American Airlines got their act together in time for my flight here Thursday. The plane took off on time and landed darn close to the scheduled hour. What's more, they actually managed to have my luggage on board…so no problems there. The New York Comic Con, which concluded today, was packed with interesting people, and an amazing percentage of them seemed to be readers of this here blog. Everyone I encountered was asking me about Lydia the Cat and, as an afterthought, about my new book.
Enjoyed seeing many people including but not limited to: Murphy Anderson, Buzz Dixon, Paul Levitz, Stan Lee, Irwin Hasen, Joe Simon, Joe Sinnott, Dick Ayers, Charlie Kochman, John Romita Senior, John Morrow, Stan Goldberg, Jerry Ordway, Colleen Doran, Kyle Baker, Joe Staton, Al Jaffee, Alan Kupperberg, Paul Kupperberg, Marty Pasko, Gary Groth, Kim Thompson, Nick Cardy, Jerry Robinson, Mary Skrenes, Mike Richardson, Michael Davis, Randolph Hoppe, Richard Bensam, Jesse Reyes, Alex Simmons, Marc Chiarello, Jack Morelli, Alan Weiss, Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, Bob Greenberger, Len Wein, Mike Gold, Martha Thomases, Tony Tower, Michael Uslan, Sal Amendola, Jim Amash, Ramona Fradon, J.J. Sedelmeier and I'm probably forgetting at least thirty other names. Oh, yeah — and I finally met Fred Hembeck in person after more than 25 years of by-mail (and more recently, by-Internet) correspondence. And as Carolyn and I left, there was Jim Burns, who has been a frequent contributor of information here.
Friday, I did two panels — one about the work of the late/great Will Eisner; the other, about the state of the animation business. Saturday morn, we had a nice public memorial panel about our pal, the late/also great Steve Gerber. Many of Steve's fans and friends were there, along with members of his family. And Steve himself was present as you can see from this photo…
I guess you can't read the label so I'll tell you what the top line of it says: "This Package Contains the Cremated Remains of Stephen R. GERBER." That's right. We had his ashes there. Morbid, I know…but Steve wouldn't have wanted to miss a whole panel about himself. It was announced that immediately following the panel, we'd be taking the ashes down and flinging them in the faces of certain editors.
Then today, we had a nice Jack Kirby Tribute Panel with Dick Ayers and Joe Sinnott. Great to see those two guys still working…and mobbed by admirers of all ages.
Good crowds. Good people. I wish I had some good stories or news but it's mostly been seeing friends and people telling me they followed the story of The Kitten here. I'll write more about it when I can think of something to write.