Hey, you all remember my favorite non-celebrity, Karen Lynn-Gorney, right? Well, I suppose she's not really my favorite anymore. I saw her again a couple weeks ago at another installment of the Big Apple Con (a comic book convention held at the Lincoln Hotel across the Madison Square Gardens) and I realized my endearment of her was slightly overrated. She has her fans, she doesn't need me. There were middle-aged men coming up to her table, buying her autographs left and right - she was doing just fine, making enough money to feed herself for awhile and possibly for a brand-new outfit. Karen didn't need my pity love, so I let her go. Rather I ended up watching Margot Kidder (1970's Lois Lane) interact with her few fans. When she started yelling at someone who was aiming his camera at her to buy a photo first I felt a glimmer of glee, just like I did the time I saw Karen begging for fans.
Actually the highlight of this convention wasn't any of these proto-celebrities, nor was it any comic-book (I hardly even bothered sorting through the long-boxes. The reasons two-fold: I practically have every comic book I want and can afford, and the stench of the place was overpowering - ordinarily putting a lot of comic-nerds into one room that will happen, but even more so when the building management decides to crank up the heat on a warm day, whew!). I have to say the stunning aria of this show was my meeting Phil Jimenez, one of my favorite comic-book creators of all time. He was the author and writer of the 1996 Tempest (Aqualad all grown-up) mini-series that was a quasi-sequel and tribute to the 1986 Aquaman mini-series (one of two of the first comic-series I followed as a kid) which was wonderfully written by Neal Pozner, Phil's partner for many years. Phil has also worked on many great DC Comics projects including artwork on the Invisibles, JLA/Titans, Wonder Woman (which he also wrote), Otherworld, and most recently the big DC crossover Infinite Crisis. And now that he's a big name in the business, he has a lot of fans, many of them showing up to this event waiting in line to get his autograph on their collections of comics that he worked on. I didn't want to be just another dork getting a signature on a comic, thereby increasing it's "value" - I actually kinda wanted to talk to him, but the line was always so long and it never seemed to move. I saw that fans had also brought sketchbooks, asking Phil to illustrate figures of Superboy Prime, Donna Troy, or some X-men whoever, so I left for awhile walking about Mid-Town.
Luckily when I returned the line was a bit more tolerable so I decided to stay and say hi to Phil. The line was was shorter, I found out, because he had announced he was leaving for lunch soon - and I was the end of the line. Whew! Anyway, the guy in front of me must not have been very interesting, or he freaked out Phil (this guy had in creepy monster-eye contact lenses), or I just seemed cool enough, but Phil started chatting it up with me while he was drawing some super so-and-so for this guy. We ended up talking for almost an hour! I brought in only one comic-book, an old Aquaman annual that Phil drew a story for. He was real excited to see a comic this old and from an early point of his career when he wasn't such a big-name in the business. He started pointing out artists' versions of the same whale that appeared in several of the stories, showing how they didn't even look alike; and he also started giving me sage advice on being new to the City and making suggestions on places to go and see. It was cool talking to someone who had such zest for for the culture and people here and wanting to share it and spread that love around- yay NYC!!! Haha, well I hope to see Phil around sometime again. He's kind of my role model I suppose - he came to NYC excelling in his art, telling his stories, and he's also friendly and generous in his efforts and time. Huzzah to Phil!
