They’ve announced it, so I will too.

On Thursday, July 23, at Noon, Comic-Con will be featuring one of North America’s funniest and most innovative cartoonists, Bryan Lee O’Malley for an hour of conversation, and I have the best seat in the house—right on stage with him. Cue up early at Room 5AB to make sure you get a seat.

BTW: The whole family and I will be at Con as usual, but this might be my only official appearance, since I’ll mostly just enjoying the sights. I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.

Cat Garza has kicked off “Flash Fridays” with a loving, adorable take on a classic Tattoo motif. Cat’s offering line files for anyone who might want to wear his designs. Keep a watch for more tatoos in the coming weeks.

Cat always called the San Diego Comic-Con “Sandy Eggo,” Larry Marder called it “The Gathering of the Tribes,” and Heidi MacDonald and others have been calling it “Nerd Prom,” but whatever you call it, the greatest of all American comics conventions is drawing near.

We’ll be there, as we have for all but one of the last 21 years, but taking it easy this time around. Mostly just relaxing and seeing friends (though I am a small part of at least one cool panel event I’ll be telling you about soon).

Con passes are — incredibly — sold out already, but if you want them and can’t get them, you may want to follow the Con’s Twitter account where they’ve been announcing official auctions regularly for the few passes they still have.

Oh, and as always, don’t miss Tom Spurgeon’s fantastic, insanely comprehensive 2009 Comic-Con Guide.

So, no sooner does Amanda Palmer (Lexington High School alumn) put together a Neutral Milk Hotel inspired production at my old high school, and no sooner do we see my old pal Brian Dewan (Lexington High School alumn) performing in LA (and also doing something related to Neutral Milk Hotel lately, oddly enough) when suddenly, our friend Sally is linking to Eugene Merman (Lexington High School alumn) giving this year’s LHS commencement speech a day or two ago.

In fact, Eugene even went to Diamond Junior High, where Kurt Busiek and I first started hanging out, playing chess, role-playing games, quoting Monty Python, and talking about why I had no interest whatsoever in Kurt’s latest hobby: comic books… while Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn sat in a Howard Johnson’s 3 miles away, sketching out the TCP/IP protocol on napkins.

Most common question from our friends who didn’t grow up in Lexington, MA: “What did they put in the water?”

Ivy just posted a gargantuan LJ entry about our Toronto/TCAF experience, so if you’d like a spouse-eye’s view of our whirlwind weekend, be sure to check it out.

Ivy and I just saw Star Trek. Good cast and fun character moments, big sloppy self-indulgent fanfic plot, typical action film directing (ADHD camera work). Whatever. We had fun.

And since I missed my chance Sunday, belated Mother’s Day wishes to my own Mom and to Ivy. Wouldn’t exist and/or wouldn’t want to without you.

Talked to…

…Ryan North about Music.
…Kate Beaton about Books.
…Bryan Lee O’Malley about Exhaustion.
…Seth about Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka.
…Derek Kirk Kim about Eternal Smile.
…Paul Pope about International Styles.
…Carla Speed McNeil about Hats.
…Faith Erin Hicks about Hair.
…Alec Longstreth about Beards.
…Chris Butcher about OMG we barely saw you!
…Mark Siegel about Mad Men.
…Mark Askwith about Everything Else.

Met…

…Emmanuel Guibert.
…Joey Comeau and Emily Horne.
…Jillian Tamaki (narrowly missed Mariko).
…Nate Powell.
…Miss Lasko Gross.
…Josh Cotter.

Failed…

…to meet the great Yoshihiro Tatsumi.
…to spend more than a minute with many other friends.

Learned that…

…Joey Comeau can be frighteningly loud.
…Rich Stevens should be on every panel.
…Chester Brown carries gigantic bags on his bike.

And much more, but that’s off the top of my head. Thanks to everyone at TCAF for a great weekend!

Some odds and ends:

Monday noon is the deadline to put your name down for my Manhattan Seminar taking place May 1 and 2.

Neil linked to it, so I should also let you know that Why I’m Not Neil Gaiman (2001) is online in case you’ve never read it.

Our old friend Matt (who was totally Thor in the Secret Wars Re-Enactment Society!) has been directing the wonderfully dark and twisted There Will Be Brawl, with co-creator Zach Grafton.

One week until China. Have a great weekend.

It’s all here. Help out one comics’ greats any way you can.

Also going the distance is David Chelsea who’ll be dedicating his next 24-hour comic event to raising money for Wilson.

Hope you’ll join me for my two-day making comics seminar in Manhattan, courtesy of the MFA in Interaction Design Program at the School of Visual Arts and IxDA NYC. Details here.

The New England Webcomics Weekend (remember?) was a big hit and newsworthy in and of itself, but of special interest to the mad scientist set (okay, me) was their “Infinite Canvas Room”—a big room of blank walls anyone could add post-it panels to. This was the same method that produced Merlin’s groundbreaking PoCom-UK-001 at London’s Institute for Contemporary Arts in 2003. No Merlin around to adapt this one, but fortunately we have this video walkthrough to commemorate it.

Webcomics Weekend is upon us. I’m not there myself, but I figured I’d add to public service messages out there that registration is full, so don’t just show up at the door and expect to register. 

Ditto for Comic Con hotels and four-day registration, but you probably already knew that.

I’m sure it’s annoying for spontaneous types, but trust me, it’s better than the reverse. I remember when there were a lot more empty patches in comics’ social arenas. I thought for sure that this would be the year that Comic-Con finally slowed down a bit, but maybe I was wrong. As for webcomics, give it a decade or two.