Jump back to [Part One/Thursday] Jump ahead to [Part Three/Saturday] or [Part Four/Wrap-up]
FRIDAY – – – – –
A nice reminder that morning light and sunset are different colors, even to my not-great camera phone. This would be the first of three days in a row that I woke up long before my alarm, a combination of timezone shifts, the end of Daylight Savings a week prior, the phenomenon of the hotel/different bed, and general convention excitement and anxiety — don’t sleep in or you’ll miss something! (Click all photos to enlarge.)
I headed to the fitness room to jog in place, and a pleasant surprise, Chris Murray was there. It’s harder to run when you’re talking, but it certainly makes the time go by faster. We headed straight to the hotel restaurant, and what luck, breakfast was still being served. We were soon joined by Josh Eggebeen and Roger Taft, and then Ben Conway. Eggebeen talked about some challenges he and Taft have had this year getting their After Action Report guidebooks printed, shipped to the States, and distributed. Eggebeen was happy that their expensive Plan B worked, and many missing books were now on their way. On the subject of things shipping later than hoped for from China, Conway showed us a photo of a truck filled to the absolute brim with Roboskulls, a big milestone for his toy company, Skeletron. They were in their brown shipping boxes, but even those looked nice. The image on his phone was an inadvertently artful abstraction of beige (cardboard) and black (ink) shapes within the square of the open truck rear. It was also a satisfying achievement he and his partner could share with their crowdfunding backers: these bonkers toy vehicles (cross a red skull with a TIE Fighter) were on their way to the States. My breakfast companions also mused about someone in the Joe collector community who makes trouble for others. I was unfamiliar with this person, but I appreciated some scuttlebutt with my eggs.
G.I. JOE GAMING SESSION – – – – –
11am was the start time for the role-playing game session. The convention center was over-air conditioned, and my wool socks only helped so much. On the other hand, I had assumed the game would be in a con room, either the showroom or the panel room next to it. These don’t have windows. But we were in the main hallway, which does! That’s a nice change, getting to see the sky during a weekend spent mostly indoors. It was also perhaps a bit of marketing. Rather than squirrel us away, put us out in the open where all the vendors and early arrivals can see us — hey, what are they doing? That looks interesting, I should do that too, somehow!
Here was the first major difference between my con experience this year at Assembly Required and last. Twelve months prior, I was having breakfast with my podcast partner, Mark, who runs all things Talking Joe and who had flown over from Heathrow. He had signed up for the Customs Class, not because he’s a toy customizer, but because it was interesting and the sole convention activity available before the doors opened to the public. I didn’t sign up, but I did stick my head in and take photos. This year, there were two activities happening at the same time. One was the Customs Class, while the other was a session of the G.I. Joe roleplaying game, led by Joe Roth of The Dealt Hand. (The Axis and Allies game the previous night was an informal event that the AR chiefs had come up with a few days earlier and offered to people on Facebook. It didn’t cost any money, but with so many people arriving the night before the show, seemed like a good option.) I’m not a customizer, but I do own several G.I. Joe RPG books but haven’t been able to learn, so this seemed ideal. Hopefully in this session we would be having this much fun:
But I am not a gamer. I played Dungeons & Dragons around 6th and 7th grade and loved it, but even then it was a little hard to find two other people who could also block off a whole afternoon. Excepting one session around 2019, I haven’t joined an adventure in more than 20 years. But I did get into D&D novels, and read 10 of them, and re-read those recently. My brother, also not a gamer, still has all of our books (predating 2nd Edition AD&D, many inherited from a friend), all our pewter miniatures (most from that same friend), and dozens of paperback novels. You could say I’m Dungeons & Dragons Adjacent. And in the intervening years I’ve noted the publication of a lot of bad D&D comics, and a few good ones, and the release of a terrible D&D movie, as well as a good one. But I don’t make time for roleplaying games. Add to that the fact that all at the same time, Renegade Games developed and released a G.I. Joe Deck-Building (card) Game, a Miniatures game, and the RPG, as well as more like that for Transformers. Realistically, this session might be the only time I’d ever play the Joe RPG, so I appreciate that it was a specific event I could sign up for, and that there wasn’t anything else tugging at my sleeve at 11am.
