Across from me, Brent Schoonover was signing Howling Commandos #4.
Now the stage is set.
You know how a not atypical situation in comics stores (at least as far as I've observed) is an excited son and an ambivalent mom? Here comes the reverse.
Emily, an 8th grader, was at the shop with her dad (who was NOT into geek stuff so much, though his wife, he said, was an avid gamer.) Emily was into Transformers -- she's about to give a speech about the evolution of Megatron for a class assignment -- and had just attended her first con last year.
She was aware of the Howling Commandos from the Ultimate Spider-Man cartoon, and bought all four issues, excited. Got 'em autographed by Brent and left happy.
HOW AWESOME IS THAT?
An hour later I heard some guys, a little older, ripping on the Ultimate Spidey cartoon. I'm not going to bag on them for not liking it, it's not going to hit every target. But I did think of Emily; USM was responsible for getting a 12 year old interested in obscure Marvel characters and caused her to pick up comics she might otherwise not have.
Not the first time USM has proselytized characters! I met a 5 year old girl at C2E2 who shocked her parents by asking for a Doctor Strange sketch. ("How does she know Doctor Strange??" "Cartoons!")
If the cartoon spreads the love, man, that's such a great thing.
And I love seeing kids excited about comics.
In other news, I had a FANTASTIC time at the signing! The Twin Cities Ghostbusters were there, pizza was had, and it was an all around great time.
My thanks to Hot Comics for having me down, and to Brent for joining in!
--Erik