The Kickstarter for Scott Morse's This Ink Runs Cold graphic novel is now live! I've talked about this book a few times, and it's now off to the printer, with 89 different one-page stories, including one written my me!
What must it be like to run a campaign that's immediately successful? Is it stress-free? Do you pay even more attention to it? I may never personally know, but this one reached its funding goal in just about two days, which is really impressive!
Scott created some graphics for the campaign, one of which lists all of the creators who worked on the book. How did I get on the first line? Bribery? No, never. But if you take a look at the list, you can see some really talented industry professionals like Stan Sakai, Brian Michael Bendis, Fabio Moon, Jim Mafood, Phil Hester and a bunch of other folks.
After last year's Comic-Con in San Diego, I posted a video that I made with Scott, talking about the book and what we might expect. The finished book should be ready by this year's convention, which is a quick turnaround and really exciting.
Scott is printing a regular version of the book, and a black and white "noir" version that'll be pretty limited. There's original art tiers, bookplates, and other physical rewards to get. I'm hoping that there'll be a group signing at Comic-Con during the summer, where I will definitely try to get a second volume going via the bully pulpit, if necessary. I'm really looking forward to this book. Check it out here, if you'd like: http://kck.st/3DvoBcS
I've got a short story set for publication in This Ink Runs Cold, an upcoming anthology from Allen Spiegel Fine Arts! I just got an update from Scott Morse, the creator of the project, with finished art from our sci-fi/crime noir story, titled "Blood Brothers." HERE'S A PREVIEW:
The book is set to come out in the spring of '25, with contributors like Dave McKean, Jim Mafood, Fabio Moon, Stan Sakai, Paul Pope, Mike Allred and a bunch more!
One of the really cool things about this book is that Scott drew parts of it on the show floor at this summer's Comic-Con in San Diego, and he invited his fellow collaborators to stop by as he drew. I thought it'd be fun to document the whole process, and I recently uploaded the whole 26-minute affair to YouTube. So let's watch, shall we?
I really think that this book, with its unique concept and list of creators, is going to be up for some awards in '25 and '26. I'm excited for it to come out!
I've spent the past few months trying to shore up some of my comic book lettering skills. I've lettered in some fashion for years at this point, but there are still things at which I'm not really proficient. This is partially because I'm lazy, but also because comic book lettering is, in many ways, Wild West-like in how people approach it. There aren't a lot of definitive resources out there, and a lot of what I've learned has simply been through trial and error. Nate Piekos did us all a great favor in publishing his The Essential Guide to Comic Book Letteringlate last year, and I used that as a motivator to finally get some answers to questions that I've had for quite a while. If you're interested in lettering for comics, this book is a great resource!
One skill that I never really thought I'd acquire is creating a font from scratch, but I recently came across the video below from Joshua Smeaton, which shows how he created a font using his own handwriting:
This was enough for me to start working on a font of my own, and pretty soon I was writing out panagrams - sentences that use every letter in the alphabet. Rather than using a digital tablet or an iPad, I hand-wrote all of the letters so they felt more natural. My handwriting is not what I would call artistic or even all that good, so I tried my best to make everything legible while still maintaining my own style. I used comic book backers for this, so now I have a stack of these bizarre ramblings in my house. If anyone would just stumble upon them...well, I guess I have weirder stuff lying around as well.
The whole process has been long and involved. I scan the letters into Adobe Illustrator, where the program traces them and makes them individual objects. After choosing what I feel are the best letters, I bring the letters into Fontself, an Illustrator extension, where the work gets even more meticulous. Not only am I looking to create a regular, all-caps font that I can use in comics, but the completist in me has put in motion a lowercase version, too, complete with alternate symbols for almost every character. In addition to this, there are bold, italic, and bold-italic versions that many good fonts need, plus symbols and other letters that are more common in Spanish and European countries that I'm trying to incorporate as well.
In all, this has been a ton of work, but the results are, so far, fun and at least somewhat encouraging. The above balloon looks okay, I think, though I'm continuing to tweak things that I think could be better. I figure that I'll be at this particular task for another month or two before I finally put it to rest. But at the end, I'll have a font that is completely my own and not subject to any licenses or agreements, and hopefully one that I find some uses for, too.
