READERSVOICE.COM: Can you list your five favorite books of all time, fiction or non-fiction, and maybe say a bit about why you liked them?

DANNY FINGEROTH: It’s hard to narrow down a list like this.

But here are five that come to mind: Moby-Dick by Herman Melville.

The all-time champ. Both as external and internal story, he uses all the narrative tools of the novelist to create a work that couldn’t be expressed or experienced in any other medium.

The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul Bellow.

A big shout of a book that grabs you by the collar and won’t let go.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York, by Robert A. Caro The secret history of New York, and by extension, of the whole country.

The Long Goodbye, by Raymond Chandler Chandler is the guy everybody wishes they could write like.

His Philip Marlowe is pretty much the zenith of the tough-guy private eye who’s too smart for his own good.

Catch-22, by Joseph Heller All the things you ever feared were true in a story masterfully told and filled with dark, gut-busting humor.

RV: Where did you stay when you went to the San Diego Comics Con? How did you get there each day?

DF: I stayed at a hotel. There are many that have arrangements with the Convention to give what I believe are lower (but certainly not low!) rates to convention attendees.

There are many other hotels in San Diego besides the official convention hotels.

If you’re planning to go to the convention next year, I’d book a room now. Seriously.

There are shuttle buses that stop at most of the major hotels to take people to and from the convention center.

There are taxis, as well. And many hotels are in walking distance of the con.

Parking is a nightmare, especially since the convention center is across the street from the Padres baseball stadium, so if you do drive, park far away and take public transit of some kind to the show.

RV: What were your main reasons for going to the convention?

DF: To network with fellow professionals and to spread the word about my various projects (Superman on the Couch, Write Now!, etc.) to potential purchasers.

I had some business meetings set up with people I knew would also be there.

Also, I like to attend panels on topics of interest to me.

There are literally hundreds of panels during the convention on every imaginable pop culture topic.

There are always two or three you want to see going on at the same time.

RV: Can you describe what it looks like and why people attend?

DF: It’s a circus. It’s really many conventions in one: a meeting place for comics professionals, the way other industries have conventions; a comics convention for comics fans; a gaming convention; a manga and anime convention; a retailers’ convention; an animation convention; a movie and TV convention.

And a bunch more I’m probably not even aware of.

Some people attend for career reasons, others because they’re fans of one or more genres and media, and others because it’s a unique spectacle.

RV: Did you have some kind of stand set-up at the convention?

DF: I was stationed at the TwoMorrrows Publishing booth. (http://www.twomorrows.com)

Aside from publishing my own Write Now! Magazine, they also publish Draw!, the Kirby Collector, and Back Issue, among many other fine comics-related periodicals and books.

I also spent a lot of time walking the convention floor to see other people’s booths.

And when you do that, you always bump into people you know who are doing the same thing.

RV: Which speakers did you see and what were they like?

DF: A sampling: I saw J.M. DeMatteis speak about the new Abadazad books he’s doing with Disney.

I saw Stan Lee speak about his new line of animation designed for mobile phones (mobisodes) that his POW Entertainment is doing with Vidiator.

I saw Paul Jenkins talk about comics and videogames. The speakers were all informative and entertaining.

RV: What did you learn at the convention?

DF: I learned that the potential for telling stories in a variety of media is virtually unlimited.

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