Had a great time at Dragon*Con this year. Although we didn’t stay down there this year and expe­ri­ence our usual 3 days, we had a blast. While I wanted to see the vis­it­ing Whe­do­n­verse folks, we made this year’s trip short and sweet. We went down on Sun­day and spent the day sift­ing through the dealer rooms for good­ies. I found some old Uni­ver­sal Mon­ster movie posters and my son snatched up some Liv­ing Dead Dolls. Waaaay cool.

When we reg­is­tered, we chose how our names would read on our badges. We went with a Stephen King motif. My son’s read “It the Clown” and mine read “Beep-Beep Ritchie”. Both are from King’s “It”.

We did man­age to visit the Brown­coats, which is a tra­di­tion for us each year. My son has got­ten to “that age” where he doesn’t want me snap­ping pic­tures of him every few min­utes. I did man­age to get his pic with the Joker and Harley! After all, who could say “no” to good ol’ Mr. J? I also got his pic with a few char­ac­ters from the Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show. We had a great time, as usual, and are already plan­ning to be there for the whole week­end again next year.

Bret with Mr. J and Harley.

Bret with Rocky Hor­ror Pic­ture Show Characters.

I found this on YouTube not too long ago and thought it was hilarious!

Poor Aqua­man. Where’s the love?

I will be teach­ing classes on car­toon­ing and comics at First Bap­tist Church in Easley, SC. The church is spon­sor­ing an Arts Camp where ris­ing 2^nd-6^th graders can come and learn art, music, and/or the­ater. This is going to be a really cool event in my home town and I am very excited and proud that my church is orga­niz­ing it. They have really got some very tal­ented peo­ple lined up to teach the kiddos.

It has been a long time since I have taught a class and I love work­ing with this age group. The imag­i­na­tive ideas that come from kids this age are stag­ger­ing. I can’t wait to par­tic­i­pate and see what they come up with. The EFBC Arts Camp will be held on August 10^th-13^th from 9am until noon. For those of you with kids that are an eli­gi­ble age to attend, you can find out more infor­ma­tion by vis­it­ing www.efbc.org or call­ing the church offices at 864–859-4052.