Wondercon and Wondercon dinner

[seank]

No pictures, sorry.

 

I attended Wondercon Saturday afternoon for some shopping and for the dinner Saturday night.

 

Upon my arrival at the show, I located House of Comics's booth to say hi to Mark, only to find his mother working the booth. She was probably the nicest person in the entire Moscone center and offered to call him on her cell, but I said I'd stop by later. I then went in search of Fiction House comics and to browse the wall books.

 

Most dealers, when I asked for Fiction House, showed me some meager pickings then told me to go see Brian Peets which on one had was nice because they were trying to be helpful but on the other had was frustrating because I traveled two hours to SF from Sacramento and Brian's store is my LCS, fifteen minutes away. I wanted to check out what other dealers had. (Don't worry, Brian gets a weekly stipend from me for my four-color crack.)

 

I ended up buying some high grade late-silver/early-bronze Brave and Bolds to fill a few gaps in my collection - I'm now down to about 80 more for a full run - and some Batman and Birds of Prey books from a dollar bin. I kept away from them mostly at this convention since I had to walk to the dinner and BART later. Despite this, one late afternoon purchase was a set of Gerber guides from Bud Plant. Those things are heavy.

 

I didn't find any Jumbo Comics for the the collection, but I purchased a VG-ish Planet Comics 53 and haggled with Harley Yee AND his brother over the price on a high grade Flight Comics 38. When we were $15 apart, I had to bite the bullet and pay over guide for a book I knew I would ultimately regret passing up. The other great GGA purchase was a Daring Adventures #12 with a truly ugly cover and nothing but Matt Baker Phantom Lady reprints inside. I believe Greggy has a photo of DeeDee leafing through it at the dinner.

 

Mark was kind enough to let me stash my purchases in a far corner of his booth. From him I purchased a Marvel Premiere 50 (Alice Cooper!) and an Our Fighting Forces 71 (classic cover, couldn't pass it up). When he found out the price I paid for the Gerbers, he ran over to Bud Plant's booth and bought his own set.

 

Near the end of the convention, I showed Mark's mother my Fight Comics 38 and gave her a quick history lesson about the characters, Fiction House, and Lilly Renee.

 

At the dinner, I got to meet quite a few board members. I'm bad with names, but I know I spoke with FFB, DeeDee, Greggy, TonyStarkFan, Matt Nelson, the Brain, Jim94, and Divad. There's more, I know. At the convention I met Steve Borock and we had a great discussion about comics and grading.

 

Mark and I had planned on leaving the dinner early to catch BART back to the East Bay. We stayed about and hour and half longer than planned. It was great fun.

[ciorac]

Sounds like fun! Wish I had been there.

[MutantKeys]

[seank]

High point the dinner was a discussion with TonyStarkFan and Divad which cumulated with Divad's explanation as to why there are no high grade copies of Red Sonja #1.

 

Let's just say the reason included "water" damage.

[deathlok]

Great report.