More NYCC Guests and Cliffs Notes

It's finally officially official, we've added Joe Kubert and Joe Simon as our latest Guests of Honor at NY ComicCon. Simon and Joe Kubert, both at the show? This is a dream come true, they are true legends. Simon coming to The Con is really special as he does not do many of these appearances anymore. So don’t miss the chance to see a the legend that co-created Captain America (to pick just one of his amazing accomplishments in his career). As for Kubert, he and his sons Andy and Adam create dour exclusive show poster, that I blogged about earlier anbd you can get a look at here.

Be Our Guest - In addition to Simon and Kubert, I leaked a bunch of new Featured guests last week, took a look at them here.

That's The Ticket - ComicCon Tickets will be on sale at most major comic retailers this week, I'll get you a full list sometime next week.

Where I'm Not - Oh yeah, I'm not in Bangkok or Singapore where I am supposed to be. Weather in NYC on Friday put my flight into enough jeopardy that I cashed in the tickets and shelved the trip. Yeah, so right about now I should be landing in Singapore preparing to speak to groups of publishers, printers and illustrators there and then in Bangkok - what am I doing instead? Sitting in Borwalk writing a blog post and preparing to scrub the bathtub - But I am listening to a Hold Steady album I just grabbed from iTunes, and that helps.

Where I will Be - This reminds me, in the NYTBR today is a piece about handful of new visual books including THE ADVENTURES OF HERGÉ, CREATOR OF TINTIN. I was recently invited to Brussels as a guest of the Foire du livre de Bruxelles (translation, BookExpo Brussels!) so I’ve been reading about the country and it's got an amazing comic (strip, really) history including a comic strip museum and a huge array of shops. Looking forward to spending some time kicking through the comic shops and book shops and a good friend of mine who runs the International Booksellers Federation lives there and has promised me a tour of Belgium’s literary and visual history. I'll blog this in a few weeks - yes, try to quell your excitement.

Fresh Books and Stale Espresso - This is awesome. Northshire Books (one of the finest indy bookshops in the NE) is the first indy bookstore in the U.S. to install an Espresso POD (print on demand) book machine. It's awesome. It’s like Rube Goldberg, meets the Jetsons, meets Gutenberg. Read about it here.

More Bitching - I posted last week about how Amtrak and Dell taught me how to provide awful service? I got another great example. I needed to get a copy of my "bill" from Amtrak so I could submit an expense report, this is what they sent me:

Thank you for contacting us. Your ticket stub is actually your ticket receipt. However, if you have lost this stub you may request a ticket receipt copy. Effective November 1, 2005 a $15.00 fee will be assessed per reservation and a charge card number is required to complete the transaction. A representative from our Refund Department will contact you to obtain your credit card information.

HGH In Action - Lastly, this is what my team does when they are at work.