The Amazing Hawaii Comicon 2016

If you want to have a lot of fun and sell books and meet wonderful creatives and fans, go to the Amazing Hawaii Comicon. I went with Roberta Gregory, who made it that much better, being able to share the adventure with a long-time friend and colleague.
William Doc Grant got trip tips for us, Roger and Elizabeth Pankey let us time-share a condo, and Hawaiian Cartoonist Jon J Murakami toured us around 3/4 of O'ahu in two trips. We got to see and do and eat everything we'd planned. 
First of all, here's the obligatory shot of me in my Ka-Blam T-shirt. If you need floppy-size comics, they have the best inks, clear paper, color and prices. I'm going to get one of their black shirts, too. 
Just for good measure, here's the convention badge and what's left of one of the leis Jon gave us.









The next two shots are the view from our condo window in Honolulu, Waikiki. 
The first one is makai - toward the mountains - over the golf course. 
The second is makau - toward the water - over the canal. 



In the morning, talapia in the schools rise in bunching black schools to feed. Fairy terns flip between the buildings, looking like the paper "birds" in Spirited Away. The terns are endemic in the northern islands, but in the south, they only live in Honolulu. 




And now more convention photos:
William Doc Grant gave Roberta and me paper hats full of pennies. We saved the pennies to buy spam musubi, and played Angry Birds with the hats. Roberta is threatening the properly terrified Erin Hamada. 
Erin makes the most amazing food pillows, including bitten eggs. You can really only get them in Hawaii, because of shipping prices.  















Here's Roberta and Erin with Erin's giant bread and onagiri pillows. We ere calling her Pillow Woman. A con nickname, of course.

Here's a Soldätchen (little soldier) I was doodling on for kids' day, Sunday. I'd somehow left all my good pens at home, so was making do with ball points. 

A couple little girls were watching with their dad, and I asked 'em if they wanted it. They did. I'd post the photo, but one needs to protect kids.



However, I can post an adult with her picture of a Söldchen (little girl soldier). This is Hannah - and she's happy with the next doodle I did. 







Now for the cosplay! A blurry (sorry! - wonky little IPod camera) Deadpool pirate with a costume based, an Aquaman with REAL scale mail he made himself, and the dapperest of dragons. 




I didn't get any more photos of the trip. It was us at the beach, and us eating everything Hawaiian we could find. We saw the valley of temples, the north shore, you name it. 
And birds! Admittedly, most of them are imports, but when else could I see Brazilian cardinals flying about, and shoo Australian zebra doves out of breakfast?
Chickens and cats were all about in the country, clean, well-fed, and utterly unafraid of humans. Which shows you just how nice the humans are.
Yes, Hawaii has racism and homelessness and all the general problems, but all anybody really cares about is food and the beach. Which is as it should be. We missed a luau I'm beginning to think we should have skinned out of the con to go see.
After the con, we moved from the condo to a little hostel near the beach. In a quiet, cool alley, where you could sit on the lanai and look at Diamond head.
See the blue toenails? Everybody has blue toenails. Or people who paint their toenails.
I no longer feel guilty for never learning to surf. Early throat and sinus operations make it impossible for me to keep water out of my lungs. I TRIED body surfing but ended up hacking out water. So I went back to floating in the lagoons. Although watching the kids using McDonald's trays to body-board was still pretty tempting. And the best fun is watching body-boarders off the jetty in the evening waves.
The Menehune are the Hawaiian Little People. They're supposed to be mischievous. I found out, if you ask for ANYTHING, they get it for you, free and cheap, so long as you thank them. Here's my haul. 
This is just a small portion of the stuff we did, so we'll end with the food report, and wishes that you have been or can go to Hawaii some day.


I would like to know if our conventions can serve MAHALO nui loa!
Spam Musubi, the basic Hawaiian spam-and-rice snack. It was the go-to food all over the island.
BEST Hawaiian food: the dark purple Okinawan potato.
And - I never thought I'd recommend McDonald's - but haupia (coconut custard) in a fried sugar crust. No, you can't get it unless you're in Hawaii. The same with the Dole plantation fresh-picked-pineapple ice cream. It's like you have to come up where I live for REALLY fresh salmon.
Seattle, you can get poi at Uwajimaya for the same price they sell it for in Hawaii. 
Roberta and I almost didn't get back on the plane....The Little Store: http://donnabarr.blogspot.com/2007/04...