The Wonder of "Wonder Con"

You may have heard that, after months of encouragement from Ranjo, I bought a pass to WonderCon specifically to attend his "Frozen" panel, (not that I was particularly interested in "Froze'd" tidbits, but, y'know, the man asked me...).

I turned up to the room, only to find myself barred from entry. OF COURSE.

Ranjo skipped our pre-arranged meet up time (that HE ARRANGED), and then it was too late...panicked, I jumped in line--but I was too late.

Shut out.

But I'm glad, because otherwise I would never have had the chance to run into Ben Montag and his wife Bessie. We grabbed lunch and had a nice visit--easily the highlight of my show.

(We caught Ranjo after the Froze'd panel let out--a college lad was trying to interview Ranjo after the panel--I stepped in and took over as interviewer. Mr. & Mrs. Montag found our tete-a-tete amusing, I think...hoping to get a copy to post here at some point).

Here's some sketches from the day:

Sketched this while Ben, Bessie and I waited in line for the food trucks. This cosplay thing is completely out of hand...felt like 50% of the attendees were in costume.

 Pixar "Toy Story" alien hat.

 These were drawn in line for Starbucks--Ranjo, his coworker Ben, their kids and I seeking refreshment. I saw the Star Trek get ups and said, "Oh, look, is that a busted Kirk...?" Cut off before I could finish by both Jeff and Ben: "THAT'S PIKE (a little exasperated)"

I met Paul Wee and bought one of his sketchbooks--he does really nice life drawing and has been branching into more ink stuff (trained with the same guys as Jeff Watts, been working on The Simpsons for 14 years). We got to talking about publishing strategies, I mentioned my BPB book and he asked if I had one to show him (of course I did ;). He dug it and bought one, cash money. He is working on a book of movie monsters, so I did this drawing for him (which cracked him up--always a good feeling). Super nice guy! Check out his sketchbooks--there's quite a few and they're great!