I've named this particular creation the McClellafont, which is a bit self-centered of me, of course, but it's mine and I'm owning it. I considered different variations of spelling like "McClellaphont," "McClell-O-font," "McClellephant," and other, worse options, but "McClellafont" is what we're going with for now.
While I'm waiting for the paint to dry on the McClellafont, I went ahead and made a much simpler font using a similar method, based on the keystrokes of my much-ballyhooed 1930s Underwood typewriter.
For this one, I typed up a bunch of text, scanned the letters, *painstakingly* adapted them in Photoshop, and then brought them into Illustrator, where Fontself took care of the spacing and kerning. Manual typewriters have fewer keys than a modern keyboard (mine does not have a key for the number 1; you use a capital I as a substitute), so this one had fewer characters to use.
This font, which I am unimaginatively calling "Underwood 1930s," features a regular and italic version with numbers and all of the symbols that are included on the actual typewriter. The one exception is the exclamation point. If you wanted to exclaim something using this machine, you needed to type a period and then draw in the top line with a pencil or pen. I felt that I couldn't be without one (I get excited sometimes), so I created one using two existing symbols, and the result is what you see above. I made a few tweaks before I was happy with the final version, as seen below:
I can hear the clickety-clack of the keys and the thunk-thunk of the carriage as I read the words! I'm not sure how often I'll use these fonts, but it was interesting to make them and I'm happy I did it. I have plans for maybe one or two more before my font-creating career comes to a close. But maybe you'll see one or both fonts in a published comic book before too long.
Sometimes I don't know what to write in the title section of these posts. I try to come up with something short, catchy, and optimized for search engines. But sometimes that doesn't work, so I just write full sentences, and thus we get titles to posts like this, "I'm co-hosting a Gem City Comic Con panel on Saturday!" I chose this because...I'm co-hosting a Gem City Comic Con panel on Saturday.
The Dayton, Ohio Gem City Comic Con is having a virtual convention this year (followed by - perhaps? - an in-person event in July) on Saturday and Sunday, March 20th and 21st. My good friend Jennie Wood asked me to help her host a panel that will focus on writing and character development. The event is open to everyone and can be streamed in two places:
We'll have some time during the panel to write and share, so if you're curious about writing for comics and you want to have a space to work on developing characters, I hope you'll stop by!
The panel is from 11:15-noon (Eastern time) on Saturday, 3/20!
I watched a little bit of the Super Bowl last night - the Steelers didn't win it, so who cares - and I caught one of the many weird commercials during the game, this one for "Inspiration4", promoting an all-civilian space flight for four individuals.
The actual commercial is fairly simple: there are plenty of dramatic pans around a futuristic-looking spacesuit, a reflection of the planet Earth seen in the helmet, and a backdrop of a moody rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." But the circumstances surrounding the opportunity - four civilians, an experimental spacecraft, the number 4 in a circular logo - draws some obvious comparisons to...oh, what is that book called?
Oh, right. THAT ONE.
Space flights aren't for just anyone. They're for a brilliant scientist - his best friend - the woman he loves - and her fiery-tempered kid brother!
This HAS to be a promotion for the 2022-scheduled Fantastic Four movie, right? I know what everyone says - that it's a SpaceX flight and one seat is going to be raffled off to someone who donates to St. Jude's charity, but how could this be ANYTHING other than either a movie teaser or an opportunity to become a real-life FF by exposing yourself to seemingly deadly amounts of cosmic radiation? What about the SHIELDING, Reed?!
I guess we'll see how this Willy Wonka-style contest plays out. But a word of warning to whomever actually gets to travel in this spacecraft:
Ian Nichols, my friend and artist on The Tick, is filming and streaming some video of his drawing board for all to see. Starting pretty soon - February 26th and continuing on Wednesdays, Ian will be sitting down and drawing different characters and subjects and letting the world get a look, too. These will be streamed on a bunch of different platforms and archived on YouTube. Check out this video of the announcement, with The Tick!
