WonderCon 2023 is coming up the weekend after this one over in Anaheim, CA, and I’ll be part of my first panel discussion since before COVID.

Nice, eh? David (Lucarelli) whipped that up for us and also gets credit for pitching the panel to the powers that be. Having been there and done that, I’m more than happy to basically just show up with a head full of wisdom to dispense.

Yeah, sure, that’s it. That’s the ticket…

But seriously, you have to fight down your imposter syndrome for these things because you might just have something interesting to say. Hell I’ve sat next to Neal Stephenson and had him and the rest of the room at least pretend to listen to me holding forth on why the choice of what weapons a character wields can be just as important as the rest of their look. Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones has a revolver and a bullwhip. Cowboy weapons. ‘Cuz that’s what he is (cue Henry Jones Sr. lamenting “You call this archaeology?!”).

I digress. With six people involved and plus the intention of a Q&A sesh I doubt I’m going to be speaking for long, but if I do it’ll probably be about the logistics of telling a long-form story. Really, really long form at this point. Seriously, if y’all don’t remember what happened five pages ago I can’t complain because right now five pages ago could be a few months in the past. Even my artist and dear wife may not fully remember. I have to try to keep it all in mind, though and keep the story rolling… because no matter how slowly the pages might be churning forth, they will eventually be collected together and they need to have a flow to them supporting that. True, five pages ago is a few clicks away (though I admit the navigation on that isn’t what it was — put that on the pile of things to try to still tweak after the template changeover…) but once someone’s holding a floppy issue or a trade volume it’s flip-flip-flippity-flip and they absorb that content just as fast as they want to. A panel by itself does not sequential art make, but a page, an issue, a volume? It’s writing to three different scales, and remembering things that happened years ago as if it was only yesterday — which it might well be for the characters themselves.

Some of the writers I’m sharing the panel with do webcomics, and some do not. Some are self-published and some have worked for known companies like Dynamite! Some have up-to-date headshots and some are making do with a random convention picture snapped in 2019 (*cough*). Anyhow it should be a gamut of perspective, since the concept of scale doesn’t just apply to the writing process. We’ll just have to see how many folks show up at 6pm on a Saturday to listen.