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!