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Red Hook's NYC Con Report: Part One

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Red Hook

Red Hook

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Part One: Friday

 

 

What can you say about a thirty hour period where one gets to meet and chat with Greggy, Matt Nelson, Steve Ritter, Barton Landsmann, Doug Schmell, Mark Haspel, Steve Borock, Mutant Keys, MonkeyMan, Paul Merolle, Mark Zaid, Brian Foolkiller and Peter Bilelis?

 

Well, what I say is that it brings home the fact that the hobby would only provide a fraction of the fun without the people you meet in the course of collecting.

 

Friday started out early, with a 10am appointment in Westchester at Purchase SUNY, and a two-hour tour of the campus with my younger daughter who is a junior in HS. After the tour and a dropoff in Brooklyn, I headed back into the city, parked and got to the con at about 2:30pm. Much thanks to Byron Jones and his wife Maria of tvcomics.com for the complimentary pass. Byron brought mine right out to me in the middle of a growing crowd. As I hit the floor of the hall, it was immediately apparent that the aisles were wider, the sense of space larger and that this years con wouldn't resemble the NFL combine that last years moshpit felt like.

 

At Byron's booth I dropped my jacket, chatted with Harry (His Burntness) and headed off to explore. For about the first hour or so I experienced a solid case of sensory overload. You don't really know where to look or go first. I wandered up and down and across aisles, ducking the inevitable groups of stormtroopers and (at least two) Darths that seem to pop up at these events. And there were the pneumatic young women in costumes that probably were no older than my daughters. Considering my first con was thirty nine years ago, it's no surprise that I barely stopped to look. smirk.gif

 

I did a quick grand tour of the major dealers, flashing waves at Vincent at Metro, Lauterbach (my close personal friend from Baltimore) at his booth, shook hands with a very busy Bob Storms and kept going. A number of dealers were still putting the finishing touches on their displays...this was still the calm before the hope-for storm which was anticipated after 5pm.

 

As I was pausing to look through my first longbox, who should I see floating unobtrusively up the aisle but Greggy. Having never met him, it was great to finally chat with him in person. "Good God" I thought to myself. Close to 55,000 posts between us. Greggy expressed a weary resignedness about finding anything of much interest. But he wasn't fooling me. I realized right away that I was looking at the comic collecting equivalent of an assassin. I got the sense that Greggy glides silently up and down the aisles like a great white shark, barely making a sound, wearing his poker face and probably eating dealers for breakfast. If there is a good book at a good price out there, he'll find it. We talked about the two Green River Brave and Bolds he was kind enough to sell me a couple years ago. He had bought them directly from John Hauser when the first GR ad appeared in about 1993 in CBM.

 

From there I stopped to check on Paul Merolle at PopFun's Toon Tumbler display. Paul was ticked about his display setup. As usual, people were coming by and diggin the tumblers. I've seen more animated reaction to Paul's products than at any other booth. People love those glasses! He ended up doing well on Friday and I believe he had a pretty good, if exhausting weekend. Go Paul!

 

Drifting by the CGC booth, there was much activity because of the onsite grading. Steve introduced me to his girlfriend Pam who came used to work in the Coin division (did I get that right, Steve?). Much impressed by Borock's slimmer profile these days. Steve has mentioned several times that CGC doesn't ever make any money, but I hope they haven't stopped feeding you guys!

 

Stopping again at Lauterbach's booth I ran into Doug Schmell and Brent Moeshlin. Saying that Doug thrives on the convention atmosphere is an understatement. I was treated to the latest photos of Doug's two wonderful kids....and in his attempt to describe the depths of his love for his infant daughter, Doug said that he would take out his copy of FF #1 and rip in right down the middle to show his love. Ever the pragmatic, I suggested he sell it, and set her up with a tidy aggressive growth mutual fund, preferably no-load. I mean, love is love, but let's not get crazy Doug, okay?

