I understand very little Japanese. It was enough to barely communicate with the artists, since they made an effort to understand, heh.
I went to Summer Comiket. Day two had basically all the "bara" artists. I went to day one too, had some good yaoi artists like Pomatobatake - the artist that made the Thor/Hercules books. Day three was mostly kemono (furry) so I didn't go.
Gai Mizuki wasn't in his booth when I bought his books, only his troupe of supporters. I went to the other hall to get Inaki Matsumoto and then came back to Mizuki's booth, he had arrived but was standing on the back, not in front, selling his stuff like the other artists. When I asked for his autograph, they got him to come, but he was kinda tired-looking. He certainly wasn't rude, far from it, just seemed distant. He also wasn't in the "bara" corner, he was in another space a few rows away, right next to Mentaiko actually. And he did laugh when I said it was hot (it was over 34 degrees, seriously, I was sweating buckets), I guess he was just tired. He didn't treat me badly or complained at all.
Masanori is great, he was my gateway to "bara" too - heck, this term didn't even exist when I found his website looking for Rival Schools yaoi (Daigo and Hayato were the sexiest game characters at the time to me) around 2001, 2002? And Hunks Work Shop is definitely one of the best gay things ever made in Japan, I hope someday I'll be able to play it and fully understand what's going on.