ComicMix

Where were we this morning?  Ah yes, it was actually noontime on Saturday, where we headed upstairs to the Hotel Penn’s Sky-something ballroom for the Mark Evanier-moderated panel "Marvel in the 60s and 70s."

Just look at those luminaries.  Gary Friedrich; Dick Ayers (in his old Army outfit that still fits!); Herb Trimpe; Joe Sinnott.  Truly amazing gentlemen, with the usual stories you’d expect.  But the best anecdote may have been one in the making, as Mark received an email from Stan Lee during the panel, emailed him back that he was currently moderating a panel and did Stan have something to say…

…which of course, about a half hour later, he did.  It went something along the lines of "Tell those gentlemen they need to get out of that hick town and come to Los Angeles, where they can join me for a real Marvel panel!"  Mark should have the exact text up on his blog shortly, I’m sure.

"But," you say, "you promised us purple pants!"  Well, here’s a Wizard to warm you up:

The bearded gent on the right, come in all the way from Israel, is Mike Netzer.  Or is he the one on the left?  I’ll never tell.  Purple pants aplenty below!

Speaking as we implicitly were of costumes, it looks like this Trojan has plenty of protection!

Here’s the sister with the travelling pants!  Heidi MacDonald‘s "Hulk pants" matched her shirt beautifully, and The Beat and I spent much time shooting the breeze about how old we know we feel (her birthday was last Thursday, my 50th is in less than 2 weeks, and we haven’t a good back between us) but hey, how young we still think we look.  I like to think our love of comics helps us keep a youthful perspective.

The great thing about having been to so many of these is how many people will wander by and pose for photos.  Here’s DC Publicity Manager Alex Segura, who sends me all those nifty DC press releases, and daddy-to-be Jamal Igle, with whom I had a terrific discussion about "ugly Americans" and xenophobia and I’m sure there must have been some comics talk in there.

And here’s one of comics’ up-and-coming power couples — Dave Gallaher, who writes High Moon over at Zuda Comics, and his (and our) Occasional Superheroine, Valerie D’Orazio, currently serving her first term as National President of Friends of Lulu, which seems primed for a resurgence.  Lots of us old-time Lulu folk are anticipating good things from Val’s stewardship!

It was good to see so many "legacy media" comic types in attendance.  Here’s Eric Flores, who by day bills himself as "The Best Damned Guy Friday in NYC" and by night does, erm, well, let’s just say Not Safe For Work and leave it at that…

And this is feminist blogger Jill Friedman, who posts at Me and My Red Stapler Against the World.

The Friends of Joe (Quesada) contingent was out in force — here’s Quesada protege Alitha Martinez and JoeyDaQ’s good buddy Jimmy Palmiotti.  Wish I could have caught the extremely photogenic Amanda Conner, but I don’t think she ever made it upstairs from her and Jimmy’s first-floor booth.

Oh ho, that’s rich!  In fact, it’s got double the Rich-ness!  Rich Watson, meet Rich Johnston!

Well, I’m afraid all that was too Rich for my blood.  Hope you had as much fun viewing the photos as I had taking them.  Don’t forget, lots of ComicMix folks will be on hand to say hi at this coming weekend’s Mid-Ohio Con, and I’m sure we can all look forward to seeing their snaps!