Heroes Con '09 Report Part 1

Thursday:

Recently I attended Heroes Convention down in Charlotte, NC: The Queen City, The Hornet's Nest, Crown Town, My Big Fat Chinese Buffet, The C-Nasty. My car, the 1991 Toyota Celica, Undisputed King of the Road, seems to have developed a problem where it starts getting way too hot after it's been running for about an hour, but I made it down there by running the heat with the windows down. I stayed with my main bro Chase, who doesn't care how smelly you get when you've been driving in the heat with the heater on. It was pretty late when I got in, so we just chatted a bit and watched some music videos, including that one video they showed on Beavis and Butthead one time with that guy on fire. It turns out that they really set a guy on fire to make it. Who knew?

Friday:

Chase had to work, so I headed down to the con. I had prepared a giant list of all Ambush Bug and GLA appearances, plus the holes I have in my collection. Can you believe I'm still missing The Tick: Karma Tornado 6 and 8 after all these years? After a longbox search-induced cuticle injury (gasp!) I went back to the lobby and perused my growing haul while waiting for my main lady bro, the Editor of Capt. Ahab's Shanty, and this guy Kyle. We did the lunch thang at a resonably priced and reasonably tasty pizza joint down the block. With my tiny system thus fueled, I and my chums hit the con full force.

Now, I'm kind of a shy person (viz: meet every criteria in the DSM-IV for social anxiety disorder), which is why I only prattle on about my day using the anonymity of the internet, so going around and chatting with strange artists isn't something that would even occur to me as a thing to do. I found out that it totally is. We made the rounds of all the people who we wanted to sign things who weren't too popular and checked out the little guys. Everyone was really nice and I'm very jealous of people who have drawing ability. Guy Davis was there and he was free to do an sketch and have a nice chat. Jeff Smith was there but what with that line there was absolutely no way. I felt kind of bad for him though when I caught a glimpse of him with his little carpal tunnel wrist brace on. I didn't have too much money to spend, but I picked up a really nice Nightcrawler print and a tiny comic about mugs from Joseph Lambert, who messed up my change twice, but signed his name extra big.

At one point, Kyle bought a pack of TMNT trading cards which still had the original gum within. We tried to eat it which was totally a mistake. It was too powdery to spit out and too nasty to just deal with it. After the con we headed back to Chase's place and got some dinner and drinks with him and Jason. Stay tuned for the Saturday report and the con swag review!