Comic-Con '08: A Midday Pause In The Manga Madness

It's Saturday at Comic-Con, so I thought I'd pop in a short update while there's a brief pause in the manga madness of today's schedule. So far today, I've talked with Hiro Mashima (the creator of Fairy Tail), peeked into the Dark Horse panel at noon (where I didn't get any new CLAMP Mangettes news before Bruce Campbell came to make his cameo), then ran to the Tite Kubo panel (where the creator of Bleach got a reception from fans befitting a rock star, complete with squeals and standing ovations).

Missed the Svetlana Chmakova signing at Yen Press, but hoping that she'll be at the Yen Press panel at 6:00 pm. And now waiting for the Hiro Mashima / Del Rey Manga panel, followed by the Shojo Beat panel, then a quick breather before I talk with Kubo-sensei.

I ran into a fellow blogger from Anime Diet who swept his hand to gesture to a few folks and told me, "Here's my staff." Hoy. It's days like this when I think it'd be nice to have help -- but for the most part, I'm having fun, in that adrenaline-charged, caffeine-addled kind of way.

Big scores so far: the first issue of Yen Plus from the Yen Press booth #1116 and a copy of Tokyo Zombie which I got at Last Gasp booth #1616 -- both of which I'm dying to read once I can take a breath.

Also lovin' my Tezuka Moderno figurines from the Organic Booth #3245, although I missed out on the Black Jack figurines, which were sold out by Thursday morning. Foo.

Ran into Lillian Diaz-Pryzbyl, Senior Editor of TokyoPop on my way into the convention center, while she was on her way back to L.A. TokyoPop pulled out of Comic-Con after their recent re-org, so Diaz-Pryzbyl left the TokyoPop promos in the capable hands of the TokyoPop guerilla marketing patrol (which I haven't encountered yet).

More to come after I finish at the Hiro Mashima panel.

Image credit: © Deb Aoki