Hello,

I read the article about the contest and I've been going to the San Diego Comic-Con for the last nine years. My story will probably not be on par with what you will be receiving from some of the other folks, I just thought I'd send it in anyways.

My story is that I got to meet 'Weird Al' Yankovic last year and that has to be the highlight of all the years I have gone. I have been a Weird Al fan since I was 7 years old. For the longest time the only music I would listen to was either the crap that my mom played or Weird Al. I was walking around the con and my freind called me and said "get to Artist Alley now!" and I got to meet the man himself. He was such a nice guy that he let my freinds and I all get pictures with him even though he was just there as a fan. I included a copy of the picture I got to take with him.

As for the picture of a costumed con freak, this one just did it for me. He was some sort of jedi/cyborg/bounty hunter/???. Strangley enough too was the fact that he was in front of a booth with scantaly clad women. I guess confused jedi's even need lovin.

THE "BLUE PILL" WINNER

Patrick Loika wins a couple MATRIX figures, Morpheus and a Ghost Twin, for this entry:

I have a few good ones, so take your pick.

San Diego Comic-Con, 1998.

Cliffhanger Productions just launched, and to celebrate that fact, the entire Cliffhanger crew at the time had a signing. The group included J Scott Campbell, Joe Madureira, Humberto Ramos, and pretty much every single one of their collaborators in their respective books. They were giving away a jam poster of the main characters in their books, listing all the creators' names for them to sign on to. I went to the signing with my best friend Chris, and went to the autograph spot a half hour early...only to find out we're in the middle of the line, which has been waiting for sometime.

After about two hours waiting in line, we finally got to the front to get our autographs. We were pissed we couldn't score any sketches, because that's one of the things we're hoping to get (I wanted to get a Psylocke from Joe Mad)...the Convention Center was closing down in about a half hour, and we were tired from the whole thing...so we sat down at a set of tables close to the autograph area. We were checking out the books we got signed, including a huge pile of Madureira's Uncanny X-Men run. I was talking to Chris, when all of a sudden, a strange looking guy came up to us, grabbed our stack of signed Uncannys...and started to sign them.

I looked at his badge, and saw his name. It was Scott Lodbell. Chris and I were ecstatic, we were really into his work at the time, particularly the 'Age of Apocalypse' stuff... That was just cool, how he came to us to sign out swag. We even got to chit-chat about Uncanny # 348 where both Rogue and Gambit were powerless, if they 'did it' in that issue. He told us to leave it to the imagination.

Comic-Con San Diego, 2002.

We were attending the many, many panels at the new ballroom. We sat through the Lord of the Rings panel...then they had a WB panel featuring 'Dreamcatcher.' The main reason we were there was because we wanted to meet Jason Lee. THE Jason Lee. With me, was my brother Tim, and best buds, Chris and Nate. So, the Q & A with Lee and Tim Olyphant had begun, and everyone wanted to talk about Lee and his View Askew work. Nate was being a pain in the ass...and so, my brother, Tim raised his hand...and he made a request.

"Jason, I'm a big fan of your work...and I was wondering, if you can PLEASE call my friend a fat fuck?"

The audience seemed shocked. Some laughs throughout the place, and there was some silence.

Jason Lee looked just as shocked: "What?"

Tim kept pressing on, "Come on man! I saw all your stuff! I even saw 'Drawing Flies!"

Lee responded by saying, "Do I look like your fuckin' monkey here?"

It finally got Tim to sit down. Later on in the panel, though, Lee did a tease of sorts as he replied to someone's question and calling the person a fat fu-- cutting himself off before finishing the line and giving a wink, which got the audience laughing.

Sadly, Tim won't be attending this year's Comic-Con since he's in the Navy and he's been deployed. However, there were a lot of reports of his infamous request all over the net last year...so he gained nameless notoriety.

Here's hoping for a win...

THE "YOU AH ONE UGLY MOTHAHFUCKAH" WINNER

The winner of PREDATOR 2 and ALIEN 3 figures is ________ for this:

hey - congratulations on your first year. i would send you a cigar, but i don't know where you live.

anyway, i couldn't find my pictures from last year, and i can't get the attach file to work (my yahoo mail's been funky all day), so here's my freak pic - http://www.cartoonfrolics.com/sdcc/day2/pages/sleepingklingon.htm (i wanted to send one of that black superman guy, cuz he's my favorite, but i couldn't find him).

and here's my story (it's not a funny one - although i do have a pretty good one concerning a friend, a bad burrito, some confusion in a bathroom, and a pissed off guy in a klingon outfit, but i digress.)

ok, so last year was the first year i actually made it to the con. every year i say i'm going to go, but i never made it. my girl and i got our tickets and decided to go for the full shebang. i saved up a few hundred bucks, and i cleared some room on my credit cards and we were all set.

the first day we get there and start looking around. we're there maybe an hour or two when i go to buy a mini-comic off of Steve Lieber. i reach for my wallet in my backpack where i decided would be the safest place to keep it, and it was gone. i check my pockets - nothing. i empty out my bag - zip. i have my girl empty her bag - nope. about six hundred dollars in cash, and somewhere in the realm of ten credit cards are now missing. practically every bit of money i had brought is gone. dread sets in as we start retracing our steps from the last place i bought something - no luck.

at this point, i think i went outside to alternately chain smoke and empty my bag over and over looking through the contents for the missing wallet. amazing, every time it came up missing. my girl went off to check the lost and found - a theory which held little hope of actually panning out. however, when she got there and asked if they had a wallet (after a little sweet talk to the worker manning the lost and found because they can't divulge the lost contents to non-owners) she found out that, yes, there was a wallet turned in, but i had to go and get it because my ids were in it, and she really couldn't tell anyone the contents.

well, let me tell you we were so happy just to get the wallet back that we were willing to accept no cash, if only the credit cards were still ok. and what do you think was left in my wallet? every. last. dollar. nearly six hundred. and every last card as well. we wanted to find the honest fan boy or security guard that turned it in without even grabbing a twenty or a fiver, and give them something - anything - for saving our vacation, but no one knew who it was.

there you have it. my feel good tale of the con. it really did make the whole trip a world better just to find out that there are people out there that aren't selfish assholes.

Thanks again to McFarlane Productions and to everyone who entered and...oh, wait. No one else did enter. Thanks for nothing, ya ungreedy bastards! We'll just blame this one on THE MATRIX RELOADED being so underwhelming and move on to the next contest soon...

E-MAIL AUTHOR