What were they like? J Buscema Chan Alcala 0

[Drewsky]

Sadly, my 3 favorite Conan artists all died before I could meet them. I love their work on Conan and all did great things in the industry, but for those of you that did meet them and interact, what were they like? Any personal stories? Anything to share? Thanks!

 

[Brian Peck]

I never met Big John or Alcala but I had the pleasure of becoming friends with Ernie Chan. He lived in the Bay Area and attended all of the Super-Cons (later rename Big WOW Comicfest). He was a regular fixture and we started a panel highlighting comic book inking and later inkers and he was alway part of that. A few years after he died the inking panel was renamed Ernie Chan Memorial Inking Panel.

I spoke with Ernie a lot over the years. When I was writing my book "John Buscema Michelangelo of Comic". Ernie was a great resource talking about working John and he even gave me some unfinished original art for Conan newspaper strips. John gave the unfinished art to Roy Thomas when was writing the strip and then Roy gave them to Ernie. Ernie then used then as layouts for the strips when he took over. Ernie was a great guy and still miss seeing him at cons.