SDCC! First timer! Report!!

[drewincanada]

Two days into my first SDCC and having a blast.

 

WARNING: there are no wall pics so far, but I hope to rectify that before the show is over.

 

Arrived in SD late on Tuesday evening after an uneventful flight from Toronto. I'd done my homework and took the 992 bus from the airport to, literally, 100 feet from my hotel at Broadway and 5th.

 

I was fortunate during the hotel lottery: I didn't get my first 3 choices, but I did get the Palomar, and fine hotel about a 12 minute walk from the convention centre.

 

Got a good night's sleep, then headed to Richard Walker's Pancake House for breakfast on Wednesday morning.

 

Walked down toward the convention centre after breakfast. Not a cloud in the sky and 24 degrees at 8:30 AM.

 

The first glimpse of the convention centre:

 

 

And getting closer:

 

 

Met up with VintageComics at 9AM and picked up my badge (Thanks Roy!) then headed onto the show floor to familiarize myself with the layout and to watch the setup.

 

I quickly discovered that photos of the con floor are not allowed during setup. I was stopped more than a few times and told to cease and desist. But I still managed to get a number of shots of the pre-show setup:

 

 

 

Sergio Aragones and Steve Leialoha, side by side. I was looking forward to meeting Steve, who I consider the best inker on Howard the Duck - he did an excellent job on both Brunner and Colan's work.

 

 

Guardians of the Galaxy in Lego:

 

 

And a few books and pieces of art in the August sale on CLink:

 

[BlowUpTheMoon]

Great pictures so far Drew!

[Treco]

Very nice!

[kav]

Can you grab that JIM 112 splash when no one looking?

[drewincanada]

I took a break and headed back to the hotel for a few hours before the start of Preview Night.

 

Walking back to the convention center around 4pm, the crowds were already starting to form. And this was just Preview Night. It made me wonder how nutty it would be by Saturday...

 

 

Back on the floor, still an hour until opening.

 

The Walking Dead display.

 

 

Some figurines from Sideshow:

 

 

The Darth Vader mobile (or something like that) at the Hot Wheels booth:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[drewincanada]

At around 5:15, all the exhibitor badge people were milling around the Hasbro booth and security kept telling them to disperse. It didn't do much good. Even though Hasbro and a few other booths had signs stating that during Preview Night the exclusives would only be sold to attendees, and not to exhibitors.

 

Aaaaand.... GO!

 

The con floor opened at 5:30 and it was pandemonium. Everyone stampeding to get the exclusives. Every 60 seconds a loud recorded announcement: DO NOT RUN ON THE CONVENTION FLOOR. DO NOT RUN!!

 

The Hasbro booth was swamped:

 

 

Wandering around and taking a few more shots of booths. This is part of the DC booth:

 

[kav]

Does the not running rule apply to people dressed as the Flash?

[drewincanada]

I headed to the IDW booth and picked up the Steranko "Nick Fury Agent of Shield" artists edition. As usual, stellar work from IDW.

 

I got Steranko to sign it the next day ... but that's a story for the next installment.

 

 

I also picked up the Breaking Bad bobbleheads:

 

 

And about 18 back issues of The Kirby Collector at half price.

 

I wandered around the booths of the various OA dealers but by 7pm I was fried, so I headed back to the hotel and dropped off my , then headed back to the convention center floor to meet all the OA collectors for the annual OA dinner. Since this was my first SDCC, this was also my first OA dinner and it was great. About 18 of us, I believe. Good to meet everyone, even if I can't recall everyone's name or if all of them are on this board. I spent much of the evening talking to Ron Sonenthal and Glen Gold.

 

Sorry, no photos of the dinner...

[jsilverjanet]

That Steranko book looks awesome!

[drewincanada]

Dinner didn't start until 9:30 or so, which meant it was something like 1 AM before I was back to the hotel room.

 

I got back to the convention center this morning (Thursday) around 9:15. I decided to skip the floor this morning and instead check out some of the programming.

 

I wanted to see the Bill Finger session, so I decided to also see the first session in the same room, which meant I'd have a good seat for as long as I wanted to stay.

