"Would you like to meet Rob Kutner?" one of Farrago Comics' booth wranglers asks a distracted woman attempting to make her way through the aisle.
"No," the woman answers, continuing on her way.
"That's all right," the Conan/Daily Show writer says to no one in particular, seated a foot away from the woman. "I wouldn't want to meet me either."
The grand irony of Comic Con has just unfolded in half a minute, the anonymity of the comics artist in a giant show ostensibly constructed to celebrate the medium. Even superstars artists can largely walk through the hall undetected. A first-time cartoonist doesn't really stand a chance.
"That's sort of the story of my life," Kutner explains with a laugh when we sit down a minute later to discuss his forthcoming book, Shrinkage. "The sheer scale of this show - I feel like that box at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In a way I feel lost, but you can also just randomly wander by our booth and find a new thing. It's sort of like the internet. It's the internet made real."
Of course, it's not all curt responses from distracted showgoers. Passersby stop and look and ultimately discuss Kutner's new book, and opportunity for a one-on-one with a creator rarely afforded in other mediums. The comedy writer happily lays out Shrinkage's fantastical plot, centering around tiny aliens doing battle in the brain of the President of the United States.
"I always wanted an excuse to play around with the human brain and make it visual," says Kutner. "I thought of this idea for a comic several years ago. I tried floating it around years ago. It's hard at the bigger (publishing houses) if it's not a franchise or a superhero thing."
Kutner and X-Men artist John Lucas brought the project to Kickstarter earlier this year, racking up just over their lofty goal of $30,000. Now the comic is the first original production for Farrago Comics, a digital comics distributor that opens the vault to titles from a slew of different publishers through the a mobile app.
It's compelling alternative to the more traditional micro-payment and ad-supported models employed by more traditional webcomics. "They're trying to reach comic book readers everywhere," says Kutner.
"Farrago is the Netflix or Spotify for original comics. They have a huge library of original comics like mine and IDW's library and all of these other companies. I love webcomics like Hark a Vagrant and xkcd and The Oatmeal. In a way I have that regular outlet through Conan. This is a way to write a more lasting story and have a big, splashy debut."
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