The moment we walked into the convention, we had bumped into Martin Nodell. It was great to see him again. He had a long row of stitches going up about a half-inch or so from his brow, and another scab closer to the center of his forehead and higher. He’d fallen out of bed, poor guy. His son Spencer said this may be Martin’s last convention, because he’s ninety years old, and it’s getting harder to get him out to big shows like this. It’s a lot of work.
I asked Spencer if Martin is doing any drawings or sketches any more, because I’d sure love to be able to include him for a pin-up in my comic. He said maybe we could dig up something old and give me permission to reproduce it. Similar to Irwin Hasen, Solomon Grundy got brought up. Spencer said we could take an image and maybe touch it up, and retitle it “Swamp Monster” or something. I think that would be really great, to include a classic Martin Nodell monster image.
Elizabeth, as usual, gave me time to walk around and try to talk with everyone. Adam Hughes wasn’t there yet, and wouldn’t arrive until the end of the first day. I couldn’t find George Tuska. I later learned he had to cancel his appearance at the con, because he cut his foot, and then got a staff infection. I was really disappointed knowing I wouldn’t have this opportunity to meet him, since he was one of the great excitements for me, coming to this con.
I decided to just poke up to George Perez, Sal Buscema, and Dick Giordano, all of whom had long lines. George Perez was signing tons of books. One guy brought like ten or twenty copies each of maybe five items. We’re talking fifty or a hundred signatures. And since it was a bunch of copies of the same items, it was obvious they weren’t for his personal collection. He even said they were all for ebay. I think if I were famous, and someone brought a stack like that to me, I would just tell them, look, you’re asking me for a free signature, and you’re gonna make out on all that. I’ll sign one of each of those, but you’re just taking advantage.
When I asked him about a pin-up, George said he was under exclusive contract. He was making a ton of great-looking convention sketches. Next up, Sal said to talk to his manager, which I did, and managed to get set up for a pin-up commission. Both Sal and his manager were very sweet, and very supportive of the fact I’m self-publishing.
I gave half my pitch to Dick Giordano, who seemed to be listening, but concentrating on a sketch he was doing, and not looking up at me. Then the woman sitting with him told me he was hard of hearing, and couldn’t hear me at all. So I embarrassedly went around to his other side and gave the pitch again, and got his contact info.
I was able to get a sketch of a giant monster from Nick Cardy, which I don’t feel I deserved. He said, “Are you a fan of my work?” And I told him, I’m not familiar with what you’ve done. How embarrassing. I felt so ashamed. He listed some of his books, including Teen Titans and the hundreds of covers he’d done, and handed me a book full of all his work, and then I realized I actually WAS familiar with his work, I just didn’t know the name to go with it. I showed him my treasury, and he flipped through it, and I was impressed that he knew so many of the artists, old and new. This was someone from the seventies era who kept up to date on his artists.
When I asked him about the pin-up, he said to come back later, to give him time to think about it. I came back, and he said he was busy, and there were sketches ahead of me that he had to do. Come back later. When I came back again, he was gone.
We bumped into him at breakfast the next day. He said, I’m still thinking about that pin-up. At the convention he said how the scariest things are things you can’t really see, except maybe a hint of it creeping out from the darkness or something, and asked me if something like that would be all right. Absolutely. I checked in later, and there were other pin-ups ahead of mine, but he was still thinking about it. He finally whipped out a beauty on Sunday, the final day. I was shocked how similar it was to Ojo.
I have mixed feelings about using convention sketches as pin-ups in my book, because of course the artists don’t necessarily use their best tools, and the conditions aren’t great for drawing, and most likely they’re pounding out a lot of sketches, and not necessarily able to put in the time and quality they might do working in their comfortable, usual working areas with all their comfortable, usual tools. I hope the con sketches reproduce all right, and look nice in my book.
At the end of the day on Friday, we bumped into Allison and Adam Hughes, who’d just gotten into town, and they suggested we share a cab back to the hotel. The hotel was about a ten-fifteen minute bus ride from the convention, and of course everyone at the con was waiting for the bus, and it showed up maybe every ten or so minutes, for some reason, so we piled into a cab together. Adam is real quiet, but he spoke a little when I mentioned that I was a bit worried about claiming such huge losses for my taxes this year, a second year in a row. He didn’t think I should worry about it. He felt I’m too small a fish, and in the worst case, they’d just ask for a little money back and some interest. He knew people who hadn’t been audited for eighteen years in comics. Does everyone, including the IRS, just know that no one can make any money in this industry?
Next day at his table, I asked, since he’d had to drive six hours to the con, if he’d had an opportunity to take advantage of his driving time with audio books. Oh yeah, he replied. He listened to a Star Wars book on his way up. I told him how my first audio book experience was with Raymond Chandler, and I loved it so much, I’ve been doing the audio book thing ever since. That’s how I learned of Adam’s appreciation of crime novels, and that got us both talking for awhile. He said he recommended reading Chandler’s published diary, which would have depressing admissions of his alcohol problem, followed by lucid critiques of famous works of fiction. Adam asked if I’d read Charles Bukowski’s “Pulp,” which I had. It was Bukowski’s last novel, an odd parody of old crime novels. So this was my first nice conversation with Adam Hughes, where I felt like he felt comfortable visiting with me.