One comic’s a classic. The other doesn’t exist yet. Here’s the hunt for both at Comic-Con.

Richard Guevara has wanted a copy since that character, known simply as “Vision” in the Marvel movies, helped convince him that comic books weren’t just for kids.

The graphic novel “The Sebaceous Funk” is much longer, around 200 pages, and mixes real-life details about jazz history with a surreal subplot concerning a song so powerful that it can impregnate listeners. At least, that’s how it comes across in Jon Macy’s head. Macy hasn’t finished writing or drawing it yet.

Both men walked into Comic-Con this week hoping to find somebody who could help realize their ambitions. Guevara, an experienced collector from San Diego, needed a seller. Macy, a longtime creator up for the comics industry’s top award, a career first, needed a publisher.

Underlying their parallel searches was the same question: What difference can a single work of art make in somebody’s life?

Wednesday was preview night. Guevara, 36, slipped in around dinnertime.

Rows of vendor booths stretched out in all directions. A single table on the main exhibition floor might hold a dozen boxes, each of which could easily contain hundreds of pages of art. Older, rarer comics hung from makeshift walls, the work sealed off in protective plastic.

Guevara took little of this seriously while growing up around Paradise Hills. He watched animated TV shows about the X-Men and Batman, but the source material didn’t feel particularly rich. Nor did it help that comics seemed to sprout endless sequels and offshoots. Where did you even start?

One day in his 20s, Guevara happened to be at a Comics-N-Stuff shop in National City. He had picked out a comic but didn’t have any cash on him, and the store required a minimum charge to use a credit card. On a whim, Guevara grabbed the first issue of a new series called “The Vision” by Tom King.

The first pages showed a suburban neighborhood. Nobody wore capes and nothing was exploding. Instead, the character Vision, an android, was introducing some neighbors to his robot wife and children. One neighbor seemed to distrust Vision’s red-ish skin and pupilless eyes. When the kids begin school, the son is implicitly asked whether he’s more — or less — valuable than his human classmates.

Cinephiles like to tell a story about the world’s first film that showed an approaching train on the screen. An audience in the 19th century, which had never seen a movie, jumped out of their seats.

The anecdote’s likely apocryphal, but it speaks to a larger truth: Your first real encounter with a new art form can knock you flat.

That’s how reading “The Vision” was for Guevara. The story’s complexity was a revelation. Ever since, Guevara has wanted to own a piece of that character’s history, and “The Avengers” No. 57 is when Vision first appears in comic books.

He approached one booth and asked if they had a copy. The seller said no. He tried a second. Same answer.

Guevara didn’t mind walking. He’d bought fresh insoles for Comic-Con. He moved on to another booth.

Thursday. The first full day of the convention. Macy, 60, sat at a table in a booth wearing a collared shirt.

To Macy’s right was a stack of his most recent graphic novel, “Djuna,” which published last year. Selling that book was a major reason why he’d flown in from Northern California. Yet he had also brought a pile of tiny booklets, each made out of a single piece of folded blue paper. “The Sebaceous Funk,” read the cover, “A graphic novel about jazz and early electronica.”

Almost everyone who passed within arm’s reach got a copy. “Here’s my zine,” Macy said to one man. (“Zine” is shorthand for a self-made magazine, or in this case a preview of an unfinished work.)

“Wanna see my zine?” Macy asked another passerby. A mother and daughter got a copy. So did a fellow author at the booth.

Macy would silently watch as people flipped through his pages — there were black-and-white drawings of instruments and gyrating women and some bald people in funky looking costumes — before quietly pitching a love plot that may or may not morph into a murder mystery.

“This is gonna be really wacky,” he told one guy.

“The Sebaceous Funk” is different from much of Macy’s previous work.

While growing up in Cupertino, Macy realized he was gay in his early 20s. But he couldn’t find many LGBTQ+ characters in the comic shops, and he certainly didn’t see gay fantasy life depicted on the page.

“When we became sexually active, we wanted comics that reflected that,” he told an interviewer in the 2018 documentary “Dirty Sexy Comics.” “So we created our own.”

Macy spent years drawing erotic art. Some work ended up in LGBTQ+ anthologies and he won a Lambda Literary Award, a big honor for queer creators, for his illustrated adaptation of the famous erotic novel “Teleny.”

Yet working in the genre also closed doors. He can still recall the sting of once being introduced to a famous artist at Comic-Con who refused to even make eye contact.

“You can stop a party cold by telling everyone you’re a queer pornographer,” Macy says in the documentary.

Plus, pornography has saturated everything. Sex is everywhere. The type of stories that today feel almost counter-cultural to Macy focus on flawed, vulnerable people searching for emotional connection.

Part of that shift in approach has already paid off. Earlier this year, Macy learned that “Djuna,” his biography of the pioneering writer Djuna Barnes, was nominated for two Eisner Awards, the Oscars of the comics world. Winners would be announced the Friday of Comic-Con.

If he won, perhaps a publisher might be willing to take a chance on “The Sebaceous Funk.”

The crowds swirled by. Macy spotted one young man carrying a copy of the “Polyamory Coloring and Activity Book.”

“Good choice,” Macy said. “Wanna zine?”

On the same day Macy was selling books, Guevara weaved his way through the main floor.

He had found several sellers that carried “The Avengers” No. 57. Some versions were nicer than others.

