’m in the back corner near a wrestling ring (?!) and loading docks. And hopefully restrooms. If you’re going to the con, you should come see me, because I have things you want to buy. Like these:

And maybe these:

And other stuffs! I’ll even draw you crappy pictures or write you dismal poetry for mere pennies on the dollar! I have three days to kill, so, please come entertain/annoy me. Thank you.

OK, to be honest, I’m looking forward to taking what might be my first real vacation in years. The location may not be the ideal summer destination for me personally, but the girlfriend and I are staying with friends of hers in a beach house for a week, so it shouldn’t be too bad. In theory, my work should be all caught up this week and the plan is to rest, recuperate and not do too much else. I will be taking sketchbooks and notebooks, and though I have no designs, it might be nice if I can just do some free-form writing like back in the day, maybe some sketches just for sketching sake, and, yeah, I’ll probably find myself doing some actual work on comic layouts. But I’m not taking a computer, I’m not taking any other tools, and I’m actually packing shorts, so I’m at least going to try to play the “vacation” game. Because I need it. Whether or not I agree.

Of course, I will have my trusty DROID, so look for what will surely be a plethora of Twitpics, Tweets and other various social media posts throughout the week. I’ll be back around July 19, in case any of you really need me. Just in time to either rejoice or lament on the fact that I won’t be at San Diego Comic-Con this year.

Actually, I’m excited. I know a lot of people who will be up there, though most of them I’ve only dealt with over the internet, including Denis Caron, Stephen Downer, Sven Straatveit and Jason Copland, who will be joining me at our little Pop! Goes the Icon table in Artist Alley on Saturday to hang out, sign stuff and help give away two pages of his original art from the first issue of Omega Comics Presents.

But the only show I’ve tabled thus far was the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival, which is relatively small (1200 attendees), and was only five hours. I decided to forego bigger shows such as San Diego Comic-Con this year in lieu of more intimate (or at least, not four-day blowouts) venues such as ECCC and Long Beach Comic-Con. But still, ECCC is pretty huge, and I’ll have to be all cheery and approachable behind a table for two full days, something I haven’t done since I worked in retail — and that was a long time ago.

And as I’ll be in Artist Alley, people might expect, I dunno, sketches or something. And I’ve already had requests from folks attending for sketches. I gives me performance anxiety. And I would just pull the “I’m a writer” card, but everyone knows I also draw the comics I write, so I can’t really fairly do that. And sitting next to Jason, who’s a for-real artist, well, it has me a bit antsy.

But the main reason for my mini-freak-out, aside from still not having all my materials prepared and dreading how many supplies I’ll have to load into the luggage I don’t own yet, is whether or not I’ll sell enough comics to justify the huge expense of flying both Sara and I to Seattle, staying in a downtown hotel for three nights, and paying hundreds of dollars for space and power at the convention. Due to distribution fuck-ups with the first issue of OCP, I HAVE to count on convention sales to turn a profit on this thing and get my creators paid. So I’m being optimistic and bringing a bunch more copies than I think I’ll sell. But what if over the course of two days I don’t sell diddly? Is it because I’m a bad salesperson? Or because the product quality isn’t there? See why my nerves are a little wracked?

Of course, I’m sure things will go smoothly. And I’ll have a good time meeting new people, seeing old friends and generally hanging out in one of my favorite U.S. cities. But still: nervous.

If you live in Seattle or plan to attend the show, PLEASE come visit me at Artist Alley booth M-12. In addition to the first issue of the well-reviewed OCP #1, I’ll also have bargains on The Utopian #s 1 and 2, as well as free swag. And I’ll draw you a sketch if you ask nicely. So long as it’s not a car.

Yes, it will be 94 degrees on Wednesday when we arrive and likely raining. If not, it will be 85 percent humid. Either way, it will be hot. And it will be wet. And neither in a good way.

But, all that being said, I’m looking forward to getting away for a few days. It’s been a busy month around these parts, and I worked extra hard the last week to get caught up for this trip. While a portion of the excursion will be spent in Melbourne Beach for wedding-related activities, the rest will be just chilling in O-Town, with no set plans. Well, except for a meet-up with Alert Nerd supreme Matt Springer. That should be fun.

