I can’t visit Chicago without having some of that delicious deep dish! After the show, I traveled with Andy, Pat, the effervescent Brian Defferding, his girlfriend and friend(sorry, names are escaping me, you know who you are!), to Gino’s East, my preferred pizza joint when at this show. They tell us the wait is 40-60 minutes but 10 short minutes later and we’re at the table. Pat is intolerant of the tasty deep dish, but Andy and I split a pepperoni supreme and it was delicious. The company was good, Brian and his friends were a nice addition and they had some fun stories to tell. Then on to the Hyatt. One great thing about having the show up by O’Hare Airport in Rosemont is that there is pretty much only one place that everyone goes to for after dinner festivities, so we can all rub elbows together. I meet lots of folks at the show floor but I also make many new friends after hours. Sometimes I’m stunned by how many people I didn’t see at the “Red Bar’, as it’s called , and then the next day, tell me they were in attendance all night! The theme for that night at the Hyatt: Kindergarten Teachers are Slu-huuts!! (you have to say it out loud.) If you want to know the full story, go ask Zack Kruse or Andy.

Business wasn’t as brisk at my table on Saturday, which seems to be a pattern at recent shows. For whatever reason, Fridays have been my big day.  Still decent, though. I was still busy doing the sketches that I had signed up the day before and a few more came in. I sold out of Tell Them Johnny Wadd is Here, and sales on Guns were steady. I never sell many prints at this how. Never have. Not sure why. The folks at different shows just have different priorities. I got some time to travel the floor of the Alley, which had a tremendous amount of talent. A lot of familiar faces but a fair amount of new faces, too, if I’m not mistaken. I picked up some cool prints, and couple of books that caught my eye, and commissioned an original sketch from Scott Reed. I knew him as the writer of The Overman from Image, teamed with Shane White. Turns out, Scott is an fantastic artist in his own right. He’s currently in production on his own book which has strong reference and tone of an ’80s bronze age superhero book. As a result, he preferred to do sketches of character from that era. I came up with the idea of a pair of character from Alien Legion. I ran to the Darktower Comics booth and picked up issue one for a dollar as reference for Scott and by the end of the day was the proud owner of a beautiful 17X11 fully inked masterpiece! How much, you ask? A measly $20 for 2 characters! When you see the pic of it you’ll be stunned by the affordability, Scott was totally underselling himself. He was good to talk to. I’m glad I met him.

More pics off my flickr:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 at 7:33 pm and is filed under Conventions, David Wachter, Old News.