Wizard World 2001

Friday, August 17, 2001
This weekend, I attended the Wizard World comic book convention in Chicago. Friday morning I met my friend, Jerry Ordway, artist and writer of such titles as Adventures of Superman, The Power of Shazam, All-Star Squadron, and Stan Lee's JLA, among many others! Jerry brought his son Tommy to the convention and Tommy is a beautiful little guy. After breakfast, we hit the convention floor for several hours just walking up and down the rows and rows of dealers. I was able to get in for free, thanks to Sal Abbinanti, Alex Ross' art agent and the model for Captain Marvel in Kingdom Come and The Power of Hope! Jerry, Tommy, and I hit the TwoMorrows booth and met Jon Cooke, editor of Comic Book Artist magazine! I love John's magazine but he was a bit stand-offish even after I introduced myself and gave him a CD with the cover to the Fawcett Companion trade that I put together for my friend Paul Hamerlinck. Who knows maybe he was tired. We stopped by the Marvel Comics booth and saw the new Spider-Man movie trailer. Very cool!

After that, Jerry begged off and I was on my own. I basically scowered the publisher areas. I walked by the Harris booth and caught a glimpse of the new Vampirella model, I checked out the DC Comics booth and looked through the advance copies of upcoming titles like The Authority, The Establishment, Joe Kelly and Doug Mahnke's JLA, John Byrne's Generations, and Keith Giffen's Suicide Squad. All looked good!

In the evening, I attended the Wizard Fan awards. The highlight of the evening was the fan video that mimicked MTV's The Real World using characters like Supergirl, Thor and The Hulk!

Saturday, August 18, 2000
I caught the panels today. Well, two of them -- DC Comics and Wildstorm. The DC panel's interesting news was that Captain Marvel will have a bigger presence in the coming year. No new book yet!

The Wildstorm panel was much more somber. Not a lot of excitement and very little mention of its flagship book, The Authority!

I snapped a picture of Gene Simmons of Kiss.

After the Con, Jerry, Tommy and I met up with my wife and daughters at Giordano's Pizzeria. We had a great time and even took the kids to Dairy Queen for ice cream!