I am a graduate of Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. We have a large list of alumni who have gone on to bigger and better things. Some of these people include Regis Philbin, Martin Scorsese, and comic book legend George Perez.  My brother Danny is an art teacher there and he informed me a few months back that the school was able to secure George Perez to come in and do a talk with the art students of the school. My brother told me to come in and meet him.

Prior to meeting Mr. Perez at my old high school, I first met him at the NY Comic Con. In my blog about the Con, I mentioned that I was going to get a bunch of books signed and graded by CGC and I got my copy of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” #7 signed by Mr. Perez.

On Monday, Mr. Perez arrived at the school where he was greeted outside of my brother’s classroom with a display of reproductions of numerous comic book covers of his work through the years - some of the covers that were reproduced were used from my collection.

Mr. Perez was taken into a neighboring art classroom where he was able to look over the work that the students were doing for class. The students were, of course, drawing comic book characters. One student from another class, Amaury, was introduced to Mr. Perez by my brother. Amaury is a junior at Hayes and he wants to be a comic book artist. Mr. Perez was kind enough to take a look at his sketch and give some advice on improving his work.

Mr. Perez was there to also do a slide presentation of his work and do a Q&A session with some art students. I couldn’t stay around because I had to get back to work, but I did get to have pizza with Mr. Perez and his lovely wife Carol.  My brother Danny is a much more assertive person than me. George Perez didn’t wrap his arm around me and say hey I like you, kid, come have some pizza with me. No, my brother told me to go into the closed door room where he and his wife were eating and ask if I could have some pizza. So what did I do? I went in and asked and he said yes.

I felt like such a fanboy, but it was very cool. I got to sit down and talk about comics with George Perez for about 20 minutes or so before he had to go do his presentation. He didn’t reveal any behind the scene secrets of the comic world in case you were wondering. He did mention a story about the Comic Con where he was trying to get to meet Joss Whedon because his wife Carol is a big “Firefly/Serenity” fan. A friend of George’s went up to Joss and said I’d like you to come over and meet my friend George. Joss was like George who and when the mutual friend said George Perez, Joss said “when and where!” Mr. Perez got a kick out of a big Hollywood star like Whedon more excited to meet him instead of the other way around. Mr. Perez was amazed at how big of a fan Whedon was of his work because he talked a lot about some of his early lesser known work.

After he ate his pizza, Mr. Perez did a quick sketch of Green Arrow and Black Canary for the event. They were just profile headshots of the characters, but it was amazing to see someone draw that fast and have it look perfect.

So I want to say thanks to George Perez for letting me sit down and be a geek with him and talk comics. He could have said beat it, kid, but he was very nice and a professional. We all hear stories about various creators and various celebrities in general being complete jerks so it was nice to see someone who is still just a regular guy after years of being a celebrity. Thanks, George