I think I need to change the name of this blog! What started out as a collection of Amazing Spider-man and Daredevil writer signatures and artist sketches has turned into a collection of Spidey and DD villains and signatures and sketches of creators of Captain America, Thor and the Inhumans!
The first con I attended was Megacon here in Orlando in 2002 and I have been going every year since...as usual with recurring cons, the same creators come year and after year but with some of my new "collections" that has led to some new work for me by these creators.
Captain America (2 artists so far)
As mentioned last post, I added the classic Marvel hero of Captain America to my writer and sketch collection. Here is another example of a series I have read casually over the years and just got back into it. As a result, I thought it would be fun to seek out these creators. At this con, there were two artist in attendance, Allen Bellman and Mike Perkins. Allen is a classic artist - in his 90's and worked on Captain America as an artist when Marvel was known as Timely Comics in the 1930's and 1940's! Allen said it would be easier to work on the sketch at his home so he shipped me the finished product after the con. And it is a full head sketch too - great job from a classic artist. The more traditional small head sketch was by a more recent Cap artist Mike Perkins.
Not an official artist sketch but my 11-year old son decided to try his hand at a Cap sketch. Maybe some day he will be on the blank variant cover!
Daredevil "Foes" Artists (6 sketches so far)
As with other DD villain sketches, I usually let the artist choose their favorite DD villain for them to sketch. I met one DD artist at Megacon, Lee Weeks and asked him to choose his favorite and he chose the Kingpin (top left).
I still like the way I added outlined boxes to make the sketch area more linear and comic panel-like.
As mentioned before, with the announced "Inhumans" movie coming from Marvel in a few years (and their presence on the "Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D." TV show), I decided to catch up on the titles featuring this team that have been released over the years (starting in the 1970's). As I have enjoyed this collecting of signatures and sketches hobby, I decided to take the blank variant of the newest series "Inhuman" and have Inhumans past and present writers sign on the inside cover and have artists who have drawn the Inhumans over the years each sketch their favorite Inhuman (a la Spidey and DD villains) on the front and back. The first two characters and two of the main Inhumans, Black Bolt and Medusa, were sketched by Tom Raney and George Perez.
I was able to add only one Spider-man head sketch at Megacon. A simple Spidey head by the artist Sean Chen (on the right).
Spider-man "Foes" Artists (13 sketches so far)
The Spider-man villains are done by Spider-man artists as they sketch their favorite villain (as long as their favorite is not the same as another artist!) or a villain that they have drawn many times over the years. I find consistently that the artists love this concept of being able to choose who they can sketch,
The sketch I received this time is an old school Lizard by artist Paolo Rivera - a favorite of mine and if you look at this blog you will see he has added a few sketches.
I was able to add one new Thor sketch to my Thor collection - that of Tom Raney (top right) - I had the artist Lee Weeks just add his signature to this cover as he had already sketched the Kingpin for me above.
Daredevil Writers (15 in total so far)
This writer addition was a cool one. I am a fan of Kevin Smith and he is a fan of comics - and he wrote a handful of Daredevil issues in the late 90's. He came to Orlando in April for "An Evening with Kevin Smith" which is basically a two-three hour Q&A session where he shares stories from his career. He is a pretty nice guy and I had brought my DD writer collection with me in the hopes I could get him to sign it. Turns out during the course of Q&A he lets people come on stage and he will sign things.
My daughter came with me and as she has a little more nerve than me, she asked him if he would sign the cover. She went on stage and told him he could sign above the Stan Lee signature. He thought the cover was a cool idea and obliged (took a quick picture but a little blurry).
Well that's it for this time - more cons on the way in 2015!
