A San Diego Scrapbook
By Greg Hatcher

Introduction: Notes For The Uninitiated

I've loved comic books my whole life, almost. It started with the BATMAN television show's premiere in 1966 -- I remember this as vividly as I remember this morning, we were living in Eugene, Oregon. Dad was away on business or something. (Many years later I learned that it was "or something," but that's not relevant.) I was probably being a pest and for all I know Mom just wanted me out of her hair for a little while. At any rate, it was my mother's idea that I might like watching this new show instead of THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES. I sat and stared in openmouthed wonder at the screen for the next thirty minutes, awed at the incredible adventures of the millionaire and his teenage ward that had a secret cave beneath their mansion and put on masks and capes to go and fight crime -- and made it look easy. Made it look FUN.

Mom had no idea what she had unleashed in me. I didn't miss an episode of that show for the next three years. Sure, it was campy, it was silly, but never to me, not then. Today, watching the old episodes on tape, I can appreciate the humor in the deadly satire of faithfully presenting comics on screen as they were at the time, stilted dialogue and garish colors and all; but even so, I still feel a faint echo of that visceral thrill I had at age six when Robin says, "Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!" and Batman coolly replies, "Roger, ready to move out," and then the Batmobile roars out of the cave on another adventure. For an adult it was just a tongue-in-cheek parody, but seen through the eyes of an imaginative six-year-old... it blew my mind.

It verged on obsession, what that show did to me. It was all I wanted to talk or think about. All my pre-school drawings were of Batman. (I think my mother may even have them somewhere still.) It was always a bit of a trauma when the credits rolled and I had to re-enter the real world for the next week. My real world sucked. I had no friends, I read too much and talked too little, I was a lousy athlete, and my parents were generally unhappy, most often with each other. The real world was too sullen and scary. I wanted to be back in that OTHER place, where the colors were brighter and the world made sense.

About a year later, Mom bought me a FLASH comic book at the drug store, one of those 80-page Giants that sold for a quarter instead of the usual fifteen cents. And once again my mind was blown. Here was the same world as on Batman's TV show, but it wasn't just Batman and Robin -- it was the Flash and Kid Flash and Green Lantern, and the world THEY lived in was even more amazing than Batman's. What's more, there were also glimpses of Superman and Kandor and the Fortress Of Solitude; Metamorpho the Element Man; Brainiac 5 and Karate Kid and Saturn Girl and the Legion in the 30th Century... and those were just the ads for the OTHER comics on sale that month. This wasn't just a world, it was a whole UNIVERSE, one you didn't have to wait around for to appear on television, you could go there any time, over and over, as often as you liked.

From then on I was relentless -- every time we went to the drugstore, I nagged Mom for a comic book, and often I would nag her just about GOING to the drugstore if it seemed to me that we were waiting too long between visits. She didn't always give in when I asked for a quarter for comics, but she did often enough that I built a collection. --No, not a collection, a library, because I read them to tatters, every one. Eventually as I grew older I learned to earn my own pocket money and walk to the drug store on my own.

As I grew older still, my admiration and envy shifted from the heroes in the stories to the heroes behind the stories, the writers and artists and editors whose workday consisted of inventing universes of wonder. I could think of no greater joy than to be paid to live in those worlds full-time like they were, and I resolved that some day I would BE one of those people. Somehow.

Now I am older even than that, edging up on forty, and I finally made it. I write stories and draw pictures for a living. It's not for comics, and I'm actually rather pleased about that, the way it's worked out. I have read interviews and histories of the people who work in the comics field and, in varying degrees, they all seem to have lost some sense of the magic that drew them to comics in the first place. I never have, and for that I am profoundly grateful. My life's a lot different now than it was -- there's not the desperate need any more to be somewhere else, ANYWHERE else -- but, when I walk into the comic-book store on Wednesdays to see the new books for that week, I still feel a little tingle of anticipation at getting to spend the next couple of hours in that other, brighter, wildly imaginative place. I don't want to live there any more, but I like being a regular tourist.

I've mostly avoided fan gatherings, because they have always struck me as vaguely unhealthy; a collection of freaks and geeks in homemade costumes, way too many people that never got over that need to live in their fantasy worlds full-time. And the one or two times I've been to one-day shows here in Seattle, I've seen many of those creepy, unfocused fans be so cruelly rude to the professionals (that, incidentally, make those fans' fantasy lives possible) that I swore off. It was too hard on my blood pressure.

But I've been wavering in this resolve in recent months, largely due to the group of people I've 'met' in cyberspace at comicbookresources.com, referred to affectionately as "CBR." Many of them, especially the ones I correspond with, seem to be much the same kind of tourist as me, willing to laugh at their own geeky fantasy lives, but not willing to give them up entirely. And they were all going to be congregating at the International Comic-Con in San Diego, THE gathering for comics fans and professionals alike. Several of them nagged me to go too, and I finally thought, why not? When am I ever going to see these people any other way? Plus, I told myself virtuously, I could score lots of free stuff for the kids in my cartooning class and maybe get some ideas for new projects for the fall term. Most of all, I could maybe get a chance to thank the men and women who'd made my childhood so much richer than it otherwise would have been, with their stories of caped crusaders and mechanical dinosaurs and men who flew.

****

"You want to watch out for the donut vampires," Kelly Hardy was saying as she deftly maneuvered the Toyota Camry through the freeway traffic.

At first I thought I must have mis-heard her. I was too busy getting my first look at San Diego out the passenger window, pleasantly surprised at how green and balmy it was. I'd expected nothing but concrete with a few dried-up palm trees. But there were lots of lawns and parks and the glittering harbor was full of sailboats. It still had that Southern California look, but in a good way, not like you think of, say, L.A.

I was also getting my first surreptitious look at Kelly herself, trying not to stare or make her uncomfortable, but pleased at the chance to put a face at last to the letters and the voice on the phone. She is a lovely blonde, a little heavier than I'd thought she'd be but not fat, with a sunny smile and shy blue eyes. She didn't seem at all intimidated or anxious about meeting me, which pleased me. I had been worried about making her feel awkward ever since she'd offered to split a hotel room with me if I would just PLEEASE come to San Diego. I had wondered about this at first -- Kelly is a notorious flirt, and I wasn't quite sure if I should take her offer seriously, finally deciding I would just ask her if it was for real, since if it meant the difference between going or not going I would be a fool to pass it up. She told me yes, she meant it, which then led me to worry about all the ramifications of THAT. But there were no 'ramifications'. What I found was that, meeting her in person, there is such a youthful vulnerability and innocence about her (despite the flirty, brassy demeanor that she shows at CBR) that I had made up my mind within thirty seconds of meeting her that I was going to be a perfect gentleman, her offer had obviously had overtones of nothing more than simple friendship and I would accept it as the graceful gesture it was. Anyway, I already had the gentlemanly rep -- Kelly had teased me in print before about being 'the perfect man.'