Roth was using the Beginner’s Box, released recently (I have it at home, too, still shrink wrapped). It contained two short adventures for Level 1 characters, several pre-made character sheets, and simplified rules. (It would have taken too long for us to make our own characters.) Devil’s Due fans will be happy to see that Firewall was one of them. On my left was David (pronounced Dah-veed) Marroquin, who played as Steeler; Brad Dellow, who is a gamer and has played this before. He was Bullet-Proof. Julian Wolfe was Mutt, meaning he could also control Junkyard. These are the same Dellow and Wolfe who were part of Axis & Allies the night before, so this was some nice continuity in the weekend. And lastly, Travis (didn’t catch a last name) played as Firewall. Marroquin had never played any RPG before, I was mightily lapsed, and the others were current, so we had a nice range. Roth hosts gaming events in Iowa with his business partner, and owns several hundred tabletop games, so this is his job and hobby — at the library, at parties, and even once a year at a G.I. Joe convention. It’s great that The Dealt Hand again had a presence at AR, and Renegade really should mail them a thank you card, as this duo continue to act as ambassadors for all the G.I. Joe tabletop games. In demoing for and playing with con attendees, they can turn someone into a gamer, into a buyer of Renegade’s products.
I won’t spoil any of the specifics of the adventure, but I will state that we five had to deal with a problem in the Pit, and were successful. We did not fight any high-ranking Cobra characters like the Commander or Destro. We did fight a Tele-Viper, something like a B.A.T., and a made-up character who felt like a Dreadnok reject. Dellow appreciated the simplified rules of the Beginner Box, and both he and Roth said that Renegade should have released it first, that the actual Rulebook is so complicated that only G.I. Joe fans will understand it, and only veteran gamers can navigate it. I forgot how many things a good DM/GM has to keep track of, and without spoiling anything for myself since players can’t look behind the gamescreen or at the Game Master’s notes, I took this photo of Roth noting what all our rolls were for each turn, our choices, and our decisions.
For my part, I found the game fun, but much slower than I expected. Of course much of that, like A&A the night before, was because Roth explained and re-explained the rules. And we kept asking questions. Can I do this? Am I rolling three dice or four? Where do I look on my sheet to know that I’m rolling four dice? I got hit by a tired wave halfway through, not helping me juggle all the information. (Hey, I hadn’t wanted to wake up two hours before my alarm!) Plus there was a big difference between this experience and the D&D that I played as a kid. In 1990 my pal the Dungeon Master had filed off the edges of the rules, with fewer moment-to-moment mechanics. If I wanted to turn and slash a different monster, I just did. Such a move in the Joe game might involve asking our Games Master how far away one enemy was, and the distance to the other, and checking my character sheet for how many feet I could move in a turn (answer: 30), and then rolling the dice for two different reasons, like I’m reloading my weapon and also the robot I’m diverting towards is reloading its as well. Active gamers may consider that reasonable, necessary, and even fun. If I played the Joe RPG regularly, I think I could get into that level of detail. But it was a lot for a first game. Also, my DM all those years ago probably read the Dungeon Master’s Guide wrong, as my Level 1 Fighter should not have had 18s for all Ability Scores, should not have gained a +2/+2 Vorpal Sword at Level 3, and our party of three should not have gone up against a Red Dragon on our second adventure, much less been able to defeat it. I will admit that playing proper rules for any RPG with all that in my past was going to be an adjustment.
Oh, hey, Renegade, can you fix this typo?
While some players want to perform in character, and others wish to problem-solve, I want the story to keep progressing. And while I like imagining the game like a movie in my head, I’m out of practice when it comes to all this waiting for the other players to take their turns. And I wanted to fight Destro and Cobra Commander at Cobra HQ, but of course that’s not reasonable for a Level 1 new recruit. It was fun to see Wolfe play in character, and by that I mean perform — he did Mutt’s voice and delivery from the Sunbow cartoon, whereas the rest of us spoke indirectly, my character goes over there, I think we should attack, Hey I have a tech specialty so I can fix that junction box. Thanks again to con chief Brian Sauer for inviting The Dealt Hand to explain and officiate all four Renegade G.I. Joe games, and to Joe Roth for GMing this specific adventure. We did finish ours, and Hawk congratulated us at the end (Roth half reading/half performing), and it only took four hours! Fun fact: Everyone had a water bottle with them, distinct from the gamer stereotype of energy drinks.
Partway through, I dashed off for 60 seconds to take a glimpse of the—
CUSTOMS CLASS WITH AVAC’S LAB – – – – –
I’m not sure why this sign showed a different name–
–as AVAC was still running it:
I realize now that despite spending a paragraph on in last year’s Con Report, I didn’t include a photo.
