[Groop] Calgary Con Report(& card prices)

Fri May 1 09:13:26 PDT 2009

Connor,

Excellent report! I¹m probably one of the least fanatical Groo fans and I
enjoyed your report thoroughly. I love the fact that you said over and over
again how Sergio was beyond friendly. That is what everyone says and I¹ve
only met him once, but that was my experience as well. The same goes for
Mark. We are fortunate fans to have chosen such wonderful people to be fans
of. (I know that¹s just awful grammar, but deal with it.) Anyway, your
report was informative and gives those of us who can¹t attend these cons a
good idea of what went on. Sorry I didn¹t get to come and crash at your
place, but I¹m glad I missed the minced meat. Thanks for the report.

Chris (no, the other one!)

on 5/1/09 6:45 AM, Conor Geoghegan at theirishtiger at hotmail.com wrote:

> Umm....hello there everybody,
> 
> Remember me? I'm the guy who offered lodging for the Calgary Con and then
> kinda vanished off the face of the internet, heh heh. Don't worry - it wasn't
> the Groop Members' sense of humor that scared me away (in fact, I think it
> would have been quite interesting indeed to try to fit 200 people in to my
> house, haha - and who knows, I might finally have been able to get rid of that
> year-old bag of minced meat stuck to the back of my freezer!). It's just that
> I was nearing the end of a semester at school and I have a horrible tendency
> during those times to go in to "horse blinder" mode, where I only focus on
> things I absolutely 'need' to do and even simple things like typing e-mails
> feel like an extraordinary amount of extra work. I did read all the Groop
> e-mails, though - and, as far as I know, nobody actually contacted me for a
> place to stay. So no worries, I hope. But if I did miss any messages from
> anybody, I'm extremely sorry.
> 
> Anyways - here's my Calgary Con Report so Gary doesn't yell at me anymore, heh
> heh:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SATURDAY
> 
> I actually had a booth at the convention because I self-publish little comic
> books with a group of fellow amateur cartoonist-friends, so, lucky for me, I
> was able to get in to the convention grounds before it opened to the public
> (in order to set up my group's booth).
> 
> I didn't see Mark anywhere during this time, but I drifted over to Sergio's
> table a few times as he was setting up (putting Groo books for sale on the
> table, etc.). Unfortunately, each time I went to see him, a random passerby
> slid in front of me and began talking to him first. So I would wait behind
> that person for about a minute and then eventually just return to my booth,
> intending to come back later when Sergio was more available.
> 
> At this point, I should mention that I am kind of a shy person (Gary mentioned
> this in an e-mail a while back, and it's true). In hindsight, I should have
> just stood in line behind any of those people and waited my turn, but I didn't
> really want to pressure them or make them rush their encounter and besides, I
> didn't really know what I would say to Sergio anyway.
> 
> So anyways, throughout the day, I left my booth a number of times to check
> Sergio's and Mark's tables to see if either of them was free. Unfortunately, I
> don't recall actually seeing Mark at his table (or maybe he was there, but he
> was just hidden somewhere behind the throngs of fans). Yes, throngs of fans.
> The convention was pretty packed on Saturday. Every time I checked, there was
> between 5 to 15 people lined up/waiting to meet Sergio (numbers for Mark's
> table depended on whether he was there or not). So long story short....I ended
> up not meeting Sergio at all on Saturday.
> 
> I did meet Mark, though (briefly).
> 
> Mark hosted a number of panels (3, I believe?) on Saturday. I managed to catch
> two of them: The "Groo The Wanderer" Panel from 1:00pm-2:00pm, and The
> "Writing For Comics" Panel from 2:00pm-3:00pm.
> 
> The "Groo The Wanderer" Panel was excellent - and packed. There were roughly
> 70+ fans in the room and only about 40 chairs or so. 
> Mark and Sergio opened the panel with a brief history of Groo, then talked
> about the upcoming Groo projects and then opened the floor to questions.
> Nothing was mentioned that astute members of the Groop don't already know, but
> the audience questions were fairly interesting. One fan asked who Sergio and
> Mark would like to use as voice actors for the Groo cartoon. Sergio said that
> they would never let him pick the voice actors himself because in his mind,
> Groo speaks Spanish. Mark mentioned that he had a potential voice actor in
> mind for Arcadio, and - if I remember correctly - he said it was the same guy
> who used to voice the leprechaun in the Lucky Charms commercials? Haha, I
> might be remembering that wrong, but I think that's what he said.
> Another fan asked Mark and Sergio what their opinions on webcomics were. From
> what I gathered, it seemed that Sergio generally didn't think too highly of
> webcomics. As far as I remember, he felt that, instead of trying to make their
> comics as good as possible, many webcomic cartoonists sacrifice quality in
> order to stay on top of deadlines and that, ultimately, the cartoonists would
> be more successful if they put more time and effort in to producing a quality
> product. Mark was a bit more encouraging with his comments as far as I recall,
> but generally agreed with the sentiment. Another fan asked Sergio if he had
> ever met any cartoonist who "could draw faster than he could". Sergio said,
> yes, that he had met many - and then Mark said that Sergio was just being
> falsely humble, heh heh. My memory is a bit fuzzy on the rest of the audience
> questions.
> 
> Anyways. Once the panel was finished, Sergio returned to his table on the
> convention floor and Mark walked over to his second panel: "Writing For
> Comics".
> 
> Again, the "Writing For Comics" Panel was great - in large part, because of
> Mark.
> 
> For the first 10 minutes or so, Mark was the only person on stage (I later
