(Hey, check out Day One’s hijinks here.)
DAY TWO
On the second day we went to the Con even earlier to make sure that we’d be able to see and do everything and everyone we wanted. This is the first time ever at Emerald City where the talent assembled was so great that two days really wasn’t enough time. Thankfully next year is a three-day Con. The funny thing was when we got to the gates, there was only a tiny fraction of the people who were there on Saturday. Oh well! I took Venus’ picture with the most realistic looking Jedi I’d ever seen in my whole life (see Gallery below). Seriously, it was balls-out.
When the hordes arrived and were unleashed, Venus hauled ass back over to Tim Sale’s table and got a voucher for a fast-pass inkwash later on in the day. This was a serious coup because he doesn’t give out very many (and he doesn’t play favourites, even with people he knows) and there are always a godforsaken number of people who want them. Ninja skills!
Then we made the horrid mistake of trying to get comics signed by Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada. After we had both waited in separate lines for over an hour (10am – 11:15), Venus’ Bendis line was informed that he didn’t intend to show up until 1:00pm. So that line scattered and Venus was released from her good-natured obligations. Nobody knew where the hell Quesada was, but fifteen minutes later he turned up and I got my Daredevil #1 and Daredevil: Father #1 signed. That little incident was really the only black mark on the whole weekend, so meh! Whatever! Onward!
I met up with Matt Fraction to get my Immortal Iron Fist #1 comic signed, and I was a little nervous about it because I had heard that he doesn’t really like doing conventions and can be pretty friggin’ standoffish, but he was just as friendly as anyone else. This is a message to anyone who may have been afraid of Matt Fraction in the past: He’s a good guy and happy to sign your comic books.
While we waited for Venus’ Tim Sale time to come up, we wandered around to all of the artist tables with our portfolio and picked up prints that we really loved. New to our collection is great stuff from: Marcio Takara, DMZ artist Nathan Fox , cover artist John Tyler Christopher, the good folks from Monster Commute and Fiona Meng. There is nothing better than coming home with a bunch of new commissions and prints. I think for future Cons I’m going to take a page from Venus’ book and concentrate more on prints and commissions than on getting comics signed. Although there will still be plenty of that, because I love to meet writers and artists no matter what.
Realizing that we’d almost forgotten about the Image table, we wandered over with copies of Chew and Phonogram to see their respective writers John Layman and Kieron Gillen. Layman had a lot to say about being approached by the movie business, but seemed to have the good sense to be very wary, and Gillen was an animated delight. The man genuinely seems to love writing comics which is good because I really love reading his comics. Win-win!
The perfect topper on the weekend, though, was the incredible ink-washed Huntress that Tim Sale did for Venus (see Gallery below). His stuff is always mind-blowing, but it always seems to me that the pieces he does for the people he knows are always nicer than the ones he does for the usual hoi-polloi. Anyways, he’d never drawn Huntress before – admittedly had never even heard of her – and still knocked the piece right out of the park.
So there you have it! The Ian and Venus Explosivo Con report! I didn’t go to any of the panels because there just wasn’t time, but I hear there weren’t many big announcements made. Apparently Hack/Slash is moving over to Image, so good for them. THE END.
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NEXT ISSUE: NUV RETURNS! AND HE’S GOT THE WHOLE DC UNIVERSE WITH HIM!!
TUNE IN: SAME NUV-TIME, SAME NUV-CHANNEL…