"Donut vampires?" I blinked. "What are donut vampires?"

Kelly laughed. "There are all these three-hundred-pound Goth girls at the convention, with the white makeup and the mascara and the black leather, the whole deal, but they're, like, HUGE. So me and Mandy started calling them donut vampires. I told her they sneak up on jelly donuts at night and suck all the jelly out of them. Usually it's my sister that comes up with stuff like that, but this one was mine."

I burst out laughing, and Kelly did too. The image of these black-clad, white-faced, undead blimp-women, descending on a Dunkin' Donuts in the wee hours to suck all the life out of the pastries within, never failed to give us the giggles, all weekend long. Every time from then on when we saw another one -- and there were many, each dressed in seemingly less skintight leather and black spandex than the last -- Kelly would elbow me and point. "Donut vampire!" The expression caught on with the others too, and Kelly later said her sister would be pleased at the two of them adding a new slang expression to the language.

****

I had originally thought my flight wouldn't be getting in until ten o'clock Friday night, so I'd only purchased a one-day pass for Saturday, thinking that Friday would be quite full enough just trying to get to San Diego and rendezvous with Kelly at the hotel. But I lucked into an earlier flight, and Kelly had said we were supposed to meet some other CBR folks for dinner at seven-thirty... so we found ourselves at the Convention Center at five o'clock on Friday.

Even with Kelly's generous offer of splitting the hotel room and the Alaska Airlines guest pass another friend had given me as a gift for my thirteen-year AA birthday, my funds were low, so I regretfully passed up all the dealer booths with row upon row of bargain bins. I had brought books from home, though, hoping for autographs, so I headed for "Artist's Alley," with Kelly following along behind. She had been asking me about the history of comics, and I found myself narrating our stroll and pointing out this or that artist and explaining who they were and what they worked on. Suddenly I pulled up short as I saw an old man doodling in a sketchbook while a younger woman sat next to him behind a sign that said, CARICATURES $45.00.

"My God -- that's Kelly Freas," I whispered. "I thought he was DEAD!"

"Who?" Kelly asked.

"Kelly Freas. For years and years he was THE man for science fiction illustrations," I explained. "He got his start in the pulps, he's done I don't know HOW many magazine covers and paperback covers, record albums, he did every cover for Roger Elwood's Laser Books series...."

"And Queen covers," Kelly added, nodding at the "Kelly Freas Calendar" that had a giant robot on the front. "That's from a Queen album." She nudged me. "Well, go up and say hello.... no, wait," she added, and grabbed my camera out of my hand. "Go say hello and I'll take your picture."

I hesitated. My mouth went dry and I was gripped with sudden panic that I might, in my dorky tongue-tied hero worship, make an utter fool of myself. "I don't want to bother him while he's drawing," I muttered, but Kelly shoved me gently forward and suddenly I was standing up at the table, fighting the urge to hyperventilate.

Freas was chatting with another young man at the table, for whom he was apparently doing the sketch, when he saw me. He blinked and smiled politely. "Yes?"

"Uh -- " Damn it, he must think I'm an idiot. "I didn't want to bother you, I just was hoping for an autograph... I'm a huge fan." I could feel myself flushing.

"Why, sure... what can I sign for you?"

"Uh -- " Stop saying 'uh', damn it. "-- uh, anything, here..." I fumbled in my bag for a slip of paper, a grocery list, anything. I had dozens of Freas covers at home, why hadn't I thought to bring one? Fat lot of good they were doing me in Seattle.

Then Kelly was at my elbow, proffering the convention program book. I clutched at it like a lifebuoy. "Here," I said, "there's something of yours in here, I think. Hang on..." Kelly and I pored over the book trying to find something, anything, in the damn book that would be appropriate for Mr. Freas to autograph. Freas waited politely for a couple of minutes while we frantically fumbled through the pages, then stood and stretched.

"Tell you what," he said with a gentle smile. "I'm going to go get some coffee, I'll sign it for you when I get back."

He departed and I looked at Kelly, feeling foolish. "We'll come back later," I told her.

We did come back in a while and I did better that time. We even found a page in the program book with Kelly Freas' photograph, commemorating the year he'd won his Inkpot Award, for him to sign, which made me feel like a bit less of an idiot.

****

After that initial encounter I was able to talk to the other convention guest artists and writers without being quite so inarticulately starstruck, though I never did get over the feeling of being entirely unworthy of their attention. I've been a professional artist for twelve years and a regularly-published writer for the last eight, but when it comes to comics, I'm afraid I'll always be an eleven-year-old at heart.

It was a little easier with the younger artists. Roger Robinson, a thirtyish fellow who draws the Batman spin-off book AZRAEL: AGENT OF THE BAT, was a delight. He laughed at me when I called him "Mr. Robinson" and said, "Please, just Roger, you're making me feel old."

I could feel myself flushing again. "I'm probably overcompensating," I confessed. "I've seen so many other fans be so rude to artists at these things."

Robinson cocked his head humorously at me. "Well, there WAS the one guy who gave me all the grief about Azrael's costume change," he said. "Guy comes up here and says, 'I got a beef with you!' and launches into this long thing about how we shouldn't have changed it -- I mean, for me it was a natural evolution of the character --"

"Really?" I grinned back at him, feeling more at ease. "I thought it was just because the old one was a bitch to draw."

Robinson burst out laughing. "It WAS a bitch to draw!"

I offered him my battered copy of THE GREATEST BATMAN STORIES EVER TOLD to sign. "I realize there's nothing of yours in here," I added hastily, "I just like all my favorites who've worked on Batman to sign it."

He nodded, impressed at the array of signatures already in the book (it's been an ongoing hobby of mine, getting that book autographed by Batman writers and artists, for the last few years.) "You want a little sketch too?" he asked. "Maybe just a little Batman head shot or something?"

"Well -- sure, if it's no trouble -- that would be great." Inwardly, I was delighted, though I hoped I wasn't imposing, and wondered if I should offer to pay him -- most artists at conventions charge for sketches.

