It is now, I suppose, early Saturday morning; I’ve just been to Space Time with Marian Call, David Malki !, Seth Boyer, Joseph Scrimshaw, and people who’ve driven rovers on another damn planet. It was great. But it appears that, courtesy of The Magicians, I’m not going to be getting to sleep anytime soon, so I may as well do a recap of (mostly) today (and a bit of yesterday)¹.

• There was an announcement that Molly Ostertag of Strong Female Protagonist will be doing an original graphic novel with Scholastic in 2018. Ostertag’s work is great, so this is welcome news.
• Kate Beaton, Lisa Hanawalt, and Emily Carroll (with Abraham Riesman moderating, from left) spoke about working in the short form, but the panel itself was kind of indicative of the topic — question asked, answer (frequently very funny — ask Hanawalt about how toucans eat, or Beaton about grackle fecal sacs, or Carroll about how she uses Twitter), but not much a through line that makes for an interesting read. I could tell you Hey, remember that thing Kate said? That was great but that’s not an entertaining thing for either of us. Some things, you just have to be there.
• I spent a good deal of time trying to get into interview slots with Hope Larson and Gene Yang but the very patient and friendly ladies running publicity and press relations for DC were unable to accommodate me². And honestly, when you hear that your last shot at a possible cancellation is gone when Evan Narcisse (writing this weekend for io9) shows up for his appointment, you can’t be mad; that guy can write, and he’s only gotten better since I first met him at the SPLAT! symposium all those years ago. In fact you should go read whatever it is he’s written from his interview with Yang.

  It worked out, though, since Larson happened to see me in the press holding area and invited me to meet up with her after a signing. While she was answering a question that involved her current work in comparison to Yang’s, he happened to walk by and after they caught up, he apologized for not being able to take another interview at DC and invited me to meet up with him after a signing. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — the best people in the world are in comics. I’m bashing those interviews into shape and will run them as soon as I can.

• Cosplay got off to a slow start on Thursday, but still produced such gems as a woman re-enacting all of Finding Dory by herself, an exuberant Kamala Khan, Sexy Darth Plague Doctor, and a pre-tragic Simon Petrikov. Friday’s deepest cut was probably Izabel and The Brand from Saga, but my favorite was probably the pair of ladies who asked themselves What if 1950s Jackie Kennedy had played every villain on Batman?. Cleverest was probably Finn Squared, with best verisimilitude going to Miss Tina Belcher (she did the groan) or the Marceline/Marshall Lee combo. Add in Matt the Radar Technician and Lurch, and you’ve got a full slate of quality costumage.

  Not shown: the Slutty BB-8, Lingerie Leia, and the many Baby-8s that I saw; the former were kind of gross, and the latter adorable, but I’m not asking parents if I can take a picture of their infant dressed as a droid because I am not a huge creeper.

• And as I scan Heidi Mac’s twitterfeed, I see that Kate Beaton took the Eisner for Humor (Step Aside, Pops) and Matthew Inman the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award for his work in promoting and fundraising for a goddamned Tesla museum. I take these as signs that all is right in the universe, and even if the DJ hasn’t had enough yet two floors down, I’m heading for bed. More tomorrow.

Creators who autographed my copy of Romeo and/or Juliet since I last mentioned it:

Kate Beaton, who in a massive irony, was signing just the other side of a curtain from the living embodiment of Strong Female Characters, the Suicide Girls.

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¹ At Space Time tonight, both Raina Telgemeier and Pat Race had things to say about my plentiful use of both parentheses and footnotes, so these are for them.

² Not that I am complaining! Briana, Alison, and especially Charlotte were wonderful and great at their jobs. I hope that they got enough time to eat a granola bar at some point in the day because they were running flat out.