This week was a momentous week - I was able to hand off the completed shots of animation, plus sound, to my editor, Rob Hall, to start putting together the pieces of the puzzle I call "Hair High". Even though I have another 2 weeks of drawing left on the film, I was able to take a long weekend off and attend the San Diego Comic Convention.

If you haven't been there before, it's the greatest gathering of comic artists, writers, animators, and fan-crazed, half-naked comic freaks. Go, you'll love it.

I've been there a number of times before, but this is the first time I've had my own table, thanks to AWN (Animation World Network). My trusted colleague, John Holderried, was also there to assist in managing the booth. (see photo) We even had the honor of having Tom + Pat Sito visit our booth. (see photo)

I had a special sneak preview of "Hair High". It was very well attended, 150 people, and they seemed to like it. I heard lots of laughter at the scene where David Carradine as Mr. Snerz, the biology teacher, goes cough-crazy. By the way, David also made an appearance at Quentin Tarantino's preview of "Kill Bill".

I spent some time at the NBM booth and signed copies of "Sleazy Cartoons", "Sloppy Seconds", "Mutant Aliens" and the new graphic novel "Hair High", available through this web-site or at NBM's.

I ran into my old buddy, Matt Groening, at the Futurama booth - we talked about getting his voice for the "Will" character in "Hair High". He said he was all excited - we planned to do it the next day, but I couldn't get my recorder to work (me and machines!). So, I sadly had to cancel the voice session - maybe we'll do a long-distance voice session.

Also, Quentin Tarantino came by the booth, we chatted a little bit - I'm so excited to see "Kill Bill" - if it's a big success and David Carradine returns to stardom, it could make distribution of "Hair High" much easier.

The first night, I went to Jerry Beck's program on "The Worst Cartoons Ever Made", and sure enough, they were the worst. The funniest was "Super President" - check it out.

The final night, Thierry Nantier of NBM took all his artists out for a wonderful Italian dinner, and after, I drunkenly staggered to the Dark Horse Comics party, where I got to chat with the Pander Bros., Tom Sito and Mike Richardson, famous publisher of Dark Horse.

Sunday, John and I sold stuff in the morning, but had a 1 pm flight back to New York. For me, the convention was a big success (we sold out of the "Mutant Aliens" DVDs), not just because of the business we did, but more because of the friends I got to see and the great books and films gathered there - it's a total comics and fantasy mecca.

This week's comic is called "The Parking Meter". While living in Oregon, I owned a '64 Falcon convertible, so I had a close familiarity with parking meters. Of course, being a cartoonist, you start to imagine machines coming to life - it struck me how meters are very tree-like, and it just followed that the meters that got the most money would expand and demand more money - like all government agencies.

See you next weekBill