Note to self: Do not book travel in the late afternoon during the summer. The potential for thunderstorm-fueled delays is huge. Although we’d wanted to get home fresh and rested for Monday morning, instead, while everyone else was enjoying the legendary Heroes Con dead dog party at owner Shelton Drum’s store, we were sitting on the tarmac wondering if one of the massive bolts of lightning surrounding the area would strike our four-hour-delayed flight when it finally launched to the skies, sending us down just as quickly.

Another note: it really does pay to check flight status when you’re close to the airport. Instead of sitting in the airport fretting out the long delay, like poor Mike Dawson and Vito Del Sante, Future Mr. Beat and The Beat sat in the bar at the Westin watching the Euros and checking flight status on the JetBlue website thanks to the free wifi.

Sunday was petty quiet up until then. We had coffee with Tom Spurgeon and negotiated a non-aggression pact that should last for six months. Actually, it was really nice just to sit down and talk about all kinds of things — Tom is a capital guy.

Speaking of Tom, he has an exhaustive rundown of everything we would have noticed if we had more focus. So go there for your HeroesCon wrap-up.

Speaking of the wrap-up, one thing jumped out at us, this funny photo
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with this caption:

* Tim Hodler of Comics Comics later told me that he tried to keep people from being able to read his disappointment if not slight dismay over the direction of the conversation during the journalism/criticism panel. On behalf of everyone in comics, I’d like to invite Mr. Hodler to attend poker night any time he wants.


I feel bad that Tim felt bad…I hope he reams us all a good one on his blog instead of feeling sad that he couldn’t get the other side heard.

We’ll have some more links and news analysis throughout the day. Big thanks to Shelton, Dustin, Doug and everyone else from HeroesCon — honestly, these guys are so nice and friendly and helpful it makes a street-savvy New Yorker feel like a cynical hater. It’s of of he reasons why HeroesCon continues to be such a popular stop on the convention circuit. We can’t wait to go back, although next time we’ll scope out some more butter-free dining options, if such a thing is possible in the South.

1 COMMENT

  1. What issue did Tim Hodler have with the direction of the journalism panel? I thought that the panel was a really interesting panel from beginning to end, and covered an awful lot of ground.

    And it was nice to finally put faces to the names of all the comics bloggers I enjoy reading everyday, and even get to sneak in my question (the manga-related one) in right at the end.

  2. Why would you want to eat food without butter? It makes everyting taste ten times better. I like a half stick melted on top of my salad, mmmmmm, delicious.

  3. One of our worst flights ever was in Charlotte during the summer. IN the amount of time we waited to land, waited during pre-boarding, waited on the tarmac and finally got in the air, we could have driven back to Virginia Beach in less time (6 hours).

  4. I’m guessing. Jason, that Tim had an issue with it being a journalism/criticism panel that you just remember as a journalism panel, seeing as how he’s a critic and all.

    But maybe there was a lot of talk about criticism. I don’t know, I wasn’t there.

  5. my flight was at 9:55pm. i hit the dead dog party for about an hour or so and headed to the airport. and yep….my flight was delayed to that massive storm. though nowhere near as long as yours. (only about 45 minutes).

  6. Heidi, you are absolutely correct to avoid travel in North Carolina on hot summer afternoons. That’s when all the meteorological mosh-pitting generally occurs, between 3 and 7, speaking as a mostly lifelong North Carolinian. Next time you come to HeroesCon, I strongly suggest you stay through to Monday morning–if nothing else, it would have given me more time to say more than a quick “hello” to you while scurrying hither or thither during the convention!