After a quick walk-through the main floor, I headed over to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund's Sketch Duel hosted by Charles Brownstein and Rowan Rozanski, who made a trip all the way over from Europe just for the show. The featured artists were, Jim Lee (Superman), Skottie Young (New Warriors), Chris Moreno (Dracula vs. King Arthur) and Tone Rodriguez (Violent Messiah). For anyone who's never been, each artist would draw on half a page and then trade with another creator to finish it off. At the end of the panel, everything would be auctioned off to the highest bidder with proceeds benefitting the charity.
This year's theme was Archie vs. Super-Heroes and there were already quite a few fans for the first panel of the day. We were also prompted to throw out some suggestions, so it quickly became cartoons meets comics in general for the panelists.
One guy really wanted to see Krusty vs. the Joker, but the first completed sketch was Jughead shooting a self-caricature of Tone, followed by the Black Panther and Black Lightning debating the merits of dropping the "Black" from Panther's name. The bidding got pretty heated over that last one too.
After a quick hunt for reference by Rowan, Jim drew Betty Cooper in a swimsuit talking about Azzarello's Superman run while Skottie drew a big Superman holding up Jim Lee, himself.
