I was recently reminded of a traumatizing event that happened last year, and it wasn’t until I started talking about it that I realized how much my mind had blocked out. Presented for your amusement/judgment is the first half of a self-induced Repressed Memory Therapy session.
Since at least the start of the decade, the San Diego Comic-Con has mutated from a celebration of comic books into “Media-Con”, where movies, TV series, video games, and RPGs now draw more than 100,000 people every year. If the main character of those offshoots happens to wear a cape and fight crime, you’d be hard-pressed to find a passerby who could tell you what year their comic series debuted. The event is a circus now, a bustling Hollywood focus group with all the creative relevance of a state fair.
But it’s still a great place to get autographs. In the summer of 2009, I attended Comic-Con for the fourth time in nine years. I was on a company trip for my day-job, but there was enough free time to wander the celebrity tables and get signatures on a few glossies and posters—oh, and look for some comic books, too.
The thing about celebrity-hunting at Comic-Con is that no matter how enticing the published guest list is, there are always surprise additions (I’m sure the poster vendors on the main floor love this, as geeks hate being caught unprepared). Late Saturday morning, the PA system boomed with new guest announcements—the coolest being that Thomas Jane was signing for free.
I love Thomas Jane as an actor. He always pops up in bizarre roles; like Todd, the out-of-control drug dealer/addict in Boogie Nights; or as The Punisher, opposite John Travolta; or as David Drayton, the square-jawed, family-killing protagonist of The Mist.
I’d heard he was a comic book fan, too—not an actor who grew to “love” comics after discovering them during a superhero movie audition, but an honest-to-God lover of the art form. The story goes that he dropped out of the Punisher sequel because the story wasn't true to the character; which I can respect, even if I might argue that the second film was a truer vision of the source material than the first. But I digress.
Thomas Jane’s signing window was limited, so I had no time to zip down to the convention floor and buy a Mist poster (Comic-Con is so crowded on Saturday that “zipping” means it only takes ten minutes to walk fifteen feet). But I figured he’d have a nice selection of glossies, and that one of them would be a Mist still—maybe a mini-movie-poster.
Surprisingly, the line wasn’t that long, maybe thirty people deep. Because of the other crowds on the floor, I couldn’t get up to the table to peruse the picture options; so I had to hang back and try to glimpse the signed photos that people were walking away with. I saw a couple of head shots, a black-and-white bust of Jane in a wife-beater or something equally suited for showing off his muscles, and an image of him as The Punisher. That was it; but, hey, I reasoned, not everyone’s a fan of The Mist.
The line moved very quickly, and I hurried to get my camera ready. By the time it was all set up, I’d just about made it to the front of the line—and I could see right away why Jane was signing for free. The “glossies” were not the standard 8 x 10 slick photos; they were cheap Xeroxes on what looked to be off-brand laser paper. And the selection was just as piss-poor as I’d feared. It was too late to leave, so I grabbed the Punisher picture and turned to meet Thomas Jane.
“You want this to anybody?” He asked flatly from behind his aviator sunglasses.
“No thanks,” I said. “I’m not really into the personalization thing. By the way, I think you’re awes—“
“Next!” He yelled, waiving a “gather ‘round” gesture at the small crowd behind me. I looked down at the picture to see if he’d even signed it. There was a silver seismograph reading that rippled across the paper, with a sharp cross in the middle (allegedly forming the “J” in “Jane”).
I had an on-the-spot movie flashback. I imagined myself as a nine-year-old boy looking up at Santa Claus, with the question, “What’s a…football?” cycling through my brain.
Before moving on, I dazedly remembered to ask Jane to pose for a photo.
“Sure, sure,” he grumbled.
A Comic-Con volunteer took our picture, and that was that.
Walking away, I couldn’t take my eyes off the shitty Punisher picture in my hand. It looked like someone had literally blown up an image from the back of a DVD slipcase to fit an 8 ½ x 11 sheet of office paper.
I almost ripped it up on the spot, but my inner Collector had a fight with my inner Storyteller. The Collector argued that the picture was un-sellable because of the cheapness of the image and the haphazard look of the autograph; any nimrod with an early-90s printer and a Sharpie could put that up on eBay with a $50 opening bid. The Storyteller reasoned that A) I’ve never considered selling anything in my collection, and B) the picture is tangible proof that Thomas Jane is kind of a dick.
The next couple of hours are a blur. I wandered around the convention, marveling at the ridiculous lines for giveaways and media panels, and remembering how much more breathing room there’d been only a few years before.
By mid-afternoon, I was depressed and tired from all the walking. Making my way out to the lobby of the San Diego Convention Center, I noticed a crowd forming at the booth of an independent publisher named RAW Studios. I took a slight detour to see what all the excitement was about, and learned that artist Tim Bradstreet had dropped by for a signing. Bradstreet’s a draw, sure, but not enough of one to attract the kinds of numbers swelling around me.
A moment later, RAW’s publisher peeked up from behind the table where he’d been leaned over, signing books. He laughed and carried on with Bradstreet, occasionally answering fan questions. The sunglasses were the same, but this was a different Thomas Jane than the one I’d met earlier.
I thought so in the moment, anyway.
Against my better judgment, I stuck around the RAW booth for a bit.
To paraphrase Art Spiegelman, it was here my troubles began.