Stan Lee presents: Dallas Comic Con Day 1

Posted by Big Dog on May 21, 2012 in Events, General | 4 comments

Thank you DCC

Another Dallas Comic Con come and gone.

I think there is a part of me that’s sad to have seen it gone, especially since the first one of these I went to was so small in comparison to what I’ve seen the past 2 days. To say I had a fun experience is understating the situation. The experience of meet the celebrities always gives me this sensation that somehow I’ve been made important for a few moments of their time. I could tell you stories about past convention, and I might later. Tonight it’s all about this convention.

The first day I arrived at the Irving Convention Center, it was already a madhouse. This building is 4 stories and meant to accommodate fairly large crowds. This wasn’t a fairly large crowd. Last year boasted over 10,000 people. I say that they well exceeded that this time. Several were dressed as I was, jeans and a t-shirt. Most of them displaying the colorful and great heroes that comic books were known for. There was a camaraderie among me and my fellow fanboys.

One such man I met when I picked up my first official media badge was a man by the name of Keith. Once I get the audio all figured out on my end, I have an interview with him to play back. He was dressed up in a Spider Jerusalem costume, awaiting his opportunity to meet Patrick “Jean-Luc Picard/Professor Charles Xavier” Stewart. The character of Spider comes from a comic called Transmetropolitan. When people speak of genius, this is the comic that lives up to the reputation. There isn’t anything like it, or that I think could come close. Stewart is a fan of such and wanted to make a movie of the series. Unfortunately, a lack of interest kept that from happening. In the future, and my ever humble pleas, with the right director something could happen. Time will tell. Back to Keith; and the line experience in general. From around 10:30 to 1:30 I was standing outside the building with a group of people that were laughing, talking, and making friends. Keith would often go an check the lines to see what sort of wait we had left. We were tired, sweaty, and trying to make sure we didn’t lose our place. There wasn’t any worry there. Everyone was holding everyone’s place. I had an empty soda bottle I was holding for fear of leaving and getting in the back of the line. A very sweet woman walked up and asked if she could throw it away for me. I appreciated it a great deal.

After what seemed a lifetime of waiting, and missed the Kevin “Batman: TAS” Conroy Q&A, I finally was able to meet the great Sir Patrick. I’ve had some bad meets with the celebrities. Some of them tend to be in bad spirits of some sort, and on occasion I’ve sucked it up and moved on. Oh I complained like hell later about it, but not this go around. No, Sir Patrick was a pure gentleman through and through. I placed down a piece of artwork I had spent around 12 or 13 hours on getting done, and I told him that it took me many hours to get this. He complimented me on doing such and said he’d know who it was. Whether just being polite, or truly meaning it, I took the compliment with the biggest smile and heart I could. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, I didn’t find much about Picard I liked at first. He wasn’t the cowboy that James T. Kirk was, it put me off of him. Then as the years wore on, I realized how awesome Picard truly was. Was he Capt. Kirk? Hell no, but he made the Enterprise his ship. And it’s not like Sir Patrick isn’t a great actor anyway. I’ve seen him in quite a few things over the years that I’ve respected him for. Regardless, the meeting was what I was hoping for. I left on a joke I told about how I was hoping the picture didn’t look like Capt. Steubing from the Love Boat (IMDb for those who don’t know what that is) and I moved on to my next destination.

Across the way from where I’d met Sir Patrick, I saw the other autograph tables in another room. Off I went to meet someone that I’d never had the pleasure, but I’d heard about about over the years; Adam West. Whether you know him from the 1960’s Batman or the Mayor of Quahog on Family Guy, you just don’t have a clue what it’s like to meet this man until you see him in person. I’m in line and behind a man that was a theatre owner. That night he was apparently showing Batman: The Movie! In case some of you aren’t aware, that isn’t the first movie with Michael Keaton. It was the ’60s movie done with Adam West and Burt Ward. There is so much cheese to it, I can’t begin. However, it personified the era it came from. The comics were following the TV series in their camp, and it was a happier time all around. The Dark Knight Detective was simple the Caped Crusader. Well, he was discussing with his agent something about how he should do something like that.; show Batman: The Movie in a theatre somewhere. I didn’t know what to say, so I stood patiently waiting with my approved artwork. Again, the art was of my own design. The reason for approval is somewhat explained above. West’s Batman isn’t like so many of the other Batmen of the day. He wouldn’t sign a copy of Batman Begins or the Dark Knight Returns (the comic by Frank Miller, in case you need to know). He wanted to sign things of his era of Batman. I showed his agent the work and he nodded, so I stood their waiting for Mayor West to finish talking. It’s a polite thing, and yeah I CAN do that. It’s not often, but it can… Eventually, he looked up at me and asked what I wanted in a very grumpy voice. He was kidding with me, and I was pleased about that. He personalized it, which I was hoping for and signed his name. Looked me in the face, and says “Jeremy, fist bump!” Damn right I fist bumped Mayor West. Wouldn’t you?

