Back in March, our buddy FirestormFan89 attended MegaCon in Orlando. While there he managed to get this beautiful Firestorm sketch by the legendary George Perez! Some of you may not be aware that Firestorm and George go way back. Firestorm was the first character he worked on when he came to DC Comics — the Firestorm eight-page back-up in Flash #289 (Sept. 1980)!
Such an awesome sketch! Notice the piping on the mask and the points at the temples. Only a true Firestorm artist would catch those old-school details in a convention sketch!
When FirestormFan89 sent a scan of the sketch, he also included an account of his MegaCon experience. Below is what he wrote me:
You really pulled a fast one on me this time, my friend. I came home from MegaCon in Orlando stoked about the sweet sketch I commissioned from legendary artist George Perez. I was going to send it to you last week for inclusion in the FIRESTORM FAN blog but was severely confused by the B’wana Beast takeover. “Why has Shag seemingly defected to do a different blog about a character I have very little interest in when clearly Firestorm is back in the DCU in such a big way of late?”, I would ask myself. Then last night I read the whole April Fools Day gag explanation and the fog of confusion lifted. Good prank, Shag. I was punk’d big time.
I had a great time at MegaCon last month. I went two out of three days, Friday was the best though. I won a raffle to get a sketch from George Perez which I am sending to you for use in your blog if you wish. I also met Mr. Perez’s nieces Charity (dressed as Terra of the Teen Titans) and Milla (Wonder Girl on Friday and Catwoman on Saturday). I sat in on the George Perez Q&A too.
I also met Geoff Johns and attended two panels that he sat in on. The Green Lantern panel was good, Geoff was joined by Tony Bedard and Ethan Van Sciver. Geoff was also in on the DC Nation panel with Dan Didio in which he revealed the Aquaman series that will be coming out later this year.
There was a great panel on Friday about writing for comics with Mark Waid, Darwyn Cooke, Denny O’Neil, and Roy Thomas. During the panel Roy Thomas mentioned something about his partnership with Gerry Conway, that for a while during the late 80s the two friends were not getting along. After the panel ended I got to talk to him about that while he signed a stack of All Star Squadron comics for me. He related to me that shortly after their collaboration on the screenplay for the Conan the Destroyer they got in a huge argument about something and stopped working together because of it. But several years later they buried the hatchet, Gerry apologized and blamed the fight on the stress he was under because his marriage was falling apart.
On Saturday I went to celebrity Q&As with Doug Jones (Abe Sapien from Hellboy), William Shatner, and the cast of ST:TNG Jon Frakes, Marina Sirtis, and Mike Dorn. Capt. Kirk was pretty boring actually but the NextGen cast was great, very funny recounting all the pranks they used to pull on each other.
I was also overjoyed when I purchased the last 4 issues of Fury of Firestorm I needed to complete my collection of Firestorm comics. I also found Blue Devil #23 the crossover with FoF, and a nice run of Atari Force by Gerry Conway in a bargain bin.
Overall it was a great convention!
My thanks to FirestormFan89 for sending his MegaCon recap and a scan of this amazing sketch!
Support Firestorm! Fan the flame!
