So, I cheated.

Just the once, mind you, but it was a cheat all the same.

This past Saturday, me and Bunny went to Heroes Convention in Charlotte, which is basically a huge collection of nerds under one building.  We had a pretty amazing time and I’d completely planned on writing an entire blog post just about Heroes Con, complete with pictures of all the awesome things I saw (including roughly 500 different girls dressed as Harley Quinn), but I was so overwhelmed with the greatness of the event — it was the first comic con I’ve ever been to — that I completely forgot to take a single picture.

But here’s a rundown of some of the highlights:

• I got to meet Bernie Wrightson, and have him sign my copy of Frankenstein, which he illustrated. He also had sketches for some concept art that he did for an unfilmed prequel to John Carpenter’s The Thing. I didn’t buy any of those because they were super-expensive and I’m super-poor.
• I got a signed print by Tony Moore, the cover illustrator for The Walking Dead. Mr. Moore was there, but my conversation with him consisted of a nod and a quick “hello”. (He was busy drawing — zombies, presumably.)
• I talked to Geof Darrow for a while (he’s a hilarious, cranky old man). For some reason, most of the con-goers didn’t seem to know what he was, but he’s one of my favorite comic book artists. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t do a whole lot of mainstream work. I got him to sign my copy of Hard-Boiled (written by Frank Miller, with art by Darrow) and bought a print of Shaolin Cowboy (which he co-created with the Wachowski Brothers, whom he met while doing concept art for The Matrix).
• I got to meet Adam Hughes. He’s British. I didn’t know that.
• I got to meet Steve Epting, and talked to him about how the Captain America movie poster totally ripped off one of his covers.

Lots of other stuff too, and I got a lot of great prints from some awesome up-and-coming artists. The best thing about Heroes Con, to me, is going through Artist’s Alley and going through all the prints. You can decorate your entire house in great quality, pop-culture memorabilia for like fifty bucks.

Oh yeah. The cheat.

So a few hours into our time at Heroes Con, we got hungry. The only restaurants in the convention center itself were an Einstein Brothers and a Bojangle’s. So we decided to leave to find something a little bit better. I’d found an awesome-looking vegetarian restaurant online called Luna’s Living Kitchen, which was about a mile and a half from the convention center and our plan was to go there.

The one thing we didn’t think about was that, once we left, we’d have to come back. And find parking again. And pay $10 to park again.

So our only choice was to find somewhere within walking distance. And in the one hundred degree heat, walking distance meant “across the street.”

Enter: FUEL Pizza Cafe.

I walked into FUEL and smelled the wonderful pizza and decided, just this once, I was going to cheat. I know, I’m only six days in at this point, but for me, the past week had been a total breakthrough. I’d eaten more veggies in the previous six days than I probably had in my entire life. So what’s one slice (okay, two slices) of pizza? 

No regrets.