Whereas last year’s project was a vehicle in the 3 3/4-inch scale, this year’s was a 6-inch action figure, turning Tiger Force Bazooka into Rowdy Roddy Piper. [EDIT: Podcast Mark tells me that “Hot Rod Customs” is a Rowdy Roddy Piper reference, that he wore a “Hot Dog!” t-shirt. Shows how much I know about wrestling. Thank you, Mark!]
There was a 4-inch RRP figure released at the 2007 G.I. Joe Collector’s Convention, and with Hasbro turning every ’80s and ’90s A Real American Hero figure into a Classified one at the larger size, there’s fan interest in the peripheral and limited edition characters.
This gent was wearing an LED headgear light as he worked:
The exhibit hall, which is actually two small rooms with a partial wall between them, didn’t open until 4pm, so now would be a good time to walk around without any crowds. Against one wall was an impressive display, the–
JOSH BLAYLOCK AUCTION – – – – –
This was the Josh Blaylock auction of original artwork and printouts from his 2001 G.I. Joe comic book launch. He’s been holding onto these since, and was at last selling them. I think this represents the last of his “Reinstated” artifacts. Oh, hey, Blaylock’s Storm Shadow redesign!
And Zanya’s first appearance! (From issue #2.)
This is fun, a three-ring binder of photocopies of Blaylock’s art layouts for issue #1, with a regular G.I. Joe issue #1 next to it for comparison. Here’s page 2 of the Kurth/Larter final with Blaylock’s roughs of that same page:
Perhaps more of interest to me than art collectors was this, the first part of a two-page printout:
It’s tantalizing that it refers to earlier communications, which I assume are lost because they’re email and not discrete documents, or not easily formatted because they are part of a back and forth email thread.
These would all be up for auction at the end of the show, and anything that didn’t sell would go on-sale a few days later at a specific website. It would be fun to try and nab something for my book, but I do have an early piece of Devil’s Due art for Chapter 20 (the final chapter), so if I missed this or was outbid, it would be okay.
WALKING AROUND THE SHOWROOM – – – – –
Let’s interrupt this series of text paragraphs with a photo of toys for sale elsewhere in the weekend!
I wanted to keep in touch with podcast Mark throughout the con, to give him some live updates, but between taking photos, typing notes on my phone, texting my wife back on the East Coast, and actually living and experiencing the convention, I didn’t much message Mark until after.
Back to walking around the dealer room as it was getting set up: Someone called out to me, it was Greg Brown, who owns Cotswold Collectibles, runs the wonderful Dallas Fort Worth (“DFW”) G.I. Joe and Action Figure Show, and helps with JoeLanta and ToyLanta. Why, I thought Brown was a 12-inch collector and not a 3 and 3/4-inch one! He corrected me. We talked about DFW ’25, and the great news that it and JoeFest ’25 would not be held at the same time. I mentioned Chris Murray, who helps run the Declassified booth and was somewhere around here setting it up. (A reminder for new readers: Joe Declassified is a non-profit that collects and displays rare and one-of-a-kind G.I. Joe art and artifacts. Particularly, it sets up tables, glass cases, and vitrines at a few conventions, a kind of roving museum.) Brown had heard of Murray, but not Declassified. As they both live in Texas, I thought they should meet, and then Murray appeared out of nowhere. This was a nice bit of convergence, my G.I. Joe pal meeting my other G.I. Joe pal.
One Chad Baker, who would be manning the Assembly Required merchandise table, introduced himself and said my con report from last year well captured the show and he appreciated it. That’s nice to hear. I assume these posts are too long and only a few people get to the end!
Here’s David Marroquin, who had played the RPG but excused himself a little early because he was a dealer and needed to set up his table. Marroquin designed and printed this fun G.I. Joe-scaled vehicle.
He has also designed and printed his own line of dinosaur add-ons, a line called Armored Beasts. At the moment, you place these harness/accessories on a Mattel Jurassic World dinosaur. These were for sale!
My tour of the dealer room was interrupted by a need for lunch. I recalled a con problem: You eat at 8 or 9, then skip lunch because so much is happening, get hungry at 4 or 5, but work through it because you know you can get dinner at 6 or 7. But what actually happens is the con room doesn’t close until 7, and it takes time for your group of friends to head out for dinner, and then there’s a walk and a wait, so food doesn’t arrive until 8. You can’t concentrate or remember much as you talk with friends and learn interesting things, and you might spend too much money on a toy or piece of art, all because you skipped lunch! (A snack at 3 might help, but not enough.) I committed this year to eating again at 4, despite the fact that the con room opened then, and even though I might be missing great photo opportunities or bumping into interesting people. On my way out, I met Michael Nie (center) and his brother, Matt (right).
