2\/26\/06<\/p>\n
Elizabeth and I found out we\u2019re having a boy. <\/span>We\u2019re going to name him Oscar Francis Wisnia. <\/span>Everyone had been telling E and I that they predicted it was going to be a girl. <\/span>A woman who does the “scientific” (sure-proof) “dangling needle on thread over belly.” <\/span>A woman who claims she always knows when someone in a room is pregnant or going to die, and who had visions it would be a girl, then later said, maybe I\u2019m going to have second thoughts about that, and so when it was born could argue she was right either way. <\/span>My mom, who had a dream. <\/span>People who told us if the heart beats faster it\u2019s a girl. <\/span>People who told us if you don\u2019t have morning sickness it\u2019s a girl.<\/p>\n The more people said we\u2019d have a girl, the more I realized I wanted a boy. <\/span>But you don\u2019t want to go out and say it, because then it sounds like you don\u2019t want your baby, and of course I\u2019d be happy with whatever I had. <\/span>But boy did I start getting excited to see the ultrasound. <\/span>See little Oscar\u2019s feet, legs, arms, profile. <\/span>Boy was it exciting realizing we knew it was a boy, and now we had a name.<\/p>\n Elizabeth is due mid-August, and the date of the San Diego Con, she will be eight and a half months pregnant. We were sweating whether or not she\u2019d be able to make it this year, but the doctor says it should be okay. <\/span>I don\u2019t know how I\u2019d do a convention without her. <\/span>It\u2019s such a relief.<\/p>\n We forgot to register for a hotel until two days after the day they became available. <\/span>Naturally, everything was sold out. <\/span>But this week we learned that we were able to get a room at the Hyatt, which is only a couple blocks away. <\/span>It will be the closest we\u2019ve ever been to the convention, and this is the year to do it. <\/span>Poor Elizabeth will be huge this year.<\/p>\n This year we got a pretty sizeable tax refund. <\/span>We should be saving up for a house, and saving to have a baby. <\/span>But E and I discussed it and decided, I better get all the pin-ups I can now, while I have the money. <\/span>Yesterday I pulled out all my business cards I\u2019ve amassed over the years. <\/span>I actually called Larry Lieber on the phone. <\/span>He doesn\u2019t have an email, and I\u2019ve sent him my comics, but never heard back from him, over the last year and a half or so. <\/span>So I called.<\/p>\n He answered, Hello? <\/span><\/p>\n Yes, is this Larry? <\/span><\/p>\n Who is this? <\/span>Almost defensive. <\/span>Irritated?<\/p>\n My name is Chris Wisnia. <\/span>I met Larry at a New York Comics Convention a couple years ago. <\/span>I draw giant monster stories. <\/span>He remembered me, and his attitutude became much kinder. <\/span>He said I\u2019d caught him at kind of a difficult time. <\/span>According to his description, he\u2019s amassed so much stuff over the years, that his apartment has become a path to his bed. <\/span>I think he was trying to get his taxes ready to file, and he needed his calculator from his drawer, and he has so much stuff, that he couldn\u2019t get to the drawer to open it, so he was trying to delicately move the piles of things in front of the drawer. <\/span>He told me I might be the last person to speak from him, and I\u2019ll read in the news that he was buried alive by all this stuff he has, when it toppled on top of him.<\/p>\n He\u2019s so funny and friendly, he just got talking. <\/span>I asked if he\u2019d gotten the comics I sent him, and he said, Please stop sending him comics. <\/span>He just doesn\u2019t have the time to read them. <\/span>He said it was nothing personal. <\/span>He also gets the New Yorker, and he hasn\u2019t read it for years, even though he keeps renewing his subscription. <\/span>He keeps thinking some day he\u2019ll have the time. <\/span>So he begged me not to send him comics, because he would never read them (not to mention the space they would take up).<\/p>\n I asked him again which Marvel characters he had told me he named. <\/span>He said he came up with Tony Stark, Donald Blake, and Henry Pym, and he took great care trying to come up with those names. <\/span>He said Stan didn\u2019t really care what their names were. <\/span>Stan named the hero names, and wrote the basic plots, but didn\u2019t care what Larry did with the scripts beyond that.<\/p>\n His favorite story was about naming Thor\u2019s Uru hammer. <\/span>He said he wanted a short, three syllable name, because he felt bad for the poor letterers, who had so much to write. <\/span>Later, but long ago, Roy Thomas had approached him, with a copy of Bullfinch\u2019s Mythology, and asked him where he\u2019d gotten the name. <\/span>Larry admitted he\u2019d made it up, and Roy was furious, and immediately had it changed back to the actual name of the hammer, Mjolnir. <\/span>But when the San Diego Con had Larry flown out in 2004, he was on a panel, and a woman told him that actually, in Norse, Uru means powerful or mighty or something like that, so the word he made up turned out to actually be applicable! <\/span>Bizarre.<\/p>\n Before I hung up, I told him I knew how busy he was, but asked him if he might ever have time to draw a pin-up of a giant monster for me. <\/span>He shouted, No! <\/span>Absolutely not! <\/span>I\u2019ll never draw a giant monster. <\/span>I told him I\u2019d pay him handsomely. <\/span>He said, No! <\/span>I don\u2019t want your money! <\/span>I don\u2019t want to draw a giant monster. <\/span>I don\u2019t draw Western pictures any more either. <\/span>He said he\u2019d like to draw a comic some day, but a nice one without superheroes and monsters. <\/span>He also said he\u2019s always wanted to write a novel, but he\u2019s just never had the time.<\/p>\n We parted, and he said he probably wouldn\u2019t come out to a convention again. <\/span>I told him if we make our way to the East Coast, I hope he would join us for dinner, and he said that would be much easier for his busy schedule. <\/span>I really enjoyed visiting with him.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Last week, I drew my first commissioned piece, a giant monster sketch, similar to Fantastic Four #1\u2019s cover, for Andrew Gregory. <\/span>Then I inked copies of the three pencil pin-ups Al Feldstein gave me, because I just wanted to do some inking, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to ink a living legend. <\/span>It was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n I thought I would be done with them and begin Doris Danger stories all last week. <\/span>I wound up having things to do all week (trying to email people, having the baby\u2019s ultrasound, going out to my local comics shop to sell two grocery bags full of comics, then going back a couple days later for their 50% off sale. And also my Dad was down for the ultrasound by chance, so he spent the night, and we got to have some time together). <\/span>Before I knew it the week was over and I hadn\u2019t done any drawing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2\/26\/06 Elizabeth and I found out we\u2019re having a boy. We\u2019re going to name him Oscar Francis Wisnia. Everyone had been telling E and I that they predicted it was going to be a girl. 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We\u2019re going to name him Oscar Francis Wisnia. Everyone had been telling E and I that they predicted it was going to be a girl. A woman who does the “scientific” (sure-proof) “dangling needle on thread over belly.” A woman who claims she always knows…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}