Con Report:
Dallas Comics and Toy Fest 3

By: Sheryl Roberts

As you folks may have seen on the news, Houston had a piddly tropical storm breeze in and it stayed in our area for 5 days and dumped 3 feet of rain in the process. There was water, water everywhere and my workplace at the Texas Medical Center got totally trashed. No plumbing, no air conditioning, no telephones, emergency power only. We started discharging patients, and there was nothing to do at my hospital. This was *wonderful.* I had wanted to go to the Dallas Comics and Toy Fest for months, and Tropical Storm Allison provided me with time off to do so. The Collector Times Palace, throughout this natural disaster, stayed high and dry, so the worst worry I had on taking this road trip was if my pet sitter would give my parrot enough attention.

Buddy the Parrot

You haven’t lived until you’ve spent a certain amount of time in a hospital with minimal lights, no air conditioning and no running water. I needed a vacation : )

My youngest daughter decided to stay with Grandma for the weekend, so Paul, Sidra and I loaded up my car for our drive to Dallas. Mind you, I have the original comicbook geekmobile of Houston. It’s a purple station wagon with a bumper sticker that announces in lime green lettering "Comic Book Geek and Proud of It." I never lose my car in a parking lot.


Joe Singleton
Anyway, we arrive at the Richardson Civic Center right after the con opens. Joe Singleton (Artistic License) has a guest table, which means that the rest of The Collector Times staff (namely, us) feels they have a right to barge in and make it home and a convenient dumping ground for the duration of the convention. Which we did. We also brought a Collector Times t-shirt to Joe as a bribe, I mean, gift. Joe put on the shirt and had his "Will draw what you want for money, I‘m just an art whore" sign up on the table. He also had more Collector Times flyers we were using at UnCommon Con. At the rate we are getting rid of them, they’ll have a longer half life than uranium. The Collector Times staff had *arrived* and was ready for work.

Those of us who can’t draw...namely Sidra, Paul and I did a quick run through the rather large dealer’s room. We always do this at the start of any convention, to get an idea of who is there, and what is being sold, and what we want to do. This isn’t practical for a convention like San Diego, but it works fine for the small to the medium conventions. I halted dead in my tracks on my initial rounds, too. Some purveyor of videotapes had a bootleg copy of that JLA pilot for that proposed television series. You know which one! The one that had Guy Gardner as the Green Lantern of the JLA and the stills on the net were so bad that you just *knew* why the pilot didn’t fly. I went no further. Paul had to fork over the money RIGHT THEN. Paul’s major job at any convention is taking photos and handing money over to his family, when he’s not busy spending it himself. He’s essentially our automatic teller machine.

My major purchase of the convention made, I went over to Joe’s table to deposit my treasured videotape. Joe is busy talking to Sidra, and Sidra is eying Todd Nauck’s table across the way. I know Sidra’s major goal of this convention is to interview him. She’s wanted to ever since talking to him at San Diego several years ago. Todd, being the penciller of the popular Young Justice series, and a local celebrity in Dallas comics circles, has a line of fans around his table rivaling the Marvel booth at San Diego. I suggest to Sidra that perhaps she might want to get in line and ask Todd for an interview at his convenience, and she gives me the Look of Death, and says, "The line will go down, I’ll wait. Besides, I’m talking to *Joe.*" Joe can talk, it’s one of his most wonderful character traits. He can go on for hours, and he’s interesting, too. Eventually, Joe gets himself an art assignment drawing Mon-El and Sidra joins me on the dealer room circuit.

We stop at the Outer Space Spider Comics booth to chat with Drew Edwards, President of the company and the writer of Halloween Man. We put Drew’s comic on last month’s front page of the CT, and we wanted to know what he thought of it. It’s not like we had the courtesy to tell him about it ahead of time. I’m the editor, I do whatever I want. Mwah ha ha. Turns out that Drew found out about having The Collector Times cover by the sudden rise in visitors to his site, and yes, he was happy about it. This was nice to hear because you folks
*never* write, and I don’t ever know if you pay attention to what I suggest or not. Sidra was popular with Drew, too, because she didn’t refer to Halloween Man as a "poor man’s Hellboy" in her review. We try to evaluate comics on their relative merits within the framework of the created universe, for future reference. And Halloween Man is NOT "a poor man’s Hellboy." No matter what you might read elsewhere.

Click Here to see Joe's art!

Joe is busily drawing something else now. He’s doing some fight scene between Sub Mariner and The Human Torch. Business is good. Joe remarks, somewhere along the line, "There sure are a buncha good looking women here at this con" and I look at the dealer next to him with the blue hair and the pierced lip and I wonder if he’s talking about her, but I’m too chicken to ask. Nevertheless, Joe is right! There are a lot of women at this convention, and I suspect the reason is the attendance of Terry Moore, creator of Strangers in Paradise. I walk by his table, and oogle at the prints of his characters that he is selling for $10 apiece. He does such beautiful art, but I wish his storyline spoke to me more. As it is, I can appreciate Strangers in Paradise, but it isn’t my cup of tea. I know Jamie Coville (Coville’s Clubhouse) will spaz right out of his little fanboy mind if I get him one of those SiP prints, so I hit up my personal ATM machine and step right up. I chat with Terry for a few, and I buy his print, and then I have him inscribe it to Jamie. Terry is such a damned *nice* guy, I really wish I liked his comic more. I get my little gift over to Joe’s table, and I show it to Joe, and I ask him, "Hey Joe! Do you want one, too?" Of course Joe does. So I get my personal ATM machine to go over to Terry’s table and to get one for Joe, cause I don’t want to look like a dork.

