Having travelled the convention circuit enough times over the years, I’m on a seemingly endless loop of promotional emails about the next show coming up… and in many cases, that’s a very good thing!

I attended Galaxy Con San Jose last year- perhaps the biggest show in the Bay Area- where I met Dan Jurgens and got a few signatures. At this year’s con, held August 15-17, I was fortunate enough to meet another all time great, Mark Waid.

Mark Waid has written pretty much every major character in mainstream comics at this point in his illustrious career. I have enjoyed much of his work in my lifetime, mainly his excellent run on The Flash, for which he’ll probably be remembered best.

That said, he has also written some standout Superman stories that have become all time classics, which even most casual fans I’m sure have heard of. He is also the current writer of Action Comics and World’s Finest, and has a major hand in the overall direction of today’s Superman books.

Waid is an uber Superman fan, which he has said on multiple occasions in interviews, and I am sure that his current job feels very much like a homecoming for him. Superman is the only major character at either of the Big 2 on which he has, amazingly, never had a sustained run. I’m not entirely familiar with the details, but apparently Waid had a falling out with DC some years back which, thankfully, seems to have now been reconciled.

I’m not quite as big a fan of Waid’s Superman work as others, as his writing tends to skew heavily into the Silver Age at times, which, admittedly, a lot of people love, even if it’s not on the top of my list. Still, his love for Superman is undeniable, and his knowledge of the character’s- and really all of the company’s- history is just unparalleled.

Besides, regardless of whatever else he writes, he will always have Kingdom Come on his resume, one of the greatest comics, and certainly Superman stories, ever written. Which is exactly what I brought for him to sign!

I arrived at the show on Sunday around 2:30, and went straight to his area to catch him in case he left early (which Bitsie Tulloch and some others had done last year in San Francisco). Waid had just finished a panel about his current DC work that morning, which I would have loved to have caught, but thankfully he was still signing right up through the end of the con that afternoon.

I’d heard about Mark’s purported temper, and I will admit have seen some of it in message board conversations with fans, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. But man, he was the absolute nicest creator I have ever met at a convention, hands down.

He was very outgoing and very friendly with every fan that came to his table while I was there, beginning each conversation by asking the person’s name and what they do. When it was my turn, I handed him my Absolute edition of Kingdom Come, asked him what it felt like to finally be writing an ongoing Superman book and how long he intended to stay. While signing the book, his answer was along the lines of:

“I’m having a blast! I’m not planning on going anywhere, they’re going to have kick me off.”

The enthusiasm was palpable! I also mentioned that I enjoyed him in his many interviews, to which he responded that he was happy to provide “institutional knowledge” of the source material.

I collected my book and was on my way, and for that matter, I was good for the whole con after that! I loved the experience of meeting Mark, and love that I have now gotten signatures in person from four of my top ten all-time Superman writers.

Some have passed on, so I will never be ten for ten, but still!

I loved the experience of meeting Waid and getting my book signed, so here we are! Of course it goes without saying that you should check out Mark’s current Superman stuff if you like the Silver Age, and definitely Kingdom Come and Birthright, which are evergreen and are now classics of DC’s library.

Hoping I will meet a few more like him in the future!