Then Kelly asked me who Azrael was and what his relationship was to Batman, and I explained about the KNIGHTFALL storyline and how Azrael had actually been a substitute Batman for a while. Robinson had some original art pages on the table and I pointed at one. "See, he's kind of trying for redemption, he wants Batman's approval," I told her.

Even with giving Kelly the Reader's Digest Condensed version of KNIGHTFALL I couldn't have had my back to Robinson for more than a minute or two. But when I turned around, my book had a new frontispiece. Robinson had penciled and inked a brooding full-page picture of Batman's head and shoulders, a beautiful rendering that was light-years beyond a mere sketch, and then at the bottom had added in gold ink -- Greg! Thanks for picking up AZ! Roger Robinson, San Diego '99.

I stared, openmouthed, as Robinson flashed me a wicked conjorer's smile. I'm fast, but he was lightning. I couldn't believe how rapidly he'd whipped this out, pencils AND inks -- and it was GORGEOUS. "WOW! Thank you -- thank you so much, mist -- I mean, Roger -- thank you!" I stammered. "No -- don't erase the pencil lines, it's fine, I can use it in my cartooning class at home to show my kids about inking..." I was babbling. Kelly stifled a giggle.

On second thought, maybe I didn't do any better with the younger ones.

****

We met several other artists and writers that afternoon, every one of whom was courteous and friendly. I managed to control my hero worship to the point where I was no longer stammering, but I still felt like I was walking through Oz. The only two times when my mouth went completely dry and I was at a total loss for words was when I met two of the all-time great Batman artists -- Jerry Robinson and Neal Adams.

Jerry Robinson (no relation to Roger from AZRAEL) who had been Bob Kane's first studio assistant on Batman back in the 1940's, and had co-created Robin the Boy Wonder and the Joker, is a gentle, soft-spoken man who appeared to be in his late sixties. He looked faintly amused at everything -- probably because for him Batman was ancient history, he went on from that first teenage job to be one of the country's most respected political cartoonists, author of 30 books, the creator of the internationally syndicated strip LIFE WITH ROBINSON, and a past president of both the National Cartoonist's Society and the Association Of American Editorial Cartoonists. He has also fought tirelessly as an advocate for creator's rights and was instrumental in helping Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster get creator's credit for Superman. He is one of my heroes.

It's a sad commentary on the state of the comics industry and the utter lack of historical knowledge of most fans that his table was practically deserted. I felt guiltily grateful at the fact that Kelly and I had him pretty much to ourselves, and as I reviewed his accomplishments in my head again I found myself almost unable to speak. So many things were coming to mind that I wanted to express my gratitude for -- not the least of which was thanking him for partly shaping my life and career ambitions and setting an impeccable example of the kind of creative person we should all try to be if we end up working in the arts -- that all I could choke out was, "Thanks for all the pleasure your work has given me, Mr. Robinson, I've been a fan since... well, forever."

He smiled and thanked me and even kindly posed for a picture with me that Kelly took with my camera.

I should pause and point out that Kelly was an utter dear throughout all of this, nudging me forward whenever I was paralyzed with shyness, taking pictures of every encounter I had, giggling with me over the 'donut vampires,' and just generally being a delightful companion all afternoon. At one point she stopped a beautiful young woman who was made up to look like Brandon Lee in THE CROW and asked if she could take a picture of her and me together.

The model demurred, saying. "Well, actually, I've got a table, it's ten bucks for a snapshot."

I was willing to let it go, but Kelly was not to be stopped. "But you're so pretty," she said, wheedling. "And he's a teacher, it's to show his kids in class back home."

The model laughed and agreed, and so Kelly got the picture. It's actually a little embarrassing. Looking at the photo I am obviously blushing, much to the model's amusement.

Kelly also got a picture of Neal Adams mugging as he tried to decide which hand to shake, mine or that of another fan next to me at the table who was equally starstruck. Adams is another legendary Batman artist -- it was his dark, brooding visuals of that character in the seventies that wiped out the stodgy memory of Adam West once and for all, and his Gothic vision of Batman as an urban creature of the night has been influencing artists to this day. He was my favorite Batman artist when I was a kid -- he was EVERYONE'S favorite Bat artist in the sixties and seventies -- and I was very nearly as paralyzed meeting him as I was meeting Jerry Robinson.

I lost the competition for the handshake and had to wait my turn. After signing an autograph for the other fellow he turned to me and gripped my hand in a firm grasp, then whistled as I offered my Bat-book for him to sign. "That's great! Who did THAT?" he asked me, pointing at Roger Robinson's drawing. I told him, grateful to have something to say. Adams shook his head and whistled. "That's nice work."

I was tempted to run right back to Roger's table and tell him that Neal Adams thought he was good, but I decided that was just too painfully nerdy.

I also met BATMAN and TITANS writer Devin Grayson, whose work I admire enormously; she brings a craft and a thoughtful, introspective characterization to comics that's been absent from the Batman titles for a while. Fans are somewhat split over their opinion of her work, but I've thought she was terrific ever since I saw a little eight-pager of hers in THE BATMAN CHRONICLES a couple of years ago. Working in the Christian press as I do, I especially appreciated her "Fear Of Faith" storyline in the Batman titles a few months back, a tale of a mission shelter in Gotham under siege; the only time I've ever seen anyone attempt to depict urban missions with any degree of realism in comics. (I have no idea what Ms. Grayson's religious feelings are, if any -- I just appreciated the evenhandedness of the story and the fact that it looked like she did a little research. And that it was a good story, of course.)

She signed my Bat-book and doodled an awkward little bat next to her signature, then laughed. "That's why I'm a writer and not an artist," she said.

I told her how impressed I had been with the essay she had written on Women In Comics a few months ago. "I forwarded it to a friend of mine who was the head of Ecumenical Ministries in Oregon for eight years," I said. "She thought it was terrific too -- she wrote right back and said, 'I don't know anything about comics, but I'll tell you, it's JUST the same for women in the church!' "

Devin Grayson giggled and nodded, "Oh, I bet," she said. "I don't doubt that for a second."

Kelly got a picture of that too. She was an indefatigable photographer -- it wasn't until I got the film back a couple of days ago that I realized how hard she had been working to keep up with me.

