Every year for the past six years, my wife (snogging a Biskup monster above) has taken me to Comic-Con, the annual comic book convention in San Diego. This year though -because she is pregnant with our little superboy- we’ll be skipping it. The bad news is that I won’t be able to give you a report on the festivities. The good news is that I planned an alternative to Comic-Con: Comic-Clone.

What’s geekier than watching a Dr. Who marathon when you could have gone to prom? COMIC-CLONE! What’s nerdier than correcting your grandma when she mispronounces “Kobayashi Maru”? COMIC-CLONE! What’s cooler than sulking all week because you couldn’t attend this year’s Comic-Con? COMIC-CLONE! And you are welcome to participate. I’ve thought of plenty of ways to recreate comic convention shenanigans without the convention itself. You can expect new ideas every day that you might have spent in San Diego, beginning with this one.

What is a comic convention without comics? Draw your own comic convention comic strip. I’ve done it (above). So has James Kochalka, Bob Burden, Sergio Aragones, and Keith Knight (below). If you could go to Comic-Con, who would you want to meet? What would you talk about? How much wilder would it be if you could meet the real comic book characters, not just their creators and fans? If you can get some friends together (or you have a lot of ideas), you can even bind the strips together into a short-run mini-comic. Your first souvenir of our baloney bonanza!