So, here we go...
I had made plans months ago to visit Pittsburgh over the weekend to attend the Pittsburgh Comicon. For the past 13-14 years I've attended this convention without fail, and for the past 4-5 years, until this year, I've been a guest at the show alongside Dirk Manning selling my wares, promoting Nightmare World, Mr. Rhee, and various other artwork, making new connections, signing autographs, hanging out with fellow artists, drawing commissioned artwork, and sitting on stage drawing artwork for charity fundraisers alongside some big named peers.
This year things went a little screwy and Dirk Manning was unable to attend. Our booth was lost in some confusion, and what has been a business trip of sorts the past few years, turned into a vacation trip of sorts for Karin and I. Without actually having a table, I decided to only visit the Comicon Saturday morning, partially because I haven't missed a show in years, but mainly cause Stan Lee was going to be the guest of honor this year and I couldn't miss out on getting a chance to meet him.
And so, I did get to meet the great Stan Lee. I stood in line and anxiously awaited my chance to just say hi. I felt a little dumb standing in line with all these guys holding rare issues of Spider-man or Iron Man, posters of Stan Lee himself, or various other collectibles to get signed. I only had my Comicon program with me to get signed. I had no rare book he wrote that changed my life, no individual item that meant anything to me. I just had a deep admiration and respect. The autograph is nice, but all I wanted was a handshake.
So, I finally get up to him and shuffled down the conveyor like line where he's cranking out autograph after autograph and before I know it, my program has already been signed without so much of a glance from Stan Lee and he's signing away at the line of items his attendents are sliding in front of him. I stop for a moment and the attendents are trying to move us along so the 500 people in line behind me can get their books signed to put on ebay, and I look at Stan Lee and say "Excuse me, I just want to shake your hand." And he looks up for a moment. And it feels like the whole room stops. I continue, "I just want to say thanks for my childhood, and everything you've created and inspired." He gives a great big smile and says "Thank you. It was my pleasure." And then I was quickly shuffled away and the signing goes on. But I got my moment. I got to meet Stan Lee.
Stan Lee!
Me shaking Stan Lee's hand. Too bad the kid taking my picture cut my face off. Oh well.
My signed program. It'll be in a frame soon enough.
So the convention was a success. I met Stan Lee. Met up with Scott Wegener for a bit and talked about Atomic Robo's successes and he hooked me up with a new T-shirt, and a couple trade paper backs. I also learned that in a recent issue of Atomic Robo, within the background of a page he drew my giant robot design from my second back-up story. That means something I created is now within official Atomic Robo continuity. Awesome!
After the convention Karin and I visited Bodyworks Tattoo and Don McDonald who will be tattooing my left arm half sleeve. We hang out for about half and hour, discussed ideas, and I think he might be just as excited as I am about the project. While I was there we scheduled my appointments for early next year and I don't want to talk about the $$$ this thing will cost me over a couple months. But it's gonna be BADASS!
Some of Don's work for an idea of what I'm getting into...
While we were there, this guy was getting his stomach tattooed.
I am excited. We're going to do something robotic, and he has a bunch of high end reference material, ILM concept art and character schematics from the Transformer movie, and he's been dying to get a chance to use it. So, lucky me!
Finally, Karin and I enjoyed the rest of our trip. We drove around and saw a good chunk of Pittsburgh, went to Market Square, drove down to the Strip District and ate at the original Primanti Bros. We loved it so, much we ate at the location in Monroeville as well, but it wasn't quite the same. The original location has that soup nazi, rude, but quick strong service feel... and the food was heaven. A meal in a single sandwich. Love it!
So, another good weekend in the book.
And while Dirk Manning missed out on the convention this year, he had a fruitful weekend as well. He got the initial presale numbers for the Nightmare World #1 TPB and appearantly they're real, REAL good. So, thanks to everyone that has already ordered a copy.
Alls well that ends well.