Ian often gives the drawings to someone who shares the video as it's streaming, so you could get some really great art out of the bargain, too.
I guess Ian has two YouTube channels. Why would someone do this? Is one a burner account? Anyway, here's a (much longer) video of The Tick and Caped Cod from about a year ago:
If anyone's interested in the process of drawing comics, I hope you'll check out Ian's videos. It's a good behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to make comics.
OTHER TICK NEWS!
There are a few other items to pass along, if you're interested in reading more about The Tick. First, New England Comics is reprinting the 2019 convention issue (this'll be...the fourth printing??) just for their Massachusetts-area stores with a new cover by Ian Nichols.
The issue is limited to 1000 copies and, from what I understand, hasn't gone on sale yet. Why not, you might ask? I...do not know. Please sell them, NEC. I would like to get a few copies, myself.
The 2020 Free Comic Book Day Tick Special has been announced, and here's a look at the cover, once again by Ian! This image will actually stretch across both the front and back cover, which I think is really exciting! This one has a lot going for it, including Thrakkorzog, the Ninja Hedge, the Terror, a...cave? Anyway, I really enjoyed seeing this cover.
Lastly, the Amazon Tick complete series is on sale...in Australia. It is a legitimate release. Did I get a copy? Yes. Is it formatted so that I can actually watch it? I don't know. But I'm glad to get a DVD copy of this show in any case. I hope that there's an official US release (in HD, hopefully) to follow soon.
Hey there, meatbags, it's time to take a look at some Futurama-related items from the past few months. I will forever have the softest of soft spots in my heart for Futurama, the Fox-turned-Comedy Central sci-fi/comedy cartoon that has meant so much to me since it first launched back in 1999. I've had some fun and interesting moments surrounding the show both in and around Comic-Con, and well, I guess this is the place to talk about it.
I suppose I'll start off with the biggest item on the list. When I was at Comic-Con in July, I purchased some original animated art from the show, as seen above, from the episode "Bender Should Not Be Allowed on Television". I had hoped to get it signed by co-creator Matt Groening at his Bongo Comics booth appearance, but I wasn't able to get one of the randomly-distributed tickets when they were handed out.
As I was leaving the booth, I ran into Futurama writer and producer Patric Verrone, and we had a nice conversation. Quite unintentionally, I had bought some eBay items from Verrone a few weeks earlier, and it was an incredible coincidence that not only did I unknowingly make those purchases and exchange a few messages with him after seeing his name on the return address label, but we also just happened to be in a similar space at a convention with over 100,000 people.
I'm leaving some details out of the recollection, but the short of it is that Verrone took my animation art and not only got it signed by Groening, but also co-creator David X. Cohen and voice of Bender, John DiMaggio (Verrone signed it, too!). Needless to say, I was pretty stunned that this all happened, and I'm naturally pretty grateful to all involved, but mostly to Patric Verrone for the incredibly kind gesture. I love that the signatures are personalized, and oh my goodness, check out the original Matt Groening Bender doodle! How unbelievable is that?
After speaking with Verrone, I learned that he, Groening, Cohen, DiMaggio and many other Futurama alumni are creating a new cartoon for Netflix titled "Disenchantment", which will air in 2018. I can't wait to watch it, and I continue to hold out hope for a Futurama revival before too long.
Now let's look at some Futurama related pictures from Comic-Con!
Here's me with Patric Verrone after we met at the Bongo Comics booth. I keep pitching ideas to Bongo for their Simpsons-related comic book titles, but haven't had any luck so far. Maybe some day.
That's Simpsons and Futurama creator Matt Groening in the yellow shirt, arriving at the Bongo booth for his signing.
Near the end of the day on Saturday, I got a picture with Phil LaMarr, voice of Hermes and a number of other characters on the show.
There were a few Futurama-themed costumes at the show, including this Leela...
...and this Bender.
In other news, I finally managed to find and buy some Futurama Comics original artwork! This series was published in print form by Bongo Comics until very recently. Like a few of their series, Futurama Comics moved to a digital-only platform in the past year.