Well, I LOOK like a dork, anyway. The annual Official Collector Times Hoochie Shirt didn’t look good on Sidra, it looked better on ME. So here I am, with this low cut t-shirt trying to look like some middle aged fanboy’s dream girl. The things I suffer for this magazine. I need to go on a diet. My personal ATM is happy, though. I spent most of the day rifling through comic boxes and selecting things that I knew my youngest daughter would be thrilled with. I bought Elaine a Powerpuff Girl comic and a slew of Simpson’s comics. I also found a whole package of Simpson’s characters, and I knew Elaine would be overjoyed with them, so I bought those, too. Satisfied that the Comic’s Gods of my youngest daughter would be placated by my purchases, I was free to look around for myself.


Sheryl at the Quarter boxes
Man, were there ever some nice deals around! Titan’s Comics had a 1/2 price off section for action figures. I looked at the Legion of Superhero DC Direct Action Figures for 7 bucks a pop and I fought the urge to buy them all. I already own them, for a considerably larger amount of money, too, so I resisted fairly well. They also had a ton of quarter boxes and quarter boxes are my friends, I go through all of them, comic by comic, just LOOKING. Some women do this with clothes, some with shoes, some with makeup, but I do this with quarter boxes. I found a couple of Black Lightning Comics, and those are really hard to find, and if they had been in better shape, I would have bought them. I did buy about 5 issues of Elementals written and drawn by Bill Willingham. I haven’t seen those comics in *years* and I was glad to get them for such a good price.

There were a couple of dealers there selling knives and swords. Paul has a fine appreciation for very sharp weapons so he and I looked over all the goods. Paul kept bitching about how they were decorative, or the balance was wrong, or the edge wasn’t sharp enough, piece by piece...sort of like I was doing with the quarter boxes. He finally bought a working pen that had a little knife located inside of it. Paul then proceeded to regale me about how he could get it past the metal detectors at the airport without any problem. I married a psychopath ... but he does all my html for me:)

Sidra has now broken down and has bought a Young Justice Trade Paper Back and is standing in the endless Todd Nauck line. Sidra informs me quietly that it’s the same 6 people in the line, they keep coming back again and again.

Sidra gets to the head of the line!

I turn around and go over to Joe’s table. Joe is now busily drawing a picture of Vampirella and Catwoman. So is Kerry Gammill, who has the table next to Joe, and the artist of the other side of Kerry. Some fan has an obvious fetish for a couple of comic characters and a lot of money. Takes all kinds and Joe is really making some dough, can’t complain. Joe deserves it.

Success! Sidra has arranged to interview Todd Nauck Sunday morning before the convention opens. She’s a happy young woman until I suggest she needs to go over and ask Terry Moore for an interview, too. "We only have 5 questions from Jamie," she protests. "That’s Ok," I reply, "We can feed Joe dinner tonight and then pick his brains." I get The Look of Death again. Mwah ha ha! I’m The Editor, phear me.


Kerry Gammill

Somewhere along the way during the day, when I had my nose deep inside some quarter bin, Sidra managed to get away from Todd Nauck’s line of slavish admirers and headed over to J.E. Smith’s table. J.E. Smith is the creator of Complex City, and if you have never read his comic, you should order it and do so. Jamie Coville, Joe Singleton, and Sidra all rave to me about the wonders of this book, and when 3 Collector Timess staff agree on ANYTHING, it’s either a sign of the Apocalypse or this guy is really putting out quality work. Sidra informed me that Diamond was dropping Complex City from it’s catalogue after issue #4, and she was upset. Joe had informed me of this tragic fate earlier, so I already knew. The good news is, J.E. Smith is going to complete the 12 issue storyline, and so we will get the complete story. Sidra wanted to interview him too, so she got him to agree to it. Sidra now had a list of 2 interviewees for Sunday, and an order to interview a third. Not a bad day’s work.

As the day was ending in the Dealer’s Room, I went and perused the art auction. I’m really dangerous at art auctions, if I see something I like. There was a lot of nice original comics art there, and the thing I really liked was Todd Nauck’s sketch of Superman. Paul was looking nervous, and I didn’t want to give him a heart attack by running nuts like I did at Aggie Con, so I reluctantly left the room before the bidding started. I couldn’t restrain myself from floating back into the open door, though, later in the auction. I watched a beautiful page of Terry Moore’s Strangers in Paradise go for $275. I knew my personal ATM was doing a Happy Dance because I didn’t stay for the auction.

Continued on Page 2


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Copyright © 2001 Sheryl Roberts

E-mail: probts@hal-pc.org

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