 

Hitting the aisles again, I hit the end of an aisle at the back of the hall and ran into Mark Haspel and Matt Nelson. Another first, having never met Matt. I had brought along a book to show both Matt and Mark, and both were quite gracious with their time. When I whipped out the book I'd brought and flipped it open casually, I actually saw Mark flinch a bit... and I realized how carefully Haspel (and the rest of the CGC graders) must treat the books. Sorry, Mark. Mark, in an attempt to show me how a particular crease pattern came to be on the book I was showing him....went over to the nearest booth, and purchased, for one dollar, a guinea pig of a book, and proceeded to give me a first hand demonstration of how the book had been crushed in order to produce the creases.

 

I talked to Matt for a couple minutes and told him that I had laid in a couple of healthy bids on a Green River X-Men 8 he had on Ebay. I'd contacted him via Ebay to ask him regarding whether the book had been pressed. Matt disclosed what he knew (answer - yes) and I was happy to bid away. Unfortunately, the auction was scheduled to end right in the middle of the CGC dinner that night, and I prefer not to use snipe software. So it ended up elsewhere. Good to meet Matt finally.

 

Next ran into Peter Bilelis (Learned Hand) who is always a pleasure to talk to. His dad is a graduate of Parsons School of Design as am I. Peter attended Bronx Science like my younger brother did (I attended Stuyvesant HS in NYC.) Peter mentioned his hope that FFB and I would get to sit down face to face someday, and said we'd probably get along quite well. I'm thinking we rent a couple of those oversized inflatable Sumo suits, give each of us a broken merlot bottle, sell the event to pay tv and give all the proceeds to The Hero Initiative, eh?

 

As you can see, this con (for me) is less about the books than it is about the people. I did score a Green River OAAW #159 from Steve Ritter.

 

oaaw159.jpg

 

This gives me both copies of that book that were listed in the original sales manifests. I've basically picked Harley clean of Greenies at this point, and many of the bigger dealers who deal mostly in GA books don't even know much about the pedigree. But I made a couple of connections with dealers who promised to keep an eye out.

 

I also picked up a nice copy of Our Fighting Forces #146, which makes it the only 20 cent book in my collection. Why you ask? Because in the Big Five Guide, there was article extolling the virtues of a story in that issue, called Burma Sky, written by Archie Goodwin and beautifully drawn by Alex Toth. Check it out sometime....it's a great story and has all the meat of a good war movie... in seven pages! With a great Joe Kubert cover (are there any that aren't great?), the NM- book was $15 at Motor City. I was happy with it.

 

off146.jpg

 

Ran briefly into Brian Ketterer (Foolkiller - yes, we're just going to have to coordinate our appointment books, dude), Darwin (who scored some nice DC War books). I took a quick stroll along artists alley and spotted Carmine Infantino, but my days of waiting in line for artists is over, I think. Unless Ditko showed up or Kirby resurrected himself. Now Joe Sinnott was around, but I missed him. Him I would have stopped for!

 

Basically, I walked the con straight without stopping from 2:30pm to 8:30pm when we gathered to head for dinner. That tale has been told already. I think the dinner turned out great considering the drawbacks of the layout, but Darwin...you have my great thanks! You did good, man!

 

To be continued....

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ComicBookGuy

ComicBookGuy

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I have a digital copy of that 1968 convention program I can send you if you don't have one. It's pretty cool and I'm going to use it in my upcoming book. I just picked up a copy of the 1965 program for over $300. Those things are crazy rare but are one of the coolest aspects of comic history when you find one. Let me know if you want one.

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comicparadox

comicparadox

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Part One: Friday

And there were the pneumatic young women in costumes that probably were no older than my daughters. Considering my first con was thirty nine years ago, it's no surprise that I barely stopped to look

 

Reminds me of the joke that "every man gains super powers at the age of forty - that's when men become invisible to teenage girls"!

 

Nice con report. Almost as much fun reading these reports as it would have been to attend. Well, not really. But it helps. yeahok.gif

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