This artwork is by Tone Rodriguez, who shares a last name with Bender - maybe they're related. I'm a big fan of Rodriguez's work...even his 'on model' stuff has his signature style. He's my favorite Bongo artist because he always brings a touch of Kirby to his work.
I bought five pages in total - kind of. The art you see here is for a five-page short story, as per the description from the seller of the pages. Pages 1-2 and 3-4 are drawn side-by-side on the same pages, so these five pages are drawn on a total of...three pages. If that makes any sense.
Most Futurama Comics stories are contained to a single issue, and they're all drawn in the same basic style, so they tend to blend together after a while and 80+ issues. As such, I'm still trying to figure out exactly where this story saw print. I'm sure I'll figure it out. Check out that sound effect!
I've written a few more Futurama-themed recipes for the "Eats Like A Duck" food blog, including one for these Futurama sugar cookies! I made the above cookies recently and they turned out really well.
Lastly, Futurama kind-of-sort-of returned as a Nerdist podcast double episode with the entire cast and some of the writing staff in September. Have a listen!
Last summer, I took a drive out to Canton, Ohio to try out the new Thing burger from Denny's. Okay, I didn't drive out there SPECIFICALLY for that, but still, it makes it seem like I was on a trek to eat a hamburger named after the Thing and would stop at nothing to accomplish this goal. Why not.
I was surprised to see any kind of marketing campaign come out of the 2015 Fantastic Four movie, which had tons of bad publicity hanging over it even before filming was completed. Denny's seems like an odd choice, but I guess if you're Fox and someone wants to promote a film you've put a lot of money into, beggars can't be choosers.
It wasn't long before the film was scheduled to debut that I first saw the commercial:
It was also the first time that I said "huh, the Thing doesn't look so bad!" with regard to the new film. Of all the things the movie messed up, giving the Thing five fingers and making his eyes ANYTHING OTHER THAN BLUE is probably something I could have lived with. But it still annoyed me. Anyway, seeing a Thing promotion was pretty neat in any context.
The Denny's I went to had promotional imagery all over, which was, again, a surprise.
They even had special menus with Fantastic Four logos on them. I considered putting one under my shirt and walking out, but then I simply asked the waiter about them - and he gave me four (there were four different menus, each designed after a different character). Now I have four Denny's menus at my house. What will I do with these things? I don't know. But I'm glad I got them.
The Thing burger was the item being promoted most heavily, but there were actually a number of limited-time offerings, including a Human Torch skillet and Invisible Woman...pancakes:
Interestingly enough, Mr. Fantastic was the only member of the group who didn't have a menu item specifically named after him. There was a Fantastic Four-Cheese Omelette, but nothing that mentioned Reed. There was even a Dr. Doom-style dessert!
I don't often eat at Denny's (it had probably been two or three years since I had been to one), and the FF specials were limited-time deals, so there was no way I was taking a chance on anything but the Thing burger. Here's what it looked like:
The Thing burger came on a cheddar-cheese bun and came topped with bacon, cheese, an egg, hash browns and...Thing sauce (plenty of jokes to make there) with a side of fries.
The sauce tasted rather mustard-y. All in all, I liked it for a fast-food burger. I enjoyed the egg on top and the sauce was okay. I probably would get the hash browns on the side the next time I order it, in a parallel universe where this promotion lasted more than a few weeks and I felt like making another trip to Denny's. I'm glad that I was able to try out one of these - how many Fantastic Four-themed food items have there been since the 1970s? Now I've got visual proof that I tried some out in 2015.
So, I haven't seen the Fantastic Four movie yet. Is it strange that I bought FF-themed merchandise even though I have no interest in seeing the film? Yeah, I guess. I'm sure I'll see it at some point - hell, I'm sure I'll buy the DVD in a few years, when it's cheap - but everything leading up to it put a bad taste in my mouth (and not even the Thing burger could overcome it!).
