Fred Perry draws spontaneous applause at all of his AWA appearances. One of the leading artists in the Antarctic Press stable, Perry has effectively merged his Gold Digger characters with the Ninja High School universe. Perry is a classic example of a fan artist who has been a success as a professional.

Pat Duke once worked with Perry at Antarctic before creating Radio Comix, which handles many of the manga titles dropped by Antarctic. Duke and Elin Winkler had AWA's best collection of Ippongi Bang dojinshi - until this author bought it.

Two AWA guests have links to the famed Star Blazers aka Capt. Harlock series. Bruce Lewis has written and illustrated the Star Blazers comic that keeps the series alive and fresh in the U.S.

The other Star Blazers guest is Amy Howard, who voiced "Nova" for the English-dubbed TV series. Howard told fans how she was working at an acting schol when she got the call for the role. "Before they got the words `are you interested' out of their mouths, I was out the door and headed to the audition," Howard recalled.

The mysterious "Pocky Man" (learn his secrets at this link) emerges only to distribute the coated wheat sticks to AWA members - and tell them about his experiences living in Japan. He was amazed that such as peace-loving nation has so many people who are weapons fans, and told the story about the Japanese costume-play fans in WWII German uniforms who showed up for the premiere of "Schindler's List."

This author once subscribed to Lorraine Savage's "The Rose" fanzine but let the subscription expire - and apologized to her at AWA. Savage barely got out of New Hampshire when a winter storm hit the East Coast.

Viz Communications sent two officials to AWA, probably the only two people wearing business suits at the convention. Editor Carl Gustav Horn queried the audience at the Viz panel about the Neon Genesis Evangelion manga, which is being published "unflipped" for the most part.He said that not reversing the art to accomodate differing reading styles - Japan reads right-to-left, Americans left-to-right - drives editors crazy because they must maintain continunity on details such as Ayanami Rei's EVA injuries and the location of steering wheels on cars.

Toshifumi Yoshida of Viz had several announcements: the Dark Stalkers manga is on the way but late; Viz will start publishing two lines of Dragonball manga in 1998, including a unflipped Z series at the author's request; there is plenty more Ranma 1/2 on the way; and the EVA manga has become Viz' biggest seller.