2005 MegaCon
CLICK HERE TO THE ACTOR AUCTION FOOTAGE.
My Son and I flew in late Thursday night so we could be at the show early on Friday morning. Even though we were about an hour and a half early the line was already about 150 people long. Out of curiousity I decided to walk the line to see if there was anyone I knew and whom do I find at the front of the line but none other than John Higashi and Craig "Stallonezone.com
" Zablo. Every time I see Craig I mean to ask him if he has ever met Stallone - maybe next time! I knew that the Adam Hughes line would be hot, particularly since it was a straight shot from the opening doors. I took my place at the back of the line and counted on the fact that enough people ahead of me wanted to be the first people to buy some anime trinket.
When the doors finally opened there was the usual chaos getting in. Although the line was a single file line they allowed the line to break into two since they were letting people in through separate doors, and this allowed plenty of line jumpers near the doorway to blend into the new line. So much for being polite and orderly!
I got in the Hughes line and by my best guess I was probably #18 or so. Adam was sharing booth space with Tone Rodriguez and Ethan Van Sciver. Jim Mooney was supposed to be there as well but he was recovering from a recent illness. Ethan and I have had a commission pending for a couple years and he and I said "hey" while I was in line. I always worry about whether or not my quarterly emails to Ethan asking how things are going are irritating to him. I ended up being around #16 on the list for Hughes and after a brief greeting to Allison Sohn I was on my way, son in tow.
I had never met Bob McLeod before so that was high on my list. I always liked his New Mutants work. Lucky for me Bob was already in Artist's Alley so I introduced myself and spoke to him for a few minutes. What an incredible person. I had him do a Cannonball sketch for me which he had complete within a few hours. I should set up an interview with Bob because I am sure it would be really insightful.
Over the course of the afternoon Artist's Alley slowly filled up. I ran into Tim Townsend and he gave my son one of his prints while we looked over my portfolio. I was wearing my CAF t-shirt and he asked how to get one so I promised to drop one off on Saturday. Aaron Lopressti was set up next to him so I looked through some of his work. All the work I liked was always more than I was willing to pay.
Back on the floor I saw that the Phil Jimenez line was too long for his free sketches so I figured I would go back on Saturday morning and try to hit him early. As busy as Phil was, Ethan Van Sciver had to have been the busiest person every day of the show. He was always doing free sketches at the Con and the lines were always 15 people deep. I asked him how it felt to be the busiest guy at the Con and he laughed and didn't really believe me. I would have thought his work on New X-Men would have pushed him to this level but his Green Lantern work has finally given him that "star" status. On Saturday Ethan actually showed me my commission in progress. Not that much done on the 6 character New X-Men tryptich (yeah, 3 11x17s!) but Wolverine was fully inked and covering 1/6 of the overall piece. It might take another few years to finish, but after seeing that I am more than willing to wait as long as it takes.
The ACTOR booth was always busy. The Silent Auction on Friday had it usual throng of people around it. There wasn't much I was interested in with any of the Silent Auctions so I passed on bidding on those. Steve McNiven seemed like he was always sketching at the booth to very long lines. Comicartfans.com is now doing the web-related chores for ACTOR so I introduced myself to Jim and while there I also ran into Kwan Chang
and BS'd with him for a while.
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