One of the many perks of living in San Diego is Comic Con, the largest pop culture convention in the world. My wife and I took Child Harbat on Sunday, the last day of the convention. The place was still thronged with folks in costume and die-hard conventioneers and the main floor was an exercise in moving through a crowd without smacking into someone because you were ogling the ten-foot tall Voltron figure.
After four days of Comic Con you’d expect the exhibitors to be burned out. The noise on the main floor is intense—big name exhibitors like Marvel, Sony, and LucasArts have gigantic screens and phalanxes of speakers pumping out high-volume promotional videos and music—and after a few hours your head feels as if it were packed tight with bumblebees. After braving the crowds at the bigger exhibits we worked our way to the book exhibits and found Andy Runton, the author of the adorable and heartwarming Owly and Wormy books. He was there at Top Shelf Comix’s booth and we bought one his books, Friends All Aflutter. My wife told him that one of CH’s favorite t-shirts was one with Owly that we bought at last year’s convention. He offered to autograph her book, then pulled out some pens and whipped up this artwork:
Let me remind you this was the final few hours of what must be one of the most exhausting events for an exhibitor, a four-day crush of people. Yet Andy was smiling, chatting, and willing to take time to make even the smallest fan feel appreciated. What a class act, and it’s folks like him that bring me back to Comic Con each year. Young or old, you’ll enjoy the Owly books and you can check out his website here. Last night Child Harbat and I sat on the couch and laughed our way Owly and Wormy’s newest adventure. Thanks Andy!
Writer, architect, father, husband.
What a treat! CH won’t ever forget THAT experience. There’s nothing more exciting than a signed book except maybe a specially drawn picture for you by the author!
That’s awesome.
This looks amazing!
Andy sounds a real star and appreciative of his followers!
I definitely didn’t see this in the limited floor time I had! We’d meant to spend Sunday making up for our floor time deficiency, but our son was indicating in no uncertain terms he really was done with Comic Con. Drat!
Still, many wonderful adventures were had, and I’m glad for my time there no matter how exhausting it always ends up being!
Taking a kid to Comic Con is a challenge for a superhero. After carrying CH around on my shoulders for six hours I was ready to drop. Still, there’s on price you can put on the look of excitement when they see a life-sized My Little Pony or a two-story Transformer. Awesome!