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KC Carlson by Keith Wilson.
by KC Carlson
HeroesCon logo
This Friday, June 22, my spouse Johanna and I are getting up at 5 AM to stack into the car and drive to Charlotte, North Carolina. We’re going to the 30th anniversary of HeroesCon, one of the extremely finest comic conventions in America (and sometimes understood as “America’s favorite Convention”).
“Really?” you ask. “Better than the San Diego Comic-Con?”
The HeroesCon floor in 2010.
Yes! At HeroesCon, you stand a much better chance of satisfying your favorite comic creators without standing in a line blocks long; you can actually walk around the primary space without as well much problem; and it’s infinitely cheaper for hotels and food than San Diego. The one drawback is that you don’t have the chance to see big Hollywood stars hawk their latest sequel — but occasionally, TV and movie people who are comics fans themselves (like people from SNL and 30 Rock) show up at Heroes to walk the floor, or look for bargains, just like you. (If you do area one, don’t freak out! just walk up and mumble something like “Hey, I truly like your (show, movie, shoes)!” and perhaps you’ll have a nice 2 or 3 minute conversation with them, if they’re not already speaking to somebody else. Be polite!)
Stuart & Kathryn Immonen
As for this year’s show, what a guest list! Stan Lee! Neal Adams! mark Bagley! Nick Cardy! Cliff Chiang! Becky Cloonan! Colleen Coover! Evan Dorkin! Tommy Lee Edwards! Matt Fraction! Adam Hughes! Stuart & Kathryn Immonen! Jeff Lemire! Paul Levitz! Ed McGuinness! Mike Mignola! George Perez! Ivan Reis! Tim Sale! bill Sienkiewicz! Walt and Louise Simonson! Scott Snyder! Lee Weeks! Bernie Wrightson! Mike Zeck! and great deals more! (Sorry, I ran out of exclamation marks…)
HEROIC FEATURES
Shelton Drum
Con organizer Shelton Drum (with his family and a incredibly organized and expert crew) has been doing this show for 30 years now — and every year it just keeps getting better and better. In addition to a huge dealer space with millions of comic books, toys, and whatnot (all of which want to be in your collection!), Heroes also has three full days of panel programming, so much that you may not have time for anything else! (Johanna is moderating three panels this weekend. watch for them!) HeroesCon is also the home of Indie Island — a devoted area for independent and alternative creators. Indie Island is so big, it’s practically a complete convention inside of another convention! (Wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma… You get the drill…)
The show also has one of the most incredible Art Auctions around. They set up a stage area in the big space with easels, so you can see the artists actually create — before your extremely eyes! — gorgeous art pieces. You can sit and watch them work while grabbing some lunch or just providing your feet a break. It’s amazing! many of comics’ “Big Gun” artists come prepared to play, as everyone tries to outdo the previous masterpiece. The pieces are then auctioned off on Saturday night, and it’s usually a Do Not miss event!
The Red Skull & the Black Panther visited Heroes in 2010. picture by Roger Ash.
Probably the very best thing of all about HeroesCon is that it’s family friendly. Sure, there are people walking around in costume all weekend, but if you’re dressed as well skimpily, the Heroes fashion authorities may suggest that you cover up a bit. Likewise, you won’t see much adult material at the show. For me, the very best part of any good comic show is seeing all the young visitors (usually in costume) with their parents. They’re tomorrow’s future comic fans!
The convention center’s food isn’t the best, but there are a number of great restaurants within walking distance. A few years ago, somebody came up with the great idea to plop down a pizza joint right across the street from the Convention Center’s primary entrance. It’s practical for lunch, but there will be long lines at peak times, and you may not be able to find a seat. but if you don’t mind a short walk, there are lots of great locations to eat just a few blocks over, further into downtown Charlotte. There’s a listing of suggested restaurants in the HeroesCon FAQ in the “Hotels / travel / restaurants / around Town” section.
Once you’re at the show, make sure to grab the official Program Book, which is jam-packed with information and great deals of cool artwork from most of the guests and has an incredible cover especially drawn for the show (and usually also made into t-shirts).
