A small listing of the books I picked up from this year’s Con:
• Zombies vs Robots vs Amazons 1 and 2 by Chris Ryall and Ashley Wood. I love Ashley’s meaty oils and gestural/dynamic panels in scratchy ink. Great texture. Plus it’s about zombies and robots and amazons all fighting eachother! C’mon!

• Chris Sanders’ Sketchbook 2 - full of his fantastic little critters and busty babes. Really, this guy is just an incredible draftsman!

• Claire Wendling’s phenomenal work in drawers 2.0. Claire blows me away. She can draw her figures and animals like Frank Frazetta and also do concept work for animation and comics. I don’t think her super simplified characters are as strong or interesting as her other work, but it’s nice to have the entire gamut of her style in one book. I love, love, love her animals and figures. The gestures!

• Afterworks 1 and 2 - I was late on this bandwagon, but I got ‘em now! Lovely work from the folks over at Pixar.

• Istanbul by Dupuy and Berberian. I couldn’t pass this one up. A real lovely book of sketches of this incredible city. It’s full of beautiful quick and whimsical studies of the architecture and people. Again, this is where my family is from, and the illustrator is Armenian. Yay!

Yesterday I attended the geek-fest that is Wondercon in San Francisco. I’m definitely on the “artist-geek” end of things, but the “fan geeks” definitely make the event highly entertaining. I picked up some really great books which I’ll talk about later. But first here are some pics from the day. These photos were taken with my phone, so apologies for the low quality.

Some people really spend time making elaborate costumes. I don’t even know who these characters are supposed to be.

Ah, yes. Cobra Command!

Again, I have no clue what character she’s supposed to be. But it’s cool!

Silent Hill was a pretty awful movie, but I loved the production design, and these evil characters. They were pretty memorable, and I was pleasantly surprised to see these two go through all the trouble of recreating them here.

Lou Ferrigno! The Original Hulk!!! I’m usually not so easily star-struck, but this guy made such a big impression on me when I was 5 years old and watching the Incredible Hulk on tv with my dad. He scared the living crap out of me back then, and I think also helped nurture my fascination with horror and all things scary.

I’m an avid newspaper reader. Waking up early and perusing the articles and photographs every morning with a cup of coffee and a bowl of chunky oatmeal is bliss to me. I always go through the op/ed pages which include the editorial cartoons. And over time, I’ve discovered that the cartoons that stick out to me the most are those by Ann Telnaes.

What I love about her work is the perfect combination of her style that makes such great use of simple shapes and caricature, matched with her searing portrayal of issues that face our country. I think she’s pretty incredible. Her line quality and draftsmanship are inventive and superb, simple and precise. And her clever scenarios are full of bite, wit, and fiery satire. Indelibly, her cartoons leave a lasting impression on my mind.

Looking at her site, I discovered that I’m not alone. Ann has won the Pulitzer Prize for her work in editorial cartoons. Before cartooning, she worked at Disney as a designer, and is a graduate of Cal Arts.

I got to see a screening of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis last night at the newly remodeled Sundance Kabuki Theater. It was quite the event, with complimentary hors d’oeuvres and popcorn, a man playing some lovely music on a giant standing bass, and media and press people flitting about. But the star was Marjane who was there herself, along with her co-director of the animated film.

Based on her autobiographical graphic novels, Persepolis follows Marjane’s story of growing up in Iran during the revolution, and her life outside of her homeland, when she flees. The animation closely follows the stark black and white graphic style of her comics, but has also been flourished with shades of gray and minute instances of color. There are so many striking moments, visually, graphically. Some scenes are told with only images, and ultimately end up being more powerful than if they had included dialogue.

Marjane discussed her story and her views in a brief interview on stage before the screening, and her striking firebrand of a personality really burst through. However, her sly humor also was very apparent. And despite the horrors that she faced during the revolution in Iran, and some of the horror that is depicted in in her story, Persepolis is just as much about the humor and absurdity of life and of coming of age in this modern world. I loved it, and will see it again when it is released in theaters.