Next Week: Part 2

Ask anyone who’s ever worked a table. There is always at least one completely crazy person every con who will insist on talking about Uwe Boll for 45 minutes with you (true story). As they might actually be a customer or an editor from a major comic company, you don’t want to be rude. So, you smile and nod and hope that if they go on a spree, they’ll remember you fondly and not attempt to make a hat out of your liver.

That’s one of the funny things about cons: you can’t really make assumptions about the people walking by. The guy in the stained Wolverine short and jorts could be multi-millionaire while the guy in the tailored suit with the briefcase might just be trying to show people his original work: Suitman and Copy Boy, which was done in stick-figures and crayon (semi-true: it wasn’t called Suitman and Copy Boy).

Where were we? Ah, yes. Mental preparation.

Now, everyone mentally prepares differently. By far the single most popular method is beer, followed by more beer, leading to staggering, and if possible yet more beer. Said beer is generally drunk in the evenings after the con and sometimes well into the next morning, leading to vendors who haven’t actually ‘slept it off,’ as they never actually went to bed in the first place.

Yes, I actually heard ‘Dude, I think I’m still drunk’ one fine con morning as I went by a table.

I’m sure there are plenty of other ways to mentally prepare for a con. Some might read old comics. Some might walk into their local comic shop on a busy Wednesday and mention loudly that ‘Batman could totally beat Superman,’ thus sparking off a nerd riot.

NOTE: According to my mother, Superman would win because Christopher Reeve was the ‘handsome one.’ Except what she actually said was ‘the handsome one who was in that movie where he traveled back in time and fell in love with that woman with dark hair’ because she can’t remember the names of actors or movies. However, having known my mother all my life, I was able to interpret this as Christopher Reeve, as he was in Somewhere in Time with Jane Seymour.

Personally, I have a very simple regimen for mental preparation: I try to cancel a credit card. Now, if you’ve never tried to do this, it’s worthy of being one of Hercules’ Twelve Labors (right after the one where he had to clean the stables), as the person you’re talking to is being paid to get you to not cancel. They will try every verbal and psychological trick in their arsenal from guilt to coupons to dates with celebrities in order to keep you as a customer. It is the art of verbal sparring at its most intense. If you can successfully cancel a credit card, you can deal with any potential customer.

Though, I must point out that I still haven’t gotten my date with Olivia Wilde.

Cheers,
-Jason