HeroesCon fun Run
New this year is an early Saturday morning fun Run. Which should be interesting as Heroes is frequently the most popular show around. and by that, I mean heat, as in temperature, son. So, prepare for the worst, but hope for the best! donations benefit the Hairy Cell Leukemia research study Foundation.
CATCHING UP WITH OLD FRIENDS
I haven’t been to all 30 of the Heroes shows, but I’ve most likely been to about half. I started going to as a guest back in the ‘90s when I worked at DC Comics (a billion years ago now). Sadly, DC no longer has a booth existence at Heroes, but a great deal of their creators and even a few personnel members are usually there to helm panel presentations throughout the weekend.
KC at the Immonen’s table.
These days, I just go to shows as a fan — mainly to see old buddies and catch up. I like seeing what my creative buddies are up to. This year, I’m especially excited to see Stuart and Kathryn Immonen at the show. They don’t always do a great deal of conventions, and they haven’t been to Heroes for a few years now. Stuart just recently published a photo of me sitting at their table from back then at his website. They also mark an essential passage of time for me. Not Stuart and Kathryn themselves — they’re quite much the exact same except for their ever-changing hairstyles — but their son Connor was born when Stuart and I were working together on Adventures of Superman — and now he’s in college. Yipes!
Louise & Walter Simonson from the Wizard world Chicago show in 2005. picture by Roger Ash.
Other people I’m excited to see are Walter and Louise Simonson. I first satisfied them within days of my arrival at DC, when mark Waid and I traveled to their home — by bus — to choose artwork for the then-upcoming Art of Walter Simonson book. Walt famously does not offer his original artwork, so DC was going to re-shoot everything from the originals for the book, and mark and I were enlisted to help choose and transfer the artwork back to the DC offices. It was an incredible day of sitting in the Simonson living room, while Walt brought out stack after stack of original art for us to not drool on. “Hey, here’s some Thor pages! want to see those?” he kept yelling from the other room. “Um… YES!” we shouted back. It was a extremely long and extremely wonderful day. When we left, I was bring a box of what seemed like numerous pages of Walter’s originals. It was massively heavy, but I never when let go of it for the entire bus trip back into NYC.
Eventually, I ended up working directly with Weezie when I inherited the editorial reigns of the then five (!) Superman titles. She composed Superman: guy of Steel — and, confusingly, Steel (which I didn’t edit.). Weezie ended up being my anchor during my oft-troubled times on the Superman books, mainly by being one of the most consistently rational of the many Superman artists and writers. As an editor, I drew much motivation from her as one of the great editors in comics — first at Warren, starting as Archie Goodwin’s assistant and eventually ending up being senior Editor, in addition to a stint at Marvel, notably editing Uncanny X-Men and new Mutants, which she would eventually write. one of comics’ worst-kept “secrets” is that Walt and Weezie are (visually) the Power pack kids’ parents (at least in the original series). Weezie was the co-creator and writer of that excellent, underrated comics series. I bet artist (and co-creator) June Brigman had something to do with what the parents looked like. (Editor’s note: She did. See the interview Westfield’s Roger Ash did with Weezie & June in Back issue #38 for more.)
HEROES AFTER DARK
One of the regional hotel bars.
A great deal of the very best times at comic conventions are what occurs at the hotel bars after the show. These are where the favorite memories happen, from Marv Wolfman holding court on working in comics in the late 60s/early 70s to Adam Hughes and our wives playing “Stump the Bartender”. I don’t keep in mind if this was before or after Johanna told an incredulous Adam about favorite crazy old Jimmy Olsen stories, including the many transvestite ones. and the one where everyone kissed a monkey.
KC’s not big on taking photos, so that’s why you get a picture of John Workman & Westfield’s Roger Ash at the Baltimore Comic-Con. picture by John’s wife, Cathy.
