Got back from Ithacon, the local comic show. Once again, I failed to connect with local great Roger Stern because of my perpetual shyness, but I just had to go and shake the hand of guest Bob “The Answer Man” Rozakis! I used to live for his “Ask the Answer Man” columns in the back of DC’s comics when I was a kid. Thanks to him, I learned the secret identities of most of the Legion of Super Heroes and in what issue the Batman of Earth-2 died.
I would’ve loved to have had an “Ask the Answer Man” column for him to sign, but I didn’t. Felt bad. He was a swell guy, too. I bought a boatload of 2/$1 books from him and accidentally left one, which he walked over to me. I ran into him again at another dealer’s table as I was flipping through old issues of Detective Comics. I pulled out one with an interesting cover (Issue 467, from Feb. 1977) when I heard someone next to me saying, “I wrote that.” What happened next was a no-brainer…
Other things I picked up…
- The six-issue run of DC: The New Frontier
- Jonathan Lethem’s Omega the Unknown, #1
- Four issues of Steve Edmond’s Emo Boy
- The first 8 (of 9) issues of Captain Atom: Armageddon (a DC/Wildstorm crossover)
- A metric crapload of Bendis’ & Oeming’s Powers from Image Comics
- A discounted copy of Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics
Oddly enough, none of these items were on my list!
I should also mention a pleasant conversation I had with artist Jime Alena Grabowski! The Wife bought a print from her a couple of years ago of “a chick” as Grabowski put it. Her drawings nowadays are completely different. There’s a print I’m interested in, so I gotta get to emailing if I want it.