One picture we didn't get was of bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno, the former television Hulk. I saw him and told Kelly, "We HAVE to get his picture, my brother and I used to love that show," and started toward him with my camera -- but then Kelly grabbed the camera out of my hands and shoved me forward. (This was getting to be such a routine you'd think I'd have been used to it by then.)

I approached his table and said politely, "Mr. Ferrigno, I was hoping we could get a picture if it's not too much trouble..."

Ferrigno looked at me with heavy-lidded contempt. "Have to buy something," he grunted, and gestured at the array of 8x10 glossies and bodybuilding literature on his table. The lowest price was $15, for a stack of old Hulk shots that weren't even autographed. I guess times had been hard since HULK was canceled and the Hercules movies bombed, but still, it was ten seconds of his time and MY camera. I love my brother, and I was sorry that I wasn't going to get a picture of Lou Ferrigno for him; but I wasn't going to give this aging muscleman a cent of my money, especially since his disgust for his current lot in life was so painfully obvious. It was very much a sense of, "If I HAVE to spend time with geeks like you, it's going to COST you." Well, the hell with that. Even geeks like me have a LITTLE pride. I nodded noncommittally and moved on.

Kelly was incensed and was ready to go give Lou what-for, but I told her to forget it. I wasn't going to pick a fight with Lou Ferrigno, even if he was past his prime.

****

We met other fans too. Kelly introduced me to all sorts of people that we ran into on the convention floor, most of whom, I'm sad to say, I wouldn't be able to name -- unless I already knew them from the CBR message boards, I had a really hard time keeping people's names straight.

Apparently there were plans for several of us from CBR to get together on Friday night for pizza; Kelly insisted that she had to buy my dinner that night because I had won a trivia contest on her web page a few weeks before, and I wasn't going to argue with her about it, especially with my budget the way it was. However, we couldn't find any of the people we were supposed to be meeting except Chris Kohler (who I knew from the boards as "Relhok") a young web designer from San Jose. What most people seem to remember about Chris is his nose ring, though to tell you the truth after an initial wince I stopped noticing it after the first few seconds. (I have no philosophical objections to piercings; it just looks so painful to me that my first reaction is always a brief inner "Ewwww!" However, I know this is strictly a generational thing and I try not to take out my prejudices on the innocent.) (It's gone now, Greg... figured a 30-year-old would just look silly with that thing -- Ed.)

What I noticed about Chris was his easygoing nature and the fact that I NEVER had to explain a book reference to him, he was as familiar with comics, pulps, sf and pop culture as I was. (One of the minor pleasures of the trip was being surrounded by people who never needed footnotes to know what we were talking about -- except Kelly, but she was so charming and eager to learn that we enjoyed answering her questions, it made us all feel a bit paternal.) Moreover, I was delighted to find Chris was that rarest of creatures, a twentysomething comics fan with an appreciation of history. Between us, as we took turns fielding Kelly's interested questions, we kept the conversation going all night; ranging from the work of Jim Steranko to the various parallel Earth stories that were so prevalent at DC comics for years to just why Captain America was still so incredibly cool despite such a cornball, jingoistic name. I enjoyed the evening enormously -- and the pizza was good too.

We also traded stories of our encounters during the day with the various professionals and celebrity guests, and of course we had to tell Chris what a jerk Lou Ferrigno was. He grinned and said, "I got his picture. I didn't ask, just snapped it. He gave me this look, like he was mad, but he didn't say anything."

Kelly and I giggled at that, probably far more than it deserved, but it did feel like sweet revenge, even at second-hand. Take THAT, muscle boy!

****

Saturday morning we were to rendezvous for breakfast with some other people Kelly knew from CBR, but whose names I did not recognize: Walt and Frank. Frank was tall and quiet, Walt jovial and outgoing. Both very nice fellows.

Walt showed us his portfolio of "cliff" drawings. These were a delight. He did not draw them himself -- rather, he has spent the last ten years or so persuading various comic-book artists to contribute a sketch of a cliff, and now his collection is a virtual who's who of comics. They ranged from the gorgeous to the slapstick, and I was tickled to see all the variations on a theme, especially since the basic premise, "draw something with a cliff," doesn't sound too exciting at first. But there were characters climbing cliffs, falling off cliffs, gazing at the view from the top of a cliff, etc. His collection had to number in the hundreds but we only glanced at a few, and Walt added that he had lots more at home, that he didn't want to pack around the convention. The silliness of the idea seems to have captured the imagination of the industry -- he apparently never has any trouble persuading anyone to contribute. "Once they see the others," Walt explained, "it appeals to their competitive spirit. They think, wow, I have to do one as good as these others did."

The funny ones were the best. My favorite was Fred Hembeck's rendering of the Mole Man, that old nemesis of the Fantastic Four, chortling with evil glee while stampeding a herd of his mindless slaves off a cliff.

****

Because the convention started Wednesday (for professionals -- fans weren't let in until Thursday) and I didn't arrive until late Friday, I missed most of the panels I wanted to see; although I qualified for professional accreditation and could have attended Wednesday if I wished, I just couldn't get away from Seattle in time. However, there were two panels on Saturday that I was dead set on attending. Both were historical panels.

The first one was "Sixty Years Of Batman." This was a panel discussion with six of the writers and artists that, between them, covered the whole of Batman's history. Arnold Drake and Jerry Robinson, both of whom had worked for Bob Kane at the beginning, in the 1940's; Julius Schwartz, the legendary DC editor who brought about the 'new look' Batman in the sixties that eventually culminated in the Adam West TV show; Irv Novick, who drew hundreds of Batman stories in the sixties and seventies; artist and former Batman editor Dick Giordano, who was one of the primary Batman editors in the eighties as well as having drawn dozens of Batman stories and inked dozens more over others' pencils; and Denny O'Neil, who is generally regarded as the all-time best-ever writer of Batman stories and is the current editor of the Batman books.

The panel was largely given over to reminiscences among the older fellows. Everyone mentioned Bill Finger, the writer who worked with Kane in the beginning and the one who, everyone said, was the REAL creative force behind Batman. "But legally, we could never give him any credit," Giordano said. "We'd been trying for twenty years to get DC to acknowledge him, give him some money or some rights. We all knew what he'd done, how much work he'd put into Batman. But the contract was with the Kane studio, and Bob had that contract locked up, they HAD to acknowledge Bob Kane as the sole creator."

