From: Steve Lieber <[72674 2012] at [compuserve.com]> Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: CON: Lieber's San Diego Date: Wed, 10 Jul 1996 14:46:42 +0100 I've no energy for any sort of a coherent report, so I'm going to present my San Diego experience as a series of fragments- just the way I remember it. On the airplane, the kid in the seat behind me is really loud and obnoxious, until he catches sight of me doodling in my sketchbook. Then he starts asking polite questions. I offer to do a picture of his favorite character, and he asks for Spiderman. He's absolutely silent until I finish, but when I give him the drawing, which I've rolled into a tube and sealed with some tape so it won't get messed up, he starts smacking his aunt with it, yelling, "I got a SPIDERMAN drawin'! This is GREAT ART!" I meet Andy Mangels as I check in at the J Street Inn, and it turns out he's familiar with my work. He thanks me for giving Hawkman a hairy chest, and expresses wonder that the whole creative team was straight. My room at the Inn smells like an insecticide factory. I stop by to say hello at Elayne and Steve's Compuserve party. The lobby folks gave me the right floor, but the wrong room number. No problem, just follow the ruckus. It's loud and crazy and people are having fun. I discuss the best water bomb options with Carl P.'s son, and gripe about how the mania for a reuseable space shuttle has deprived me of my beloved "Washington Momument with Fins" spacecraft design. I speak briefly on the phone with Dave Eppley. Sadie O has arrived but I haven't the strength to fight the crowd to cross the hotel room to introduce myself. I stagger back to my room where it's quiet. Feeling guilty for enjoying the quiet, I show up at the party at the Hyatt. Richard Case and I buy drinks for each other, and talk about what a great town Prov. RI is. Richard tells me about his time at the RI School of Design where he studied under Chris Van Allsburg, among others. I'm irrationally jealous. Mark Hamill is holding court on the balcony outside. The people listening to him are aranged in a perfect semi-circle with a radius of exactly seven feet. If they'll stay like that til morning, we can use them for a sundial. Don Simpson is smoking a shaggy, exotic cigarette given to him by Paul Pope. I show Charles Vess my grease crayon. I chat briefly with Paul Guinan, letting him know how much I dug his storytelling and set design in Heartbreakers. Paul nicely phrases a basic objective for storytellers- "Put your characters IN an environment, not in front of one." Cigars. Everywhere people are smoking these god-awful dog-turd cigars. I dunno, I made it through 28 years of my life without ever seeing anyone below retirement age sucking on a stogie for enjoyment, and now the damn things are everywhere. I find myself wondering if the derby is coming back next. An dear friend stops by to say hey, and fills me in on the details of her life. I'm pleased to hear that she's dating someone who lives near her for once. (Actually, he's in an adjoining state, but that's a huge improvement.) I begin to notice that everyone's Mexico anecdotes have the same wrap up: "So we slipped them a twenty and they let us go." Hmm- except maybe Glen's, which ends with frogs and ann engagement ring. Home again- My room has no phone or alarm clock so I leave the lights and TV on as a way of making sure I sleep too lightly to miss the wake-up knock from housekeeping. This will be my m.o. for three of four nights. More to come if I can remember anything. --- More Fragments from San Diego Showtime. Is it just me or do the rules for where and when we can enter the hall get more and more Byzantine every year? I'm directed and re-directed up and down stairs and escalators, throygh hallways, in and out of doors, past an alarming cubic horror fifteen feet high that looks like a cross between a piece of Kirby tech and a Hellraiser puzzle box. The thing is supposed to be Jonny Quest related. Right. I begin setting up. My table has been quadruple booked., but this isn't too much of a problem actually. There are enough cancellations and people only setting up part time that no one has to go without space very long as far as I can tell. Rick Geary is sitting on my right. I resist the urge to kowtow, but still wind up babbling to him about how much I love his