Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
DAY THREE - PAGE 3
After a while, I split off to go to the panel on The Event, a much-hyped television show debuting this fall on NBC. As I write this, a couple of episodes have already aired, but back in July, no one knew many details about its premise, so I thought I'd check it out.
It turns out nearly all of the program was an airing of the first episode. If I had known that, I wouldn't have come. This is a show I was going to watch anyway, from my La-Z-Boy and within easy reach of my refrigerator. For me, there's no appeal to watching it in a crowded room on a hard chair, surrounded by a mob of other CCI attendees, just so I can say I've seen it early.
But I was there, and they promised to bring out the cast and crew later, so I tried to pretend I was at home, during one of those rare times when I don't watch TV in my underwear. The cast and crew did eventually put in an appearance, but by the time the episode had been shown, there wasn't much time left for more than introducing them and having them tell us what a great show it's going to be. I don't recall the "L" word ever being mentioned, but the implication was that for those of us that love scratching our heads, looking puzzled, and drawing charts on our bedroom walls, this show would fill the void left by Lost.
After this panel, I went next door and met Sam for the Quick Draw Panel. This is a recurring program at the Con, and one of Sam's favorites, but I'd never attended one, being under the mistaken impression that it was an annual tribute to the old Hanna-Barbara Quickdraw McGraw cartoons. I've always been offended by the Baba Looey stereotype presented in those cartoons, which I believe set back the cause of burro civil rights for years.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the Quick Draw Panel consists of three cartoonists who quickly come up with cartoons prompted by an emcee and the audience. Sort of Whose Line Is It Anyway? with cartoonists instead of comedians. The three artists were Sergio Aragones; Scott Shaw!; and Bill Stout. That's not a typo by Scott's name... he spells it with the exclamation point. I don't know the story behind that; it looks like he's trying to make his name sound like a sneeze. But it's an interesting concept, and I'm thinking about having my name legally changed to a parenthetical phrase.
Sergio Aragones is probably the artist most folks would be familiar with. If you open up your latest issue of Mad magazine (it's in your magazine rack, tucked between Newsweek and The Atlantic Monthly), you'll see all of his little wordless cartoons in the margins throughout the magazine. Here's a sample of his work:
Every month, just for Mad alone, he produces about ten of these. He's very fast. Somewhere I have an autographed paperback collection of his cartoons, where he drew a little picture of Alfred E. Neuman (the Mad mascot) in the time it takes me to sign my name. During Quick Draw, he would produce 3 or 4 cartoons while the other guys (who were no slouches) would produce one.
So Quick Draw was a very entertaining, and I'm putting on my list of panels to see every year (right next to "Some old guy reminisces about the old days").