Uncanny X-Men 151. November 1981

My last Adventure Con post...

As I was flipping through a box, I came upon this one. I was like "OOH!! I remember you!" This was my first X-Men comic.

Remember how I said I was a big ol' DC geek? Well, I did in an earlier post, but I'm not gonna go back and look for it, LOL. Anyway, this started about a decade of my venturing into the Marvel Universe...and it was all DC's fault!!

Back at this time, X-Men was the number 1 selling comic. The number 2 selling comic was DC's New Teen Titans, which was my favorite comic at the time. Well, the letters pages in NTT had mentioned a couple of times that Marvel and DC were going to do a cross-over between the Titans and the X-Men. That left me with a dilemma: When the team-up came out, I wouldn't know who half the characters were!! So, even though I had almost no interest in them whatsoever, I had to at least have a slight working knowledge of who the X-Men were. When I went to the comics shop, this was the lastest issue.

OMG! I loved it! So I bought the next one, and the next one. Within a couple months I started picking up back issues! That led me to the amazing John Byrne artwork. I had to have more, I found Byrne on Fantastic Four...so I started buying that! And She-Hulk, and Alpha Flight. Then came New Mutants, Excalibur... I pretty much started buying quite a few Marvels for awhile.

Eventually, I was down to just X-Titles. When they started having too many and the quality started suffering, I pretty much faded off of them.

But back in the 80s, X-Men rocked! And Jim Sherman's art was pretty cool, too. I was kinda disappointed that he only did 151 and 152, but I still was lovin' me some X-Men!

Adventure Comics 370/Plastic Man 18

Here are a couple of comics I picked up at Adventure Con for no more interesting reason than curiosity...
Adventure Comics 370. July 1968

I grabbed this one because Insect Queen was on the cover.

I'd known that Lana had had adventures as the Insect Queen. And I knew that they'd involved the Legion. But I never thought that she'd actually been on a cover alongside them. I guess since Legion rules were that your powers had to be "organic" and not from a device (like Lana's ring), that she wasn't really a major player or something.

Anyway, I just thought it was interesting that she was on the cover, so I picked it up. $3 was a good enough deal for that.

Another $3 Silver-Ager: Plastic Man 18. (Super Comics)

When I first spotted this one, I thought it was an issue of DC's Plastic Man series from the 60s. Then I realized that it has the Super Comics logo and not the DC logo on the cover. That made it all the more intriguing.

I knew Super Comics had done a bunch of unauthorized reprints in the 50s and 60s, but I don't think I was aware that Plastic Man was one of them.

There are 4 stories in this book, but only one features Plastic Man. The others are a comedy strip called "Candy," a Will Eisner "The Spirit" story and one featuring the original "Manhunter."

I did a little research on this one. This is issue #18, but Super only published 3 issues: Numbers 11, 16 and 18. Not sure what the methodology was with this. Didn't dig quite that deep. HA!

Okay, bye.

Adventure Con Swag

I didn't buy a lot at the con, but here's some of the deals that I got:

DC Pocket Super Heroes. This line was discontinued, but I liked it. I never bought a lot of them when they were new, but at the con I grabbed a bunch for only $2.50 a piece! 75% off!! Woot. DC Mini-Mates. This is the line that replaced the Pocket Super Heroes. I like these, too. Haven't bought any until now. I don't know why. I'm not sure what they sell for, probably about $10. I got all 3 of these for $20. JLA Huntress figure and Batman Die-Cast. I probably already have the Huntress somewhere in storage, and I'm not sure what I needed the Batman and Robin for (although they are kinda cute), but I figured for $2.50 a pop, what the heck!! Adventure Con T-shirt. I wasn't gonna buy one of these, didn't want to spend $20 on one. But on my way out, they'd lowered the price to $10, so I figured, "What the hell?"

Adventure Con pics - 6.03.2007

I didn't take a lot of pictures at the con because I'm so damn shy and didn't want to ask anyone. I mostly just jumped in when other people were taking pictures. But here are the few that turned out.

These are some Star Wars characters. I don't know. I'm not big on Star Wars, but there were a lot of them there.

A bunch of costumed people trying to decide how to pose for the cameras. Rogue came up with the DC vs. Marvel idea. Although they could've executed it better. Obviously not a group of actors...play for the camera!!! Catwoman, Supergirl, Poison Ivy, Kitty Pride, Cyclops (without his visor) and Rogue.

A couple more random shots. Supergirl, Catwoman and Robin. Kitty Pride, Supergirl and Han Solo.

Okay, the end.

Joe Staton drawing Donna Troy

Here's a pic of Joe Staton drawing my Donna Troy pic at Adventure Con. One of the few pics that I took that turned out okay. I only took 10, and 3 of them aren't worth showing. I'll put up the others later. But this one needed to be first because I love the pic and Joe was a great, friendly guy!!

Donna Troy by Joe Staton

Okay, so I went to Adventure Con today.
Bought a few comics. Picked up some DC Pocket Super Heroes for $2.50 a pack! And some DC Mini-Mates for $7.
But the best thing was this picture I got Joe Staton to draw for me!!
Yay, I have my very own Donna Troy!!
Unfortunately, until I saw the pic, I didn't realize that the reference I gave him didn't include a clear shot of the eagle on her chocker, so that's kinda not there. But I don't care, really. I LOVE IT!!!
I was planning on having Andy Smith do one, but he wasn't overly friendly really. And when I asked he said he was about to go to lunch. I offered to come back, he said around 2:30. So I got back there at about 2:45 and he still wasn't there. About 10 minutes later they announced he was doing a signing at the main entrance table. Around 3:45 I came back past Artist Alley and he was packing up to leave. Oh well.
I got one from Joe Staton, and he was just the nicest guy in the world. Constantly had a smile on his face. I even picked up a copy of Digital Webbing's E-Man #1 and he signed it. That was cool, too.
I'll have a bit more on the con in a later post. Right now, I'm tired and going to bed.
G'night.

Super Heroes in Knoxville

Well, you could color me all kinds of surprised when I saw this picture on the entertainment section of the Knoxville News Sentinel yesterday:

I knew that Adventure Con was this weekend (I'm planning on going tomorrow), but I just didn't expect this. Not to mention: All the advertising that I've seen until now has completely downplayed the comics aspect. They've had ads at the movie theaters the last few times I went, but they played up the sci-fi aspect and all the stars. If you breathed wrong you missed the fleeting mention of comic books.

So this was kinda cool. They even had two articles about the con. One featuring an interview with Ethan Van Sciver. Not too shabby.

You can see the black and white line art on artist Andy Smith's MySpace page.
You can read an article about Adventure Con at KnoxNews.com.
And here's Adventure Con's website.