Sharing My Story

(Journal entry for July 22, 2006)
This morning before heading to the convention I had some
good conversation with Robert Flores and Cedric. The walk
to the Convention Center was very crowded at 10:30 AM.
The first panel I went to was the one on the Silver Age
and later versions of the Flash. It had Joe Giella, Carmine
Infantino, Geoff Johns, Howard Porter, Brian Bolland and
the two current writers, Paul DeMeo and Danny Bilson,
on the new Flash relaunch. These two also directed/produced
the Flash 1990 TV show. Then I went to the Convention Art
Show. Lots of Fantasy-dragons and unicorns-some very nice.
Perhaps the most interesting section were a series of
biographical posters on famous comics artists, writers and
editors. After that I went to the James Bama panel about
the film documentary on him where they showed a 15 minute
clip from the film. James Bama is a commercial painter who
did among other things many famous Doc Savage paperback
book covers in the 1960s and 1970s.

I had to leave that session early to get to the panel with
Ray Bradbury, Ray Harryhausen and Forry Ackerman.
These gentlemen are getting along well in years (both
Bradbury and Harryhausen are 86 this year and Ackerman
will turn 90 in November). They talked about their literary
work as well as their adventures in the motion picture industry.
Then I went to the Comic Arts Conference Poster Session.
Matt Posusey had a rather superficial presentation on how
Darwin’s evolutionary ideas are presented in comics. After
that I went to the Dynamic Drawing seminar with Jeff Watts
and Erik Geis. They had a demonstration with a live model
on how to do finished portrait sketching. They are very good
and good presenters. Stayed for the entire presentation.
They have an atelier north of San Diego for students.

Then I went to the Golden & Silver Age Panel moderated
by Mark Evanier. The panelists were Shelly Moldoff, Everett
Raymond Kinstler, Luis Dominquez, John Romita, Arnold
Drake, and Irwin Hasen. These guys are getting older. Poor
Mark Evanier had a hard time controlling the panel. Met Linda
Brown there and she took a lot of notes. Also sit by the
Convention Archivist, Gene Henderson and chatted with him
a short time. After that I went to the Jack Kirby Museum
seminar panel with John Morrow (Editor/publisher of the
Kirby Collector) and Lisa Kirby (one of Jack’s daughters).
It is an online museum (kirbymuseum.org) and will also
have a traveling exhibit of Kirby’s work. Then I went to
the Alex Toth panel. Irwin Hasen was on it as well as
two of Toth’s children, Eric Toth and Dana Palmer.
After that I meet the Christian Comics folks at the
Horton Plaza again for some good fellowship and food.
One of my good friends, Monte Wilson made his only
convention appearance with the group this evening.
We took a lot of impromptu fun photos of each other.