MAD Comic Con Exclusive

I didn’t mention anything last week about the 2008 San Diego Comic Con that was going about it’s usual insanity because… well… I didn’t go so therefore didn’t have much to say about it. I’ve only been to it twice. The first time was when I was working for the now defunct NOW Comics and sat at the NOW booth with, among other people, Mr. T who was pimping his comic “Mr. T and the T-Force”. That was…. interesting. The second was a few years ago and I sat mainly at the National Cartoonists Society booth. I’d like to go again someday but the summer is a tough time for me to get away for any personal time.

This year there were two things I greatly missed from Comic Con. First was to attend the panel on MAD Magazine moderated, as seemingly all panels at Comic-Con are, by Mark Evanier. The panelists were writer Arnie Kogen, artists Sergio Aragon?¬©s and Al Jaffee and former editor Al Feldstein. I’ve never met Arnie or Al Feldstein, an would have loved to have done so.

The other thing I missed out on was the free issue of MAD that they gave away free in the goodie bag. There was brief talk in the offices about bumping my parody of “Iron Man” from the magazine proper into the giveaway instead, but that eventually was decided against. Here’s the contents that ended up in the issue:

• “Botchmen”- (5-page parody of Moore/Gibbons’ “Watchmen graphic novel, plus a related cover)– Desmond Devlin/Glenn Fabry
  
• “The 8 Greatest Comic Books of All Time” (2-page article making fun of “mega-event” series, movie tie-in comics, All-Star Batman, Harvey Pekar, and more)– Evan Dorkin/Ty Templeton
  
• “Sergio Aragones Presents a MAD Look at the San Diego Comic-Con” (4 pages, self-explanatory)– Sergio Aragones/Aragones, Sergio
  
• “Comic-Con Bingo!” (1 page article listing 25 different items or personality types you’ll spot at any convention)– Scott Maiko/Charles Akins

I have to thank the mysterious “DD” of madmumblings.com for the contents/descriptions of the comic, as I don’t have a copy and these might be so rare (i.e. not enough copies printed) that even the Usual Gang of Idiots won;t be getting copies in our usual monthly package of comps. That’s the scuttlebutt anyway. So it’s eBay or nothing. The “Botchmen” parody is awesome, btw… Fabray does a spot-on mimicry of Dave Gibbon‘s style.