We’ll hear from Nie in the Part 3/Saturday report, in fact. He had reached out to me a few months back in my capacity as shop owner, looking for a particular IDW variant cover which doesn’t turn up often, and I was able to connect him with a copy. But Nie isn’t just a collector, he’s a reader, too! He’s has had four (or more? So many!) letters published in the Skybound G.I. Joe comics. That must be a record. He’s also a Talking Joe listener, and has guested on the Joe on Joe podcast. I’m curious how and why people come to toy conventions, so sometimes I ask a little more than “did you drive or fly?” The Nies have family nearby, so this was a fun way to double up. We three talked about my book, and the challenges the G.I. Joe brand faces in the 2010s and 2020s. Then I walked back to the hotel. Its restaurant was closed for the lunch-dinner interim, but a limited menu was available at the bar, which I recalled being a real life saver a year earlier. In general, I don’t wish to eat alone at conventions, but it can be a nice break from all the talking.
But who should happened to have ambled up next to me at the bar? It was toymaker, G.I. Joe art historian, book publisher, web maestro, and all-around nice guy Carson Mataxis. He was not selling his art book at AR, a break from his last few conventions this summer and fall, so he could relax and actually take in the con as an attendee. Mataxis was in fact in the Customs Class that morning, and one of the photos I had taken was over his shoulder — certainly he would not have been painting a plastic head at 11am if he’d been “on duty,” lugging mics and speakers and boxes of heavy books! There’s no photo of our lunch, but here’s an artist’s rendering:
I always want to catch up with Mataxis, but we’re both so busy at cons that we tend not to. But now we had time, and I could feel my urge to get back to the convention hall recede because here was an interesting friend who could engage in good conversation, someone who knows a lot about G.I. Joe, collecting, animation, and videography. And here is the other tough choice of a convention besides “when do I eat?” It’s “do I engage in this interesting activity that’s in front of me and risk missing something amazing over there, or do I cut this one short and risk that the other thing isn’t as good?” Mataxis told me about his business plan for 2025 — totally amazing — and I was able to offer my perspective. This is separate from his Operation: Recall action figures! He also reminded me that he has assembled a substantial ’80s MOC G.I. Joe collection three different times, that he sold the first one and collected the second one and then sold it! This is amazing and bananas at the same time. There is no one like Carson Mataxis.
AARONS OF THE UNIVERSE – – – – –
Back in the con hall, I noted this display:
This requires some explanation. There’s a beloved brick and mortar toy store in Springfield, Ohio called ROMA Collectibles. Its owner, the lively Aaron Detrick, a toy con fixture, was diagnosed with cancer before JoeFest in August. Many of his friends are toy makers and customizers, and organized this amazing online auction featuring 12 different action figures-as-Detrick to raise money and show their support. The toys were auctioned on Facebook during AR, with the actual toys on display there, as most of the maker/customizers would be in attendance, as would Detrick himself. I particularly enjoyed some of the punny names.
Here’s Springfield, OH Aaron Series CG by Adam Skalmoski (a play on Larry Hama’s concept that batches of Crimson Guardsmen look alike and each “series” shares the same name).
ScAaron Glow by Ryan Melzer, from a retro Masters of the Universe Scareglow:
For this one, Joel Elvisrocker has turned a Crimson Guardsman into an Eco-Warrior and I find the end result fun and disturbing. Out of focus in the background is normal, regular Detrick at his store.
And knowing that all these would be at a larger scale, Brian Kaufman crafted Detrick at the 1980s size, along with two additional characters, and a vintage Roboskull remade to match the aqua color of the 1992 Ninja Viper. (I believe Ninja Viper is Detrick’s favorite Joe toy). Left to right are Ms Mercenary, RomaSkull co-pilot; Teal Yeti, RomaSkull pilot (note the Aaron Detrick likeness!); and Cousin Skeleton, Cargo hold specialist. Behind them is the RomaSkull. Something went wrong with the casting, so Kaufman had to substitute some actual 1980s Roboskull parts (note the red), with the proper aqua replacements to come.
Here’s Kaufmann, by the way, taken later. This was me sort of admitting I didn’t have or make time to talk with everyone. Brian, let’s get a photo since/in case I don’t walk back over to this corner of the lobby bar or stop by your table tomorrow.
