If you missed it, you can read about the first part of day one at the North Texas Comic Book Show right here.
After getting my main mission accomplished, I was able to relax a bit and enjoy the show.
First up was Jim Shooter’s one-man-panel on storytelling. When Jim Shooter was 14 years old he began selling comic book stories to an editor at DC comics, who had no idea at first that the writer sending him these great stories was barely a teenager. When I was 9 years old, I was reading Superman, Superboy, and Legion of Super-Heroes comic book stories written by Shooter, who was 5 years older than me, and loving them! Of course, I didn’t know that at the time.
Here’s a couple of photos of Jim Shooter expounding on aspects of storytelling.
Afterward, I just meandered around visiting the various seller’s booths remembering when I paid 12 cents for a comic book that now sold for $2,400 and walked down “Artists Alley” admiring some of the comic book drawings.
Next up was the staple of every self-respecting comic book convention – the costume contest. They had one for kids and one for adults who were still kids. I’ve never competed in one, but I could see myself having fun doing that, so don’t take that previous sentence as a snarky poke at those adults who were letting their inner child out to play.
Here are some photos of some of the contestants.
Can you name all of them in the comments?
Then it was on to the final panel of the day; the Secret Wars reunion panel composed of writer/editor Jim Shooter, penciller Mike Zeck, and inker John Beatty. This was one of my favorite parts of the convention and these three gentlemen spent about 90 minutes telling us how the comic book came about, why they made some of the changes to established characters that they did, how hard the project was, how fun the project was, and sharing little-known behind-the-scenes stories while answering audience questions.
Here’s a photo of, from left to right, John Beatty, Mike Zeck, and Jim Shooter during the panel.
By the time this panel was over, I was too. It was time to make my way to my nearby hotel, get something to eat and crash for the night so I could be fresh for the next day at the North Texas Comic Book Show.
I finally entered at 10:02 am and immediately went looking for the line where former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief and writer for the Marvel Super Heroes: Secret Wars series, Jim Shooter, was signing. After standing in the very long line for about an hour (the last 15 minutes of that spent enjoying conversation with Mr. Shooter as he talked to the two men in front of me and myself while he signed their books), I finally stood in front of him and presented my book and a couple of prints I purchased for his autograph. He kindly signed a dark interior page of my book with a light marker, then the prints, and then the Certificates of Authority (COA’s) to prove he signed said items, should I ever wish to sell them. He graciously shook my hand, said it was a pleasure meeting me and hoped I would have a good time at the convention. 
Then it was over to the line for the penciller of the series, Mr. Zeck. The wait in this exceptionally long line was about 45-50 minutes. I’ve always liked Mr. Zeck’s art so I picked up a print of a Captain America drawing he had done that I had admired for years to have that signed as well. We only spoke for a few moments while he was signing, because there were a lot of eager fans behind me who were also waiting anxiously for a chance to have their various books and prints to be signed.
It’s been a while since I’ve been to a Comic Book Convention, so I’m especially looking forward to going to the 
Best Buy announced recently that they would stop selling music CDs in all of its stores by July of this year, while Target is considering moving to a consignment only deal for any music CDs it sells. The news has a lot of people asking if music CDs will be no more.
At the cabin, I have a couple of good-sized boxes of music CDs that I have accumulated over the years. And every time I get t spend a few days at the cabin I take the time to rip songs from those CDs to iTunes, then place the CDs back in a box. Why? Why not sell them? It’s true that I could definitely use the space in my office that those boxes take up.
I used to have a ton of vinyl record albums and 45’s that ended up being sold at yard sales for a buck because, “Who needs ‘em? I’ve got my music on little reel-to-reel cassette tapes.” Then I had cassette tapes that eventually bit the dust from non-use as in, “I don’t need these cassettes because I have my music on 8-track cassettes with much higher quality.” And soon after it was, “My music is on these high-quality CDs, so I don’t need those 8-track cassettes anymore.” Now it’s, “I can carry my entire music library with me digitally in a device only slightly larger than those old reel-to-reel cassettes, so I don’t need these bulky CDs.”
And yet, over the past few years, there has been a resurgence of audiophiles who only want to listen to music on vinyl records. Just think; if I had saved those albums for forty years I could be making a fortune by selling them now. Maybe the same thing will happen in another 40 years with reel-to-reel cassettes, 8-track cassettes, or even music CDs and my grandchildren could become millionaires from my boxes of CDs.
Last night before bed I scheduled 
So, as soon as I arrived back at the hotel I contacted my hosting service and found a way I could go in through “the back” so to speak using my hosting credentials to reset my username and password for the blog. While in the files I looked around (even though I’m nowhere near conversant enough with my database details to know what I was looking at) to see if I could find any obvious changes or dates/times when this could have happened.
I was also confused as to why anyone would bother to do all this and then do nothing over the following 12-18 hours to make use of the site…