I understand that Fox wanted to do something different this time around, if nothing else than to differentiate this new film from the lackluster effort that was made a decade ago, but it seemed that everything that could have gone wrong did, from casting to filming and everything in between. My biggest beef was with director Josh Trank, who seemed almost combative when presented with a skeptical audience. At every turn he seemed to ignore and outright refuse to pay attention to anything that had made the concept so popular over the last 50 years. And yes, I'm aware that the FF aren't as popular as they were in the '60s and '70s, and I'm aware that the Avengers and other Marvel properties have leapfrogged them in recent years for a number of reasons. But that doesn't take away the core elements that can still be something great, on screen and in comics.
I bought the above magazines a few weeks ago and was amused at how downbeat everything is, from the headlines to the inside article, about the film...and this is just weeks before it was released. It all came across as "the new Fantastic Four movie! People think it'll be terrible! But maybe it won't be!" It's obvious everyone involved was hedging his or her bets pretty heavily on this thing. My favorite part of the inside article came at the very end, from Trank himself:
So Trank "insist[ed] he wouldn't do anything differently" with the film...and then, a day after it premiered, he put out a tweet that said, basically, "I would have done a lot differently".
What a train wreck. Fantastic Four was easily one of the biggest flops of 2015. And, unfortunately, I can't help but feel like everyone involved on the creative and management end of it deserved everything they got. Do I sound bitter about all of this? I guess I am, but only because I love the characters so much. Movies - good or bad - don't define the franchise, but wouldn't it be great to see an Avengers-level Fantastic Four movie? One in which the Thing gets all of the attention and exposure the character deserves? I know I'd like to see it, and so far Hollywood is 0-for-4.
Oh well. We'll always have the Thing burger.
So what was I doing out in Canton, anyway? Why, I went there to see Pittsburgh Steeler great Jerome Bettis finally get inducted into the pro football Hall of Fame.
It was a great evening. Steeler fans outnumbered others by at least nine-to-one. It was raucous and lots of fun.
There were lots of pro football players at the event, including a number of Bettis's teammates. Here's James Farrior.
And here's Brett Keisel! What an impressive beard.
What else have I been up to? Oh, I made it into the trailer for the Christmas movie "Love the Coopers" with Olivia Wilde. In this scene I'm reading my copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. 3. How...exciting? Sure.
Fan films based on comic book properties are nothing new, but I had quite a shock a few weeks ago when I found the above 8mm film featuring none other than the Hulk and the Thing. At this point, it's almost 35 years old, so I'm surprised that a copy survived to be digitized, but I'm glad that one made it to YouTube.
Despite the technological limitations of the period, the film quality is decent, all things considering. It's amusing to see all of the different costumed characters in this film, from Superman to Darth Vader (Star Wars was pretty new at this point) to the Thing himself. The costume belongs to Gerry Giovinco, who relays the story behind this film here. Joe Sinnott even drew what amounts to the flyer for the film, as can be seen above.
The film itself is fairly crude and, interestingly enough, it doesn't feature the Hulk and Thing fighting - they just hang out and drink for a bit. Maybe the people behind the film were worried about messing up that great Thing costume. As Giovinco explains, he created the costume to wear at a convention - and 35 years later, I still have yet to see a better Thing getup at any con I've been to.
The entire film has its audio dubbed, which is, of course, a sign of when it was filmed. One of the directors listed in the credits is none other than Bob Schreck, who went on to be a top editor at DC for a time and is part of the Legendary line of comics (publisher of Holy Terror) today.
The film even has an IMDB page. I can't figure out if the Thing only has one eye, as you can only see the right eye throughout the film, of if the other is just perpetually shadowed.
The date for this film is either 1982 or '83 (I found both dates listed), and the Hulk obviously takes its cues from the Ferrigno version. What a strange find. The film seems pretty random and madcap throughout - someone compared it to the Rocky Horror Picture Show - but it's fun to see. I wonder what these guys are up to today. I'd sure love to chat it up with Giovinco about his Thing costume.
This one goes under "how did I forget to post this before now?" Because I have categories like that, in a filing cabinet, next to my desk. Whatever.
Jeff Lafferty is not only a great artist, and not only a great guy, but he's a great artist who's a great guy who has drawn Teddy and the Yeti before. He's also drawn Doom 2099 for Marvel. I wonder if he gets tired of me saying that, because it's not like he hasn't done other, more impressive things in the years since then...but I guess I just can't let some things go.