> heard from a friend who was volunteering at the con that none of the panelists
> in the Writing For Comics Panel had actually been informed they were ON the
> panel; and that the only reason Mark knew he was on the panel is because he
> had actually been responsible and investigated it himself). So anyways, Mark
> took charge of the panel and began speaking to the crowd all by himself and
> then about 10 minutes in, 2 more of the panelists (Mike Allred and Ron Marz)
> entered the room and helped him out. The 3 of them told anecdotes from their
> writing careers, dispensed bits of advice and then answered audience
> questions. It was a well-done and informative discussion - but, sadly, Groo
> wasn't mentioned even once, heh heh.
> 
> As soon as the panel was finished, I went up to talk to Mark, but to be
> honest, I think I scared him a bit because I was dressed as a clown at the
> time (long story). Or maybe he was just in a rush - in hindsight, it's
> probably a bad idea to try to talk to a panelist as soon as the panel is done
> and they're trying to leave the room. Anyways - long story short, I didn't
> (really) get to talk to Mark at all.
> 
> ...And that was basically Saturday. The rest of the day mainly involved me
> standing at my booth, periodically leaving to see if either Mark's or Sergio's
> table was free (they never were).
> 
> 
> 
> 
> SUNDAY
> 
> I was regretting not having met either Sergio or Mark the day before, so I
> decided that, today, I would take Gary's advice and overcome my shyness and
> actually talk to them.
> 
> I went to Sergio's table early in the morning (Mark hadn't arrived at the con
> yet). There was already a line at Sergio's table, but I figured, this time, I
> would actually wait in line and meet him.
> 
> When I got up to meet Sergio, I kinda stumbled over my words and said I didn't
> really know what to say, other than "I really like your stuff", heh heh.
> Sergio was beyond friendly; he told me just to say whatever I wanted. So I
> can't remember the exact "order" of events that followed (it's unimportant
> anyway), but I bombarded him with all sorts of questions - mostly art-related,
> like "how he draws", "can I see what pen he uses", "how does he take care of
> his wrist", etc., etc. - and then eventually he asked if I was an artist
> myself. I had a comic in my hands that I had drawn, so I showed it to him. My
> artwork is fairly amateurish, but Sergio was very encouraging and helpful and
> again, beyond nice. Eventually, the line behind me began to get pretty long,
> heh heh, so Sergio asked if I'd like to sit beside him so we could talk some
> more after he had talked to the people behind me.
> 
> ...To be honest, I was kind of in shock. But I took him up on the offer and
> for the next 2 hours I sat beside him at his table. He pretty much had a
> steady stream of fans visiting his table the whole time, but whenever the line
> did die down, he would turn to me and give advice on how to plot stories and
> in general, how to get better at making comics. Some of his fans brought some
> really obscure work for him to sign (some of the most obscure: a copy of "The
> Wild and Wacky World of Sergio Aragones" and a copy of "Smokehouse Five" -
> neither of which I had ever seen before). I was able to watch him do a few
> sketches for people too; it's amazing to see how little penciling he does and
> how that looseness/sense of freedom helps create his style of drawing. All in
> all, Sergio is a frickin' awesome person.
> 
> At around Noon, he had to go to a panel and I had to get back to my booth (I
> hadn't been there all morning), so we parted ways. I wrote down some quick
> notes to make sure I didn't forget some of the things he said.
> 
> For the rest of the day, I alternated between my booth and quickly checking to
> see if Mark was around (unfortunately, though, I didn't see Mark at all that
> day).
> 
> As the con was closing, I went back to Sergio's table and thanked him very
> much for all his help and advice. Again, he was beyond friendly. I can't say
> enough good things about him. He gave me some last bits of advice on
> story-writing, which I wrote down, and then he had to leave. I told him that
> if I ever see him again, I'll have a book of short comic stories completed.
> 
> And then the con was over.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> So yeah, that's my "Calgary Con Report". To be honest, I feel a bit silly
> documenting all these events, but you guys are hardcore Groo fans, sooo you're
> actually interested in this kind of minutia, haha....right? Hopefully it
> wasn't too boring or self-indulgent - I tried to focus mostly on the
> Groo-related stuff.
> Mark mentioned that he didn't really enjoy his time at the con, and I'm sorry
> to hear that. In hindsight, I should have been more proactive myself in
> actually meeting him and trying to ensure that he had a pleasant experience.
> Lesson learned. I'll try to remember that for next time (if there ever is
> one).
> 
> As for myself, I'm still kinda walking on air from the whole thing; still
> somewhat in disbelief in regards to my encounter with Sergio. I went to San
> Diego 2 years ago with the express purpose of meeting the Groo Crew, but in
> the end, ended up only talking to each of them for about 20 seconds because I
> couldn't think of much to say and I didn't want to hold them up. So, truly,
> I'm extremely grateful to the Powers That Be for the fact that Sergio and
> Mark, at least, were able to come up to Calgary.
> 
> I guess I'll stop there. In order to improve my story-writing, Sergio advised
> that I look in to the works of "O. Henry", so I signed out some O. Henry story
> collections from the library and I'm slowly working my way through them right
> now. I'm gonna start working on that book of short story comics soon.
> 
> So yeah. I tend to be fairly quiet with regards to the Groop, but rest assured
> everybody, I'm still here, reading all the Groop e-mails, heh heh. Talk to
> y'all later!
> 
> -Conor
> 
> 
> 

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