Yeah, yeah, I’m still here. I haven’t fallen off the edge of a cliff. I haven’t drowned in the Pacific Ocean. I’m still very much alive, thank you very much.

The past couple of weeks have been an absolute whirlwind. First, we went to Brandon’s brother’s house in Los Angeles, where we first saw Brandon’s niece, sweet baby Mira, with our very own eyes. She is such a tiny, cute, little thing. I’m sure she’ll break many hearts when she’s older.

Then we were off to Comic-Con International in San Diego, California. Brandon was an exhibitor there for the first time, and we managed to get into the convention center without waiting in line. It was super-cool to browse around the area with hardly anybody there. We shared our table with a friend, Gary Buechler, who owns a comic shop in San Francisco called Comic Outpost. It was certainly different being behind the table rather than in front of it (For one thing, Brandon was keeping longer than regular work hours at the table. He woke up everyday at about 7-8 a.m. and stayed at the hall until 6 p.m. or so). But it was all good because he made serious bank. We sold a ton of Geek Pride t-shirts and buttons, and lots of comics to boot. We even came to a PROFIT, which is amazing.

I won’t even bother giving you the details about the awesomeness that is the San Diego Comic-Con. I mean, it’s too much to even describe. The amount of comics, toys, merchandise, video games, tv/movie related things… it’s overwhelming to even think about. I’ll just give you a general overview of what I did. I bought a few things from Giant Robot (Great company, support them!), a couple more things from Drawn and Quarterly (I met Adrian Tomine of Optic Nerve, got him to sign things), met up with Scott Kurtz of PvP and just generally soaked in the awesomeness of pop culture that was Comic-Con International. I managed to sneak a peek at the new Incredibles movie, plus saw a preview of a new HitchHiker movie (Yes, they’re making a movie out of the HitchHiker series! Too awesome). I couldn’t meet Neil Gaiman for a signing, but I did show up at his MirrorMask panel. If you’re any kind of fan of Gaiman’s or the Sandman books, you’re not going to want to miss it. It looks wild and crazy, like most Dave McKean stuff, and they basically described it as “acid for kids.” Which seems quite accurate, really.

Other than that, much of the time was spent with our mutual friends from Comic Book Resources. They were great fun — we had a get-together dinner, a beach barbecue/grill, late-night talking sessions in hotel rooms — ah the beauty of Internet friendships. There were more sexual double entrende jokes than you could shake a stick at (No pun intended). I think some of them are coming out to San Francisco for the Alternative Press Expo next year, which will be great fun as well.

After that, well, we came home and just crashed. I just didn’t want to do anything at all for a few days. And here I am blogging about our trip. For a whole boatload of Comic-Con related pics (All 133 of them), click here.

More updates about my life in a few days. For now, I rest.