I went to Alternative Press Expo and all I got were these lousy stitches.

That’s a lie. I met some great people at APE on October 13th, and got to share a booth with Ethan Young, the massively talented creator/writer/artist of Tails (and cool guy to boot). And I got to hang out again with Josh Finney and Kat Rocha, creators of Utopiates and Titanium Rain, two more seriously gifted and nice people.

It was all going good until that night, when a pack of knuckleheads rushed me while I was talking on my phone on a street corner. One of them sucker-punched me and grabbed my phone when I went down. I never saw it coming, but he clocked me good — gave me an orbital fracture under my eye socket. The cuts on my eyebrow and nose are from my glasses (the mofo punched a guy with glasses on!).

All in all, it could’ve gone down a lot worse, and I’m back in the safe haven of L.A. recovering. What was really disappointing was packing up my booth at APE a day early (figured it was gonna be hard to sell comics with one eye swollen shut, fresh stitches and zoned out on vicodin). Thanks to everyone who stopped by and supported PROTEGE — hopefully next year I’ll stay out of trouble for two days.