Heroes Con report!

[KingOfRulers]

Just to start things off, Heroes Con was great!!! I started up on Thursday night with a forum member from the CPG boards (lookwhoitis). It was definetly great having someone to travel up there with. The drive was pretty tough, but it was worth it. It is certainly weird being away from the boards for 4 days.

 

Day 1: We leave at about 9 pm Thursday and reach Charlotte at about 4:30 am. We didn't have a hotel, so we just did without sleep and stood outside the convention center like nerds and waited for it to open. After a long time of waiting it did open and we got in to again be bored and do more waiting. So we decided to go find some food. Een after that the CON was not open, so I decided to take a little nap in the car. About an hour later we headed in and got our spot in the line to get in the CON. Finally, we got in. I walked around with mcmiles for a while checking out the GA, SA and BA offerings at the booths. Also, did some chatting at various booths and met up with some friends. Found some great artwork all over the place suprisingly. OA seems to be growing. Nothing really happened on the floor that day overall. Towards the end of the day I got a call from Pirate about meeting up and about the forum dinner. So after a long while we got ourselves organized and went to Unos where everyone was about done eating It was great meeting a bunch of forum members for the first time. Too bad you couldn't stay for the entire CON arexcrooke. After that we headed over to see Warren Ellis' shtick. I was pretty tired by now since it was about 11 pm. After that we checked into our hotel.

 

Day 2: Did the regular searching for books and chatting. I met Dave Cockrum and Alex Saviuk also! Started piling some X-men books for myself in a reserve pile at a friends booth. I sold my FF #12 and Avengers #4 for a nice bit of cash and a Joe Simon OA piece. I didn't actually do much purchasing today, but I know pretty much everyone else did; lots of big buys from some forum members! After the CON everyone headed tp the Hilton for the OA auction or should I say mad house. It was packed. I'd say about 300-400-ish people there at the beginning. I was ready to win a Dave Cockrum piece that was up, that was supposedly pencilled, inked and colored by him. I have heard conflicting stories. Anyway, after a long time of waiting they start the auction for that piece and I bid like mad only to find out that it is a black and white print with his colors. By now I was pretty scared and confused as I was the high bidder at $325 for what seemed like a crappy print. I was not happy at all. Pirate saw my face --like a deer in a headlight probably. I was about ready to walk out because they did not give accurate info on the piece. Luckily some knucklehead bid $350 at the last second, and I was thankful for that. I have to say that the auction was the absolute WORST part of the convention. The hosts were terrible--people complained because it was taking forever to do the auction. We were there for 4 HOURS!

 

Day 3: Buying day!!! I picked out 29 books from my friends booth, most were BA X-men and one Thor. All were great looking books. So, I did a trade for my IM #55, ASM #17 and ASM #100 plus some cash. It was a great deal. I took two Cockrum cover X-men books and had Cockrum sign them for me. I also met Don Rosa and he did a great head sketch for me. And I got a zen style painting of Thor!!! Great show!!! I'm ready for the next one.

 

Dave Cockrum

 

The jam packed auction

 

Some of the featured OA pieces in the distance

 

Neil and Chris at the OA auction

 

Pirate!

 

The Cockrum piece in question

 

Picture of Don Rosa, me, and Chris' kids.

 

The X-men haul

 

The art haul

 

The Joe Simon OA

 

The back of the Joe Simon OA

[THE_BEYONDER]

Wish I could have made it. Nice report.

[sterlingcomics]

nice report! We really should organize better next year as there are more forum members that went to the con that I realized. If anything else, a Whose who.

[Sal]

nice report! We really should organize better next year as there are more forum members that went to the con that I realized. If anything else, a Whose who.

 

oh, i agree.

 

i nominate sterlingcomics to work out all the details

[Darrell F]

Nice report King. Sounds like a good time other than the auction.

[Pirate]

i bought one comic book. A shanna #1 from Harley for $15.

 

got a couple of sketches, couple of OA pieces, some SS from thecollector and won three things at that terrible auction. Oh and picked up my HOS 92 SS by wrightson. Overall a pleasant con but lacking the heavy hitters pro wise.

[Darrell F]

Oh and picked up my HOS 92 SS by wrightson.

 

Scan?

[drbanner]

nice report! We really should organize better next year as there are more forum members that went to the con that I realized. If anything else, a Whose who.

oh, i agree.

 

i nominate sterlingcomics to work out all the details

I second the motion!

 

I thought it actually ended up working out well at Uno's as far as sitting outside, the restaurant being basically right across the street from the con, people coming and going and being able to pull up tables as the size of the group grew/shrank, and the wait staff keeping track and separating everyone's checks, etc.,. From reading about the various forum dinners over the years, a reserved/private banquet room sounds like the best scenario but takes a lot more planning, and a lot more $$.