A while back, I commissioned Jeff to draw the above image of our favorite cryptozoological adventuring duo. I eventually used the finished product for a series of trading cards that I gave out at Comic-Con. Jeff sent me the final piece, which I promptly had framed:
I wrote about this briefly at the time, but since then, Jeff has created a YouTube video that shows off his process in creating the image (with some of that space age time lapse video, too), and it's worth a look, even a few years after the fact (and he name checks Franks and Beans!). Thanks again to Mr. Lafferty for producing such a fantastic image of these characters!
Saturdays at Comic-Con are often the busiest days of the entire event. It has a feeling of "let's squeeze in as much as we can before it's all over". Sunday, in contrast, is pretty mellow and relaxed.
I was nervous about this particular Saturday weeks in advance, though, because it was announced that "Weird Al" Yankovic was going to make a rare Comic-Con appearance in the form of a panel at the Horton Grand Theater.
The Horton was a new offsite location for Comic-Con in 2014, and it took some obvious cues from Nerd HQ and its intimate celebrity panels. Nerd HQ does everyone a favor and distributes tickets to its panels before the events, so there's very little time spent waiting in line, a staple of Comic-Con-run panels. As the Horton Theater seats only a few hundred people, I had nightmares of waiting in line overnight just to get the chance to take in this panel, which was at the top of my list for the entire show.
Comic-Con, though, chose to hold a random drawing for tickets on Saturday morning, much in the same way it gives out tickets to autograph signings and certain (LEGO) exclusive offerings. I had never waited in line for a random drawing, and I found the entire concept a bit suspect to begin with, so there was a lot of trepidation over whether it would even be worth it or not to try and get tickets for this event.
I'm glad I gave it a chance, because it obviously worked out, and it was much more painless than I imagined. Of course, I say this as someone who was able to get one of the few tickets available, but overall I think that Comic-Con has a good system in place when it comes to events like these.
I got in line about an hour before the doors officially opened for Saturday, and by this time the line was already stretched out of the convention center, down the stairs, across the street and onto the sidewalk near the water. Some people thought better of it and left when we didn't seem to be moving by 9:15, but soon after we were steadily on our way to the entrance.
Once inside the autograph pavilion, the lines split up further depending on what event you wanted to go and see. There were quite a few people who wanted to try for the Weird Al tickets, but still, I would say that before 10:00, it was my turn to grab a ticket.
The system is so low-tech to the point of being ridiculous. Comic-Con volunteers hold a cloth bag with generic "keep this ticket" tickets inside. You pick one, and if there's a stamp on the back (for me it was an image of a frog), you win. Luckily, if you get a ticket with no stamp, you can get in line once again, which by this time only takes five or so minutes to get back to the front. Even luckier, my wife pulled a winning ticket. Luckier still, each winning ticket gets you two event tickets, so we were all set, and not much worse for the wear.
At this point, I decided to press my luck, and I got back in line for the Weird Al autograph session, which required a different ticket. My wife took off for the George R.R. Martin line, and - wouldn't you know it - we both got tickets to those. I'll talk more about the autograph session in a bit.
The tickets to the event came in an envelope and looked like the picture above. For me, it was pretty cool to get a specially printed ticket with the Comic-Con logo on it, and I was even happier that we were able to keep our tickets after we entered the theater - they were checked, but not collected and not even torn. So I got a nice keepsake from the event that I was somehow able to keep in good shape all the way back home.
The Horton Grand Theater was a few blocks from the convention center, and it's obviously designed for small performances, either theatrical or musical. It sat probably 300 people. There was a lot of nervous energy in line as we waited to enter the building. Once inside, there was a poster with the Mandatory Fun branding on it, as seen above. I wonder who walked home with that thing. I'm sure someone claimed it.
Once inside, my wife and I got seats about six rows from the front, as assigned on our tickets, which were great. After a few minutes, the event organizers asked to see if there were empty seats, as they would then let in the "stand by" hopefuls, otherwise known as the teeming masses who took a chance and waited outside the building. There just so happened to be two seats in the very front row, and I grabbed them up quick.
