We’ll be revisiting some of these con reports over the next few weeks.
After checking in and getting ourselves situated after the short but still tough flight from Boston to Chicago we took a walk around the Convention area. The show is actually in Rosemont, which is a couple of miles outside the city and right next to the airport. I’m familiar with the town because I come here every year for Wizard World— but this was the first time with Veronica.
Now if you’re a regular reader here you’ve heard me go on about GIBSONS Steakhouse. It’s easily my favorite restaurant in the world. The Spaghetti Place in Nagoya Japan is a close second, but there’s just something about GIBSONS. It feels solid. It’s wood and leather and heavy on the guy-ness and they make the best steaks anywhere. The secret is an 1800 degree oven that gives the Medium Rare steak (please don’t ever order a steak any other way) a nice warm center and a crisp outside. You can cut their filet with a fork— it’s that tender.
All right so I go on about Gibsons here on the blog, imagine how I go on about it at home. It’s gotten to the point that Veronica rolls her eyes when I start talking about it— so planning our Anniversary dinner there added a great deal of pressure, it had to live up to my buildup— so I did the only thing any sensible husband could do— I reached out to the manager of the place and told him the stakes.
He did not let us down.
Our dinner was five star and he comped us dessert which was so huge we shared it with the front desk at our hotel. Veronica really liked the place and she could understand why I speak so highly of it.
After dinner we walked over to the King’s Entertainment Complex— it’s a sort of grown up Chuckee Cheese area situated behind the main street— I think you have to know its there to find it and it’s a lot of fun. There is a mexican restaurant, a german restaurant, an Irish Pub and KIng’s which which has a full restaurant with pretty good food. Nearby is Murray Bros— Bill Murray’s restaurant which is equally good (and surprising because it certainly could just get by on the gimmick of being owned by Bill Murray).
We got in a good walk before heading back to the hotel to prep for day one of the show. Here’s the thing about traveling with Veronica. Yes, she’s my wife and she’s gorgeous. She’s also a very sweet person and one of the most genuinely fun and funny people I’ve ever met. I could have fun sitting with her in a car stuck in a garage during a snowstorm (and I have). So traveling with her is always perfect.
The next day the show didn’t start until 4pm so we had some time to kill. The hotel has a full breakfast— and I don’t mean a chintzy pile of cheese danish and stale coffee- it’s a full on breakfast complete with an Omelet bar— always go with the hotel Omelet bar if they have one. We ate breakfast and then got all of our things situated for the show before heading over a couple of hours early for setup.
Our table was right in front— virtually the first artists you see after you’ve come through the experience area. You could get your picture taken with the Batmobile, or with Star Wars props, or as a life size Pop Figure— etc, and then there was us. We were set up next to Dexter Soy who is one of the finest artists working in comics today— I’m a big fan of his work and he’s a wonderful guy— so is his little brother who helps him out.
Dexter Soy
That’s one of the things I like best about doing these shows, meeting people. Not just amazing artists like Dexter, or spending time with equally amazing artists like Art Baltazar, or even the people who are our fans (although they are really cool) but I like meeting the people at the front desk, the people who clean up the convention center, the waiters and the waitresses or even people like Dean who I got to know in the elevator of our hotel and roughly a ¼ mile walk together to a nearby restaurant to pick up dinner for his family.
Dean is from Chicago’s suburbs but he and his wife came into Rosemont to take their two year old daughter to SESAME STREET LIVE— where she was mesmerized by the $20 bubble wand he bought her. We laughed at how kids are. I told him two was a great age for kids but it’s even better when they’re 22.
Anyway, back to Friday— this show promoter is the former head of Wizard Con, so I’ve known him for many years. He was particularly gracious, the show had produced a special SABRINA THE TEENAGE WITCH Comic with Kiernan Shipka on the cover and our art on the insides, he asked how many Archie had given us and when I told him zero he had someone swing by with BOXES of them and told us to feel free to sell them for the same price the show was ($15/ea). That might seem high for a comic book but since Kiernan was a guest at the show it was a sort of quasi program/memento too. We ended up blowing through ALL of them pretty quickly. Usually Friday’s are dead at conventions—people have to work right? Well this one was straight outl the moment it opened to the moment it closed at 9pm. We walked back to our hotel and I can’t for the life of me remember what we had for dinner. Breakfast couldn’t have possibly held us over. That might have been the day I got a pretty great (and huge) Turkey sandwich from the convention center restaurant.
We got in a good walk and had some fun and then turned in by midnight with the following day’s show starting at 10am.
Continued Next Week.