Guys, you all know I'm a huge huge jerk. Those of you who wish to maintain that opinion by not reading the following friendly paragraphs may wish to ignore the blog today.

This year in San Diego was easily the best time I've ever had at a convention.

First, big thanks to my friends/managers at Content House - Mark Saffian, Dave Olbrich, and Kevin Cleary. Mark got Kelly, James, and I into an Aquabats concert where MC Lars was playing. Lars is another client of Mark's, a really nice guy, and an excellent musician. Go check him out.

Second, I want to thank every fan I bumped into. I didn't have a booth this year, so most of my run-ins with SMBC readers were serendipitous. Unfortunately, I was stupid enough not to get everyone's name, so I'll do my best to thank everyone I met by reference to the way I met them:

-Thank you guy who jumped out of line to get video and a photo with me
-Thank you two guys relaxing at the end of a hallway who noticed me after we gave them flyers
-Thank you two guys who waited at the SF Cartoon Art Museum booth to make me draw ridiculous things (I remember one of you was named Alex and you were from Montreal!)
-Thank you girl who raises chickens who liked the recent Superman comic
-Thank you guy I saw while talking to Randall Munroe who asked me where the SMBC booth was

I'm sure there were a few more readers I'm forgetting to thank. If I've forgotten to mention you, chalk it up to my poor memory. I understand there were a number of folks who had wanted to see me, but did not. I really apologize for this, but next year it should be a bit easier to find me.

After meeting readers, the next best thing was meeting fellow artists. I'm going to thank everyone in more or less no particular order. So, this'll take a while.

Thanks to the guys at C&H. We are mutual admirers of each others stuff, so it was a lot of fun to meet those guys. Rob in particular was super cool, and was kind enough to draw me a naked stick figure.

Thanks to Randall Munroe, who very much surprised me when he informed me that he read my comics. We spent a minute chatting about comics and (a little) physics before I reluctantly left for fear of being trampled by his massive crowd of fans. Randall was every bit as cool as you'd expect him to be from his work. Although he is the only 4-letter-acronym comic bigger in readership than SMBC, I no longer consider him my arch-nemesis.

Thanks to the San Francisco Cartoon Art Museum for letting me do some donation sketches. I got to draw alongside Dan Piraro!

Thanks to J and Mel from Two Lumps for being startlingly friendly and taking a super-cool picture of the three of us. I hope they email it to me soon. They also gave me a copy of their booklet even though I had already given out all the copies of mine. Cool folks!

Thanks to Randy Milholland who was with J and Mel. He is one of several people I was looking forward to seeing but was only able to speak to briefly. Hopefully we can chat more next year.

Great big thanks to all the guys at Blind Ferret. Nick and Randy were really cool, and I got to briefly say hi to Ryan Sohmer, who does a couple top notch strips while also running a media company.

Extra giant thanks to Jeph Jacques for letting me graffiti his site recently. Much like Randall, despite a huge crowd of people waiting to see him, he took some time to chit chat with me about comics.

Thanks to R Stevens for spending some time talking with me and Kelly. He's always fun to harass at Comic-Con.

Thanks to Kris Straub for chatting with me on Sunday. I wish I had found the Halfpixel booth earlier on so I could've harassed those guys a bit more.

Thanks to Bobby Crosby for saying trying to say "hi" the day after we'd chatted at his booth. Unfortunately, he was on his way up an escalator as Kelly and I were descending stairs. 'Twasn't meant to be!

Now for a few folks who are also awesome, but whom I didn't get to chat with as much:

Thanks to Scott Kurtz, Gabe and Tycho, Wil Wheaton, Chris Hastings, The Foglios, and the Dumbrella guys.

Last but not least, thanks to James and Kelly for coming along to hand out flyers and wade through hordes of geekness to chat with webcomics people. Needless to say, we were the coolest people at Comic-Con, as evidenced by the photos below (snapped at the Marriott lounge, each of us taking turns wearing James' prescription sunglasses)



I hope I haven't forgotten anyone. If I did, feel free to email me a reminder. As for anyone who got a picture with me, I'd love for you to send a copy. I'll happily post it on this blog.

Thanks, and I hope to see you all next year,
Zach

PS: The Field is the best pub on Earth. Between James, Kelly, and I, we sampled 6 different types of boxty in two evenings.