I’ve really started enjoying cons in the last few years.

Ever since the slew of Hollywood/pop culture material that saturated all of the biggest, longest running cons, making them less about comics and more about everything adjacent (if that) to comics, it’s been refreshing to see new, smaller cons pop up that are bringing attention back to the books themselves. Oakland Comic Con, which was just held for the first time ever May 9-10, was one such event for me.

Jeff Parker, a dependable writer who has created some great stories over the past two decades, was there and it was nice to meet him.

I very much enjoyed Future Quest from some years back, and some of his indie stuff like Underground and Meteor Men which were published by Oni Press. Parker hasn’t done too much Superman material, but I really enjoyed the Adventures of Superman digital series from 2013, for which he wrote the first and probably most iconic story from the series.

Parker was a super nice guy who said he liked working on Superman even though he has only done a handful of stories with the character. During my brief interaction with him he also said that he is trying to hammer out a Superman mini with Doc Shaner, his artist on Adventures and frequent collaborator, to pitch to DC.

If that ever happens, sign me all the way up!

I had him sign a copy of the first trade of Adventures, which he did in a pretty fancy way, which is lmakes sense when one considers that Parker was a comic book artist for the first decade or so of his career.

While there, I also admired the work of Tony Dela Cruz, a local artist from whom I picked up a beautiful, minimalist Superman art print as well. I looked his work up on social media after the show, and I think it’s great! I highly recommend checking out his stuff as well.

I am glad I went to the show (even though Dave Johnson, who I was also hoping to meet, cancelled his appearance last minute), and got my trade paperback collection of the series signed by Parker, who represents the talent from that book as well as anyone.

Hope to see Jeff Parker do a Superman story or two again in the future one of these days!