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Meeting your Idols:
Where to begin... I guess we can start with how I became so fortunate..
The first of my childhood idols I had the priveledge of meeting was Whilce Portacio, I had been a fan of his since the golden run on X-Factor back in the late 80's early 90's. My best friend began actively collecting original comic book art and at the time he was searching for Whilce's run on Uncanny X-Men. After searching all avenues for the cover to Uncanny 281 he was told that Whilce still had the covers and that to get them he would have to contact Whilce and work a deal. Suffice it to say that he got a hold of Whilce and was able to get the covers. This began a friendship between Whilce and my BF. After nearly a year of correspondance with Whilce my friend was asked to help run Whilce's fansite. A job which would require a few interviews with the man himself. This is where I come in, in Nov. of 2005 my buddy decided to schedule a trip to San Diego to meet up with Whilce to pick up some art and to interview Whilce and take a tour of Wildstorm Studios.
Kyle (my buddy) asked if I wanted to go with him, and suffice it to say, I jumped at the chance! After arriving in San Diego (La Jolla to be exact) and getting checked into our hotel Whilce gave us a call and said he's be by early to pick us up. After picking us up, we had a few minutes to kill and Whilce reminisced about the old school Image days, the buying fast cars and racing Rob and Marc, to the way they all named the Image characters and the games they played to get them, a truly insightful time. As surreal as that was nothing was going to top where we were heading, WILDSTORM STUDIOS!!!!
After we arrived in downtown La Jolla (a very posh spot that Jim had to have
) Whilce walks us to a very unassuming building and after a quick elevator ride up we are at the front door Wildstorm. This place is everything I imagined it to be, lots of cool toys and things everywhere, comics lying about and just about everyone there can draw! We get the 10 cent tour of the place, over here is the bullpen, over here is the stock room, down the hall is Jim's office... wait what?!? Just over there is Jim Lee's office? It took every bit of me to fight off the urge to burst throught the doors for the chance to meet the other of my 2 idols, somehow sensing that, Whilce tells me "Jim isn't here, he's in Italy" D'OH! Oh well, I still get to be here and meet all these cool people. Whilce introduced us to Rich Friend, Sandra Hope, and a few others that I can't reall recall right now. After a brief conversation Whilce leads us back to his office. Whilce had a nice little corner office with a great window view, (he points out that he's seen some crazy things going on late at night at the Apts. across the way ) and on his walls he has full pages laid of his follow-up to Wetworks hanging on his walls, Whilce's pencils are AMAZING!!!! The way he has them up is quite ingenious too, he's using the metal bands you can buy from Ikea with magnets supporting them, laying out the entire issue on his wall. After watching Whilce work and getting his take on the things happening in comics today (off record) we deicide it's time to eat. Whilce takes us down the elevator and out of the lobby into the adjoining plaza, where we decide to grab some sushi and shoot the shit...TBC....