Once I left the room, Matt and Carl came and found me. From there we went to hear the Stan Lee Q&A. I believe we did audio for that. But as Mark Walters, one of the organizers for DCC, pointed out; there would be video for the Q&A’s on his website. That’s www.bigfanboy.com

Let me tell you about my thoughts on the Stan Lee Q&A. It would be a great deal easy for me to put out how great the man is. Really try for the kiss up factor for Mr. Marvel himself. I won’t lie like that though. What I will say, respect wise, is that he and some very talented artists came up with some great characters that will endure. Spider-Man, Iron Man, the Hulk, the Fantastic Four, among so many others will remain around with the likes of DC’s Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. What form they will take, who knows? However, I think they’ll be around for many, many years to come. Some of the things he said in his Q&A were funny and I think he believes it. I think there’s a lot about him that doesn’t make him work for me as a personal favorite. I won’t go on a Stan bashing tirade, because really I don’t want to go there. I could turn it ugly, but I sincerely have a place in my heart where his characters have meant so much to me. I’m a DC man at heart, but there’s a lot of Marvel that’s long since infected my soul. What I don’t much care for about him started with Who Wants to be a Superhero? As you know, our podcast has talked to PurrKayla a couple of times and as I recall the story, she first got started because of that show. For this, I can only applaud it. It started off a wonderful lady doing something good for community and charity alike. However, while watching the show (and I did watch religiously) I couldn’t help wondering why people were being let go for being actors when nearly everyone had an IMDb page? Or why it was that Major Victory was being chastised for taking bits of his costume off when there was a huge picture of Stripperella behind Stan? It was a bit off putting to thing that the competition was a bit more scripted than it should have been. Don’t get me wrong, I expect things to get scripted in places. When you talk about a game show, for all intents and purposes, that’s the last thing you want to see. I’m glad we’ve got PurrKayla out of the deal, but by the same token I got to give a lot of crap to Stan for that.

Now that I’ve said that, there is one thing I do want to mention as nice gesture on his part. He had to leave a day earlier than expected. These things happen all the times at these cons We hope it doesn’t, but it does. Of course, if you’re a ticket holder to get an autograph that would suck if he couldn’t get to you. Stan decided since he was leaving a day early, he would start autographing a day early too. So Friday night, the event opened up for autographs with the comics legend. Such as it goes, that I can’t be mad at. That was a cool thing to do.

Once the Q&A had ended, I decided that I would sneak downstairs to the dealers room to see about the last autograph I needed. It took us 24 minutes to get from the fourth floor to the first floor. The place was packed like we were sardines. We were fan-cattle for all intents and purposes. I was bound and determined to get Kevin Conroy’s autograph before I left. After standing in a line for about an hour I was told that I was in the wrong line and the place I needed to be was against the wall leading all the way around the dealers room. This is a huge room. This was not happening. I decided it was time to sit down and chill out. The only open area to do that was near the restrooms. Yeah, not the most dignified, but any port in a storm… So I sat their for awhile getting over many hours of soreness from standing in lines and herding from place to place. While I sat there, lo and behold, Summer Glau passes me by. Here’s the sad part of this, I did not recognize her at first. All I saw was this pretty lady standing their say hello to me and the she asked if I was okay. She had genuine concern in her eyes, because I’d been sweating like crazy from nerves, heat, and the crowding of thousands of people. I assured her I was fine and she moved on.

Okay, I can hear the laughter out there already. Yes, I’m not a Firefly fan, and yet here is Summer Glau asking me if I’m okay. The irony is thick there, but you know what? I’ll take it! If by some miracle, she manages to read this and remembers out of the crowd the one rather large man sitting there near the restrooms, I want to offer my humble thank yous. It’s usually a very welcome thing for a fanboy like myself to have a pretty lady smile my direction. It’s another to ask if I’m okay with such concern. My hope is that she’ll come back to Dallas some time soon. I would like to have a piece of artwork ready for her to sign. It’s not that I think it to be some privilege to do so, but a chance to thank you in person would be great.

I also want to give one shout out to my friend Joe! We’ve mentioned him on the podcast before. He’s the guy that argues with me over Star Wars: the Clone Wars and the Big Bang Theory all the time! I’ve got a small conversation with him recorded. We got cut short due to my being paged. Apparently people wanna know where you are when you’re phone dies and you can’t respond! Next time I need to remember to bring my charger. Between FB, texting, and all the other methods to let everyone out there know how awesome a time I was having, I drained my battery quicker than a vampire at a blood bank!

Well, I could go on for awhile more, but I leave this as my day one experience. I’ll post something on day two at some point very soon. I hope everyone that was there had as much fun as I did. To Keith, it was awesome to hang with you in line, bud. Hope to catch you at the next con!

Other post you may like:

Stan Lees presents: Dallas Comic Con – Day 2 Editorial: Dallas Comic Con Aftermath – Ranting on the Rants Dallas Comic Con 2012 Photo Album SciFiFX Podcast #50 – Dallas Comic Con – Stan Lee