Greetings About Heroes readers!  My name is Matt (Baby Matt to listeners of the podcast, as well as Omar, Ben, and co.) and I am the newest addition to the AH crew.  I figured that with the event still pretty fresh on my mind, I’d give you guys my take on the Lexington Comic Con that Ben and I attended.

The convention only ran one day this year from 10AM to 5PM.  We arrived around 11AM due to an unfortunate incident with a pass for a certain VIP dinner that was left in a certain persons car, who shall remain nameless *cough*Spider-Ben*cough*.  Once our pass was retrieved, Ben, my brother Logan, and myself, all ventured to the wonderland of Lexington.

Upon arrival we were greeted with two large banners to each side of the entrance showing 2 pretty nice pieces of artwork of the Megazord from Power Rangers Zeo.  Once inside there were a TON of people, making it sometimes hard to navigate.  I was impressed with the crowd, having attended Scarefest the last 2 years, this crowd easily doubled the number of Scarefest.

Once we got our bearings and found an open path, we made our way around the outer wall of the con.  This is where they had most of the celebs and comic people lined up.  I told the guys that my first “mission” upon arriving was to find legendary comic artists Bob McLeod and Mike Grell, because I just HAD to get artwork from them.  I had already arranged a piece with Jay Leisten, so I wasn’t in as much of a rush to get to him.  After making our way around the entire floor we finally found them in the far corner, with no lines at all!  Mike Grell had taken a break, and Bob McLeod had one person standing there while he sketched, so I started with Jay.

I chatted with Jay for a few minutes, he wished me a happy birthday, and said my sketch of the X-Force Wolverine was up next and to check back with him later.  On my merry way I went, 5 feet away, to the booth of Bob McLeod!  After a long, hard trot there, I waited for a few minutes while he finished up a sketch of Batman he was doing for another fan.  While waiting, I thumbed through some of theoriginal artwork pages he had brought and put up for sale, and was amazed at what I saw.  Some VERY nice pages were there for sale, but nothing that gave me that “buy me!” feeling. After a few more minutes, the gentleman ahead of me got his sketch, which looked awesome, so I made my move.  I introduced myself, thanked him for being there, and asked for 2 sketches.  At this point, I already knew I wanted to get a Conan for my Dad, who is a huge Conan fan.  I hadn’t made up my mind until I saw the Batman from the dude before me, at which point, I knew what I wanted.  Giving him my order, I made my way around a little bit before returning to Mike Grell to get a sketch for my Dad.

Mike still hadn’t returned, but I went ahead and put in an order for a full page sketch of Tarzan and was thankfully 3rd in line. I finally ended up getting that sketch at almost the end of the convention, but it was okay, because it was a beautiful piece of art and both I and my Dad were super stoked about it.

After getting my sketches ordered, we walked around the rest of the con and were greeted by all sorts of things for sale.  Toys, comics, art supplies, posters, apparel – all sorts of stuff!  Having pretty much spent my money getting original art, I decided not to purchase any toys or goodies, instead reserving some for some freelance artists that I might be interested in, and that was a good idea.

We found an artist by the name of Mason Easley who does a number of different things from video game characters, classic cartoons, to comic book characters.  He had a very nice book on hand featuring prints of some of his art, most of which were extremely good.  I ended up signing up for a sketch from him and he did a pretty wicked Deadpool which I was happy about.

We also found another really good artist who was giving out free sketch cards by the name of Scottie Watson.  He was drawing anything you could ask for including Scooby-Doo (which I got fo my little girl), Darkwing Duck (which Ben got), to Green Lantern and Batman (which was for myself and my brother respectively).  He was a really nice guy to talk to and many thanks to him for those.

Throughout the day we wandered about the remainder of the con area, seeing many things for sale.  Like I said before, I held off from buying any toys or comics, though they were readily available.  We mostly killed time looking at things, talking to artists, and just enjoying the atmosphere.  Towards the end of the convention, like Ben mentioned before, they announced that they would indeed be returning next year for another convention, this time expanded to a 2-day convention!  Nice!  Not long after, we went around for last stops to pick up artwork from everyone I had asked for sketches from, and finally made our way out to head towards the pizza place for our VIP dinner with none other than Jason David Frank!

The dinner turned out to be well worth it, as I’m sure both my brother and Ben will agree.  We got to eat at a great little place called Puccini’s which had some awesome food, and the setting was very nice, with the VIP guests having a sectioned off spot to enjoy the dinner.  Jason arrived a little bit late, though no one was too upset about that.  He came in and although exhausted, went right in to everything, talking about the convention and telling us stories about his personal life.  He had everyone go around and tell a little about ourselves, tell a goal that we had set for ourself, and any hobbies or things you were interested in.  We were also joined by the very sweet Catherine Sutherland for the dinner who also shared stories and interacted with everyone.  They both signed items, took pictures, made phone calls, and gave shout-outs on video to those that asked.  If anyone were to get my voice mail on my cell, you would totally hear him telling you to leave me a message!

All in all it was a great day, and we all had a blast.  It gave me a bit of con fever and I’m anxious to go to another one.  Very much looking forward to the con next year!