Monday 20 March 2017

Speaking of Petunia Con...

"Petunia Con '84" print
Art by Dave Sim
(Click image to enlare)

DAVE SIM:
(from an AMOC Comment, 16 March 2017)
Coincidentally (?)

a) I just sent Conan Tobias [at Taddle Creek] two pictures from the Aardvark-Vanaheim panel -- featuring Bill Loebs, me, Deni, Arn Saba, Jim Valentino and Joshua Quagmire -- at the Real World (?) PETUNIACON '84 in Oakland California (since they were two of the only four photos of Arn Saba that I had for his article on Arn Saba/Katherine Collins for QUILL & QUIRE)...



b) researching LOVE & AARDVARKS #1 in Todd Hignite's JAIME HERNANDEZ book, I just noticed in a period photo of Los Bros. that Mario is wearing a Petuniacon t-shirt (it was the first convention Los Bros. attended: Jaime's was definitely the first mohawk I had ever seen in my hotel suite). It was also Gerhard's first convention.

*I* don't even have a Petuniacon t-shirt!

Los Bros Hernandez: Jaime, Mario & Gilbert (1984)
Photo by Carol Kovinick Hernandez

c) a caption for another photo in the book mentions that I had organized PETUNIACON. Which isn't true. Faye Desmond organized PETUNIACON at the beginning until the Bay Area Comics & Comix retail chain crew got wind of the fact that the only guests were going to be Indy creators and recognized a disaster in the making and jumped in and lined up Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz as guests to prevent the disaster from taking place. I did drawings for the program book, t-shirt and poster but that was the extent of my hands-on participation. Apart from holding the above-mentioned Killer Party in my suite. And insisting that I needed to have a suite large enough for a Killer Party as part of my attendance.

6 comments:

Travis Pelkie said...

Pretty sure, from memory, that the second picture here was published in the comic.

Whatever happened to Joshua Quagmire, anyway?

And I know I've seen that Los Bros pic before (it's a fun one!), but where? I don't have the Hignite book...

Michael Hoskin said...

Quagmire is still making comics: http://www.cuteybunny.com/

Tony Dunlop said...

Travis, you're correct - but I think Valentino was cropped out. As I recall the caption said something about Arn "balancing an exit sign on his head." Man, do I have a brain full of useless Cerebus trivia or what?

Unknown said...

Travis and Michael - The relationship between Joshua Quagmire and Aardvark-Vanaheim was limited to the "Cutey Bunny" CEREBUS Preview we ran. There was a lengthy correspondence between Joshua and Deni and me as we thought we were moving towards publication that definitely arrived at a "never darken my mailbox, again" point. Sufficiently lengthy that I ended up pulling all of the letters out of chronological order and buffalo-clipping them together (an exceptional circumstance with the Correspondence files).

Glad to hear Joshua is still doing CUTEY BUNNY comics more than thirty years later! He was definitely one of the REALLY productive self-publishers "back in the day".

Unknown said...

The other two photos of Arn are from the suite that Deni and I had in Los Angeles on the '82 AMERICAN TOUR. That's the original artwork for the cover of NEIL THE HORSE #1 that Arn's holding up and sheet music for his NEIL THE HORSE Musical on the coffee table.

Deni and I were much enamoured of our pushbutton fireplace. I have a picture of me and Steve (HOWARD THE DUCK) Gerber in front of it as well.

Unknown said...

That long-haired bearded fellow in the top picture. Is he chug-a-lugging water right of the pitcher? Why, I do believe he is. You don't suppose he had a tad too much to drink at his party the night before, do you?