I am on my way to Chicago for C2E2, which is a comic convention. Join me, won’t you, on this grand adventure into the wild North, as I weave a thrilling tale full of poignance and genuine human emotions. The first of these emotions is “FEELING LIKE A ZOMBIE IN THE AIRPORT AT FIVE IN THE MORNING”
“Hav-a-look” at these handsome postcards what showed up in the mail today just in time for this convention:
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#c2e2 #textI really love Chicago. I didn’t do as well at this show as I’d hoped, and it was rife with the sorts of problems a first-year show might be expected to have (fortunately most of them invisible on the attendees’ end). But it will probably be an excuse for me to go to Chicago next year, and the convention will probably go much better next year.
Anyway I stayed with Spike and Matt and their ugly dog, along with Dave and Abby and Kel.
Her handsome apartment-
And the show floor, with everyone setting up on Friday…
Oh, it’s one of THOSE conventions:
I was in the Webcomics Pavilion area, which occupied three little aisles towards the back. Very cool that particular attention is being given to webcomics, though I got the sense that we missed out on a lot of traffic because we were all together in one area, and off towards the edge of the floor.
My half-table all set up for the first day:
I shared it with Dave Shabet. I was going to share it with Dave McGuire but he got sick and could not make it! He is feeling better now though. So many Daves.
Saw Erika!
Met KC! And we enacted a comic book trade-
Across the way were Chris and another David. I read a whole bunch of Chris’ comic the Book of Biff during the convention, and good lord but it is hilarious.
And here’s a Frank and a Becky, who recently released a very handsome book called Tigerbuttah. They shared a table with Spike who had her new fourth book of Templar, Arizona (I got caught up on Templar on the flight home and will say again that it is one of my favorite things being published online right now. You should really read it).
And hangout times.
Here’s some handsome originals Dave drew during the show-
Some drawings for some nice people-
And at the end we all got tattoos.
I took a bunch of pictures and will put them online when I am able to input them into the computer, with a writeup of the convention. It went pretty ok! A little poorly-run and not extremely profitable, but very fun. Now I am at Spike’s place with her boxes about to leave to the airport.
Chief among my successes this weekend has been making friends with Spike’s freakish neurotic rat-dog.
Possible cover for the Order of Tales one-volume book, without the text at bottom of course. I love the Rice Boy book having no text on the cover, so I think this would work too? I think this would be pretty striking on the front of a 6 by 9 inch, 800-page book. And its shape suggests the nib-icon on the front of Koark’s book, which I like.
I’ve been laying out the book for a while now. I can’t believe I drew 740 pages of this thing. I am still happy with it, but am coming across problems I have with it now. I have less and less of a problem with noticing that kind of thing, though, probably in part by seeing that people are still responding well to Rice Boy. It’s a story, but in a way anything we make is an expression of the particular time in our life and development, and that is not in itself a problem.
I have been thinking about space aliens recently and I made these guys up. They can fold up into little defensive balls. Their eye is on a stalk and constantly flicks around to see in three dimensions, like we do by having two eyes. They are mentally connected in some way that leads to them having little sense of ego, and functioning like a massive cluster of ant-colonies. They are space-faring and have built enormous, haphazard space stations all around their home planet.
Put up the new short story! It is the first of a 3-part thing… a format and length I haven’t dealt with before. Very happy with how it’s turned out. Tried a kind of new approach: working outwards from a central, abstract concept, which I’ve tried to represent in a visually interesting way. Don’t want to say too much before the rest of it is up.
Hi everyone! I recently started a Kickstarter project to raise money for the new edition of the Rice Boy book. If you’d like to preorder the book, or a number of other cool things that are on the way, please consider helping out!
Thank you!
EDIT I forgot to link to the kickstarter woops
This is a cruddy photo of what the book looks like with its little jacket on and all. Without the jacket, it’s the same as the print on demand version– images of the Matchwoods in day (front) and night (back). I’m very happy with the cover design, and pleased that I came up with something that no publisher would probably ever have let me do.
The wordless cover bothers people at conventions, though, so I made the jacket to have a title, blurbs, and flashier images. I guess I will see if it works this weekend at TCAF.
Very proud of these things. The preorders are going out the door as quickly as I can draw in them and pack them up, which is not very quickly. I’m very happy about how well these are doing already, and about how much more sustainable this will be than having them printed on demand. I am a serious-business self publisher now and it will be a little easier to pay my rent.
If you don’t follow me elsewhere on the internet, perhaps you are not aware that I just put up a new short story.
I started a Kickstarter project for the Order of Tales book a few days ago, and forgot to mention it here! It’s about halfway funded already, which is VERY EXCITING.
There will be 2,000 books and it will cost around 12,000 dollars. There’s an awkward video you can watch at the link for more details. Thanks so much for supporting the book and helping me spread the word! You are all the best.
Last weekend I went to Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, the biggest and best comic convention around my area. Heroes 2009 was the first big comic show I ever exhibited at, in fact, so this marks one year of going to conventions! I hope to keep doing it for a while. And now I have a bit more experience and am confident in my assessment of this as a really excellent show, representing a wide variety of material very well, run by nice people who are honestly passionate about comics. Loved it.
Early on Friday I saw a Calabash and a T-O-E, wow wow wow–
These two were very nice and had such lovely handmade costumes! It is the first time I’ve seen anybody dressed as any of my characters so it was pretty mind-blowing and pretty much made the show for me.
I was flanked for the duration of the show by Paul
and Anthony
…charming gentlemen both. We of the webcomics universe were smartly arranged all together in a big central island, so I had the pleasure of talking to and commiserating with a bunch of webcomics pals; Joel, Kate, Meredith, Rich, Chris, David, Brad, Danielle, and Erika among them. It’s exciting to be a part of this webcomics thing; I think they (we?) are making some of the most interesting independent work out there right now. This is the future, guys. I am becoming more and more of an evangelist about online self-publishing.
Here’s a look down Webcomics Way:
And here is a T-Rex. Anthony draws a mean T-Rex, I tell you what-
And here is the first Spider-Man I have drawn in nearly a decade, for someone’s sketchbook-
And here is a colossus I drew for Joe’s sketchbook-
On Sunday there was a nice little after party at Heroes aren’t Hard to Find, the comic shop which hosts the show– a really nice shop, too! I got the first book of Lone Wolf and Cub (mostly because it was small and I am moving soon and trying to get rid of books) and read it on the way home and it blew my mind, it is so good.
So! A fine comic convention and worth attending if you’re in the area next June. Thanks to Shelton and Dustin and the many other people that put this thing together!
Sunday night! https://www.twitch.tv/evandahm/