work. My sign says- STEVE LIEBER (former) ARTIST ON DC'S HAWKMAN CURRENTLY WORKING ON GRENDEL TALES WHAT A GUY Surprisingly, many Hawkman fans aren't familiar with Grendel. When the ask me what it is, I tell them to do a 180 and check out the table directly behind them, where Matt Wagner has conveniently set up. *Munch* *Chompf* This (gulpp) food court isn't bad... Joshua Macy gets the "coolest sketch request" of the con award, for his "Nanny Katie doing an Alas poor Yorick with the Kit Kat clock from Roadways." That bastard Jeff Parker is actually following up on his promise. I'd posted my usual free quick doodle offer on CIS, to which Jeff replied saying that for any picture I give out, he'll do one that's BIGGER. I sense the beginnings of an arms race. Jim Calfiore is stopping by my table and showing me what he's been up to. A kid sees Jim's signature on the bottom of one of his covers and seems awestruck. "Was that the name I THOUGHT it was." "I'm Jim Calfiore." "OH MY GOD! I LOVE YOUR AQUAMAN! ARE YOU SET UP HERE?" They go off, Jim leading and the kid floating after him. Mexican Dinner with Parker, Craig Gilmore, Randy Green, Bil Ruth, Chris Kemple and someone else I'm forgetting. Everyone is drawing on the paper tablecloth and wolfing down chips and salsa a lot quicker than our slacker waiter can refill them. The drawings are pretty damn detailed by the time the food arrives. Someone notes my picture of a riding cowboy and says, "Ooh- Dassa Nise Horrs." I'm in the US Grant hotel, decending a wide staircase, both sides of which are lined with posing beauty pagent contestants in sashes and formal gowns. Flashbulbs are going off everywhere. Moments later I run into Sidne and several other rac-ers, to whom I find myself unable to offer even a single complete, declarative sentence The lobby guy at the J Street Inn has run out of roll-a-beds, so Nat offers to sleep on the floor. Thanks Nat, and sorry. Jason Lutes' second issue of BERLIN is out. I rave at him for a few minutes on the subject of the extent to which he rules. Tom Hart and I chat briefly about Finnish cartoonist and children's book author Tove Jannson. We agree on the extent to which she rules. Tom's got a new series out from Black Eye, "The Sands" which is off to a promising start, and his 24 hour comic "The Ditch, The River, The Sea, The Snake" is a beautiful and powerful 24 page story. Xena and Hercules Bloopers. Cool. I've finally nailed a Batman pose that's given me trouble for a while now. Pat runs and gets a xerox for me before the guy comes to pick it up. Why am I able to pull off a tough shot like that at the busiest con of the year, when it's eluded me for so long in the quiet of my studio? Chris Moeller is apologizing to Mike Kaluta. I've offered to help him carry his stuff to the car, so we head back to his table. Chris is schlepping a giant portfolio and a cardboard box the size of my drawing board. Everything else of his fits neatly into a totebag, which I bravely shoulder. Elayne would like to buy my sketch of Wonder Woman fighting off a wild horse. Stupidly, I ask if she's serious. I work on it compulsively for the next day or so, changing the stallion into a gelding in the process. I run into Kubies everywhere. Mark Irwin, an inker for Wildstorm fills me in on what's going on back in Dover NJ. We jam on a Hawkman sketch. Someone's put a giant net up over the Fantagraphics party. Kurt Schaffenberger is set up right there, chatting and selling pages. I snag an astounding Superboy page as a gift for my buddy Jim Ottaviani, and thank Kurt for several thousand happy hours of my youth. Later, as a fellow very patiently waits at my table, I try to repay a karmic debt to Marie Severin. I introduce myself and tell her that when I was maybe 10 or so, she was guest at a con in Pittsburgh I'd attended. I'd spent the dollar my mom had given me, and I was miserable. She saw me, this sad little kid, called me over and offered to draw something for me. I asked for "Doc Savage" and this wonderful sketch came flying out of her pen. I tell her that I must have copied that drawing a hundred times afterwards, and that she might well be the reason I'm working in comics today. She laughs and says. "Oh God, I'm sorry!" I return to my table, thank the patient fellow and start calling kids over. Wonderful Con, folks. I'll be back again next year.