Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates, san diego comic con | Tagged: mark evanier, quick draw, SDCC '15, sergio aragones

SDCC '15: Quick Draw Panel With Sergio Aragones, Mark Evanier, And More

Published Wed, 15 Jul 2015 14:00:53 -0500

By Joshua Stone

The annual Quick Draw panel at SDCC is always one of my favorites, and that is for two reasons – Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier. Aragones can draw anything and make it funny and have it done faster than you can blink. He and Evanier's banter is always fun and it is clearly between two people who have been friends for many years. In addition, you never can be sure what Evanier might say in a quick off the cuff comment. Joining Sergio on the panel this year were Floyd Norman, a legendary Disney animator who worked with Walt Disney himself and has been working on animated films for around 60 years, and cartoonist Mike Kazaleh. The way Quick Draw works is that Evanier will give the panel a challenge to draw something, whether using his own ideas or getting ideas from the audience. The panel then has to meet that challenge by knocking out a drawing as fast as they can while their work is projected on huge screens for the entire audience to see. Some people may not think this would be a popular panel, but that would be incorrect. The room used for this panel holds over 2000 people, and it was pretty close to filled.

When it came to getting suggestions from the audience the most popular name given was Donald Trump, an example of this is this work showing Trump with Godzilla. (I would love to tell you which artist did this, but they move so fast that just couldn't keep up with that.)

For years this panel has included Scott Shaw as a regular, however due to a leg injury he was unable to make it to SDCC this year. Evanier decided to give Shaw a call to wish him well. As part of introducing Shaw to the audience Evanier let everyone know that Shaw still had a booth set up on the floor selling his wares and that everyone should go there to support Shaw. Shaw was so impressed with this that he told Evanier that he was almost as good a salesman as Stan Lee. Evanier responded by saying, "But I give Jack Kirby credit."

Another fun moment was when Evanier challenged Aragones to draw picture of himself running from a stripper. Aragones responded by saying, "That's rare." (My apologies again for the quality of the photo, but I was in the middle of the room, which was still far away.)

So if you have a chance to go to SDCC in the future, I highly recommend taking a break from the craziness of the convention floor and the madness of Hall H to see what is one of the best panels year in and year out at SDCC.