Con Report: ME's Panels

Thursday, we had the Sergio and Mark Show, an annual panel given by the entire creative team of the Groo comic books.  Groo holds the distinction of being one of the (if not the) longest running comic series with the same creative team.  For 20 years, Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, Stan Sakai, and Tom Luth have put out Groo together.  They’ve had 4 publishers in those 20 years and go through editors faster than I go through boxes of Q-Tips, but have only had one change in the creative team:  Tom Luth replaced the colorist after the first issue.  (Gary, chime in if I got any of that wrong).  This year at the Groo Panel, they announced three upcoming Groo projects.  In addition to the 12-issue miniseries, they’ve finally consented to a crossover.  Get ready for Groo Meets Conan and Groo Meets Tarzan.

Saturday was the huge panel day, partly because that was the day of all the best panels, and partly because Saturday is the day with the biggest attendance, so it behooves one to stay off the floor if there is anything else one wants to see. 

After a quick stop in the Stargate SG-1 panel, I headed over to Quick Draw!  Cartoon Improv, which lived up to its reputation as a not-to-be missed panel.  We missed the unveiling of the title of the new Star Wars movie (Revenge of the Sith), but then again, the people unveiling the new title missed a hilarious panel of improvisational cartooning.  ME moderated, throwing out ideas to three of the quickest pens in the business:  Sergio Aragones, Scott Shaw! and Jeff Smith (author and artist of Bone, not the Frugal Gourmet).  If you’d ever wondered what Pictionary would be like with professional comic book artists, this is the place to go.  Also, we got a hilarious look at The Hulk’s new career as a proctologist, taxidermist, and tax attorney.  My favorite, though, was when they played “What do you get when you cross…”  To Sergio, they threw the prompt “What do you get when you cross a rhino with a zebra?”  Sergio drew a rhino, and you could almost feel the disappointment in the packed hall as everyone thought, “He’s just going to put stripes on a rhino.  What’s the fun in that?”  Then Sergio drew a second rhino, looking at the first, and this rhino looked as pissed off as a cartoon rhino can.  In front of the second rhino, he drew a third, smaller, baby rhino.  This rhino had stripes.  But that was not the end of it all.  Bushes sprouted in the background, and hiding in the bushes was a very nonchalant looking zebra.  So what do you get when you cross a rhino with a zebra?  A pissed off daddy rhino!  I must emphasize that this whole scene fell off his pen in probably under 2 minutes.  This is why they call it Quick Draw.  Another fun moment came as ME asked Jeff Smith to draw his character, Bone.  Jeff Smith just put out a 1,300-page collection of all the Bone comics, plus he’s drawn innumerable unpublished Bone drawings and sketches for fans, so drawing Bone wouldn’t be too challenging for him.  He tossed off a casual sketch of the character sitting on a log with a flower.  Then out came the blindfold!  Following the blindfold, the challenge to reproduce the previous sketch.  The consensus among the hall was that we couldn’t draw half as well with our eyes open as Jeff Smith did blindfolded.

That was just Panel 1.  Panel 2 was a group panel by some of the top cartoon voices in the business today, with a nod to the star of Panel 4, June Foray (the woman about whom legendary animator Chuck Jones once said, “No, you’ve got it wrong.  June Foray is not the female Mel Blanc.  Mel Blanc is the male June Foray.”).  June Foray was sitting right in front of us for much of the panel, though she did get up partway through, leaving the panelists gesturing to a short Asian man every time they mentioned June Foray for the remainder of the hour and a half.

I leave you with a word from Panel 3, the Ray Bradbury hour.  Every morning, the universe has decided to give you another day to live.  Prove yourself worthy.