"I only really met Bill once," Denny O'Neil said. "It was a long, strange, boozy evening at his place in New York, just the two of us, talking about movies, music, everything in the world. He loved movies. That was near the end of his life. I've often regretted that I didn't try harder to get him some work then, some kind of assignment. He was still a good writer. He gave us so much -- everything that I did, Batman as creature of the night, the city as Gothic mansion -- all of that was implicit in Bill's work."

(For those who don't know, Bill Finger died in 1974, broke and hopelessly alcoholic, and to this day most people have no idea who he was or the amazing work he did. The history of comic books is not a proud one. I remember when I saw BATMAN FOREVER with Val Kilmer as Batman and Chris O'Donnell as Robin, feeling a little sad as I saw scenes play out on the screen that Finger had originally written for comics: Harvey Dent being splashed with acid in the courtroom, becoming the demented Two-Face; the murder of Dick Grayson's parents at the circus that inspired Dick to eventually become Robin... and I remember thinking what a terrible shame it was that Finger, a lifelong movie aficionado, would never get to see some of his greatest moments in comics get the big Hollywood treatment.)

Arnold Drake explained how it worked with the Kane studio. "See, there were a bunch of us working there in the 40's, like a sweatshop almost, all of us barely out of our teens. We'd do the pages and letter them and Bob would take the whole bundle and sign his name to them and take them down to the DC offices and they'd cut him a check, then he'd come back and pay us. Pay us a lot LESS," he added. Everyone laughed. "I remember -- this is a funny story -- I was walking around the Village one time and I ran into Bob, and he was bitching about something or other about the business, and I said to him, "Bob, why don't you just get out of comics" Do something else? You're obviously not happy."

"Well, he says to me, 'I am getting out of comics, I'm going to concentrate on my painting.'"

"Now that really took me by surprise, because I wouldn't have thought of Bob as having a lot of, well, artistic ambition. So I said, 'Why, that's great, Bob,' you know, real encouraging, and he gets kind of excited and asks if I want to come see his paintings, his place is just a few blocks up. So I say sure and we go up there.

"Well, when we get there, he shows me what he's got, and it's all these CLOWN paintings, like Red Skelton or something. And he's obviously real proud of them. I just nodded and said something noncommittal and made my excuses and I went on my way.

"So I'm at the DC offices a few weeks later and some guy tells me that one of Bob's ghost artists is suing him. So I got all huffy and said well, there's no basis for that, we all knew what the deal was, all of us who worked on Batman signed a contract... and the guy interrupts me and says no, no, not one of his Batman ghosts -- one of his CLOWN ghosts!!"

It brought the house down. Bill Finger may not have ever gotten credit for Batman, but he got vengeance that day. Drake's anecdote prompted a flurry of unflattering Kane reminiscences. Here's the other one that I can remember, from Julius Schwartz:

"Well, when I was editing Batman, we were getting near the end of the arrangement with Bob's studio but they were still doing some stories for us, and he brought in some pages that I thought needed a little work. I didn't think they were dynamic enough. This was when Kirby's style was all the rage, over at Marvel, you know, his figures had so much power. So I said to Bob, 'Why don't you run down to the art department and fix up this one panel here, make it so Batman's fist is coming right AT the reader -- " Schwartz pantomimed it -- "like, you know, a 3-D kind of effect. So Bob says sure and he goes downstairs to redraw it.

"He comes back a few minutes later and it's terrible. Of course we all know why, it's because Bob had to actually do it himself for once. But anyway, I say no, do it again, so he goes away and a few minutes later he's back and it's gorgeous. So I tell him it's great and -- don't laugh, this isn't the punch line yet -- he says Murphy Anderson was down there and he asked HIM to draw it, and Murph did. Now don't laugh yet!" Schwartz thundered as a few stifled giggles erupted. "That's not the punch line! So I asked him, 'Bob, why didn't YOU just do it?' and he says -- okay, here it comes -- 'LACK OF TALENT.' " Schwartz paused to let that sink in, then chuckled and finished, "Okay, NOW you can laugh."

We all roared, as much at the delivery as at the long-awaited punch line.

I was able to add several more signatures to my Batbook then, as well -- Drake, Giordano, and Schwartz. Denny O'Neil's and Jerry Robinson's I already had. And I also got moderator Mark Evanier's permission to shoot some pictures; I felt foolish afterward, because flashes were going off all over the place and they were videotaping too. Still, it's always polite to ask.

The other historical panel I attended was also moderated by Mark Evanier -- it was called simply "Golden Age Artists," and it was an amazing array of talent from comics in the forties and fifties. Chuck Cuidera, who gave us "Blackhawk," the great old strip of the heroic Blackhawk fighting pilot squadron; Sam Glanzman, who's drawn every war and western strip ever done (my favorites being the Haunted Tank stories he did for DC in the late 60's); Irwin Hasen, who got his start doing Wildcat and Green Lantern for DC in the 40's and then later did the newspaper strip "Dondi" for 37 years; John Romita, who drew dozens of romance and humor comics before making his reputation at Marvel on Daredevil and Spider-Man and going on to become Marvel's art director; Ramona Fradon, the first woman ever to work in comic books and whose work on "Aquaman" was so terrific I use a sample of it in my class; Irv Novick, DC comics' utility infielder for twenty years (he could do ANYTHING, but his Batman and Flash stories were my favorites); and Russ Heath, who made his rep on the war and high-adventure stories at EC comics but can do anything, he has one of the cleanest lines in the business.

There were luminaries in the audience too. I got a front-row seat for this one and found myself sitting next to a lovely auburn-haired woman in her late forties wearing a POGO button. We exchanged pleasantries and joked about the crowds on the main floor, and we agreed that we were pleased that this room was filling up so quickly. (One of my gripes with most comics fans is that they have no sense of history.) Then another gentleman asked her about her button and she explained about how they'd only made a few, but in the course of her explanation about how "my father" had done this and that, it dawned on me that I was sitting next to Walt Kelly's daughter. I opened my mouth to tell her how much I loved POGO but then the panel started and I shut up. I never did get a chance to say anything more to her, but it was nice to meet her anyway, even just in passing.