Other than that, there will be the usual Utopian updates on Wednesday and Friday this week, a few CD reviews in the Las Vegas Weekly on Thursday, and I believe the October issue of 944 drops as well, featuring my roundtable discussion with four hot local architects. Keep your eyes open, and don’t break anything while I’m gone.

Yes, it will be 94 degrees on Wednesday when we arrive and likely raining. If not, it will be 85 percent humid. Either way, it will be hot. And it will be wet. And neither in a good way.

But, all that being said, I’m looking forward to getting away for a few days. It’s been a busy month around these parts, and I worked extra hard the last week to get caught up for this trip. While a portion of the excursion will be spent in Melbourne Beach for wedding-related activities, the rest will be just chilling in O-Town, with no set plans. Well, except for a meet-up with Alert Nerd supreme Matt Springer. That should be fun.

Other than that, there will be the usual Utopian updates on Wednesday and Friday this week, a few CD reviews in the Las Vegas Weekly on Thursday, and I believe the October issue of 944 drops as well, featuring my roundtable discussion with four hot local architects. Keep your eyes open, and don’t break anything while I’m gone.

Why, yes, that’s me ducking behind a giant cigar outside S.F. Deli in San Francisco with my two pals, The Fist and Little Aaron. Little Aaron is the foam board-mounted miniature alter-ego of Michigan buddy Aaron Stahdjkfhrghdyghdiwicz.* Aaron’s a character. He takes Little Aaron with him every time he travels, and takes pictures of him, with him, etc. Little Aaron got run over while in England, where Aaron was trying to take his picture at the famous Abbey Road crosswalk. But he survived to tell the tale — and take his picture with The Fist.

*Aaron has one of those crazy Polish last names with too many consonants and not enough vowels, so this is as close as I’m going to get in spelling it without looking it up.

This puppy was taken at the Use Hearing Protection event at the Paley Center in Beverly Hills this spring, where legendary Factory Records graphic designer Peter Saville made a rare United States appearance. That’s me, shockingly fist-less, on the left (duh) and Jason Feinberg with the crazy mutton chops on the right. I apologize, dude in the middle, who is a friend of Jason’s I just met that night and I have forgotten his name already. But he is from the U.K. and is cool.

I meant to write a review of the event post-mortem, but I never got around to it. Actually, I started writing a post about the whole Los Angeles experience, which is still sitting in my drafts folder entitled “L.A. Story.” One day I will finish it and post it. But the Q&A session was amazing, Saville is quite brilliant, and if you missed it, um, well, you missed it.

Due to a combination of other obligations and financial restrictions, Sara and I missed the preview night of Comic-Con (Wednesday) and the opening day (Thursday). We drove down in the AwesomeMobile Thursday afternoon, arriving at our hotel, a Courtyard by Marriott about 15 minutes from downtown San Diego, about 6 p.m. That’s the view from our room up above. Thursday night we took a winding drive on a search for food through University City and La Jolla, eventually ending up in Del Mar. Just in time to catch a pizza joint just as it was closing. Because in Del Mar, apparently pizza after 9 p.m. is just unheard of.

On Friday morning, after a stop at the corner Starbucks, we drove to the park-and-ride at Qualcomm Stadium (I think a football team or something plays there) to catch a trolley to the San Diego Convention Center. Parking at SDCC is far worse than at any convention in Las Vegas, where at least the casinos nearby offer free, nearly unlimited parking, and a number of remote lots at the actual convention center. Meanwhile, SDCC is locked right downtown in San Diego near Petco Park (I think some baseball team or something plays there), so your best bet is not to bring a car anywhere near there unless you don’t mind paying $30 to $40 a day for parking. Our 2-day transit pass was a bargain at $9.

As you can tell by the photo above, the crowds at Comic-Con this year were insane. The last time I was there, in 2007, I don’t remember having to wait in line just to get to the crosswalk. But this year, uh, yeah. It was pretty thick. The inside of the convention was like a giant, crowded geek nightclub, but instead of go-go dancers, there were people in sometimes-awesome, sometimes-ill-fitting costumes everywhere. And people stopping dead in the middle of a stuffed aisle to take their picture every five seconds.

