I don't know if I'm like most comics fans, but I was a bit resistant for many years to meeting comics creators. I preferred the image of how I imagined them to be, vs. the potential disappointment of what they might be like. So ultimately I preferred for a long time to know them by their work, rather than the person behind the work.
(A point of view Steve Ditko would have agreed with me on.)
I attended my first convention at Miamicon in 1979, and there were a bunch of creators there such as John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Mike Zeck, Pat Broderick, Jim Shooter, C.C. Beck, Wayne Boring, RICHIE RICH artist Al Kurzrok, and others. I saw them from a distance, but was more interested in buying back issues, and partly because it wasn't that important to me, I didn't make the time to approach and actually meet them.
Again at the 1981 Miami convention, I just went for back issues and didn't make an effort to meet the creators there.
I later met Zeck, Beatty, Broderick and Mcleod at a show in Jan 1982, and they were very friendly and approachable, at a smaller convention in Gainesville, Florida (I was a freshman at University of Florida at the time, and the hotel for the convention was literally right across the street).
In the 1985-1995 period, I met a lot of creators at booksignings in a number of local South Florida comic shops, such as George Perez, Jon Muth, Kevin Maguire, Berni Wrightson, Joe Jusko, and a few other lesser-knowns who were only briefly in comics.
The owner of Tropic Comics in Fort Lauderdale let on to me that at some point it just became too costly to bring creators in the store. That in the early days you could just get them a local hotel room and a plane ticket, whereas now they expect a large cash payment of $1,000 or more in addition to that.
The last I met at a local comic store signing was Greg Horn, who was also a very personable and friendly guy. I asked him what his favorite cover was that he drew, and he said MARVILLE 2 (Dec 2002 issue).
He said he liked how it was a beautiful naked girl, bringing (aside from the naked girl) all the "guy stuff" for her man that you could imagine (pizza, video games, beer, a football, porn...) in a very inviting image. So I bought that issue and asked him to sign it for me. That was probably sometime in 2003, the last comic shop signing in the area that I'm aware of. I recall mentioning it once before on RKMB, I recall Wednesday said he was at the same signing appearance. It's possible we were in the store at the same time, but just didn't know each other by photo then to recognize each other.
I saw Greg Horn several other times at Orlando Con, and MegaCon (then in Miami, now held in Fort Lauderdale).
So what creators have you met, good or bad experiences? The meetings I've had with comics creators have been overwhelmingly good, with a select few who were either pricks or I caught on a bad day.
