Man, I WISH I could have cranked out an entire update over the course of a single panel. I’m really, REALLY sorry this stuff took so long to get finished. Real life was not very accommodating this week. I’m gonna do everything possible to make sure this dismal performance is avoided for the AWA/AUSA double header in a few weeks. YOU PEOPLE HOLD ME ACCOUNTABLE TO THAT, OKAY?

(Historical Notes: This was the one time where whatever behind the scenes chaos was ensuing actually bubbled over into my convention experience… aside from the empty concerts, I mean.  There was this “draw your own comic” panel on Sunday that was apparently supposed to be hosted by some Marvel-affiliated guy, who apparently went home early after deciding the convention just wasn’t worth his time or whatever.  The thing is, the panel was run by a staffer instead, and if he hadn’t mentioned that the original host had bolted, I never would have noticed anything was wrong.  Dude totally seemed to know what he was doing and kept a room full of people fully occupied for an hour, what more could you ask for?  And that’s the biggest problem with trying to talk about tiltEXPO.  Even when things were clearly going wrong, they didn’t REALLY go wrong.  Nobody was having public meltdowns or calling the cops or stranding everybody in a locked room that was also on fire, it’s biggest sin was being a limp, quiet letdown.  And where’s the fun in talking about THAT?  Oh, and I only just now noticed that these page titles I’ve been copy/pasting off of SmackJeeves don’t mention “2014” anywhere after the cover page.  Looks like, for all the attempts to be nice, Past Me could already tell there weren’t going to be any other tiltEXPOs that would need years to keep them apart.  And that’s extra funny, because apparently they actually DID try to do a second tiltEXPO in 2015… which I literally only just found out about this morning while trying to do some rudimentary fact-checking.  Apparently they kept pushing the date back to allow more time for advertising, which obviously didn’t amount to much, before ultimately folding the event into some OTHER convention.  I guess.  Again, I only just now discovered ANYTHING else happened after this weekend right here, so I’m not the one to turn to for info.  But yeah, all things considered, I’d say this was the single biggest disaster of a convention that I’ve ever personally attended… which is to say I’ve never attended a TRUE disaster of a con.)