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For Neal Adams, A Happy Ending To A Megacon Disaster

Published Wed, 01 Jun 2016 10:00:56 -0500

Earlier today, Martin Dunn tweeted out an appeal to Bleeding Cool. We got in touch. He told us.

In a nutshell, I was hosting the last comic related panel of the day and this meant I didn't get back to the CAE Studios booth until after 5:30pm. The show closed at 5, and I didn't want to brave the unforgiving traffic. Being local and doing Megacon every year, I know it's a circus. So we (The CAE team) just sort of sat around and talked. We finally started loading our stuff around 10 pm, and as I was on my final walkthrough to the loading dock, I saw a bright floral bag on the floor mixed in with a pile of trash.

My curiosity got the best of me and I took a look. Inside was what felt like several picture frames, but it was all wrapped in a black fabric. I was being a little rushed by my fiance, who was hungry. So I just grabbed it and figured we'd take a look when we got home. When I got home, I was so tired I just unloaded everything and went to bed. Yesterday I spent Memorial day relaxing and hanging out with my kids. This morning, I was in my office and the bag was sitting on my sofa. I was waiting on the kids to finish getting ready for school, so I decided to take a look. The bag contained 8 pieces of art by Neal Adams and some that are labeled as being inked by Frank Miller. This was both shocking and exciting. So, I sent out the tweet. Hopefully, I can get these back to Mr. Adams as soon as possible.

So I e-mailed Neal Adams who responded extremely positively. I set Martin up to talk to Neal. And this is Neal's story.

Okay, here's the story: at the various conventions around the country we've been hearing about more and more things stolen, purses stolen, comic books stolen, and stuff stolen, etc. Last week, at Planet Comic Con in Kansas City, Marilyn, my wife, who carries our IDs and cash, had that purse stolen. We believe it was stolen while we were at the booth and during the commotion that happens at the end of the show with last minute interviews, chatting between pros, and the beginning of wrap up. We have been recovering terribly since then by applying for new passports, getting new social security cards, new drivers licenses and state IDs, and totally unable to make up the money that was also in the purse.

Thinking all this was over, and we were getting through the disaster that was caused by some damned thief whose job it is to steal purses without regard to the consequences, we had spent the week applying for all these other things. So we're at Mega Con and for us, a really terrific con, in fact, a terrific con for all the artists there selling their own prints. Perhaps not so good for artists that are selling prints that are not their own, which, as many know, has become an object of discussion lately. And once again we were packing up to leave, lots of commotion, we shipped all our stuff, we went to the hotel, exhausted, for a quiet dinner, got up in the morning, and we all contacted each other and said, "You have the flowery bag with all the big pieces of art and the paintings, right?" to which we all said, "No." We lost a bag of art and we had to go to the airport. So we began calling everyone, resolved to get it back. We called Dave, who is so good at this sort of thing, and is the angel of these conventions to help us. We called the police. We called the security at the convention. Then we got on the plane to suffer through the flight. We started a police report that evening which we were going to finish up with a detective this morning when we got an email from Bleeding Cool who passed on an email from Martin Dunn. Martin Dunn has a company called Cae Studios, www.caestudios.com and www.dunntown.com, he was leaving the convention and noticed a floral bag in a pile of trash. Curious, he grabbed it, took it home thinking he had found a floral bag and there was something wrapped in it, and he too was exhausted. He didn't open it until this morning and found all our artwork. Right away he got in touch with Rich from Bleeding Cool and sent out a tweet and got a hold of us. And right now, my wife is on the phone talking to Martin Dunn, CEO at CAE Studios, and arranging for the return of the bag and the artwork. The greatly loved David Wray will be picking up the art from Martin in Florida, and will get it back to us. We have no possible way at this moment to think of to thank this fellow. We don't know how the bag got in the trash, we don't know how we got so stupid to leave the bag to get thrown in the trash. But this is a story that has a happy ending.

Epilogue: That is not to say there is more and more thievery going on at conventions, more and more people scalping exhibitor passes, and more people realizing there is money to be stolen at these conventions. Security must be heightened because I can tell you getting your ID back and making up the thousands dollars you may lose, the collector books you may lose to these scoundrels, and anything else you may lose to these very bad people is not a good experience.

Today we have had the best experience of all, and we have made a new friend."

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