I have a lot more photos from the convention, most of them taken by my pal Phil Geiger. First up is this one from Thursday…
This is from a panel, the full name of which was "Good Grief! The Enduring Legacy of Peanuts, Snoopy, and Charles M. Schulz." Basically, this was an hour of four people involved in the recent book, The Essential Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz: The Greatest Comic Strip of All Time, talking about the book and hinting that if you haven't bought it, you should buy it. Seated, we have me in the green checked shirt, then Chip Kidd, the award-winning book designer who — the following evening — took home an Eisner Award for the design of said book. The gent on the right is its editor and my excellent friend, Charlie Kochman and the gentleman standing is Lex Fajardo, the Editorial Director of Publishing & Experiences at Charles M. Schulz Creative Associates. Lex was the panel moderator and one of several folks in the Schulz organization without whom the book wouldn't have been as good or accurate.
Okay, let's go to Friday…
I'm seen above with my friend Mark Waid — a fine writer of comic books and an expert on their history. Whenever we're at the same con, we do a panel called "Two Marks Explain Everything." People ask us questions about comics. We answer them…and if we can't answer a question, that probably means no one can. I don't think we've been truly stumped yet. I enjoy this panel a lot.
I also enjoy a panel we do every Saturday at Comic-Con, always to a very large and full room. It's Quick Draw!, the game where I challenge fast cartoonists to come up with gags and sketch them out before the eyes of the audience. Our three this year were — above, left to right — Lalo Alcaraz, Scott Shaw! and Tom Richmond. My partner Sergio Aragonés used to be on it every year but he's not attending conventions these days so he participated by phone. We also had three guest cartoonists for one bit — Wendy Pini, Dan Jurgens and a gent who I plucked out of the audience when one cartoonist was a no-show. He was very good but I have forgotten his name. Would he or someone who knows it please let me know what it is? He was part of a pretty funny hour in Room 6BCF.
I said here the other day that I didn't have a photo of the Frank Miller panel because my friend-with-a-camera, Phil Geiger, couldn't get into the event. Well, I was wrong. He did get in and he snapped this picture of Frank and moi talking after the panel. Most of what we talked about on the panel was Frank's newly-issued autobiography, which I highly recommend.
Lastly for now: Every Sunday morning at Comic-Con, I chair The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel and that's a photo from this year's. The gent in the Captain America t-shirt is Roy Schwartz, who accomplished the seemingly-impossible feat of getting a street corner in Kirby's old neighborhood renamed "Jack Kirby Way." Next to him, we have Jack's grandkids, Jeremy Kirby and Tracy Kirby, and lurking next to them is attorney Paul S. Levine. who represented the Kirby family and who now represents me. In fact, he's handling the business end of a very long book I've written about Jack and I expect to be able to announce an actual publication date for it in the next month or three.
And in the front, there's me and Mike Royer, Jack's favorite of all the inkers he had over the years. How long have I known Mike? I knew him at least a year before I met Jack and I met Jack in 1969.
That's enough for now. I have more photos and I'll have them up here shortly. Thanks, Phil.