Al and the host, comedian Jonah Ray, came out a few minutes later, after a video introduction, and the crowd, of course, went wild. Keep in mind that this was a matter of days after the Mandatory Fun album was released, and almost right after it was announced that the album had reached #1 on the Billboard charts (Al's first, and the first comedy album in about half a century to hit that mark...which is a really big deal!). Everyone was excited to be there and especially happy to be one of the few to see the event in person.
The panel itself was a lot of fun, though nothing revelatory transpired. Jonah Ray might have been the most excited person in the hall, and that led him to talk...and talk...and talk about how much he enjoyed being there. That's great, and I probably would have felt similarly, but I suppose he didn't realize (or didn't care) that no one in the hall was there to see him. Seriously, I hate to gripe about it, but rather than moderate the panel, Ray wanted to interject his own opinion into everything that Al said and every question that was asked by the audience. Now I know a lot about Jonah Ray, I guess.
About half way through the panel, a Q&A session broke out, and I was able to leap out of my seat and in front of a microphone, which was placed not too far away from where I was sitting. The session was as strange as you might expect, with some people asking the almost requisite "do you remember me from..." questions to one lady telling Al that she sat on his lap at some point back in the '80s.
From my time at the Toonseum, I had learned that Al had recently been given the ACE award (Amateur Cartoonist Extraordinaire) by the National Cartoonists Society. I knew that he had always been a fan of Mad Magazine, but I didn't have any clue that he did any drawing of his own, so I was able to ask him about it. The end of my question was something like "I'd like to know why don't we see any of these drawings...and can I have one?" The last part was a joke, of course, but it got me the meanest look you can imagine from the staffer who had earlier asked us all what our questions were going to be. This in itself was pretty funny.
Someone sitting on my side of the auditorium, near the back, managed to record sections of the panel (about half altogether), including most of the discussion between Al and Jonah Ray:
You can pick me out in my trusty gold Steelers hat near the beginning, as seen below. You could probably also see me by my enthusiastic fist pumping:
The panel ended after about 50 minutes...but it wasn't Al's last appearance of the day. I had mentioned earlier that I had also gotten a ticket to a signing event. This event was to take place before the panel. And even though I've got probably too many things signed by Al in my possession, I thought it would still be fun to get in line, say hello and get an autograph if I could.
Earlier that morning, Shout! Factory made the announcement, obviously with Al's Comic-Con appearance in mind, that they were releasing a 25th anniversary Blu-Ray edition of the movie UHF later in the year. I caught it, purely by chance, on Twitter, and as I knew that Shout! had a booth at the show, I decided to seek them out and see if they had anything - I was thinking a postcard or flyer announcing the release - that I could grab to get signed.
This was around 10:30, so the convention hall had already been open for quite a while, but I walked down to the main floor and found the booth, only to see an incredible UHF poster print resting against one of the sides of the booth. I looked the guy working the book in the eyes, pointed to the poster, and said, "uh, what is this?", fearing that they'd be on sale for, like, a hundred bucks.
HOWEVER! It turns out that I really hit it big. The first 50 people to ask ask about Weird Al were given a wrist band to an exclusive poster signing later in the day, right after the panel at the Horton theater. This was not announced! It was pure luck that I was there at the right time.
HOOOOOWEVER!! I was an idiot and was worried about getting back into the convention hall in time to make the signing. This wasn't completely unfounded, as it is difficult to walk from one side of the hall to the other at Comic-Con, and I was coming from outside and blocks away. So I asked the guy if I could forgo the wrist band and just get a copy of the poster, which, I figured, I could take to get signed at the event that I already had a ticket for.
The guy looked at me like I was crazy, and to his credit, I kind of was. The posters were on hold until the signing event, so I couldn't get a wrist band and still get a poster, but I could, he told me, get a poster with no chance of getting it signed later.
I took him up on this proposition and, a little bit later, went up to the autograph pavilion...only to see literally hundreds of people waiting in line to get Al's autograph. Realizing I had made the (terribly, horribly, inexcusably) wrong choice, I nonetheless waited at the back of the line for about 15 minutes...only to not move at all. I was one of the very last people in line, it seemed, and in the time I was waiting, only about three other people showed up to stand in back of me.