Back to shop owner Aaron Detrick and his hardworking friends, I’ve only met him briefly, but his brick and mortar store is an institution, as I’ve heard a few folks at cons over the years refer to “ROMA” as if everyone knew what it was, and others going out of their way to stop at ROMA while driving to a particular convention. I don’t know when I’ll next be in Ohio, but that would be a fun pit stop.
Then I talked with Pat Stewart about multiplexes, and Kenny Koepnick, part of ROMA Collectibles and owner of his own store, The Toy Department) about the Aarons of the Universe. Over at the Declassified booth Justin Talton (who specializes in Joe catalogs) had just acquired an original Earl Norem painting, and then someone called out from behind me. It was the artist Kickily!
This was funny. Podcast Mark and I interviewed him in March and I’m always surprised when people know what I look like even though I plaster myself onto the internet. And it was an unusual episode in that we talked for at least 45 minutes without covering G.I. Joe. Kickily had driven the three(?) hours from Minnesota to attend the con, and to informally be a vendor. He was camping out at someone’s table, had brought paint, and had a stack of small paintings (what he considers sketches, not full paintings) for sale. Many were G.I. Joe, a few were M.A.S.K., and some were of Minnesota Vikings! I gawked at all of them, one by one. The color! Sorry, I didn’t get a photo. I wanted to show Kickily a chapter of my book, but I was also enjoying not lugging around my laptop, perhaps later at the hotel bar?
Kickily also had two packs of prints for sale, and kindly gifted me the first two issues of his self-published comic, Tiempos Finales. These are exclusive to his website, and are gorgeous and fun.
I ambled over to Larry Hama. He was drawing, and there wasn’t a line at his table, so I sat next to him. He said “So, what’s this panel about tomorrow?” I had to laugh, because on the one hand, isn’t every Larry Hama panel about G.I. Joe, especially at a G.I. Joe convention? On the other hand, I was specifically going to make our panel not about G.I. Joe, and had run that by Ron Wagner the previous night. And to the extent that Hama might want or need any prep for a 45-minute panel, he’s an accomplished extemporaneous storyteller, so if anyone in the room didn’t need a heads up on the next day’s topic, it was that guy. But I told him my angle, and he replied with his standard “okay” and kept drawing. It was good to see him. I hadn’t seen Hama since May.
FRIDAY DINNER – – – – –
At 7pm the con room closed and people started heading next door for dinner. A month or so before the convention, the 50-person only dinner sold out. Con chiefs Brian Sauer and Travis Webber had shifted the Friday dinner, an add-on to the convention packages, from one restaurant to another. But many people commented their disappointment at not being able to to take part. This feels different than some other toy cons, where if a smaller event within the con fills up, people are sad or angry because they’ll miss out on an additional exclusive toy or bauble. And while there is always a surprise bauble at the AR Friday dinner, this was about missing comeraderie. Sauer and Webber switched the dinner back to Buzzard Billy’s, with its 100-person capacity in the rear room, and announced via Facebook that they were opening up the dinner option again on the Codename Iowa/Assembly Required website. I was glad, as I’d missed the first round, and could now get in on it.
Upon arriving in the back room at the restaurant, everyone was given a shooter glass. Each had the Destro Iron Grenadiers logo stenciled on it. I’m not much of a drinker, but I appreciate custom G.I. Joe novelty items, particularly when they are made in limited quantities and commemorate a special event. Here’s Webber making an announcement about who could go up to the buffet first.
I was hungry, and lucky that my section headed to the buffet line first. The catfish was excellent. I sat with David T. Allen (who hosts the G.I. Joe New News Review podcast) and toy collector Jason Packard, both of Florida. We talked about conventions, and I said that as small as AR was, it didn’t feel small, I didn’t run out of things to do or people to talk to. Allen observed that Assembly Required isn’t a convention, it’s a community event with a convention in the middle, which I thought was apt. Allen is a fixture at AR, and helps run JoeFest (a much bigger show), so I am intrigued by his take on these events. I went to order a black bean burger at the bar, and wound up at a different table with Dak Knomadd (pictured above right, with sunglasses), Rachel Mendoza, and Michael Charles Hill. We talked about comic book retail, convention travel, and Hill explained how his original story for the con came to be — plans for a shared con-exclusive comic book with another con didn’t work out, and having an illustrator draw this story as a comic also didn’t materialize, so Hill wrote it in G.I. Joe teleplay format just for AR, which was his preference in the first place. (More on this in Part 3/Saturday.) Here’s Hill, who I met a year earlier at AR ’23, and interviewed by phone and saw in August in the interim:
Knomadd talked about contacting toy sellers as potential AR dealers, and slowly expanding the con’s footprint over time. Mendoza spoke of the kids’ scavenger hunt, which I’ll spend a paragraph on in Saturday/Part 3 or Sunday/Part 4. But let’s jump ahead a day to when I grabbed a photo of her at the Registration desk:
Back to Friday dinner: Travis Webber raffled off a bottle of whisky, which came in a one-of-a-kind box. I didn’t see it up-close but will assume that Brian Sauer designed and printed something Destro-related and gorgeous for the label and box. I’ll also assume that it’s a quality whisky. This happened fast enough that I didn’t get a good photo, but imagine 99 disappointed dinner attendees and one very happy one.
