Imaginary Soundtrack – Sunday
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I think he only went because we were going to take the trolley down there.
The odd thing was that his head didn’t explode immediately upon entering the convention center. Guess he’s more resilient than I give him credit for. Funny, though, as I figured he’d be all over the toys and bugging me for one after the other (just so long as I didn’t have to answer the question “Daddy, why is that lady not wearing any clothes?” I figured I’d be okay). Anyways, he only had eyes for art supplies, pads and pens. Though he assured me (and anyone who asked him) that he wasn’t interested in being a comic book artist. Better making a career as an artist than as schlepping your writing, sez me.
He talked briefly with Parker (who I never got a chance to say farewell to) before hiding behind me when Jeff offered him a copy of the first issue of the new AVENGERS title he’d been working on. He shared dinosaur stories with William Stout, which was pretty cool, and Mr. Stout knows that the way to a kid’s heart is with dinosaur trading cards. And he asked Cameron Stewart what was going on in all those SEAGUY pages he had laid out.
Eric also ran me ragged. He can move through those crowds a heck of a lot faster than I can, which is why I was keeping a death grip on his hand. Sure, there was an emergency number on Eric’s badge, but I hadn’t been able to get my phone to work on the show floor and losing him would have been…suboptimal.
I have to say that he was probably a bit young to be going to the show. Not much made an impact on him. Batman in costume walking past? Meh. However, that giant Queen Alien made out of scrap metal? THAT was cool. And he was a trooper, waiting patiently while I did one last bit of business with an editor that I didn’t think I’d see. Yeah, he got a little squirmy and almost dragged me down to the floor by grabbing my wrist then going all boneless, but anyone else woulda done the same thing to get me moving.
Only stayed for a couple of hours, and that’s really about all that he could have taken. Was less than I wanted, but that seemed to be the dominant theme this year. Less time with friends, less big news, less money to buy original art (only managed to scratch up enough for a sketch from Cameron – MODOK since he wasn’t doing anything more than headshots. Though on a tangent, Cameron showed me the cover for the issue of AVENGERS ADVENTURES that he did, where the entire team was turned into MODOKs, which is genius and only Jeff Parker would have been bold enough to even try it, which he did. And thank God for that.)
The only thing there wasn’t less of this year was people. No, the fire marshall didn’t shut down the hall as had happened at Wondercon earlier this year, but they did shut down badge sales (and I heard they even ran out of badges on Sunday afternoon). Guesses have the crowds at 125K and I wouldn’t disbelieve that.
But still, I wouldn’t mind some more comics at the big comics show…