Ernie is not coming out. When I heard about this earlier this morning I contacted him. He just hit me back on text message and tells me May 3rd he's going to be at Wizard World. Also, I drove to this comic store today to meet the owner, Mike. He's a pathological liar, he can't help himself, he starts with one small lie and it snowballs bigger and bigger.
Earlier this morning I went to this comic store's FB page and saw a Feb 2nd post about a paragraph long, and then at the very bottom it was added in parenthesis "( ernie Hudson will be here for free comic book day )" Okay, well, what's weird about that, aside from the fact he didn't capitalize Ernie's name? If you're having a celeb who normally works the autograph circuit then you're probably putting out some big money for them, typically somewhere in the area of $5k to $10 for an appearance fee. They don't come out for free. Despite this there is no mention of Ernie other than that little tidbit? Also, they claimed Kane Hodder ( Jason Voorhees ) is coming out which was at least promoed with a pic of him.
I reached out to Ernie immediately in the hopes I'd hear back from him today. Then I drove over to the store to inquire if they were doing anything for Free Comic Book Day. Mike had another customer in the store at the moment I asked so he made a loud production of saying "Do I?! Oh boy, we're going to have the best day ever! I've got Ernie Hudson coming out, and Kane Hodder, and Robert Englund, and artists from IDW will be here, and...." and the list kept growing. It was a suspiciously large list for such a small store that's only been in business a few years. Also, what's weird about having IDW artists out is even though IDW management is here in San Diego ( been to their offices once before ) you don't find a lot of the talent here. Many work from home in other states, or in some cases countries. So he says IDW is sending a bunch of artists out? Interesting.
Mike told me he spoke with Derek at Ernie's management company and without revealing names, it wasn't the agency that I knew Ernie to be with. He and Bert Belasco are with the same one the last I heard, and it's not the same one he mentioned.
Mike went on to talk about how he's had Gene Simmons at his store to promote the KISS comic book and how he had a live KISS tribute band playing in the parking lot and it stopped traffic, and he was so popular and... It just went on and on. I felt like I was listening to the dude's dreams, not the reality. I looked up Gene Simmons going to his store because Escondido is a small and unlikely town, and if Gene showed up here people would talk. It would be in the newspaper. ( Bill Murray owns a home in Valley Center and although he's rarely around, if he's spotted anywhere it shows up in the Escondido paper every time. ) I looked at the only online article I could find about this alleged Gene Simmons event at his store and when it comes time to
talk and put things into print, he seems to completely miss anything about Gene Simmons showing up.
http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/Jul ... escondido/"He has held one signing already, with creators from San Diego-based IDW Publishing to promote a new “KISS” comic book series, inspired by the heavy metal band. Marte is working with IDW and other publishers to set up more signing events at his store." Also, it doesn't hurt my case any that Ernie just wrote me and said he's already booked for May 3rd so you really don't need anything beyond that.
I really can't stand liars or frauds. Take this guy with a major grain of salt. His stories about who's coming and who's been to his store to promote in the past are dubious at best, complete lies at the worst.