 

I lined up for 20 minutes to see "Behind The Music: Crime, Death and Resurrection" with 6 composers of music for film and TV: James Levine (American Horror Story), Jeff Russo (Fargo), Brian Reitzell (Hannibal), Daniel Licht (Dexter), Steve Jablonsky (Transformers films), and Christopher Young (Spider-Man 3, Deliver Us From Evil, etc. The session was hosted by actor Shane West.

 

I worked as a professional musician for 20 years, so I thought it was a lively and informative discussion.

 

 

[drewincanada]

That Steranko book looks awesome!

 

It is!

 

It collects the Nick Fury stories from Strange Tales #151 through #162. All complete stories and almost entirely shot from the OA. A few pages in the latter books were missing and were reproduced from stats.

[kav]

wow that Steranko book-awesome as hell

Hopefully you didnt have to lug it around all day?

[drewincanada]

The next panel session was "Spotlight on Bill Finger, the Co-Creator of Batman".

 

Many of the sessions this year have Batman themes, since it's the anniversary year. This session included Bill Finger's only surviving relatives: his granddaughter Athena and great-grandson Benjamin, as well as Mark Evanier, Bob Kane's biographer Tom Andrae, Jerry Robinson's son Jens, author Marc Tyler Nobleman, Michael Uslan (executive producer of all the Batman movies), Denny O'Neill, and Lee Meriwether. The moderator was Dr. Travis Langley (Batman & Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight).

 

Lee Meriwether & Mark Evanier:

 

 

The panel:

 

 

Jens Robinson, Tom Andrae and Denny O'Neill

 

 

 

My next panel was "Batman in the 70s". It was fantastic. Great stories from Neal Adams, Denny O'Neill, Len Wein, Mark Evanier, Michael Uslan and Anthony Tollin. I didn't get any pics from this.

 

 

[JD Glitch-migration]

Looks like your having a blast! Great pictures, very jealous over here.

[drewincanada]

After this third session, I headed to the con floor and the booth where Steranko was signing prints.

 

I was fortunate enough to get there during a lull, and was able to chat with Jim for perhaps 15 minutes. We hit it off very quickly when we discovered our shared love of musicians like Bill Evans and Oscar Peterson (and especially when I told him that I taught Oscar how to use Photoshop... a true story).

 

Unfortunately, I hadn't bothered to lug my IDW Steranko book back to the convention on Thursday, but he insisted that I go get it. So after lunch I hauled it back down there and Jim signed it.

 

I wanted to get a photo of the two of us, but (as I heard him tell a number of other people) he doesn't do photos "unless they're with good looking women".

 

Steranko's personality is a little larger than life (and so is his attire and hair), although he's actually a tiny guy. But once you get past the superficial stuff, he seemed quite genuine. He is really very modest about his art. He said he has trouble looking at his own work because all he can see is what he wishes he'd done differently and what he'd like to improve.

 

Anyway, despite the "i don't do photos" policy, I grabbed a few candids.

 

[dupont2005]

Have a blast (thumbs u

[drewincanada]

After that I crossed the con floor to find Steve Leialoha. Anyone who has seen my OA collection knows that I like Steve's inking work on Howard the Duck. He did an amazing job interpreting the pencils of both Frank Brunner and Gene Colan. Inking Colan is no small feat, and I think that Leialoha was the definitive inker on Howard the Duck.

 

I had a wonderful, long conversation with Steve and he enjoyed looking at all of his art in my collection. He hadn't seen many of the pages since he first did them and they brought back very specific memories.

 

One of the highlights of the convention for me. But I forgot to take a photo.

 

After that, I did take a few more random cosplay shots, though.

 

 

[drewincanada]

A Lego Spider-Man:

 

[kav]

Dang that would be fun to smash to bits!!!!!!

[drewincanada]

And finally, I was steered in the direction of Allen Bellman who worked at Timely in the mid to late 1940s and through the 1950s. Apparently he started out doing backgrounds on Captain America, but graduated to doing pencils on Cap, Sub-Mariner, The Human Torch, Young Allies, Marvel Mystery Comics and many more. In the 50s, like everyone else, he worked on whatever crossed his easel.

 

He turned 90 last month... and he's quite active on the con circuit. He was there with his wife Roz (I believe).

 

He's a character. He does this same pose with everyone who buys one of his prints.