Motorcity Comic Con 2010 Day 3

And, it’s over. Take down the banners, put away the tables, and take a bow kids ‘cause the whole show is over. Phew.

Sunday is usually a drag of a day because it’s the slowest of the days, the end of a long weekend, and by this time I tend to be under-slept and over-sugared. Seriously, it’s like going to some sort of camp, this weekend – you eat for crap, act a fool, and are usually mauled by a bear. Or at least a furry.

The day began as a disaster for me and looked bleak but two book sales and the sale of a painting, both sales within fifteen minutes of one another, really turned the day around – and allowed me to buy a zombie toy. YAY!

Sundays are usually a great day to talk to people. The guests, famous and not, are tired and ready for the weekend to be over and are usually open for a conversation. Two big comic book names that were there were wandering around speaking to other artists and it was really great to see. Some amazing costumes again today, but not as many as yesterday. People on Sunday are out for the bargains, which they will find more times than not. I love the buzz that you get from this place when it’s ‘right’. You see how excited people are to meet an artist or celeb they admire, and it’s great.

The lameness of the day came from a neighboring table, which was held by a shrew of a girl I have seen at the con for years and years and years. For some reason she decided that a patron from the previous day that had come to her table and spoken to her was ‘creepy’ and ‘weird’ and went to great pains to tell all who would listen about the person. It was utterly uncalled for and ridiculous to make fun of people at a comic con for being who they are. Are there creeps? Boy are there ever. Creeps are a dime a dozen at these things, wanting to get as close to girls as they can.  But jeepers, this is a place where we can all fly our freak flags, and to act as if you are better than anyone else is a bit absurd.Lest we forget, we are not there, at these things, were it not for the impassioned (and oft-times smelly) people who come to the shows. We are all nerds here, so let’s have some darn solidarity! We all, every person on the earth, pokes fun at people from time to time, but there is a fine line between acknowledging the absurdity of people and making someone a target of bullying, whether they are there before you or not. This girl is the reason I don’t like cons all the time. Her awful attitude and sense of entitlement. Drives me nuts. I live for the few people that like what I do. I don’t really have ‘fans’ per se so I LOVE when people want to talk to me and get into my stuff. It’s what keeps me going. She’d be well to remember that.

It was a good con overall but there really has become too much of an emphasis on nude and Playboy models. Get them, sure, but only after you have pursued cult actors and others that may be a draw. There needs to be just…well, MORE. I hated, as a fan, knowing that I did everything while I was there. You’d rather people left wanting more, knowing they didn’t get a chance to do everything. That’s the fun. And get the celebs and artists out from behind the tables and interacting in some capacity.

It was a fun show, and one of the better ones I have had. I had a great time, talked to a lot of wonderful people, and met a rad writer I admire. The heck of it is that, for me, I dunno that it makes sense to do the shows any more. Fiction (red:non-picture) books are not what people are interested in there, and my art, for the interest it got at times, just doesn’t seem to work there. I really need to learn to promote though, seriously. That is what I need to work on. The books are good, but I am just a rough person to sell them because I am so close to them. For as much as a table costs, for as much as the ticket price is, I want more. Heck, as a person with a table I want a free show shirt, darn it. Gimme a shirt!

We shall see what the future holds on that front but for me, I am glad the weekend is over, and am back to promoting the books and art and move ever forward.

If you got here, to my blog-ranch, via the convention and were interested in my books or art, point yer mousey to the right there and you can find out more about me, my art, and my books, and will hopefully find something of interest.

Thanks for stopping by.

The Meep Sheep – $12

This Beautiful Darkness – $10

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Motorcity Comic Con 2010 Day Two

Day two and another epic and fun day. So much fun. So many people…so few sales. It’s always a drag not to sell but, darn, it was such a fun day that it’s hard, very hard, to be bitter.

