REVIEW: Drops of God

L.A. Comic Con 2025

Click here to go directly to the photo gallery.

Though I didn’t exhibit, I received a pro badge and attended L.A. Comic Con on the Saturday and Sunday of the three-day show, held Sept. 26–28. On both days, I took the L.A. Metro to the L.A. Convention Center, only about a 25 minute ride for me.

In the past, the entire show fit inside the L.A. Convention's big South Hall, so I was surprised to discover that there were additional exhibition halls, with the bulk of Artists Alley/Small Press in a completely different hall downstairs, which, based on my guestimate, seemed to nearly double the exhibition space. The crowd sizes were pretty good throughout the convention center. 

The autograph area was down in the artists alley area as well, where people like David Tennant, Dallas Bryce Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Denise Richards, and Elizabeth Olsen were signing (the lines for Tennant were especially long!) I saw a lot of fellow cartoonists and publishers I know. My daughter was also there separately, helping out a friend at an artists alley booth!

One feature I appreciate about L.A. Comic Con is that its main stage is simply an open area in the middle of the main hall, so there's no waiting in line for a seat or to get into a room. In fact, my primary reason for attending L.A. Comic Con the past several years when I haven’t exhibited is to see the celebrity guests, a luxury I never have a chance to take advantage of at San Diego Comic-Con! Last year I saw actor Ewan McGregor and the year before that, 2023, I experienced one of my favorite comic con highlights of all time when the four Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings hobbits—Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monagham, and Billy Boyd—appeared together. 

On Saturday morning, I attended a sneak peak panel of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art that included moderator Jessica Alba, director Robert Rodriguez, cartoonist legend Frank Miller, and illustrator/painter Kadir Nelson. A short video of the new museum, scheduled to open in 2026, was shown—what impressed me was the number of comics and cartoonists represented in the video, ranging from Charles Schulz, to Winsor McKay, to Moebius, and many in between! (My metro ride to the convention center actually goes right past the museum.) I also watched part of the panel with David Tennant and Billie Piper, and later, Dallas Bryce Howard. Howard was a particularly fascinating interview and the last question from the audience asked for her memories of working with Robert Redford on Pete's Dragon and, in response, she provided a beautiful tribute to Redford.

The following day, I briefly attended a panel featuring a reunion of the cast of the film, Starship Troopers, which included Denise Richards, Casper Van Dien, and Michael Ironside.

But the main draw for my attending L.A. Comic Con this year was actress Freema Agyeman. Though she’s arguably best known for her role as Martha Jones, one of the companions of David Tennant’s Doctor Who—a role she has reprised, most notably in a series called Torchwood—I became a fan of hers on the television import series, Law and Order U.K. Like Howard, she gave a thoughtful and engaging interview about the acting process. She spoke about her various roles and her of Shakespeare, having appeared in a recent production of As You Like It.

Immediately following that panel, I ran to another panel that had started concurrently, on Toxic Fandom, that I enjoyed. 

Click here to go directly to the photo gallery.

Linda Linda Linda!

Happy Batman Day!

Cover art to the Rob Hanes Archives

Attack on Late Night

Remembering Robert Redford

Jean Girard (Moebius) Mini-Documentary

Below is the documentary referenced in the post above:

Long Beach Comic Con 2025

Though I seriously considered exhibiting at this year's Long Beach Comic Con, held August 30–31, in Long Beach, California, I ultimately didn't. While the show was just 25 miles from my residence, which would not require the expense of an overnight stay at a hotel, the cost of a table was more than I could afford for a show that was still rebuilding after COVID. (I exhibited there in 2022, sharing space provided by the organizers to CAPS (Comics Art Professional Society), a professional society I belonged to.)

One of the reasons I seriously considered tabling, however, was due to the announcement of artist Howard Chaykin as a special guest, of whom I'm a longtime fan, dating back to his days on American Flagg (1983–89). Frankly, since I didn't expect big crowds at the show or for the event to be very busy, I thought it would be an opportunity to have more than a perfunctory conversation.  