There was a surprise that also started with Webber getting everyone’s attention. Here, Kenny Koepnick announced that Aaron Detrick and his wife, Lynne Root, would be renewing their vows. My only experience with that comes from television, and I’ve never witnessed it in person. Also, let’s step back for a moment and realize what a lovely and funny act this is to do at a toy convention. But it speaks to the community at Assembly Required, as well as Detrick’s passion and business — owning a brick and mortar toy store and vending at conventions (as many as 22 in one year, according to ROMA’s website.) I thought of the notion of the long-suffering girlfriend/wife/partner of a toy/comics collector who attends conventions, and how out of date it’s starting to feel. I figured that Root must be pretty cool. Of note, this was a one-year anniversary, so the happy couple only got married in 2023, although social media suggests they’ve been together for much longer. All three were dressed up, and Koepnick’s speech was beautiful and perfect. You wouldn’t think a barbeque restaurant at a toy convention would be the place to find a marriage-type event, but it was moving. Everyone was quiet and paid attention, there was a huge applause at the end, and the energy in the room was something I haven’t quite felt at a toy or comic con. Here’s a terrible photo from across the room:
I have seen and felt camaraderie and affection between fans, and respect and devotion from attendees to guests, and I’ve felt little surges of brotherly love in the final minutes of a few cons as people departed. And I’ve felt a kind of yearning sadness for a few con-buddies as we hit our 40s and 50s and a few people have encountered health issues, and as one or two people in the collector-and-fan community have died. This was a little like that, as the subtext here is Detrick’s cancer diagnosis (an October Facebook update explained that treatment was going well), but this was also just uplifting, wonderful, and fun. I appreciated being able to bear witness, even though I don’t know the happy couple.
I wound up at a different table, and spoke with Kenny Koepnick and Mike Irrizary. Mike kindly said that the What’s on Joe Mind podcast had been hyping the Hub Comics/Tom Reilly signing, which I appreciate. This led Koepnick to ask if Hub Comics events are successful, so we compared notes. We talked about hosting parties, art shows, and comics people at my store, and Power Rangers and pro wrestlers at his. Not all events make a lot of money, but they raise the visibility of a store, and are community events, so they generate interest and value. (My wife once saw three people walk past my store on a regular afternoon, one was local and the others seemed like out of town friends, and the one pointed to the Hub Comics sign, said it was a good store, and that it had signings and events all the time. I appreciated the sentiment and the exaggeration.) Around 10 everyone headed back to the Hilton lobby.
BAR SOCIALIZING – – – – –
I didn’t last long. I’d like to blame this on the Daylight Savings clock change of a week earlier, and general convention/travel/hotel/airport fatigue. I spoke with con chief Brian Sauer about growing the con, and I waxed a little about what makes Assembly Required special. He asked if I was ready for my panel the next day, which I thought was funny, because I could moderate a Larry Hama/Ron Wagner panel in my sleep. But suddenly I felt underprepared! I told him my concept and the questions I’d ask, and thought I should write out more bullet points and Google a few items in the morning.
I walked over to a different part of the lobby and briefly talked with Chris Murray, Pat Stewart, and Chris Neal. I thought of the tired wave that had hit me at 1pm, and how I didn’t want to fizzle out the next day. While I wanted to stay and talk, and to an extent, this is the central activity of the con — after hours socializing with friends at the lobby bar — I wanted a decent night’s sleep. Ten years ago I could go three nights in a row with five or six hours’ sleep at a toy convention or animation film festival, but that holds a little less appeal now.
In Part 3 of our exciting adventure, Tim moderates a panel at a G.I. Joe convention without asking any G.I. Joe questions, misses several fun events for being spontaneous and saying “yes” to other events, and doesn’t buy any toys! [Jump back to Part One] [Check out 150 posts from ten-plus years in the blog Index]
A Real American Book! 