Wonder Con & a HAPPY NEW YEAR! continued
Check the work of Eric Joyner, who makes gorgeous paintings featuring classic 50′s tinker toy robots…
And here’s a guy who does prints and shirts all based on bears (often packing heat); I forget his name and somehow misplaced his business card (sorry)…
One booth was selling old European print ads and propaganda, which seemed odd for a comic book show, but hey its San Fran (and I had yet to visit its equivalent of St. Marks or Washington Square), plus they had some really nice stuff….
The best thing about Wonder Con was how there were tons of awesome shirts to be found in every corner of the show, which I guess makes sense given that it is California, where lots of indie hipster folks make indie hipster clothing (outside of Brooklyn that is). Folks like Gama Go…
Spicy Brown was also present, whose shirts I have acquired in the past, not for myself, but for assorted female friends…
… the funny thing about them is that, because I’ve always seen their shirts in Japanese book stores, I had assumed that they were Japanese. Not so… but they’re like the only American clothing line to be available in Kinokuniya. They’re just that good.
Pouser Ink had some really neat threads…
And Pixmix had some really cute ones…
There was actually quite a contingency of folks with clothing that’s geared for kids, like this one line featuring peas….
Here’s another shirt that I’m kicking myself over not getting, as well as neglecting to get a business card…
Finally, I spotted just some random kid walking the aisles with this one…
… He told me that he simply had it made at a t-shirt shop in a local mall.
Another thing there was plenty of was toys and stuff from Japan, but the quality and variety, plus prices, was far better than anything I’ve normally seen at shows around here. I’m assuming once again it has everything to do with location (given the relative closeness of Japan and all)…
… They had a bunch of figures of very young and very naked girls, the kid of stuff that freak’s the hell out of Katie, and for DIRT CHEAP. So of course I had to buy a few!
There was also a huge table filled with hentai doujinshi, and because I felt kinda stupid for not really checking all the stuff that was available when in Japan, I decided to take a long look, mostly for any game related doujinshi…
… And there was some, though mostly just Soul Calibur and Resident Evil ones (and none featuring Clair Redfield, dammit). All the good stuff, like ones based on shumps, Pictochat, Cooking Mama, and DDR were long gone…
… But hey, at least they had a really wacky one starring the women of the WWE!
BTW, I know this post is already a bit NSFW, but there’s better stuff, coming soon on Flickr, so watch for it. Anyhow, soon it was time to meet up with Slonie, who decided to ditch the car this time around, so after a quick bite of Indian (at another place that Raina recommended, Naan n’ Curry, which was also quite excellent), we went to Japantown…
Some pics inside the Super 7 store, where I had to fight myself from picking up every shirt in the house…
Then it was off to the mall, which was a nice mish-mash of east meets west. Here’s a shot from the car shop…
… And here are some very authentic cutesy signs for an eatery…
… There was also a toy shop, where I was finally able to pick up some Shooting Historia figures, specifically the Gradius 2 Metarion ship and the R-Type vessel. Unfortunately, they did not have the Gradius 5 Vic Viper, but that’s hardly a surprise.
From Japantown we went to Chinatown…
San Francisco Chinatown was pretty neat, but didn’t come close to resembling what I envisioned, due to Big Trouble in Little China, despite it also being a rainy night. Though on a total coincidental note, it was Chinese New Year’s; this float was doing just a ten second portion of the “Anything Goes” routine from Temple of Doom, over and over again…
Instead of finding a place to sit down, we got some street food, which can often be the best kind of food. Or not. Thankfully, the fates were with us. Anyhow, we ended up near the parade route, which meant seeing people dragons removing their heads and the people going inside “thank God that’s over with!” It didn’t matter; Slonie and I opted to get nice and buzzed with Chinese beer (which I had never had… and its not too bad) while standing in the rain…
It was time to head back, but not before a quick game of Daytona (of course) at the arcade at the Sony Metreon…
… And the winner was me! Can’t wait for next year’s head-to-head bout!
Oh, and one last shot from that day: the Legend of Zelda plague from the Walk Of Game circa 2005, which I don’t think they even updated anymore…
And with that, I went back to my hotel room, made another attempt at updating this journal, but couldn’t due to technical difficulties for the millionth time, got frustrated, then went back out for a Carl’s Jr hamburger and a Captain Crunch milkshake (which was delicious) and that was my last night in San Fran! I guess that was San Fran, more or less?
BTW, may as well pass along the obligatory pictures of stuff I got; it’s funny how I spent more money on Saturday buying books and shirts and stuff than I had the entire week prior, due to the abundance of free food the GDC provided. Anyhow, remember that guy who creates stuff featuring bears with guns? Well here’s the shirt I got from him…
And here’s one I got at the Super 7 store…
Plus another that I picked up for Katie…
New wallet get! Courtesy of Gama Go…
Remember me mentioning that book featuring naked jungle women and Nazis? Well here it is, from Five Color Comics btw…
Since I have the picture handy; here’s what the cover to that Japanese PSP game I scored looks like…
Plus, I did manage to get one decent game-related h-doujinshi at the show, the last copy of Famimania…
… Come on, with a cover like that, how could one resist?
Oh, and the stuff I picked up at Needles & Pens, featuring Titty City…
Finally, some poster inside the local hipster rag that I also got at the store…
That’s it folks!
