GEEKGASM!!!

Ok, so a couple of weeks ago was the Phoenix Comicon. As you may remember from back in September, I was on staff for last year's con. Well, this year, not so much. Which was AWESOME!! This meant that I got to do all the stuff you go to a comicon to do: Stand in line,
buy things, win things and get autographs. I got to hang out with some cool people, met a few cool people and by virtue of the fact that I was on staff last year, got to see some of the behind the scenes stuff most people don't get to see. It was great. I actually got a major geek moment, and while I'm looking forward to SDCC in July, I don't know how it'll top this:

I got to hang out with comics legend, George Perez.

Here's the lowdown:

On Sunday morning, I met with my friend Gareth at the Con, at the art contest he runs for the con. He tells me that he's on his way over to the vendor room to check his tickets. "What tickets?" I ask. He proceeds to tell me that the Hero Initiative was holding a raffle where you could win a sketch from Mr. George Perez, by donating $50 to the charity, and the drawing was at 11:00 am. (This was at 10:45am.) So, I begged my wife to let me enter the raffle, and we bought 6 tickets (at $1 a piece). 11:00 rolls around and they start the drawing. 7 people are called 6 people claim their place in line. They had one more slot to fill, so they call off the final number, and guess who's holding it in their hot little hand? Yeah, ME! W00t! So we fork over our $50 and are told by Brian Pulido to come back later today to retreive our sketch. Cool beans. So, I go to the AZCBA table, to set up my sketching for charity thing, and am joined by indy comic renaissance man, Craig DeBoard. We do the sketch thing for a couple of hours, during which I do about 15 sketches and gain $24 for the charity. Not bad for 2 hours worth of work, and Ashlie and I hit the vendor floor again. We get some sketches from Tony Parker (who is awesome, BTW), Daniel Davis, Arthur Suydam, Marat Mychaels, Matt Haley, Phil Hester, Bret Blevins, M. Alice LeGrow, Tess Fowler, Todd Nauck, Tone Rodriguez and James Owen. And we run into David Rabbitte (also a really cool dude) on the floor, and talk to him a bit. We then figure let's check in on our Perez Sketch. So we amble on over to the Hero Booth to see that George is still about 2 sketches ahead of ours, and make it just in time to see Gareth's daughter, Cammie posing for her sketch of Raven from the Teen Titans, (which was totally cute,) so we go to a panel. Well we got back in time to see George finish the sketch before ours and start ours. So, we start talking to George and Brian and ask if it's OK to take a picture of him drawing my sketch. He said it was cool, so we did. Brian decides to do us one better, tho. He has me come sit next to George behind the table while he's working and tells me, "What's the one question that you've always wanted to ask George or any comic professional?" Me being the uncreative sot that I am, ask "How'd you get into the business?" To which George replies, "Through the Skylight." We all have a bit of a laugh, and chat a little about art techniques and tricks, until George finishes my drawing. I was beaming for the next week about that. Not many people get to sit and talk to one of their Idols like they matter, and that was exactly what happened to me. SO, I gotta thank Brian and George for being awesome, and the current PCC staff for bringing me this major geek moment.

And now Pics!!

George & I before he started drawing.

George drawing my Thor sketch

Me sitting with George Perez while he's drawing my Thor Sketch. AWESOMENESS!!!