Erika Moen is inextricable from San Diego Comic Con in my mind. I had originally written just Comic Con, because the vast preponderance of you would know which one I meant - it is only lesser Comic Cons which must bear the sigil of their low houses. But, just in case.
I can remember quite well: I came into contact with Pants Press, a kind of online comics supergroup, which was all women except for the one, stray Bill Mudron who had been snared by their impossible gravity. I got a sketchbook they had done together that year, colloquially referred to as an "Ashcan" in the comics culture I've never truly been a part of. These were Artist artists, with a capital A, and they were intimidating as shit. That was another ancient schism: the Artists on one side, athwart vile gag merchants and merch hawkers trying to drag the form down, down into Stygia. What I have found after almost sixteen years of doing this is that people often imagine they are competing with me on this or that front, but I've never fucking heard of them, and I don't know it's happening. They are dunking on ghosts. This is the exact opposite. I didn't want to compete with them, I wanted to be them.
I followed Erika's work the closest. There's a lot of real-ass motherfucking talk in her archive, and it spoke to me because we're both weird in some of the same ways. She launched Oh Joy, Sex Toy after a clarifying talk with Robert, and it really seems like she's fucking killing it right now. As soon as we started talking about The Talk, we knew she should be in there somewhere. And here she is.
I had a chance to see a bunch of games when I was at SDCC, some off-site and some during the show. One of the weirder attempts to Activate Social Media involved tweeting the hashtag "bring me smash," and then people would bring you a bunch of 3DS systems with an early version of Super Smash Brothers along with a few opponents to play against. Scrupulously, I try to avoid Activating Social Media unless it means that somebody will give me something I want. Basically, I only do it when there is a real or even nominal benefit to me. Wait. This is starting to sound way less scrupulous.
There are very technical players of Super Smash Bros., and that isn't me. I like Link and Samus because they let me prowl the perimeter like a hyena and bark. I am from the Party Game, Button Masher, "snipe from the corner" school of Smash. The game just has a feel that I like, very carefully maintained, and I'll be frank with you: the 3DS version wasn't on my radar at all because I assumed it couldn't be done correctly there. It's on some Kid Brother type shit; I can sit this one out. Right? I asked them to come over because the show was slow. Five rounds later, it's a day one purchase. If you wanted to know what I thought of it, there you go.
(CW)TB out.