Comics, especially older issues, are “graded” on a scale of 0.5 to 10, and the best of the best usually get a 9.8. Guevara would certainly like one of those, yet as far as he’s aware, the planet has fewer than two dozen 9.8 copies of “The Avengers” No. 57. It was possible one might be at Comic-Con, but that could come with a price tag worth around $40,000. Guevara previously worked as an associate pastor at a church in Chula Vista, and life in the ministry, with a few exceptions, is not known to be lucrative.

As a result, Guevara was willing to accept a much lower grade.

He arrived at a large booth packed with boxes. He had found a “The Avengers” No. 57 at this spot the previous night. Price tag: $250. The issue wasn’t formally graded, but the dealer had marked it as being in “fine” condition, meaning it was probably a 6.0. Guevara had asked the owner to reserve it for him.

Upon returning Thursday, he didn’t see the comic on display. Hopefully that meant it was still on hold.

After a short wait, a man with a graying beard and ponytail walked up. He wore a black T-shirt that read, “I’m Steve Doing Steve Things.” This was Steve Wyatt, the booth’s owner, and he loves “The Avengers” No. 57.

“That’s my number one book,” Wyatt said. He first read it when he was around 8 years old. “That was the book that made me go from a kid reading comics to: ‘Look at this art! Look at this story!’”

Guevara asked if a copy remained available. Wyatt turned around, walked into his booth and bent over a box.

Friday evening. The Indigo Ballroom in the Hilton Bayfront. The Eisners were about to begin.

The awards are named after the artist Will Eisner, one of the “inventors” of the modern graphic novel, and the ceremony takes place each year at Comic-Con. Macy was up for two honors, “Best Reality-Based Work” and “Best Writer/Artist.” His earlier optimism had given way to nerves, and before walking in he ordered a double bourbon at the hotel bar.

“Good evening ladies and gentlemen,” said a disembodied voice over a loudspeaker. “Welcome to the 37th annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.”

Nominees were seated around tables at the front. Behind them were chairs filled with fans. Macy sat near the back of his section, just a few feet from those who had come only to watch.

“Best Writer/Artist” was one of the first awards given out. “This next category is my favorite category,” a presenters said on stage, “because it is the summary of, I think, so many seminal creators that redefined comics again and again and again.”

The nominees’ names were read aloud. Macy listened without moving.

An inspiration for “The Sebaceous Funk” was Miles Davis, who, to the dismay of jazz purists, experimented with electronic music later in his life. That change-up offered an obvious parallel with Macy’s career: He’s not embarrassed by his past in erotic comics, he just wants to keep evolving. And few things give people more freedom to evolve than trophies.

“The award goes to … Charles Burns!”

The room erupted. Jazzy horns blared from speakers. Multicolored spotlights swept over the crowd.

Macy could still win for “Best Reality-Based Work.”

His desire for a trophy went beyond personal ambition. For so long, it had felt like big awards were often off limits to LGBTQ+ creators. The nonprofit behind the booth he had been at, Prism Comics, formed decades ago to make the industry a more welcoming place for voices like his. Getting an Eisner for “Djuna,” a book that wrestled with questions about sexuality, might feel like a collective win.

The ceremony continued for another hour, then two. Finally, a presenter announced the nominees for reality-based comics.

“And the award goes to … ‘Suffrage Song!’”

Applause. Horns. Lights.

The after-party was in the foyer.

Macy stood and walked away from his table, pulled on his jacket and then doubled back upon realizing he had forgotten his bag. Another author gave him a hug. Macy didn’t say much.

He wasn’t quite sure how he felt. Certainly having his name in the mix offered a level of validation. And the LGBTQ+ community was represented on stage by others. One winner teared up discussing how comics could create safe places for queer kids. Another winning work unpacked what it’s like to transition.

Macy had also made a key connection earlier that evening. A punk musician happened to be at the same table during a dinner for the nominees, and Macy had pulled out his zine. The two ended up geeking out about Charles Mingus, another jazz great. The musician was based in Chicago, and he offered to take photos of venues where famous artists had performed to serve as references for drawings. Macy readily agreed.

It was nearly midnight. Macy left the ballroom. He thought about getting a drink but didn’t order anything in the foyer, even after a man wheeled up a portable bar. Macy surveyed the room, looking for anyone he knew.

“The Sebaceous Funk” felt like a living thing inside him. Many new story ideas did, but there was a real loneliness that came with that. Although he was surrounded by hundreds of fellow comics lovers, nobody else could see the pages in his head.

Guevara got his “The Avengers” No. 57. He ended up negotiating a slightly lower price, $220. He paid with one $100 bill and six twenties.

Before slipping the comic into a plastic sheath that went inside a cardboard case, Guevara opened the issue up. He’d purposely never read “The Avengers” No. 57, even though reproductions are widely available. Guevara had waited until he could hold an original.

Wyatt, the owner, watched from across the table. Other potential customers were milling about, but Wyatt’s eyes didn’t move from the pages.

“Look at that!” Wyatt said. “Look at that art!”

Guevara has already thought about who he could share the comic with. Sure, letting other people leaf through it might reduce the value. Whatever. Guevara has young nieces, and maybe one of them will encounter Vision in a movie and ask about the character. He’s ready to hand over “The Avengers” No. 57, a comic that’s been passed from person to person for more than half a century, and say: “See this!”