January 27, 2008(From Don Ensign's journal)Next morning we checked out of the hotel around 8:30 AM. We went to a Family Restaurant and had a good breakfast. We then returned to the Convention Center and went to the dealer’s room and spoke with several people. One was Mike Kunkel (Herobear) and gave him a copy of the CCAS Business card. Also was able to speak with Mike Bullock at the next table (writer of Phantom) and gave him a CCAS business card and a copy of the 2007 Guide. Then James and I and talked with Noel Neill and I purchased her new book, Beyond Lois Lane and James took my photo with her. I told her that her “Thank you for being part of my childhood.” She responded very well to that. She is a very sweet lady. Then we want over to the Rude/Dude booth and spoke to Mrs Rube. She mentioned that the new Moth mini-series will start on Free Comic Book Day in May. We then went to the theatre and watched several trailers for some of upcoming films. While there Walter Koenig came in and began talking about his Inalienable film. We left that session and went to a comic artist panel with Ed McGuinness. During the question and answer period I asked him questions about his work habits and so forth. He mentioned that he tried to maintain balance in his life—not work on Sunday and going to church with his family. McGuinness is currently working on the Hulk. I took the opportunity to speak with him afterwards and gave him the CCAS Business Card and told him a little about CCAS. He was appreciative of knowing about CCAS.After the Ed McGuinness panel James and I took as short lunch break at a nearby Circle K. Then we returned to the Convention Center and went the Michael Golden panel. This was mostly a Q & A where he talked about some of his background before his got into comics and how he broke into the industry. He confessed that he was never really a comics fan like many who have come into the industry over the years. He provided good answers and told some interesting stories about his life in comics. Early in his career while in the DC offices Joe Kubert demonstrated how he could draw by first putting down a small circle and a squiggly line and then proceeded to draw a fantastic sketch of Adam Strange. Golden was so blown away by that thinking he could never do that. However, thirty years later with constant practice he was able to do the same thing. Golden started doing car painting in the early 1970s (hippie van art) and friends urged him to try comics and on his first trip to New York got work from both Marvel and DC. (He mentioned that this very unusual).After the Golden panel James and I took in a workshop about some computer software for making web comics. The presenter also is making available free space on his server for people wanting to show their web comics on the internet. This company, Dreamco a Tucson based company and the presenter was Greg Loumeau. The software contained some good features for making very simple webcomics. After that we returned to the theatre and a raffle was going on with everyone in the audience winning something—James and I won much needed hats as it was a rainy Sunday. We made one last trip to the dealers room. Then we decided to leave around 4:30 PM and got back to Tucson around 7:00 PM. We had a late dinner and I took James back to his home and then returned to Green Valley. Overall a good, fun weekend of Con events.
I 'm a big fan of Mike Kunkel's and Ed McGuinnes. It would be so cool if they frequented this forum too. Course with they're busy schedules it might not happen. Still it would be cool. Sounds like fun. Maybe I'll bump into you at the SDCC.
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I have posted some photos of the Phoenix on another web site that you might find interesting.
http://sharingmystory.blogspot.com/
God bless.
DinoDon