From patman@pentagon.io.com Thu Jun 19 08:17:48 CDT 1997 Article: 250195 of rec.arts.comics.misc Path: news.io.com!not-for-mail From: patman@pentagon.io.com (Patman) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: Re: Yet Another Heroes Con Report Date: 17 Jun 1997 05:29:29 GMT Organization: Illuminati Online Lines: 128 Message-ID: <5o57bp$a3s$1@nntp-3.io.com> References: <19970616221501.SAA14345@ladder02.news.aol.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pentagon.io.com X-Newsposter: trn 4.0-test56 (2 Mar 97) Xref: news.io.com rec.arts.comics.misc:250195 In article <19970616221501.SAA14345@ladder02.news.aol.com>, SRoweCanoe wrote: > I talked to only two usenet contributors, the gentleman who posts as >Patman (sorry can't remember your real name) who tells me that he's been >too busy to post much lately; Well, also, the email spam that shows up in my emailbox after posting is also a deterrent to posting for me nowadays. If you really need to find out my real name, a trip to the web page should suffice. :) While I'm here, I'll piggy-back on Steve's post and give you my observations of the con: At the art auction, the jam piece went for $1100! Last year's jam piece with presumably the last Superman by Curt Swan on it went for $800 (of course, no one at the time knew that at the time of the auction). A Fairchild painting by Adam Hughes went for over $450, and a Batgirl painting by Brian Stelfreeze went for over $370 IIRC. It was pretty scary how high some of the bids were this year, but it all went to a good cause: The Children Burn VIctim foundation by the Firemen of Charlotte (I may have the name of the organization wrongs, but you get the idea). George Perez promoted his new book from Event Comics, Crimson Plague, and also raised a ton of money for the same charity by selling his convention edition of Crimson Plague #1 (with all the proceeds going to charity) for $5 each, and it was possible to get the book signed by all the victims in the book (yes, you too can appear in a comic book, but you die soon enough!) Jimmy Palmiotti was wearing a shirt that featured a woman's head on the front of the shirt, and she was gagged with one of those B&D ball-in-the-mouth gags, and in big letters was the phrase "SHUT UP BITCH!" A very disturbing t-shirt to say the least. Go visit Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker if you get a chance to see them at a convention this summer. Two of the nicest guys in the business. Oh, and if you're at Dragon Con in a couple of weeks, go say hi to Jeff Mason and Chris Waldron of Indy Magazine, another couple of swell guys. The attendance seemed less than last year's crowds, but that was just my impression. The hot comics were all Top Cow related books, like Witchblade, and The Darkness. The lines for Marc Silvestri was pretty damn long. I was bummed that Christine Z was in attendance as part of the Witchblade creative team. She looked kinda cute in her pix in the back of the Witchblade LOC. JL #1 was plentiful, but you couldn't find a copy of #2, #3, or #4 on the floor. Spawn early issues were crawling out of the woodworks, with the cartoon's release on HBO and the upcoming live action movie. The Homage creators are always a kick to meet. Paul Smith has this infectious attitude that makes you like the guy >from the very get-go. Kurt Busiek seemed to be making some head-way on his own want list of comics. It's always nice to see the creators rummaging through the boxes along with the rest of us. Terry Moore was very cool, and made it a point to thank you for waiting in line to get an autograph or just ask him a few questions, very self-assuming. Paul Smith turned a small boy into an Akiko fan by giving him a copy of Akiko (Mark Criley happened to be sitting near the table at the booth). I can't say enough about Paul SMith as an ambassador for comics. I spotted Mark Waid at the FoL booth, wow, Waid's lost some weight. Congrats. I spotted Neil Gaiman signing away at the CBLDF booth, he always had long lines for his signature, even with the charge of $5/signature (or 3/$10), with all the money going to the CBLDF. A dealer wanted to sell me a 1st edition hard cover of Good Omens that was autographed by Gaiman to his wife, like I'd want a book autographed to a woman named Mindy ( or whatever)... :) Oh, his asking price was $30 for the book. I had Martin Wagner sign my whole collection of Hepcats. He expressed surprise that I had an entire run of the original issue. Then I gave him a Cerebus 130 to sign as well, just for good measure. I need to find a copy of Usagi Yojimbo 37 to round out the Hepcats completist collection. I bit my tongue as he gave out the standard spiel of the release schedule for the new Hepcats issues next year (which coincides with the release of Windows97 - what will come out first: Hepcats 13 or Windows97?). I figure he's heard all the fan bitching, so why pile on. Good luck! I didn't go to any of the panels this year. I figure I'd get my fill in San Diego later in July. I spent most of the time getting comics signed and scrounging through the $1 or less boxes. I bought way more comics than I expected to, but for a quarter how can you go wrong? I got see who the artists were that painted the really nifty card sets that feature comic characters in another medium, that of the painting side of art. I can remember Dave DeVries and Cathleen Thole(?), the latter did some nice painting from the DC Masterpiece set. The former did some really cool stufon the X-Men card sets. Chaos comics had a small presence at this con, as did London Night Studios (I don't even recall seeing LNS set up at a booth). Caliber comics had a nice booth. I think the age of the bad gals from the indies is coming to a close. DC's booth was filled with upcoming b/w preview copies of their comics. You must leaf through the Wonder Woman Amazonia preview, the artwork by Phil Winslade/Winslow(?) is simply amazingly detailed to say the least, with plans to release this book in the giant over-sized format that Barry Windsor-Smith's Storyteller is using now. Oh, and they were running the previews for the upcoming Steel movie and of course the Batman & Robin movie. The Steel movie looked sort of lame, and all I can say about the B&R movie is that I won't have a problem believing that Batman knows CPR, or that Batgirl can accessorize for shit. :) The Marvel booth consisted of a few stacks of free Marvel comics >from this month, and a Heroes Con employee watching the stacks of comics, trying to limit the number of comics per person. Pretty pathetic display by the House of Ideas. Well, didn't mean to ramble on like that, but I digressed. -- ************** A random qoute from Heathers: ************ "What are you talking about? You hated her, she hated you." *** My WWW home page: http://www.io.com/~patman/ *****