If you attended the con, be sure to fill out the survey posted at the official website. As usual, I requested Nick Cardy and Ramona Fradon as guests.
Right, where was I? Oh yeah, wandering Artist Alley, away from Angela the Engineer (whose comic has just been added to my RSS reader, yay!). I would love to have a GPS track of my wanderings, as I sometimes turned around on a dime and headed off in another direction. Maybe someday I'll get myself a GPS that works inside and can do the job for me. That would be a fun thing to see after the fact. Anyway, we went to Troll Pete Abrams and then hit that back "corner" of the alley that was a little out of the way. In there we met Bob the Angry Flower, Eduardo Nuñez, Ryan Cody, and Ben Thompson. I really like Ben Thompson's t-shirt in this Troll image.
I then decided to brave the horrors of the media area again, so Lisa and I started to walk over there, past the concessions. In the middle of concessions we spotted the Doctor and a Dalek and I had to Troll them. I gave the Doctor's mother the "You've Been Trolled!" card.
I mentioned in yesterday's report what happened when I met with Leonard Nimoy's rep, who explained that part of the agreement they had with the convention was that there would be NO candid shots of Nimoy at all. The con staff had their hands absolutely full trying to prevent people from getting those shots, despite the signs posted everywhere stating the policy. After my depressing conversation with the rep, I headed down to see if I could get a shot of Wil Wheaton in his jersey for Carolyn. As you have seen, I got the shot. I called out to Wil to ask him to turn around so "I can get a picture of you in that jersey for my Canadian friend!" You can see his resigned reaction. I wasn't the only person standing there. Another half-dozen got pictures of him at the same time.
At this point, Lisa and I lost each other for a short time. I wandered by and met Keith Knight before finding Lisa near Kurt Busiek's table, which was our designated meeting spot for the con. We decided it was lunchtime, and pushed through the crowds, stopping at the Fantagraphics booth to Troll Gilbert Hernandez.
Lunch was chicken sandwiches (thank you Mom!) and bananas. We enjoyed our high-class parking garage meal while Lisa started reading her Linear Algebra book, which she then carried with her for the rest of the convention and read any time she stopped for more than 10 seconds. I ditched the Aquaman Hoodie because it was so warm on the con floor, and left evil twin reading her homework in the car and went back up to the floor to try to get some more images. It was time for my annual picture of Greg's Middle School Students.
An aside... Greg has requested fan help in keeping the program these kids are in alive. I donated a little on the last day, and I'll mention it again when I get to that point in my adventures. But This is a program worth saving, so if you have a little to spare, consider sending it their way.
About this time I decided to try to get a pic of James Robinson with Torvald. I'd already walked by his table earlier, when I Trolled Keith Knight, so I headed back there. The table had Keith Knight on the right, near a support column, next to Danielle Corsetto, who had a crowd much of the time I was there. Then James Robinson's table, then Kevin Maguire sat drawing mostly alone, with fans coming up to visit him every few minutes. Barry Kitson was at the end of the row. The DC Panel with Robinson had just ended, so I figured if I waited long enough, he would show up. What no one realized is that he hadn't had lunch, and decided to take a long break. So I Trolled Gavin, the Emerald City ComiCon staff member who was assigned to that section of the floor. And I Trolled Kevin Maguire, who did some Aquaman covers and whom I had talked with the last time he was in town. Barry Kitson was Trolled last year. I people-watched while standing in wait. And standing. And standing. Evil twin wandered by, then away again. People lined up behind me, then gave up and left. I persisted, mostly because it was a pretty good place to watch people from and because I was extremely tired. If I'd realized ahead of time the problems it would cause my feet, I may have given up standing as well, but I stayed until Robinson finally showed up an hour later and Trolled him. Then I Trolled Danielle, whose line had kept getting longer and longer as I waited for Robinson.
Barely able to walk now, I wandered with Evil Twin around the convention. We saw an awesome orange Aquaman shirt, and Lisa said that if I had that on she wouldn't have to worry about finding me now that I wasn't wearing the hoodie anymore. At this point, I was wearing my Best Ever Aquaman Panel t-shirt. We stopped by to see Kurt again, and he pointed out my shirt to Len Wein, who agreed that it was the best Aquaman panel, and that was hands down the best killer shark he'd ever seen.
As an aside, I did hit the ECCC Booth to get an Owly T-shirt based on the awesome Owly in Seattle drawing that I actually use as a desktop image whenever con season rolls around. But the pink ladies design was a massive turn-off for me. On the website it didn't look so bad, but in person I realized that I wouldn't be caught dead in it. So I got an XL Child's size, which was in a better color. I don't know how much I'll wear it, though, because it's VERY tight on me. Even if I lose a lot more weight it'll still be pretty tight.