Otherwise, Friday at the Con was pretty good. I didn’t make it to any panels that day, but did hit the floor for about four or five hours, meeting up with friends such as Jill Beaton (Oni Press) and Paul Horn (Cool Jerk) as well as meeting in the flesh for the first time internet pals such as Kevin Church (The Rack, Lydia), Rick Lacy (Labor Days) and David Hahn (All Nighter), at least a few of whom I’m be pestering to work with in the near future. I also took care of business, placing copies of The Utopian and Pop! Goes the Icon swag at the freebies table, talking to distributors and generally shaking a lot of hands. Sara and I did try to get into the Big Bang Theory panel, but alas, we were not prepared to wait outside the big room for two hours.

After leaving the con, we took a few trolleys back to Qualcomm to get our car, headed back to the hotel for a short nap, and then dared to drive back downtown to grab a bite to eat before the Oni Press/United Talent Agency/Electronic Arts party to which we were invited. After finding a parking lot that cost less than $20, we headed into the Gaslamp Quarter to find somewhere reasonable for food — a challenge for time, cost and quality on a Friday night during Comic-Con. We ended up at a tapas joint called The Marble Room, in which Fantastic Four cartoons were playing on the flat screen at the bar and servers were dressed somewhat in geeky costumes. The food was pretty good, the view (and breeze) from the window-side bar table was refreshing, and we managed to get in and out within an hour.

After wandering the streets a bit, we headed to the party, which was being held on the rooftop of the Western Metal Supply Co. — also known as the northwestern edge of Petco Park. The atmosphere wasn’t much different than every other party we go to in Vegas. Open bar with accompanying lengthy lines. Appetizers floating around on trays. DJ spinning mix of hip-hop and ’80s pop. People gathering in small groups but not mingling much. None of the above is a bad thing (especially not the hosted bar), but aside from the great view (see above photo), perfect weather and higher-than-usual geek content, a party is a party is a party. Except this one featured attendees such as Zachary Quinto, Masi Oka and Joss Whedon. Actually, the best part of the party was, oddly, hanging out with people I either already knew or just met, half of whom also live or have lived in Vegas, including the aforementioned Jill and her husband/high school buddy/writer Frank Beaton, awesome artist Warren Wucinich and his lovely lady companion Linda, and an assortment of other people such as that Rick Lacy guy. (Again, some of those above people should be expecting/already have received e-mails soliciting their awesomeness.)

Saturday, Sara and I decided to sleep in a bit, as there were no panels I had to get to until the early afternoon. After a so-so late breakfast at our hotel, we headed downtown about noon. Instead of taking the trolley, she dropped me off by the convention before driving off to explore less insane parts of San Diego, leaving me to fend for myself amongst the geek hordes. I lasted on the main floor about an hour before hightailing it to the somewhat-calmer upper level, where most of the panels were being held (as well as autograph signings and the freebie table, where I unleashed more copies of The Utopian to waiting crowds — the free comic pickings up there were slim!). While waiting in line for a panel on webcomics featuring the creative forces behind such popular strips as PvP and Sheldon, I ran into another Vegas-ite, cartoonist and journalist F. Andrew Taylor (and his son, Duncan). We happened to both be attending the same panel. We also both happen to be on the Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival planning committee. It’s a small world out there, even 300 miles from home.

After that, I got away from the crowds with a relaxing solo lunch at Whiskey Girl, where I worked on layouts for next week’s Utopian pages. On my way back to the convention center, I came upon some roller derby chicks performing stunts for onlookers. Somehow even my poor excuse for a phone-mounted camera caught this jump mid-air:

I was headed back to SDCC for one last panel, where former New Line Cinema production executive and comic book writer Jeff Katz unleashed his new publishing and intellectual property development house, American Original, unto an audience equally composed of fans and industry pals. American Original has strategically partnered with companies such as Top Cow, Longbox and Titmouse to produce original content across multiple media. Katz’s approach is basically this: Hollywood has been raping and pillaging geek culture for too long, and his company will reverse that by having the geeks in control. Should be interesting to see what comes out of that.

