Baltimore and Barry Kitson
Pattie, Alex and I went to the Baltimore Comic-Con earlier this month. We’d heard a lot about the con, but never quite managed to get there. It’s quite a nice gathering – very comics-focused, unlike cons like San Diego and Wizard World that have a heavy pop culture emphasis. I’d say the guest list was 99% comics, and the retailers were probably 80% comics with some non-comics toys and DVDs thrown in. I really wish I had brought my want list, because I may have actually made a dent in it.
George Perez was there, but was swamped. I don’t know if he was taking commissions that day, but if he was, his list filled up in nanoseconds. I did meet Perez’s old partner on New Teen Titans, Marv Wolfman. Wolfman seemed excited to be writing Nightwing for an extended run. I really hope it works out. I like happy endings, and I don’t think the last few years of Wolfman’s run on the Titans count as one by anyone’s measure.
By far the highlight of the con for me was meeting Barry Kitson, who had flown into the States for a meeting and was thus available to do the show. I’ve done two interviews with Barry for the site and swapped e-mails with him over the years, but this was the first time I’d get to see him. Better yet, he was doing sketches – for free! (As long as they were in a sketchbook or personally dedicated, as a small line of defense against the sketch being immediately resold. As one guy in the line joked, “Yeah, could you make that out to Mr. Bay? My first initial’s ‘E’ . . .”) I got in the line, and we pretty quickly realized that Alex was not yet into the whole line-for-sketches thing. We had the following dialogue:
ALEX: Why are we here?
ME: Daddy wants that man to draw a picture for him.
ALEX: Why?
ME: Daddy likes the pictures he draws.
ALEX: Why?
ME: Well, kiddo, art’s a subjective thing . . .
After that, Pattie took Alex back to the hotel pool. There was a fire alarm that evacuated the hall, but once that was over everyone very politely resumed their original place in line. The folks in front of me were serious original art collectors, buying pages and bringing full-sized boards and paper for Barry to draw on. As I watched Barry do full-figure drawings, I started rethinking how I’ve been going about this whole sketch business. Maybe it would be worth it to ramp up to a higher scale. (Then I look at my bank account and think maybe not so much.) At any rate, Barry was every bit as nice a guy in person as he has been over e-mail, and eventually I got this sketch of Golgoth from the Empire series:
That was the only sketch I was able to get – the days of camping at the CrossGen or DC booth and picking up four or five sketches in a day seem to be over – but it sure was worth it.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.