Saturday is always the huge day of the con and this was one of the biggest I have seen. Huge. And man, seriously, even with more space to wander in people just fill it with their stink and their duh. Lots of duh. Almost got run down by a Hover-Round while going towards the bathroom. Tragedy, and embarrassment averted. Phew.  People just go to this thing though and stop in the middle of the aisles and it is maddening. GAH!

Lots more friends today, and I sold some stuff to them, which was cool. It is so good to see friends at these things because even if you are having a bad day you can have some laughs that make up for it all. By day two you are getting wacky and so the jokes start to roll. This was also a huge costume day and despite a lot of people with similar gear on (really, must we ALL be Batman characters or the other major characters, really? Give a brother a Galactus. At least there were some oddballs, like Sinestro, that was fun.) but the costumes were fun, and not as sleazy as you see at some of the cons. Word spread of some celebs copping ‘tude but everyone I ran into seemed affable and to be having fun. Heck, I walked between Eric Roberts and a rassler of some manner talking in the exit. Fun.

Got stuff signed by author Max Brooks who wrote The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z, and The Zombie Survival Guide – Recorded Attacks. Super nice guy and very fun with his fans. I appreciate when people sign stuff for free if people have it with them. I ended up being talked into giving him a copy of one of my books (This Beautiful Darkness) and he was really cool and thanked me for it. Boss!

Also got to talk to a few more guests there, and that was cool. So many creative people. It bums me out that so many of them have to do their versions of known or established characters in order to make money. How sad. Like going to an acclaimed artist and telling them you like what they do but could they do it THIS way instead? Really? Really?

No after party this year, which is super weak sauce but we had our own fun. Better day today but still need to sell more. Still not really selling the Meep Sheep which is nutty. I just am not sure how to pitch it. Darn it, it’s good, read it. READ IT! And I cannot bring myself to ‘bark’ out to people to entice them to buy. It just seems tacky to me.

Overall a great day. Had a blast. Still need to check the ‘green’ room. Oh, and Mandie bought me the Brooks graphic novel and she and friend Justin went in on a rad Earth X figurine for me. WIN!

Tomorrow is the last day, wish us all luck. Pics below. Oh, if you are just discovering me, the stuff for sale and the like is to your right. Feel free to browse but you break it, you bought it kid.

Motorcity Comic Con 2010 Day 1

Can I tell you how much I love the first day of comic con? Love it. It is like a dysfunctional family reunion where you are all smelly and weird but never have to deal with the drama a family does. Great! Setting up is a drag, a huge drag, but darn is it fun to see familiar faces. I am doing a split-table set up now where art is on one side and books on the other and it works great. GAH! My banner, cool as it is, keeps falling down though.

Lame.

Totally got to nerd out and school a kid working parking when we got there. So we roll up and the kid is laughing to his cohort that ‘this guy’ got upset because he was Danny Hicks and the kid should know who he was. I was like, oh, yeah, from Evil Dead 2, yeah, well, not many would know him. He was like, uh, yeah, I dunno him. HA! So you work a comic con and don’t know that movie?

NERRRRR…oh, nevermind.

So, the bummer of the day, for ticketholders, was that a LOT of the guests don’t come Fridays. Not at all. Some did, for sure, and they appeared approachable and cheery, which was good. But it sucks if you went for the celebs and not all are there. Though, I will say that the con does make it clear who will and will not be there all weekend.

For me, it was a bummer because I didn’t really sell much. Sold a small painting to a rad artist I met at an art fair I did last Summer, and sold a couple buttons. No books. BOO! The heck of it with these comic cons, at least in this area, is that the climate has changed. People seem to come for the celebs, for the comics and toys, and once in a while to see a comic artist but not for the whole experience. Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s that the damn celebs charge so much for autographs (and we did it to ourselves, I guess, by getting crap signed then rushing to EBay), or it’s that the cons themselves are SO pricey, I dunno, but I know that not many of us are making a lot of loot. I am having fun this year but the thing is that I need to make some dough, and maybe it’s just me, and maybe that having paintings and books are not things that will sell, but for me, it’s worrisome, for sure.

