June 13, 2000

1994 Artists Workshop Entries: Heroes Con

Many years ago, Comic Buyers Guide had a contest. Users sent in samples (shown on the left) and winners were allowed to fly out to the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC to attend an artists workshop held by Dick Giordano.

I entered it and won a spot and was sent a script for Shade the Changing Man. (The pages above top) Other participants received a script for some cross-over event for the DC Universe (the only good end result being the creation of Hitman by Garth Ennis.)

Looking at the work, I can see that I was pretty bad.

At Heroes Con, I attended the Dick Giordano workshop held there which lasted for, I think, 3 days. There were 5 other people there along with Pat Bastienne who dropped by frequently. We were each sent scripts to work from the previous week (although some never received theirs) and I ended up with a Shade the Changing Man script. It was Issue #51 and I received the script for the first seven pages. Everyone else received an action oriented script featuring members of the Bloodpack.

I also ran into Liam Neeson a couple of times at my hotel in downtown Charlotte. Evidently, they had just wrapped up filming for Jodie Foster's movie, Nell.

At the end of the Art Workshop, Mr. Giordano decided that he didn't want to bring back the art clip boards he had brought out from New York, so he told us to keep them. So we ended up with autographed art boards for the experience.