Like the Batman panel, this was mostly just a collection of funny reminiscences amongst the panelists. Irwin Hasen's was my favorite. Asked about his first drawing job, this was his reply:

"It was when I was just a teenager, maybe seventeen or eighteen. I had all these sports drawings I'd done, baseball things, you know, if you were a kid in New York back then your heroes were all ballplayers. I thought they were pretty good and so did my friends, so one day I packed up my portfolio and I looked up every daily paper in the Manhattan phone book -- there were a lot more dailies back then -- and I was going to go to each one of them and see if I couldn't get some work. So the first one I went to, it was a little seedy building, they were publishing the Daily something, and I went up to the sports editor and showed him my work. Well, he loved it, and he asked me if I couldn't do him something for that Friday's paper. So I raced home and did the drawing and I was back the next day, and he took it and said uh-huh, uh-huh, this is great. Then nothing.

"So I'm still standing there, waiting, and finally I had to ask the question no freelancer wants to ever ask. I said, 'So... when do I get paid?'

"Well, the sports editor frowns and says well, you better go upstairs and talk to the boss about that. So I go up to the third floor and wait to see the publisher. He's a nice guy, shakes my hand and tells me I'm doing great work, loved the pictures, so on and so forth, and finally I asked him, 'well, thank you, sir, but when can I get paid?'

"He just stares at me and says, 'But aren't you doing it for the CAUSE?'

"See, the paper was THE DAILY WORKER, it was the Communist paper! They didn't pay anybody! So I says no sir, I'm not a communist, I'm just trying to make some money for me and my family, and he got real upset and apologetic, sorry he couldn't help me, but he did finally give me a nickel for the subway so I could get home. And sure enough, they printed the picture that Friday. So my first published job was for THE DAILY WORKER, and I made a nickel."

Sam Glanzman impressed me more than any of the others, I think; he's still so vital and lively, and he's got to be pushing eighty. Most of the others are in retirement or just teaching these days. Glanzman, however, is still doing straight-ahead comics work -- he just finished a Western job for DC's Jonah Hex. Asked what he thought his best work was, he shot back, "I'd like to think I haven't done it yet."

Ramona Fradon was quiet and subdued, though with a wry humor that belied her forbidding expression. "For me it was the money," she explained. "I'd married a cartoonist, that was how I got into it. He was doing all right with comic books, and I was faster than he was, drawing, so I thought, well, I can do this too. But I never really liked doing it. I could never get into the super-heroes. Metamorpho I guess I enjoyed a little more because of the humor, I could be a little broader because it wasn't supposed to be so serious. And Plastic Man, I enjoyed that, again because of the humor. But what I'm finding out now, this is the strangest thing, back then it was always WORK. I was just trying to feed my family. Now I'm retired and I come to these shows and I do drawings for the fans, and you know, I discovered that I really LIKE drawing. I think what I hated was that I was always doing somebody else's script. Now I can do it however I want to, and I enjoy that."

I did get to meet Ramona Fradon later in Artist's Alley and she kindly signed my program book. I was annoyed that we couldn't find anything of hers printed in there, but she just laughed and signed a POGO page instead, saying, "I always loved POGO." I told her that I used an old AQUAMAN page of hers in my drawing class as an example of how to do a nice layout, and that pleased her.

****

I had some time to kill between the first panel and the second, and ended up out on the main floor again, wandering around with no particular destination in mind. I went past the art auction and snapped a picture, whereupon four security people converged on me, snarling, "No camera! No video!" Well, I didn't know. I was glad to get the picture anyway (and it turned out nice.)

Feeling chastised, I fled towards the other end of the floor, where the big publishers had all their huge multimedia displays and retailers had books and toys for sale. I had avoided this area up until now because of my relative poverty, but now it was the only thing I hadn't seen yet, so I thought, why not have a look?

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a booth plastered with posters and paintings that looked familiar, and I realized after a moment it was because I had many of those same books at home. The posters were cover reproductions. Suddenly I found myself staring at an older man, dressed to kill in a silk shirt and a gray blazer, with a mane of white and gray-streaked hair brushed back off his forehead. Chris and Kelly had told me he was here, at dinner the night before, but I still couldn't quite believe it -- it was Jim Steranko. Another drawing hero of mine from my youth.

Comics fans know him from his groundbreaking comics work on the late 60's NICK FURY and CAPTAIN AMERICA; but I remembered him as the painter of the breathtaking Shadow book covers of Pyramid's paperback re-issues of the old pulp stories in the seventies, and as the designer of Byron Preiss' WEIRD HEROES paperbacks from that same time. Probably one of my biggest influences learning to draw was trying to figure out how Steranko used light and shadow and color to get the incredible 3-D effects that he did in his paintings. Most fans talk about his comics, but for me Steranko is a painter.

What with meals and so forth I really only had about five dollars to spend. I wanted to buy SOMETHING, though, some kind of a keepsake, and I ended up getting a trading card that was a reproduction of the cover to Steranko's CHANDLER, a detective pastiche that he had done for FICTION ILLUSTRATED in the mid-seventies. Steranko signed it for me with a flourish, and I told him, "You know, I bought this book when it came out."

"Well, you know what?" Steranko clapped me on the shoulder. "It's coming out AGAIN, baby." He grinned and handed me a promotional flyer. Sure enough, Dark Horse Comics was re-issuing CHANDLER: RED TIDE in December, with new pages of art and a new introduction by Steranko himself.

He peered at my name tag and grinned. "Seattle, huh? I been to Seattle, about ten years ago, I think it was. Nice place."

"I hope you got a chance to enjoy the city a little," I told him. "It's a great town."

"Oh yeah, I found this great little jazz record store in the older part of downtown -- "

"Bud's Jazz Records? In Pioneer Square?" It's one of my favorite record stores.

"Yeah! That was it!" Steranko lit up. "You go down the little stairs, it's in the basement..." I nodded. He went on, "Yeah, loved it, but it looked pretty well picked over the day I was in there, there was this other place I liked too, up the street a little..."

I didn't have the heart to tell him it was gone now, replaced by Benaroya Hall and the new Metro bus tunnel station. Damn gentrification.

****

Since Chris, Kelly and I had wasted an hour the night before trying to find the other CBR regulars we were supposed to meet before giving up and going to dinner on our own, I was taking no chances. Jim and Terri MacQuarrie were hosting a barbecue at their campground that evening that we had promised to attend, and I didn't want to miss that. I had told Kelly that NO MATTER WHAT she could find me at the Batman and Golden Age panels, and just as the Golden Age panel was getting started she, Chris, and two others slid into the row behind me. When the panel broke up an hour or so later, I turned around and we made introductions.