That panel was both the end of the day and the end of my stay at SDCC for the year. Sara met me downtown (somehow she found free, street parking within a few blocks of the convention!), we had a great dinner at this cool place called Sidebar (I believe every city is required to have one), and then … well, we pooped out. Headed back to the hotel and stayed in for the night, turning in early with the hopes of getting a decent start the next day.

On Sunday morning, we swung by the same Starbucks again, and then started driving north toward Encinitas, where I intended on visiting one of my favorite SD-area eateries, Swami’s Cafe, but as usual, there was a long line and we didn’t feel like waiting, so we headed down the street to Luxus 101 Bistro. The service was slow and the food was mediocre, but the bathrooms were nice, so … there’s that. Afterward, we walked off our brunch at another favorite, the meditation gardens as the Self-Realization Fellowship Temple. It’s a beautiful, immaculately maintained collection of flora and fauna perched on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. And people really do sit on benches hidden all around the property meditating. If you’re ever in the area, I highly recommend stopping by and gaining some perspective.

We meandered up the coast a bit more before crossing over to the I-15 and heading north toward Las Vegas. If you’ve ever done the weekend drive between SoCal and Vegas, then you know Sunday afternoon/evening is a bad time to be leaving Sin City, as every L.A. visitors drives home south on the 15, but it’s a fine time to head into Vegas. Except this past Sunday. There was a giant vehicle fire mid-afternoon between Primm and Jean, and though it was cleared up long before we got there, for some reason traffic was still playing catch-up by the evening. A few miles outside of Jean, we were stuck, moving a few inches every couple of minutes. It must have taken about an hour and a half to move all of one mile. Even worse, as evidenced by the photo above, The Fog was coming for us! There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, and on top of it all, I had to pee like a mofo. But we made it through. We made it home, to a house full of packed boxes and two very excited Pekingese dogs.

And there you have it. I still haven’t gone through the bag of graphic novels and comics I bought in San Diego (mostly from friends — I take care of my peeps!), and I’m just now getting caught up on e-mails, assignments, etc. It’s still up in the air whether I’ll return to SDCC in 2010. I was planning on renting table space for PGTI next year, but so much of the focus of the convention has moved away from comics (and more importantly, people buying comics!) and toward movies, video games and toys, that I feel as though my time and money is better invested in smaller cons such as Emerald City or Alternative Press Expo. But at the same time, for mere exposure, four-and-a-half days of face time at the country’s largest celebration of the popular arts couldn’t hurt. Well, not much.

Unlike Las Vegas, San Diego does not have more than 100,000 hotel rooms within minutes of the convention center. Hell, it barely has 50,000 in the metro area. Rooms get reserved quickly and the ones left are pricey. I reserved mine back in the early spring, maybe even winter, and even then, the closest I could get to the center for less than $200 was a Courtyard by Marriott near the airport. By comparison, our last trip there in the spring got us a room five or six blocks from the bay with a towering view of the city for about $125/a night.

But I digress. While I was able to get my professional credentials for this year’s geekfest, I missed the deadline for a small press or Artist Alley table reservation. So, as described over at Pop! Goes the Icon, I’ll be wandering around the convention halls with a bag full of goodies, including the items found inside this box:

Yep, extremely limited-edition (only 50!) Comic-Con exclusive print samplers of The Utopian, ready for the unsuspecting public. These will be handed out for free to whatever suckers want them in San Diego, so if that’s you and you’ll be down there, I highly recommend letting me know ahead of time, and I’ll hold a copy for you to grab from me there. Otherwise, if you want a print edition of my ongoing webcomic, I recommend waiting for the official first issue this fall, which will have nifty bonus materials well worth the $3.50 cover price. More on that later.

Oh, you have been keeping up with the webcomic, right? Because some sh*t is going to happen next week you’ll need to be prepared for.

I will have other comic-related news to announce soon, including the next title from Pop! Goes the Icon. Stay tuned.

HEARTY DISCLAIMER: The girlfriend and I are in the middle of buying a house, and the lender is playing the shell game with the closing date. So there is a chance this whole trip could get borked, but I’m really hoping that doesn’t happen. If it does, I will make sure a deputy is down there to distribute materials, but I would like you all to pray to whatever god or demon you love that everything goes fine next week. Thanks for your support.