Okay, I got up at around 6:00 a.m., took my Lantus(long acting insulin), checked blood sugar, then got in the shower. After getting dressed I hastily tried to get together all the stuff I wanted to get signed by looking at the ECCC guest list and then scrambling through my comic boxes. Turns out that the only stuff I had that I wanted to get signed was the Vigil stuff, a few Mike Grell books and a few Bill Willingham books. SO I had a short comic box more than half full but decided that was too much and eventually got it down to a small cardboard mailer box with only Vigil stuff and one Willingham comic.
I never even saw Bill Willingham(or Mike Grell) at the con so...*shrug* but I will get back to that later.
Me and my friends all crammed ourselves into a tiny car and made the half hour journey to Seattle. Then we spent another half hour trying to find the convention center(there are three of them in Seattle I think) and parking. By the time we got in we were a sweaty, disheveled group so we fit right in. By this time my blood sugar was starting to drop a bit and I could feel it but I got lucky and stumbled right into the Castle Rain table without having to wander around much.
Tony Bledsoe recognized me immediately and ran out and punched me in the face. Yelling "You believe in THAT Change Obama girl?!" and I spent the day in the hospital .
Was still fun though.
Just kidding. The ugly-knuckled one was extremely cool as was Aran-...Arcan... Michael Angelos. I bought a bunch of Jack The Lanterns and they both signed them for me.
The Godfather was busy sketching so I picked out some books I wanted to buy and trying not to interrupt his flow too much. I had forgotten the books I brought out in the car so I just stood around there talking with Joe and Tony and Tim for like an hour before I realized that my blood sugar was dropping pretty bad. I was getting even sweatier and pretty confused so I took my leave and headed for the expensive food place where I wolfed down a 6$ hamburger and 3$ soda.
From my vantage point at the food table I could see there were some monstrous lines forming in front of some artist or writer whom I could not even see. Maybe that was Bill Willingham. If it was then fuck that. I was not THAT big a fan of him so my rare first appearance of the Elementals(Justice Machine Annual) would just not get signed. Even if that was not Bill's line I had little enthusiasm for checking out the mainstream stuff anyway.
After eating I ran into my friends again(their arms full of bags) and we decided to try and get back to the car to unload and grab my books I wanted to get signed by Tim and Joe.
An hour and a half later we found our car. I shit you not, when in Seattle one should ALWAYS leave a trail of breadcrumbs when going from wherever you parked to wherever you are going.
By the time we got back in to the convention my blood sugar was taking a dive again. I managed to get Joe and Tim to sign many of my books(but in my confusion I missed a few) adn bought this sketch off Tim:
He had already done that one and another Jack The Lantern one(presumably while waiting around for people to file in or something) and since he was hard at work by now sketching and inking some stuff for the Zombie-Jesus/Champions in Hell guys I decided I would rather buy the beautiful sketch he had already done(I mean look at that quality! For a con' sketch and just 30 bucks!?) than make a specialized request for something he might not feel like drawing("*Groan* Another Claire!?").
I did make it over to the Frazetta table to buy a sketch cover for Dark Kingdom but at this point I was not cognizant enough to figure out how to open my wallet and one of my friends, worriedly dragged me off somewhere so I would not have some episode.
One funny thing I remember was some like 12 year old kid looking through Tim's art pages he was evidently selling. Scenes of rape, sex, dismemberment etc. and his mom came up behind him and shockingly said "500 bucks!?". I almost went into a fit over that one.
I really wish I was a video guy because you should have seen the Champions of Hell drawing he was doing(well, I am sure you will when they publish it as the cover of a book or something). It was really nice.
Outside the Castle Rain/Rebel area there were a few neat or interesting things(some of which I missed out on in my daze but my friends told me about) and some really annoying things. Seattle is like the Fur-fag capital of the world I guess and the furries were out en masse. Girls with cat ears and tails and bad make-up taking pictures with gay guys dressed in similar costumes.
My friend Mike, who writes the comic strip we do for a local magazine(I draw it) wanted to drop off samples or copies of the magazine itself with someone but I was against it thinking "I do not want my crappy artwork sullying the Emerald City Comic-Con.". Then a couple of girls hand me this sample/mini-comic of their own new book(they had a table there and everything) and while looking through it I was suddenly angry that Mike did not bring samples of our work. The art in this mini-comic was so bad that I could quite literally draw better with my left hand while blindfolded...WAY better.
Anyway that was about it for me. Said goodbye to Tim, Joe, Tony and Michael, picked up a copy of "Unholy Vigils" from the Zombie Jesus/Champions in Hell guys on my way out and left.