Current mood:	accomplished
Entry tags:	conventions, favorite posts

HeroesCon
On Thursday night I had the strangest thought: "I should go to heroes con." So I had a chat with my mother, who for one reason or another decided she wanted to come too. We packed some crap up and took off after work on Friday. I had a blast. I now wish I had brought my portfolio, but I suppose I will just have to go back next year (actually, It's looking like I will be attending Dragon*Con later this year, which I am told is very intensely geektastic).

Mom chillin' with John Lucas

Duane Ballenger from Wide Awake Press (http://www.wideawakepress.com/) and myself, being really, really, really, attractive.


Other exciting people I met/saw:

Rosario Dawson -- Very hot actress, she played Gail in Sin City, and is now featured as a character in the new comic series OCT, I'm always awkward around pretty girls and Rosario Dawson is the queen of prettiness, so all I could manage was to shake her hand and blabber about being a fan, she was very nice, and actually recognized me and said "hey again" when I passed her in the hallway, which made me feel like less of a loser. Anyway, she was lovely, and maybe if i see her again I will be more suave or something.

Art Adams -- For those of you not in the know, Art Adams is a very popular comic book artist, people were waiting on line for a very long time just to get his autograph, seeing this, my mother (being on the other side of the line, and thus very close to Art Adams, of whom she had never heard) went ahead and asked him "woa, you have a big line here, who the hell are you?" He just kind of chuckled and replied "My name is Arthur Adams, I've drawn a few comics." In short, Art Adams is a total baddass. At the end of the day we walked out of the convention center with him, which allowed for a brief conversation in which I learned that in spite of being extremely well known and admired, Art is a very genuine down to earth guy. Also, we both like the old Hulk tv show.

Ethan Van Sciver -- I had actually never heard of him before, although I gather he is currently rather popular, he was drawing The Thing, which mom mistook for "Rock Face"


Patrick -- sxyblkmn I managed to recognize him from his livejournal pics, and we got a chance to chat for a while.

The Guys from Wide Awake Press, Common Bond, and One Percent Press -- A bunch of awesome indy comic artists, writers, and publishers, I didn't do a very good job of keeping track of which guy was with which title, but notably, there were some awesome guys named Scott, Brad, Frank, JP and Duane. Here are links to their websites, because they were all so damn cool and I think everyone should read their stuff! Wide Awake Press, One Percent Press, I could unfortunately, not find a website for the common bond.

Dash Shaw -- *swoon* Dash is another indy artist who is either completely out of his mind or completely brilliant (or some of both). He drew some pictures for me but our interactions were otherwise limited due to the fact that he is completely adorable, and I don't like talking to people who are cuter than me. He has a few books out, and another coming up in a few months, his website can be found at http://www.dashshaw.com/

Jarret Williams -- Jarret attends Savannah College of Art and Design, which is one of my top choices for college, he drew a picture of his character, Lunar Boy, for me and I bought some minis from him. He has a lovely website and a great little webcomic over at http://lunarboyland.com/

Jigsaw Jones -- I met Jones a while ago, he just recently opened a comic book store in my hometown (Durham, NC) his shop is great, his website is amazing, and he is brilliant. He brought his little robot puppet friend to the con and taped a Jigsaw TV episode (I can't really explain it, just go look at his website http://jigsawfanclub.com/).

Javier Saltares -- Javier is currently working on Ghost Rider for Marvel (the comic, not the movie) I was just outside of the Hilton hotel, drawing some random stuff on Saturday night when Javier came up and asked what I was drawing, I showed him and we struck up a conversation, we ended up chatting for an hour or two. He gave me a lot of advice from an experienced comic artist to a total newb. It was really nice to hear about the industry and everything so I knew what I might be getting myself into. I didn't get to see him on Sunday to say goodbye, but I guess I will just hope I meet him again at another convention.

Warren Ellis -- A well known writer, I rode in an elevator with him. Apparently he's on first name basis with Jigsaw Jones (most of us don't even know Jigsaw's real name). I don't know which one I'm more jealous of.

Tom Durham -- a rather odd but fun artist, who doesn't do much in the way of comic art, but has a lot of strange fantasy type paintings and drawings, My mother and I ran into him in a bar and ended up chatting for a long time, he had a friend with him who was very cool, and also a fantastic artist but I cannot remember his name, which is frustrating.

Mark and Jennifer -- The couple who own the store I work in, they are both totally awesome, and I was happy to run into them at the con (as they were my partial inspiration to go in the first place). We did lunch and goofed off for a while, and I went with them to a panel with Greg Rucka. They have a retail site which I already posted a link to, but here it is again http://www.scifigenre.com/.

Louis Small -- My mom gave him a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and they became very good friends.

Greg Rucka -- He is a writer for DC comics and also does his own work on both comics and novels. He did work on Supergirl and Batman, among others and is currently writing Queen and Country, which is about a British special agent, but I don't know the details.

I also found out about http://www.newsarama.com/ which is pretty sweet.