San Diego, I Love You

back from the Reubens and back to work.

Floof, Sirius, and “Alice” by Andrea Beizer (Comics Kingdom) drawn on the table in the Comic Con Museum in San Diego.

I’ve just returned from the Reuben Awards in San Diego. I have been in the NCS since 1980 but last attended one of these yearly events in 2001. Since the Reubens were usually held in September during the school year, I wasn’t able to get to them when I was still teaching. The Reubens have now been moved to August to allow more people to work them into their schedules.

I arrived the day before the event. The hotel was a great way north of the city, near a college complex. Buses ran by but no one in the hotel seemed to have a schedule or know where they went.

Most events were in the hotel. There was one bus trip to the Comic Con Museum in Balboa Park. I was looking forward to this.

A podcast with some of the Reuben nominees was the high point of the Museum visit. Then, there was a lunch. We played a sort of Exquisite Corpse game and drew things on the table after lunch. My contribution, along with Andrea Beizer’s, appears above.

Then came the tour. Oh, good. There was an exhibit on Betty Boop and another on Comic Con history. Unfortunately neither one was on the tour.

The tour was not a high point of the trip. We were shepherded through a display of the history of robots (?) and treated like a very naughty school group. At one point we were ordered to stop looking at anything on our own and get back in the group with our docent, who was inaudible in the echoing room. “YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO HER! GET BACK HERE!” No one wanted to make a scene, but this was not necessary.

We were then ordered to look at a display of a ‘room from 1983, before digital media!’ I not only knew what rooms looked like in 1983, I definitely had better wallpaper.

(Note to young docents: When you are giving a tour to a group of professional cartoonists, assume that they know something about design, graphics, and emotional color. It may be new to you, but not to them.)

The Reuben ceremony and dinner was crisp and short. It featured an hilarious accceptance speech by Jason Chatfield—for Nick Gallifianakis’ award. Jason is a stand up comedian as well as a cartoonist and he is very good at both. This was the high point of the Reubens for me.

Friends assumed that I was one of the nominees. I explained that someone had to be the audience, and that most of the attendees were not nominated for anything. The point of the Reubens is to meet other cartoonists and have a good time. The awards are nice, but they are not the primary reason for the event.

I met some fine cartoonists whom I knew and met some new ones. I got a gag shot with Bill Hinds of TANK MCNAMARA. Bill got the Golden T Square for 50 years drawing the same comic (it’s rarely awarded, and I hope that he got that heavy thing through airport security!) Here, he is interviewing me about pickleball.

I stayed two extra days to see something of San Diego, but still didn’t have a map of the bus routes. I managed to get a trolley map in the Comic Con Museum. Two friends came down from L.A. to see the city and they took the unoccupied bed in the hotel. Only one of us had ever been to San Diego before and none of us knew where anything was.

San Diego has very good public transit but all of their information booths are closed on weekends. I was limping along using the phone maps, which were highly variable, until I was checking out. When I explained to someone at the desk that there were no maps of the public transit routes, she said “Wait a minute.”

And came out with a great map of the entire bus and trolley system, with hookups to two trains.

Why were these only available now? “I’ve been on vacation for the past week.”

No one else at the hotel knew about these maps. I have no idea why they were not out at the front desk, as they are in most hotels. Maybe it would spoil the design aesthetic. Someone once used that excuse when they ignored 300 call outs for one of my book editions.

The new map enabled me and two friends to travel to the lovely La Jolla Cove to see the pelicans and sea lions and marvelous wave carved rocks. Here is one happy sea lion enjoying the sun. She reminds me of my dog.

I got back without incident on Monday and my surviving cat Sam-E barked, WHERE WERE YOU?

I’m back and back drawing cartoons. The capybara story ended on August 25 and I am doing a series of short gags until the Halloween season starts for our characters.

It’s amazing that I will soon complete the first full year of strips for FurBabies. They will definitely be entered for Reuben consideration next year. If they are nominated, that is great. If not, I’ll still go, since they are in Boston next year.

They have great public transportation in Boston.