[Groop] Calgary Con Report-

[No Way]

Greetings, Groop-

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to tell; I was only able to attend for a portion of Sunday.

I did, however, manage to catch Sergio at his table.  As always, he was a consummate gentleman- I wore my 25th anniversary hat (thanks again, Gary!), and his first words upon seeing me were "Hey, nice hat!".

Unfortunately, also as always, he was very busy, so there simply wasn't a lot of time to chat.

A quick photo of Sergio in a position that I'm sure most of you will have seen him in before- 
http://img134.imageshack.us/img134/6647/0904261431000.jpg- hunched over a sketch, heh.

For those that are curious, in the photo he's doing me a sketch of a character from the Naruto anime ("Sasuke Uchiha")- it's the favourite character of one of the boys I sponsor through Compassion Canada, and given that said character's (English) Voice Actor was present at the con, I thought it would be a very cool gift to have his favourite character (signed by the VA), done by one of MY favourite artists.

And the other photo that I THOUGHT I had gotten, I apparently didn't, somewhat to my disappointment- it wouldn't mean a lot to most of you, but it was a shot of him and me together.  Apparently my fiancee hit the wrong button *sigh*

Mark, unfortunately, had had to leave before I got there, and wasn't slated to return before the end of the con, so I missed him.

Other than the Mark and Sergio show, there was the usual parade of costumes- the 501st Stormtrooper's Calgary branch was out, so there were some very impressive Star Wars costumes wandering about (I spotted a Clone Trooper, a Storm Trooper or two, both Boba and Jango Fett, that purple-outfitted female bounty hunter whose name I have no idea of from Episode II, two Darth Vaders (one rather more impressive than the other), and a Rebel X-Wing pilot), along with the usual assortment of anime and superhero characters (it was with a weird mixture of shame and pride that I realized I recognized almost every single one that I saw, heh...)

I also stumbled upon a rather good dealer out of Victoria who had a lot of classic... stuff, including original Pogo collections (I didn't look too closely, being on a limited budget and the books costing $35 apiece, but at a guess I would have been surprised if they were any newer than 1950-something), DVDs of the complete works of Tex Avery (which I snapped up immediately- I'm very nearly as much a fan of Tex' work as I am of Sergio's), and a few other odds and ends, including a couple of comic collections that I had been wanting to find for some time (Don Rosa's "The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" series).

I also picked up a couple of pieces of entirely superfluous, but impressively large, bits of cutlery- a replica katana and some sort of long blade that can become a two-ended short-bladed... thing, or else have the blade come out of the opposite end of the hilt entirely.  Mostly useless unless I'm planning to do what Groo does best, but entertaining.

Brief glimpses were also caught of Ray Park (aka Darth Maul, Toad from the X-Men films, and Snake Eyes from the upcoming GI Joe film- he seems to like the Calgary Con, he was there last year, too), Bruce Timm (executive producer of the DC Animated Universe... I actually wanted to talk to him, and maybe snag a sketch, but he was busy (borderline swamped), so we wandered off... and he was gone ten minutes later.  Bah), Margot Kidder, and a bunch of other people who I theoretically should have recognized but didn't =P

Oh- I also got to exchange pleasantries with Gavin Blair, co-creator of the seminal CG Animated series, "ReBoot", although it was mostly a "Hey, I love your work, hurry up and release it on DVD" sort of situation.  Apparently it's horribly tied up in some kind of rights dispute, though.  Feh.

Not much else to tell- the con was winding down somewhat, and my fiancee wanted to catch the reptile show that same day (what can I say?  I have a very cool fiancee), so we moved on.

Cheers,
David



      
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