I've been meaning to write the second part of my WonderCon Report but it's been a busy week around here.
Where was I? Oh, right: Saturday. Saturday, parts of WonderCon looked like a Cosplay Con with a few tables for people to sell comic books. I keep hearing that the people who do this just want to be noticed and to "stand out" and I don't completely buy that. If they wanted to "stand out," half of them wouldn't be dressed as Harley Quinn or The Joker. Harley Quinn is such a popular costume, I even saw women dressed up as her!
Some folks find them annoying but I love all cosplayers who don't brandish props that can (and do) thoughtlessly poke people and who understand that when someone asks to take their photo, they can't just stop anywhere and strike a pose. If it's on a walkway, other people may be trying to walk that walkway. I saw one spot where we came close to having a Four-Klingon-Pileup.
My two Saturday panels were late in the day so I just wandered around talking to folks and browsing the aisles. There were some wonderful craftworks there to be browsed and if I had any room left in my house for such things, some of them would have been purchased by me, too. As it was, some of the sellers seemed to be doing a brisk business.
That day's panels — Quick Draw! and Cartoon Voices — were back-to-back in the same room, the way we go it at Comic-Con in San Diego. We filled the room to capacity for the first one and the few seats that were vacated after Quick Draw! were quickly filled for Cartoon Voices. Both were in Room North 200B, which is in the convention center's new add-on building…very nice but also a little far from the part of the main hall where I'd been hanging out.
Our Quick Draw! draw-ers were Tom Richmond (from MAD), Lonnie Millsap (from this very funny site) and Sergio Aragonés (also from MAD, as well as Groo the Wanderer). Scott Shaw!, who usually occupies one of those seats, was unable to make it to WonderCon but we expect to see him back, Sharpie in hand, for San Diego. On the Cartoon Voices panel, we had Neil Ross, Eliza Jane Schneider, Wally Wingert, Julie Nathanson and Townsend Coleman.
Fave moment of the panel? There were several but I loved when Wally displayed a new acquisition he'd brought to the con…a replica Muppet from the famous "Mahna Mahna" routine. Wally brought it out, made it say "Manha Manha" and the whole audience, without prompting, began singing "Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo."
Sunday, I did two more panels. There was Cover Story where we discuss the design of comic book covers, in this case with Dan Jurgens, Ed Piskor, Mitch Gerads and Ryan Benjamin. Later came the Annual Jack Kirby Tribute with my ol' partner Steve Sherman, Tom Kraft of the Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center, and attorney Paul S. Levine. Interest in Jack and his work has never been greater and I expect to keep saying that the rest of my days.
That's about all that comes to mind. I very much enjoyed chatting with old friends and meeting many readers of this blog. I had one frustrating conversation with a Trump supporter who sought me out to explain to me that everything bad about Trump the press says is a conspiracy of lies, whereas everything good you hear about him is absolutely, incontrovertibly true. Guess that must be so if this guy said it. As a bonus for the entire weekend, I made great time back on the 5 Freeway…and I think that's the end of this report. If you made it there, I hope you had even a quarter as good a time as I did.