Moving on, I Trolled Renee Witterstaetter, but never did manage to Troll Mark Texeira next to her. I had a chance on Sunday, but he was drawing and it wasn't a good time to interrupt. I'd already Trolled Michael Golden in 2007. I also stopped by John Aegard's table and giggled a bit and Trolled him. I need to buy some of his pamphlets, but I'm not sure what to do with them. Certainly put one in my car, I guess. Probably the pirate one.
We visited and Trolled Susan Tardif and Rich Ellis of Periscope Studio and Evil Twin picked up Cat Walk (a preview) by Susan Tardif and Mike Cassella. We then met Stephen JB Jones (designer on Batman: Brave and the Bold) and Trolled him with some difficulty. Then we visited and Trolled Jeff Ellis at the Cloudscape Comics table. I'm going to say now that for the first time ever at this con I ran into a person who was genuinely afraid of Torvald, like little-hubby-Eric was so long ago. In fact, I ran into two people who were frightened, though one overcame it long enough to be Trolled. This isn't a surprise to me, as Torvald can be a little creepy in person. But there is a reason I try to ask nicely before I hand over the troll. I don't mean to scare people!
I went back to the media area for one last look. The crowds weren't so bad for a moment, and Erin Gray was completely alone. So I wandered up and asked if I could take a Troll picture. She explained that she was charging $10, and her keeper chimed in to say it was for charity, so I agreed. Actually, I would've agreed even if it wasn't for charity, because $10 is a reasonable amount to charge for a photo op. And Erin Gray was one of my childhood heroes as Colonel Wilma Deering on Buck Rogers. And she continues to fight the good fight with charity work against domestic violence, so she's still my hero. If each of the media guests were only charging $10 for a photo, I might have been able to Troll more of them. *sigh*
Another wander brought me back to the Periscope Studio area, where I Trolled Jeremy Barlow. I was feeling a little down and out, but managed to Troll Brian Azzarello, who was talking with a very high class woman, dressed as snazzily as I've ever seen anyone dressed at a convention. This turned out to be Heidi MacDonald, who I had to Troll.
In the meantime, Evil Twin Lisa found some cool buttons (including an Einstein button) for herself and a friend, and debated getting a book from the Wasted Talent table. She lamented that she couldn't find a Newton button, because a friend shares Newton's birthday. When we happened by the table that was selling the science buttons I asked if he had Newton. He said he was sure of it, and started digging until he found one for Lisa. For my effort, Lisa bought me a couple of new buttons to add to my con bag. Then we learned that the buttons were drawn by Angela the Engineer, so Lisa finally decided to purchase the anthology that Angela had contributed to (since the Wasted Talent book isn't out yet). We went back to Angela's table to buy it.
I'm sure I'm leaving lots of stuff out...
I finally had enough at about 5 pm, with an hour of con left to go. I was invited to a dinner, but I would have to take a bus back since Lisa had the car. And one of these years I'm going to have to attend the masquerade somehow. Maybe I'll have to figure out a way to take the bus, or actually stay at a local hotel instead of the next town over.
On the way out I Trolled an Ewok, who was posing for other photos. Then Lisa and I headed to Hotel Mom&Dad for a home-cooked meal. Lisa surprised me, as well. She left to grab some snacks for us and bought that bright orange Aquaman T-shirt for me, which I wore the second day of the convention.
At some point I talked with Brad Guigar at the Halfpixel booth who saw the Troll and said, "Now I know I'm at the Emerald City ComiCon!"... Dave Kellett drew me a pug sketch, which was one of only two sketches I got at the con... The crowds were so insane that we didn't actually get to many booths on the media side of the con... The last Stan Lee signing was apparently moved to another room, giving those of us left a chance to move around... Lisa and I had trouble finding Heidi and James, but we did find the HERO Initiative booth eventually... There was a very long line for Geoff Johns all weekend... I missed Joe Quesada entirely... I missed out on a lot of chances to get really good costume pictures on Saturday. I should've been more bold, because there were some truly awesome costumes around... Tally for the day: 32 Troll pictures, 31 of them with people for a total of 35 people Trolled, and one sketch.
Ok, that's it for Saturday's reports. Next up: Solo Sunday at the con!
1 comments:
Sounds like a lot of People! :)
Too bad about Media Guests charging so much for photos. Although, if I had gone I would have somehow managed to save money to get pic with Lenard. :) Maybe good I didn't go, I can imagine overspending there, and being in the hole because of it. And I don't like that...
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