This, in fact, turned out to be the case. Though I've briefly met him a few times, I never assume people will remember me—fortunately, he did. (One of the first things he told me that made me laugh was, "You present a lot younger on Facebook!" The first time we met, when he was introduced to me by a fellow artist, when I told him I was a big fan, he said, "Of course, we steal from the same people!") In any case, we had a great time chatting, particularly talking about Broadway productions we had seen, after I mentioned my trip there back in April.

So it was a great thrill to see Chaykin and become better acquainted! I purchased a recent American Flagg print he was selling at his table (see below), which he signed along with several items I brought along—including the back cover of Blackhawk #3 since, as I mentioned, I owned the art featured there!

Another memorable guest at the show was actor William Daniels (St. Elsewhere, 1776), now 98, whose wife of 74 years, Bonnie Bartlett, was also there as a guest. Since they were charging for photos and autographs, I assumed it wouldn't be proper for me to take a photo without paying. 

Click here to see the full photogallery of the show.

Migration to New Web Host

A few weeks back, I received a reminder from my web host provider for my wcgcomics.com website that my three-year hosting package was up for renewal in mid-September. Although the previous two three-year terms, starting in 2019, were approximately $98 for three years, I was shocked to learn that the renewal cost for another three years was nearly $400!

After researching options, I decided on Bluehost, a well established and reviewed web host company. My only concern was the amount of work and level of technical ability that would be required. While I consider myself moderately web-savvy, and had changed hosts before, this was my first time doing so with a WordPress (WP) site. While WP made site management and updates simpler in many ways, migrating was a little more complex than simply copying and moving files from one account to another, because WP is a more complex beast. Beneath the hood, WP is a complex engine involving nameservers, databases, DNS and A records (the latter of which I still don't understand). These all have to be correctly configured to ensure that when someone types in the specific URL for a domain, the internet correctly points the user's browser to the correct IP address for the website.

Thanks to the time I transitioned to WP in 2022, I was somewhat experienced backing up and re-installing a WP website (using a plug-in called Duplicator). In this sense, transferring and re-deploying the files to another web hosting service wasn't too much of a leap, nor was simply re-directing my domain name to my Bluehost site either. But making all the other little changes beneath the hood—as well as migrating my domain name email accounts—seemed daunting. (I am sure web host providers rely on people choosing the least path of resistance by simply paying the higher renewal fee than going through the hassle and stress of such a migration.)

Fortunately, saving some bucks is a great motivator. It helped that Bluehost had solid 24/7 chat support which I took full advantage of—while everyone who assisted me was competent and patient, I did sometimes feel like they were not understanding my questions or adequately responding to me in layman's terms. It also helped that there is a consistency in the platforms' administrator pages, particularly in the same use of the cPanel to manage the account and websites. 

In the end, after doing everything I needed to do on my end based on their guidance, I had to make a leap of faith and accept a certain level of uncertainty on my part, and put my complete trust in them. In this regard, they were actually fairly reassuring, and I drew some comfort from the fact that they no doubt did this almost daily. Since I had already installed and deployed the site several times and had all the backups, I figured that if worse came to worst, I could still go back to my original web host provider or start again from scratch.

That all said, once I made the leap and pointed my domain name to the new web host, of course everything went relatively smoothly and quickly.

Migrating my email also turned out to be fairly simple and smooth. Many years ago, I had fortunately set up all emails sent to my domain name accounts (i.e., emails with the wcgcomics.com extension) to not reside on the server but to forward to a private shadow gmail account where I actually managed the emails within a single account (the account is also configured to allow me to send and respond to messages under my wcgcomics.com email accounts). So though any mail sent to me during the brief transition may have been lost or bounced back to the sender, once I created and configured the same accounts in Bluehost, they automatically re-sync'd to the master gmail account. So, yay! In fact, the change also gave me the opportunity to clean up and streamline the way the accounts are configured.

So, bottom line, though the process was a bit stressful, all turned out well and, all things considered, in retrospect it was not quite as onerous or time consuming as I had anticipated. Indeed, the entire episode turned out to be a good learning experience because the process has now been demystified. I should note that, for the future, I've gotten into the habit of documenting such projects step-by-step as meticulously as possible.