28 Jun 2012

 

 

 

<Note: this was the original material from my first edited draft regarding this year’s Special Recognition Awards that would up in a much-abbreviated form for the live ceremony speech at Heroes Con June 23 on Saturday 12:30-2:00 for the sake of brevity. All three Inkwell award recipients received their silver inkwell trophy following the ceremony.>

“Before I bring up our Presenter I want to first take a moment to give special recognition to three brilliant people.  First and foremost, Joe Sinnott.  He’s been our hall of fame namesake and its’ first recipient since 2008 but he’s been to many our unofficial front line ambassador by default.   We want to honor him with what he deserves for all he’s done to bring us attention, credibility and esteem and be the nicest guy in the world while doing so. I’d like to retroactively, proudly and officially offer him the title of Special Ambassador!  We’ve all been trying to get Joe here for some time but no such luck to date, maybe next time. This unique silver inkwell trophy will promptly be shipped to his studio in New York.

Next, I’d like to talk about two retired committee members and friends of mine. All core committee members are given a small gift for at least a year of their time and participation, the silver inkwell trophy. Nathan Massengill was recruited by last year’s retiree, Bob Shaw, to fill in the void left by Dave Simons and it was a great move.  Besides being a fine inker, he brought with him reason and order during a chaotic time.  His writing and organizational skills were a handy assistance when ol’ Danny boy wasn’t available.  He brought in contributor Gina Kirlew to design our first brochure and Ms. Inkwell logo. Nathan was also a key component when Ms. Inkwell was being created.  While I had the concept in mind and Randy Green worked out the visuals, in-between Nathan acted as sounding board when it came to evaluating Randy’s prelim designs.  While, admittedly, had Nathan had the final say, Ms. Inkwell would not be a sexy and savvy business woman today but, instead, a sexy and savvy majorette.  Nathan closed the deal by deftly inking Randy’s final pencils (since I didn’t have the available time myself) and digitally coloring the image.  Lastly, he filled in as our auctioneer for a few months after Bob and before Mike Kellar took over.  Come on up, Nathan!+

XXX <a cue for Nathan to speak as he was scheduled to be at the convention>

 

“Lastly, a founding member dropped down to the contributor level, so he’s not lost completely. Based in Adelaide Australia, ‘ruff-n-tumble’ Danny Best was active at the formation of the initial team of Tim Townsend, Bill Nichols, Jim Tournas and myself and has had several duties and titles over the years. He helped set up our first Facebook and Twitter social network accounts. After Jim created our first website he’s acted as webhost, along with Tim Aslat, to this day, still paying our annual domain and website dues. He handled site designs and updates there longer than anyone to date. He acted as our resident writer because the bunch of us artists couldn’t write to save our lives. He’s been our most-prolific chronicler, handling writing chores for more bios at the venue than anyone else and he’s written the text to every book we’ve produced. Lastly, he’s been a behind the scenes financer whether to pay stupid money for auction items or to simply drop a bundle to fund the Simons Scholarship Fund when needed. The ‘heart’ of the Inkwell family and debatably the most-passionate, Danny has vowed that neither the Inkwells nor the Scholarship would ever cease from existence if he could help it. And I believe him. And I’m thankful that he’s still around. Well, not around here, though….remember, he lives in Australia! We will be sure to ship this silver inkwell to him pronto!”

 

Bob Almond

June 11, 2012