And hello this time from San Francisco. I flew back here yesterday morning on a plane full of Korean teenagers who were loudly rehearsing scenes from High School Musical. There's gotta be an F.A.A. regulation prohibiting that kind of thing.
The con was just where I'd left it but busier than the day before. I got back in time to host three panels in a row — a one-on-one with Gary Friedrich, a three-on-three (I guess you'd call it) with Sergio Aragonés and Stan Sakai and my ever-lovin' self, and a one-on-one with Roy Thomas. At the first, Gary spoke with disarming candor about his career writing for Marvel in the late sixties and early seventies, and how it ended due largely to alcohol abuse…or as Gary put it, "My becoming an unreliable drunk." He's thirty years sober and writing again, so the whole thing has as much of a happy ending as might be possible. If I were running a publishing firm today, I think I'd hire Gary to write some stories for me…including one that was painfully autobiographical. The audience at our panel was certainly riveted by the honesty of his narrative.
The panel with Sergio and Stan was fun, as those things always are. And I could have spent several more hours quizzing Roy about his long, colorful career. Mike Friedrich, who wrote for Marvel in the days when Roy was in charge, dropped in to heckle him about not supporting Barack Obama, even though Obama was a reader of Conan back when Roy wrote the comic.
Then in the evening, I took an expedition to see Frank Ferrante do his uncanny Groucho show at a local Jewish Community Center. But I'll write about that in a separate post because it's Sunday morn and there's another day of WonderConning to be done. See you later.