My Verdict on the San Diego Comic Con

It’s been a funny old week. I’ve rather felt as if I was in limbo.

It’s not that I haven’t managed to do anything. I did get that story off to my editor, and I started edits on a novel the husband and I collaborated on a long time ago that’s being reissued. I also spent a couple of lovely days with my sister.

It hasn’t been an easy week, though. The husband has been away at the San Diego Comic Convention, and it’s been surprisingly tough. 

We’ve been doing this forever. He’s been going off to do signings and conventions all over the World since he started in this business; it’s not new. I have been with him on a few occasions, but it’s expensive, there isn’t a whole lot for me to do when I get there and I’m not a huge fan of aeroplanes. Besides, I hated to leave the children, and I couldn’t take them out of school, so, for a long time we didn’t have the option of going together. We got used to it, we took the routine for granted. Hell, I think we even enjoyed it, at least some of the time.

Not any more.

I don’t know what changes or why, but things do.

I wish I’d simply done this trip with the husband, and I get the feeling that he wishes I’d gone with him, too.

I don’t know whether it’s because we’re older, and, in some ways, actually closer than ever. I don’t know whether it’s because we rely on each other more, or because we’re less tolerant of others. I don’t know whether it’s because we just like to be comfortable. I don’t know whether it’s because we like the familiar, and we are incredibly familiar with one another. I don’t know whether it’s because we understand one another or because when we’re together there’s always someone in the room who gets the joke or the reference. Hell, I don’t know whether it’s the fallout of the husband’s recent epilepsy diagnosis.

I think this week was easier for me than it was for him; at least I was at home; at least I was with my sister and my daughter; at least I was comfortable.

San Diego Comic Convention is an extraordinary event and an amazing experience; you’ll hear the husband say it himself in his event report on his blog. It’s also a heaving mass of over a hundred thousand geek bodies, who all want a piece of something. There’s more energy in that vast space than can be generated by all the superheroes put together, and more adrenalin pumping than can be found in the veins of all the victims of all the supervillains placed end to end. 

I know the husband met some wonderful people. I know that he found friends old and new, and that he wouldn’t have missed it for the World. I also know that he’s a little sad he didn’t get to share the experience with me, and that makes me a little sad too.

So, if you saw the husband at San Diego this year, and you happen to see him again in the future, spare a thought and if you can manage it, a smile, for the little woman standing a yard or two behind him with the big, slightly terrified eyes. She hasn’t been to the biggest comic convention in the World before, but she’ll be there the next time he’s there, and it’s going to be interesting.