Jonathan Bogert, "Goldenager," I knew from both the CBR message boards and also from Jim MacQuarrie's church website. He is a thoughtful, deeply Christian writer with a remarkable grasp of Biblical scholarship and the history of the Catholic Church. I was shocked to find that in person Jon is barely twenty-one years old, a soft-spoken brown-haired man with a neatly-trimmed beard and a studious, academic look about him despite being clad in a T-shirt and shorts.

Tim Morrison, known to all at CBR as "fly on the wall," was, along with Kelly and the MacQuarries, one of the people I had looked forward the most to meeting on this trip, and I was glad to see him at last. He looked about my age, though I knew he was in fact 44. He carries his years better than I do. He was wearing gold wire-framed glasses and had dark hair with a slightly graying goatee. He seemed awfully subdued for the person whose manic humor I had enjoyed reading so much, and I thought he might be a bit shy about meeting all of us. I sympathized -- I was a little nervous meeting everyone myself, and had been secretly relieved when dinner plans had fallen through the night before. Meeting new people works best for me in small doses. Also, there is an odd vibe to meeting people that you previously have only known through internet correspondence; you know them, yet at the same time you don't. For example, I knew Tim's family background was remarkably similar to mine, that he suffered from bipolar disorder that he controlled with medication, that he was a gifted writer of satire, and that he was locked into an unhappy marriage because he couldn't bring himself to leave his wife when she had fallen ill with cancer a year or two before. And Tim knew just as much about me. In print we were old friends, having bonded over our status as battle-scarred veterans of the dysfunctional family follies.

So theoretically we should have been instantly at ease. But it's different in person. There was a moment's odd awkwardness at first, which, blessedly, quickly dissipated as we started talking about dinner plans and comparing notes about what we'd done during the day. I was vastly relieved. It was going to be fine, and maybe even fun. We agreed to rendezvous at the blood-drive station downstairs at five-thirty, and then Kelly, Chris and I went outside on to the plaza overlooking the harbor. I insisted Kelly and Chris pose for a picture, and they reluctantly agreed. Kelly protested that her eyes would be all 'squinty' in the afternoon sun, but I wasn't going to be dissuaded -- there was NO WAY I was going home without a good picture of her. (It turned out beautifully, despite her protests.) That was the last shot on my roll, and I put the camera in the bag.

I was disappointed to find out that Chris was going to miss the cookout. "I've been invited to Stan Lee's launch party for his new web site," he explained. "I can't pass up the chance to meet Stan Lee." I had to concede his point -- meeting Stan Lee, the founding father of Marvel Comics, was indeed something not to be missed. (Chris wrote later that Lee was a spry old guy, who upon meeting Chris had said, "Well, I guess I don't have to explain the internet to you, young fella!")

We decided just to stretch out in the sun for a while. I was suffering from severe sensory overload after the last few days, and I needed a break. Chris and Kelly said the same, and we sat on the steps and watched the ships in the harbor for a little while. Chris asked us how we knew Tim and Jonathan, so I told him a little about how I'd gotten to know them -- in print at least -- with Kelly adding her two cents when appropriate.

Finally it was time to go meet the others, and Chris held out a hand. Abruptly I realized that with him missing dinner and us leaving in the morning, we wouldn't be seeing him again, and said, "Hey, listen, it was tremendous fun meeting you. Don't be a stranger."

Chris flushed and grinned. "It was fun meeting you guys too. Take care."

Kelly gave him a big hug and then she and I entered the convention center again in search of the others. We found Tim fairly quickly, and then were soon joined by Jonathan, as well as Jim MacQuarrie and his daughter Ashley. Jim I had met VERY briefly the night before, while we were searching for our missing dinner companions, but this was the first time meeting Ashley. She is a quiet twelve-year-old with glasses that do little to hide the intensity of her wide dark eyes. She forcibly reminded me of my student Brittany, back home -- in fact if it weren't for the age difference they might almost be twins. Jim introduced her with a breezy, "Ashley, this is Kelly, known as Falcoria; Tim, known as fly; and Greg, known as Greg. Now shake hands so you know they aren't all imaginary." He grinned at us. "Ashley says all my computer buddies are imaginary."

Tim raised an eyebrow at Ashley. "How are you handling being exposed to all this unapologetic geekiness?" he asked her, with an all-inclusive sweep of his arm at the convention hall.

"Oh, it's all right," Ashley said.

MacQuarrie snorted. "Are you kidding? She's a geek from the toes up. It runs in the family." He looked around. "Are we all here?"

"Richard's missing," Tim said. Richard was rooming with Tim at the motel; it was he and Tim that we had tried to find to join us for dinner last night. Somebody said later -- it might have been Tim -- that if anyone made a movie about our trip to San Diego it would have to be called LOOKING FOR RICHARD.

"Well, let's go find him," MacQuarrie said, and we all trooped back into the crowded convention hall to go look for Richard. I wasn't sure what use I would be, since I had no idea what he looked like, but I didn't want to get separated from the others, either. The absurdity of trying to find one man in the midst of the sea of freaks, geeks, donut vampires, and Klingons (yes, there were Klingons) struck us after about twenty minutes of fruitless searching, and MacQuarrie left us to go get his van.

Jonathan suggested paging him, but Tim just shook his head. "I tried that. They won't do it, they just glared at me and said, 'he's not a child.' "

This struck me as really funny. "I can't believe they said that to you with a straight face," I told Tim. "There's nobody here BUT overgrown children."

"I KNOW!" Tim said, laughing, and then we both collapsed with giggles. "Okay, show of hands, anybody who's ever kissed a girl -- I bet there's maybe twenty people here, max-- "

Kelly, overhearing, said, "Do the donut vampires count as girls?"

Then we had to explain to Tim about the donut vampires, and that REALLY did it. By the time MacQuarrie came back with the van we were all hopelessly giddy.

We went looking around the floor one last time, then decided just to leave a message at the motel to Richard to call MacQuarrie's pager when he arrived, and we would go get him then. That settled, we all climbed into the van and headed out to the campground where MacQuarrie was staying with his family.

It was a wonderful, warm, giggly evening. MacQuarrie is fall-down funny all by himself, and so is Tim when he loosens up, and between the two of them I thought the rest of us would sprain something laughing. Terri MacQuarrie watched it all with an air of amused resignation and indulgent good humor, and MacQuarrie's three kids just pinballed around off everyone's kneecaps all evening. Dinner was simple, just burgers, hot dogs and chips, but after nothing all day since breakfast it was ambrosial.

