"In the 15 years I have been writing for The Times, I have covered wildfires, riots, gang murders and plenty of other mayhem," blogs LAT reporter Geoff Boucher. "I never got hurt. This weekend I covered a comic book convention in San Diego and I'm going home with staples in my head."

Who knew a trip to Comic-Con meant oogling Hayden Panettiere and getting your ass kicked?

Writes Boucher:

I was walking alone to my hotel after late Saturday night interviews with Neal Adams and Darwyn Cook. I was also talking on my cell to Spencer Weiner, the photographer for The Times shooting Comic-Con. Spencer heard everything that happened next.

I (literally) bumped into a young guy walking with three friends in the Gaslamp Quarter. They were tattooed and wearing the street uniform of baggy pants, white T-shirts and shaved heads. The guy started mad-dogging me, rasping threats. I told him I was just walking by, no offense meant. He got in my face, and I told him it would be stupid for us to make something out of nothing.

"You calling me stupid?" "No, I'm not." Then I stopped talking, because my mouth was bleeding. One of his buddies, standing off to my side, cold-cocked me, and the ring on his fist took a chunk out of my face. I never saw it coming. I was at the emergency room until dawn.

They stitched up the triangular gash on my face and put staples in my scalp for the nasty cut on the back of my head left when I hit the curb. The cops at the scene said this sort of incident isn't that rare, and the ER folks said I was lucky the guys didn't kick me, which might have happened if the street hadn't been packed with closing-time crowds headed home.

Perhaps this isn't the best time to make a joke about a Batman or Johnny Storm being too busy preening or having homosexual sex and thus unavailable to save the day.