I usually seek out Jim Amash for multi-hour behind-the-scenes conversations about his wonderful interviews with golden and Silver Age creators for alter Ego. In recent years, Johanna and I have frequently kidnapped Robot 6 columnist Tim O’Shea for a night out at regional indy music/video store manifest Records and dinner (if we still have money). but I believe that my favorite — and most unforeseen — after-hours discussion was with legendary letterer John Workman and his spouse Cathy about behind-the-scenes comic history. If you only know John as a letterer, you only know 10% of his skill and history. For starters, he was art director for heavy metal for many of its glory years.
THE DESIGNATED walker AFFAIR
My most interesting after hours HeroesCon escapade was the night that I had to become the “designated walker” for six of the bigger names in comics. I was “lucky” enough to be at last phone call at a bar at the other end of downtown Charlotte from the convention hotels, where a extremely successful personal celebration was held. My six buddies (and a regional girl, who was obviously thinking about at least one of them) had overindulged, and it quickly ended up being obvious that it was going to be my job (since I don’t drink) to get them safely back to their hotels. since this was a comic convention, none of us had cars. believing that this was going to be fairly easy — it was six long blocks in a directly line back to the hotel — we started off walking.
The first issue was that even though it was 2 AM, there was still lots of web traffic in downtown Charlotte. These guys were as well far gone to concern about stopping at the corner before crossing the street. So my first job was to grab everybody by the arm (or collar) at every corner up until it was risk-free to cross. As you can guess, this wasn’t much fun, but it quickly got worse, as soon, one or more of them decided at each corner that “The hotel’s this way!” and turned a corner to walk away from the genuine route. At one point, a couple of them got completely turned around at a corner and started walking back towards the now-closed bar. It was like herding cats. Big, drunken cats. What was supposed to be a 15-20-minute walk was now approaching an hour because of the unforeseen course changes.
It got worse. We walked by an office building with a fountain in front, and the girl wished to go wading. next thing I know, she and five of the guys were in the fountain in different specifies of undress (thankfully, nobody naked). The sixth man sat with me on the steps, slurring “You don’t seeeem to be having any fun… You sssshould go wwwading. I’ll hold your wwwallet.” Uh huh…
As if on cue, a authorities car pulled up, and I walked over to talk to the officer. Luckily, he was a nice guy. He realized that I was sober and actually trusted that I had things (sorta) under manage and would get us all back to the hotel. I told him we were all from out of town. He provided me his card in case there were issues and told me to make sure that everybody got tetanus shots within a couple of days. good man. He drove by again after we got going to inspect up on us.
I finally got everybody back to the hotel. most had begun to sober up, most likely from the wading. It was now practically 4 AM. I got everybody into the hotel elevator, where everybody pushed the button for their floor — and I really hoped they were correct. I noticed that the regional girl was still with us and didn’t press a button. Obviously, she had decided who she was going to stay with, although she had been flirting hard with at least two of the guys. So even this stupid elevator was full of suspense. who would she choose?
The first four guys got off the elevator on low floors without incident, so this was going to the wire. We were down to the two guys the girl had been flirting with, the girl, and me, the chaperone. We got to the next chosen floor, and one of the guys got out, stopped, and turned around to see what would happen next. The girl hadn’t moved, and time had stopped for everybody. It was the most expecting of pauses. The other man in the elevator broke into a huge smile, believing he had “won”.
Suddenly, as the elevator doors started to close, the girl jumped out of the elevator, the doors slammed shut, and we started going up. The jilted guy, who was a good friend, just melted into the floor, drunkenly moaning “why?… why?…” When the elevator got to his floor, I assisted him to his room, essentially poured him into bed, sat with him for a bit, and left when it appeared like he had drifted off.
I went back to my room. It was practically 5. I was understandably all wound up and couldn’t sleep. Johanna, who had left earlier at a practical hour, woke up around 6, asking “how was your night?” and eventually regretted asking. (Actually, she was greatly amused, because she understood whom I was with. Obviously, the identities of these people must stay my secret.) I finally got a couple hours sleep before the con opened that morning.
All six of th