We took the kids to the Boston Comic Con yesterday. This marks the 3rd year in a row we’ve all gone. The kids are a wonderful excuse for me to fulfill my own desire to go.
I was not optimistic about our experience this year as the BCC is certainly picking up in popularity which of course makes it difficult to see everybody/everything in one day especially with the younglings. Not to mention longer lines!!!
Our first stop was the #1 guest on my “want” list – Kevin Eastman. Eastman was a late add-on to the Con and I have wanted to meet him since day one of my comic-book-fanboy life. Putting aside the typical love for Spider-man and Batman growing up (more fueled by TV and toys than actual comics) I consider my very first introduction to comic book collecting to be Donatello #1. When I was in sixth grade, my friend had some older brothers who were into independent comics. Through him I was introduced to these things called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He let me borrow Donatello #1 and I was HOOKED. I immediately made my dad bring me to a local comic shop (which I had to hunt down a couple towns over) and bought my own copy of the book. I still have it and it remains one of my all-time favorites. I became obsessive with the idea of meeting these guys Pater Laird and Kevin Eastman who were creating these amazing books right in my own state of Massachusetts! Well, that was more than 25 years ago and I still have never met either guy. So, when I discovered that Kevin Eastman was going to be at this year’s BCC, I loaded up on some books to sign including that Donatello #1. Naturally, hundreds of other people had the same story and they were all in line before me. Had I been willing to dedicate the entire day to meeting Kevin, I’m sure I would have and from what I saw he was being pretty friendly and gracious to everyone he met. Definitely regret missing out on the chance to thank him for shaping my childhood, but oh well…
I could only hope the rest of the day would not have the same outcome. And I am happy to say it did not. The first hour or two was spent on tracking down the artists I wanted to meet including Clayton Crain, Arthur Suydam, and Herb Trimpe (the very first guy to drawn Wolverine!) Everyone was amazingly gracious about signing books for me and Trimpe even did a sketch for me (although I asked for him to do Wolverine and ended up with the Hulk…he was having attention issues) Arthur Suydam was awesome. I picked up a great Army of Darkness print and I have to say, he and his helpers were pros at running a signing. They ran an amazing table.
We also got some awesome stuff for the kids. Mark McKenna hooked the kids up with great Banana Tails books and a sketch. Johnny got a Fraggle Rock painting and Dave Peterson did an AMAZING Mouse Guard sketch for Avalyn!
And just before lunch we got to meet Jo Chen. Like most people, I am floor by Jo Chen’s work, but I was more excited to personally thank her for donating to our “Dark Knight Movie Night” fundraiser for the Flutie Foundation back in ’08. I also introduced her to Johnny who was exhausted and unfortunately just wanted to go to lunch! Jo was amazingly friendly and I got a Serenity print for Sarah and I (as well as a ton of books signed!)
Sarah gets the wife of the year award for being a kid wrangler and my personal photographer at the same time. Neither the kids nor I made either of these easy tasks and she is absolutely the BEST for both her execution and tolerance!!!!
After lunch (where poor Johnny and Sarah had to watch the Penguins kiss their season goodbye) we headed back in for a much more laid back afternoon. The first place I wanted to go was Jill Thompson’s table. I know Jill’s work from Sandman and the Hellboy crossover with her Beasts of Burden book. She is probably most famous these days for her Scary Godmother book which was adapted into a Cartoon Network movie. Jill was awesome and our kids were weird. We bought a Scary Godmother TPB for Avalyn and Avalyn kept hiding and refusing to take it. Jill was being so nice to her and she just wouldn’t respond. She even offered Avalyn a print for free because she saw Avalyn checking it out and Avalyn said no! What is wrong with these kids? I’ve never been particularly greedy but I certainly don’t turn down free stuff!!!! Jill also did a head shot of Death for me and was just an awesome person to meet.
We wandered around a bit more but everyone was pretty wiped out and the kids really couldn’t decide what they wanted to see. So, although I still had a few people I wanted to track down we decided to call it a day. Fortunately, our path nearly immediately brought us past Skottie Young!!!! If your reading this blog, than you know this was a big deal to me! I had been looking for Skottie all day but had seen on Twitter/Facebook that he had run into some flight troubles and was questionable to make it so I assumed the worst. But, there he was; appearing to us at the 11.99th hour!!
After getting my Trickster books signed, I explained how much I loved following the SkottieScott blog and told him what I was doing with this blog for awhile which he seemed to genuinely think was cool. Then I surprised myself for having the guts (and Sarah because I hadn’t told her I had even thought about doing this) to put out half a dozen of the sketches I did for this blog. Again he genuinely seemed to appreciate it and got a kick out of a few of them. He was very complimentary about the White Rabbit sketch and enjoyed the humor of the Gonzo and Luke Skywalker ones. He actually said something nice about all of them. It was really cool for me and I was beaming! He gave Johnny a Baby X-Men vs Avengers print and I thanked him for the drawing inspiration. Then he had to chase me down because I had accidently shuffled in a commission he was working on with my drawings! I felt like a dope!
But I still walked away happy, and on a day that began with me deciding to pass up on meeting someone who was a creative inspiration to me for more than a quarter of a century, I ended up have my most inspirational moment come from one of the guys who has inspired me the most over the last few years!
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