At this point, I had almost nothing to lose, so I went back to the main floor and the Shout! booth and asked if I could make the trade, once again, of the poster for the wrist band. It just so happened that there were still about six wrist bands left, so my monumental stupidity didn't end up costing me on this day. And it's a good thing, too, because the signing was really great!
After the panel ended, I beat a hasty retreat back to the convention hall. I, of course, understood that Al had to travel the same distance, but I imagined him taking a secret underground route or something reserved for celebrities and was thus anxious about getting there in time. Not to worry, though, as I was about 20th in line and it was still about 15 minutes before Al walked in.
Convention security did, as it turned out, kind of sneak Al in through the back. Probably for the purposes of crowd control, the signing wasn't advertised, so there were a lot of stunned people standing near the booth when "Weird Al" Yankovic came walking in to sit behind a table. A lot of people (innocently enough) tried to sneak in line only to be told of the wrist band policy.
Being first in line sometimes has its benefits, but I find that there are sometimes more benefits to being back a bit, as was the case with this signing. The first three or four people in line got a poster, said hello, got it signed and were on their way. As the signing progressed, everyone loosened up a little bit, and soon people were chatting away with Al, getting their pictures taken, shaking hands, asking questions, the whole bit. Al started personalizing the posters after the first half dozen or so, too. I know that not everyone likes to have autographs personalized, but this was one item I was happy to get my name written on.
Shortly after Al arrived, he was joined by another special guest - UHF director (and Al's longtime manager) Jay Levey! Not everyone knew who he was, but listen, people: he played the lead role in the "Gandhi II" spoof from UHF! This was a big deal!
The line moved fairly quickly and the crowd of onlookers grew. The overall mood was pretty low-key throughout. Check out that oversized UHF print behind Levey...I also wonder who walked away with that.
I've been looking to give Al a copy of the UHF "Six Panel Cinema" that Jeff McComsey and I worked on a few years ago for a while now. I took it to his Washington, PA concert in 2013, but didn't get a chance to see him after that show. So when I heard about his Comic-Con panel, I thought that I might was well lug it to San Diego with me in case I was able to toss it at him from me seat or something. It was a gigantic stroke of luck that this just happened to be the day that the Blu-Ray was announced. So many things came together - what were the odds that I'd get to meet Al in this context and actually have the UHF print with me? But it worked out and I was able to give him a copy, which both he and Levey seemed to enjoy. This was - of course - a big thrill for me.
Other things of note:
1) I was wearing my Transformers "Dare to Be Stupid" t-shirt on this day. Both Al and Jay noticed it and hadn't before seen it; "Dare to Be Stupid" is a song of Al's that made it onto the 1980s Transformers movie soundtrack, hence the reference on the shirt. I told Al where I bought it (the locally-based 80sTees) and he pulled out his phone to search it out.
2) This is probably the best picture that I'll ever take with Weird Al. I should have played the lottery this day. So much was going my way.
3) McComsey's Six Panel Cinema later took a trip to the first page of Reddit, at which point Al tweeted a copy of the UHF entry to his (literally) millions of followers (if you'd like to buy a print, you can do so here).
4) The poster, thankfully, made it back to Pennsylvania with me safely. I bought a protective sleeve at the show and it has stayed in there ever since. I realize that this is a pretty rare Weird Al collectible, but I'm just happy to have this memento from what turned out to be a pretty good day.
5) The poster had what turned out to be the front artwork for the Blu-Ray release of the movie, which is out and available to purchase now. It is very similar to the previous DVD release, with a notable exception: it includes the entire Comic-Con panel as a special feature (I wish it also included footage from the signing event, which was filmed in its entirety). It's a more professional feed than what was on YouTube, which is nice...and I also make a couple appearances on it.
6) Mandatory Fun won Al his fourth Grammy award, which continues quite a year for Mr. Yankovic, and he's also announced the dates for his upcoming Mandatory World Tour. He'll be in nearby Greensburg on May 31st. I'll be there, too. You should also come.
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