And why do I keep getting placed next to other ‘new’ writers that are doing better than me? GAH! What is with that? I need a gimmick, like, like, like dressing up like a Meep Sheep. Or a wizard or something.

Can I tell you how nerdy I still get when I walk past celebs? It’s hilarious! It’s like – ohmigawd, you are totally So-and-so. HEE!

All in all, day one was fun, but not fruitful. Hopefully day two is much better for everyone.

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The REAL THE MEEP SHEEP Cover And Other News…

    Oh April Fool’s Day, I can love you so sometimes. I took this day to play a little trick on you, dear friend, and for that I am…heck, I am not sorry in the least. My fear though is that mine was a joke that either no one got, or didn’t care about. What I had tried was to release a false ‘bad’ cover to the book and back cover and then wrote a bunch of nonsense about what the book’s stories have to do with. I was hoping someone would fall for it, and well, did you?

Hmm.

    Oh, anyway, why we’re here NOW – this is the for reals cover to The Meep Sheep and I do honestly love it to pieces. I liked it quite a bit until my friend Marcus found the perfect font and then tweaked the cover image to make it pop more and now I absolutely adore this cover. THIS is what the book is about. To me this cover is the book. The book consists of several short stories that follow several people as they discover who they are and their places in the world and what they find is that they have destinies far greater than they had ever imagined. As I have said before, this is a book of fairy tales but which are not the kid stories they began as. These are closer to the Grimm’s version of fairy tales, just with less violence and less bodily dismemberment.

The Meep Sheep will be priced at $12 because it is about 100 pages longer than This Beautiful Darkness but you can buy both books for $20 if you catch me at any of the conventions I am doing this spring. The book clocks in at around 276 pages, give or take a few, and will have some art in it by me. The art is sketchy, but shows some of the many critters you’ll find in the Land of Man. Amanda did an amazing job laying the book out and I think you’ll like what she put together. The book is in Proof mode and I have yet to get the first proof in my hands. My friend Billy is reading through the book right now and correcting grammar and finding any loose ends and as he does that I shall fix the book and we should have a finished book by May, if not a touch earlier.

As for plans for the Spring they are –

Downtown Flint Comix Con on April 17th in Downtown Flint, Michigan at the Masonic Temple.

Motorcity Nightmares which will be April 23 – 25th in Novi, Michigan at the Sheraton.

Motor City Comic Con which is May 14th – 16th in Novi, Michigan at the Rock Financial Center.

I am going to do a book signing with Flint authors Glen Birdsall and Dangerous Lee as well at some point. And am going to try to get into at least one art festival during the summer.  

Anyway, that’s all the info I have, and now you have it. So, without further ado, here is the front and back cover for The Meep Sheep.

   

lemme know what you think!

Upcoming Appearances…

Looking up, it sounds really pompous to have UPCOMING APPEARANCES as the header but, I mean, it’s the truth, so what can ya do?

I got my confirmations for two of the three shows I was planning to do the early part of the year, which is awesome.

April 23rd – 25th I will have a table at Motor City Nightmares in Novi, Michigan where I will have my art and books on sale. And who doesn’t want some art and books to buy near my birthday? This is a horror convention, and Michigan’s own, so it’ll be fun. Last one was pretty neat.

May 14 – 16I will be at the Motorcity Comic Con in Novi, Michigan which I have been doing off and on since ’94. This is a huge show where you get comic and culture nerds together for some smelly good fun. Great guests this year (Linda Blair! Adam West! Max Brooks!) and some amazing indie talent. I always have fun at these shows. This is were The Meep Sheep will get it’s world debut. I will be selling art and books, so look for me and This Beautiful Darkness.

These should be awesome shows and should be a ton of fun. Hope to see you there.

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