After dinner, over firelight, we got into a discussion about dysfunctional families. MacQuarrie and I had written back and forth on this, as well as me and Tim, and the three of us were agreed that comics were essentially our first and best way out of a crappy home situation. Kelly and Jonathan just shook their heads, and Kelly said, "I don't know -- I mean, my Dad died when we were young, but... really, my life's been pretty normal. I never had any big tragedies."

"It's not a prerequisite for being a comics fan," I told her, laughing.

"But it helps," MacQuarrie added, not missing a beat.

Mostly though, we traded jokes and laughed ourselves silly. I wish I could remember more of it, but even if I could I don't think it would translate very well; so much of it depended on things that we all already knew and didn't have to explain. If I tried to set it down the explanatory footnotes would go on for pages. I was struck by how homey it was, how easy we all were in one another's company. It was as though we'd all known one another for years. Part of it was the family atmosphere of MacQuarrie's campground, but I think we all would have been just as easy with each other no matter what the surroundings. This was the good side of the internet, I decided. Sure, there are lots of horror stories about stalkers and so on, but there were also times like this. We all lived hundreds of miles apart, but we had been brought together to THIS place, at THIS moment, by our mutual interest in comics and in each other, and it really did feel oddly like a homecoming. The last time I had felt such instant kinship with a group of relative strangers was at the first WITH writer's conference, seven years before. And look what THAT led to, I thought, with an inner smile.

After dinner Tim and I wanted to see the ocean. So we trooped down through the campground to a beach that fronted on the bay, where a couple of small sailboats had been dragged up on to the sand. The bay was so sheltered that it was a bit of a disappointment, but Tim decided that he WASN'T coming all the way out here without swimming in the Pacific Ocean, so he stripped off his shirt and dived in. He paddled cheerfully around for a few minutes, then emerged.

"Aren't you cold?" Kelly asked him, shivering. "I'm freezing."

"No, it's warm," Tim said, then added gallantly, "No, you keep it," when Kelly offered his shirt back to him. "I'm fine."

Still no page from Richard, even though it was after ten o'clock at night. Kelly and I were getting sleepy, but Tim was obviously worried, and MacQuarrie offered to drive us all back and help look for him one more time. So MacQuarrie, Terri, Tim, Jonathan, Kelly and I piled back into the van, leaving Ashley to look after the other two kids while we embarked on Looking For Richard, the sequel.

We never did find him. By that time the convention center had quieted down a bit -- the main floor was closed, and the Masquerade had finished, so that just left the movie rooms and the dance. We searched every one of them, then went over to the Hyatt where there were another couple of movie programs and a hospitality suite. ("This is the nicest place I've ever been in wet shorts," Tim said casually as he squelched through the Hyatt lobby. Of course, he was still dripping from his impromptu moonlight swim.)

"Maybe a donut vampire got him," Kelly speculated.

Tim snorted. "Are you kidding? He'd love that. We're comics geeks, we don't get dates. A donut vampire'd be the best thing that could have happened to him. Probably more fun than he'd have had with us."

Finally we gave up. We dropped Tim off at his motel, with him muttering darkly about having to call the police and explain finding the body to Richard's parents. Then MacQuarrie dropped Kelly and I at Walt's motel, where we'd left the car that morning -- it seemed a hundred years ago by then. "Oh, wait, I have to leave Walt a note," Kelly said. "We were supposed to hook up after dinner... but what with looking for Richard...."

I nodded and Kelly dashed over to Walt's door, looking distressed, while I sat and thought that Richard had a lot to answer for. Kelly was taking an awfully long time. Finally I turned around and saw Walt standing in the doorway with Kelly. I gave them another minute, then decided the hell with it, it was late and I wanted to go home. So I bestirred myself and went over to join them.

"He heard me leaving the note on the air conditioner," Kelly told me apologetically. They agreed to meet for lunch tomorrow on Kelly's way out -- she was driving back to Idaho after dropping me at the airport -- and, that settled, we said our good-byes.

By the time Kelly and I made it back to our motel it was past one in the morning; we barely had enough steam left to get into our pajamas and flop into bed. We were, finally, all talked out.

****

The following morning Kelly called Tim at his motel to see if the elusive Richard had ever turned up. He had. Apparently he had been in the one movie room we hadn't searched -- though I'd have sworn we'd searched them all -- and had walked in a little before three a.m., just as Tim had been describing him to the police. Kelly handed the phone to me and I said, "So the prodigal returned safely?"

"Yes," Tim said, exasperated. "I was telling 911 what he looked like and what he was wearing, and then he just breezed right in like it was the middle of the afternoon -- "

"Well, smack him one and tell him we were all worried SICK about him."

Tim laughed. "Greg says I'm supposed to smack you around, we were all worried sick," he told Richard, and I heard a faint groan in the background. Obviously Richard had been getting an earful.

Satisfied that the errant Richard had been sufficiently punished with guilt for the moment, I added, "Anyway, Tim, it was a tremendous, tremendous pleasure meeting you. Stay in touch. You know, we don't need to wait for the next convention to get together."

"Hey, that's right, we don't," Tim said, in a tone of wonder. "We could do this any time."

"That's right," I said, grinning. "So think about it. And have a safe trip home." We said our good-byes and I hung up.

Kelly was in the bathroom, so I stepped out on to the balcony for a moment to have a last look at San Diego. What a trip. I couldn't believe it had all taken place in less than two days.

When Kelly emerged from the bathroom it was my turn, and then I helped Kelly pack up the car and we were on our way.

****

When we arrived at the airport Kelly pulled up at the airport entrance, stopped, and then got out and opened the trunk.

"I don't have anything in the trunk, kitten," I told her, smiling. "I'm a guy. It's all carry-on."

"Oh. Duh. I MUST be tired. Well, come on, give me a hug, then." She held out her arms and I gathered her in.

After a moment I released her and said, "You WILL be careful driving home. No sleeping in the car."

"No, no. I'll stay in a motel in Vegas if I decide to stop. I'll be fine."

"Promise me, Kelly, be careful."

"I promise."

"All right, then." I shouldered my bags, feeling awkward and sad. "Thanks for everything, Kelly. For dinner and chauffeuring us everywhere and... for taking a chance on a stranger."

"No, thank YOU, it was wonderful." Kelly twinkled. "And you're not a stranger. You're the Perfect Man".

I didn't know WHAT to reply to that. Finally I just grinned and waved and turned towards the airport entrance, and home.