Highway 62

EMERALD CITY: DAY II, ONE MILLION BILLIONTH OF A MILLISECOND ON A SUNDAY MORNING

Sunday was Mother’s day, a fact that I was reminded of only after I’d tried to get breakfast. I strolled casually into the Daily Grill, but a street away from the convention center, and expected to be seated promptly, as had happened the day before. The restaurant was two-thirds filled at best, both easy and peasy to get a seat.

Until I actually asked for one. Which got the response “Have you a reservation?” And then it hit me. In about ten minutes, that room was going to be hip deep in doting families and doted-upon mothers. There would be no sitting there for me that morning. I headed to the convention center and grabbed an apple, then called a friend who was coming in and hoped I was in time for him to grab a doughnut or three for me, since I wasn’t going to get real food. And me without real food (we can argue the realness of a doughnut later) is not a pretty sight, as I was shown in Portland a couple weeks back.

There weren’t many exhibitors on the show floor just yet. But Steve Lieber was there, personifying the idea of “professional”. He was finishing sketches when most folks were probably still sleeping. Or sleeping it off. Not me, I’m a lightweight, and I mostly know my limits. Mostly.

Passed a copy of MURDER MOON off to Eric Powell (you know, THE GOON guy), who seemed genuinely interested in the book (not such a stretch from pulp horror to weird westerns really). You get a chance to do such things before the show opens up and things are quiet enough to hear a diaper drop. Not sure what made me think of that, other than seeing more than one very little critter being cradled by mom as they walked the aisles yesterday. I guess you gotta start ‘em young.

I also had an opportunity to look over the hall more closely, now that I wasn’t frantically trying to get a space to set up in (as had been the case yesterday.) It’s in a kinda weird, Logan’s Run part of Seattle, with giant steel and glass awnings covering the street (but not doing much about the wind). And, TARDIS-like, it seems bigger on the inside than the outside, favoring concrete monolithic slabwork more so than the open, sail/nautical theme of the San Diego Convention Center. It’s certainly in a more vital part of Seattle than the old convention facility was, though maybe things have changed in the couple years since then. But a glance or two from the freeway didn’t change my mind in that regard.

Now, I’m not sure the convention center would be completely zombie-proof (too much glass), but it’s a secure enough facility. The multiple levels of escalators give the impression of the place being more cavernous than it probably really is. Even so, it’s pretty impressive to ride the mechanical stairs not once, not twice, but three times all the way up to the top level, past the hidden niches of public art and franchise food. Morning silence made the place a bit more eerie than totally necessary.

And so was the Comic Show itself, at least for the first couple of hours or so. Very quiet. Really, about as quiet as the Sunday Morning at Stumptown was. My feeling is that with shows like this, there’s a hardcore that wants the first crack at stuff on Saturday and doesn’t worry so much about Sunday. I didn’t see anything to refute that, as I we had to be told over the loudspeakers that the show was actually open.

This is not to say it was a ghost town. Just pretty sedate compared to the previous day. People still lingered in front of the booth long enough to end up getting the quick pitch and a postcard. And, as mentioned previously, some of them actually were repeat customers from the previous day who’d read the preview and liked it enough to buy the whole damn book.

Eventually, the slackness of the lethargic Sunday morning crowd gave way to a more urgent, if not smaller crowd, bend on catching up on all the things that it had missed the day before (or more likely, cramming both days of the show into a Sunday-only outing). I waited for my friend to arrive with breakfast, the apple in no way cutting it in terms of staying power. Happily, the ECCC crew passed through, offering caffeinated (and Nutrasweeted) beverage, which I accepted without a second thought. So much for my hope to break the habit by the time SDCC rolls around (which is sooner rather than later, isn’t it?)

Breakfast arrives. Apparently, however, the doughnut store in question doesn’t understand the wonder and glory that is the buttermilk bar. Glazed, unglazed, chocolatey or not, nothing, nothing, nothing beats a buttermilk bar and a cup of coffee. But a couple of old-fashioned and said cup of coffee work just fine to keep the blood sugar spiked into the upper stratosphere. This helps keep me engaged with the buying public. Of that, I’m sure.

During lulls (and thanks to my friend who was helpfully watching the table for me), I was able to sneak out and make some purchases here and there. At the top of that list was a copy (my second – the first I’d given as a birthday present) of I SHALL DESTROY ALL THE CIVILIZED PLANETS from the Fantagraphics table. Next time, I’ll hit those CASTLE WAITING collections. I also picked up my copy of the AGENTS OF ATLAS collection from Jeff, who sketched up the insides as part of the HERO Initiative benefit that was running through the whole of the show. Meant to get to the Oni booth to get a copy of BLACK METAL, but it didn’t come together.

Though I did get a chance to talk to Jim Massey for a bit over there. Of course, that actually happened yesterday, after I’d run into him at the pizza place downstairs and he bought the last slice of cheese pizza RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME. Turns out he’s a lot nicer than that, really. And while he’s better known for MAINTAINENCE these days, his early DEATH TAKES A HOLIDAY minis are good for a grim chuckle. I like the grim chuckles.

I also got a chance to talk with Ed for a little bit, though I could only do so after the crowds around him had been forcibly removed. He was as busy as anyone I’d seen at the show, constantly signing books for a waiting crowd. Maybe this CAPTAIN AMERICA thing isn’t a passing fancy after all. I just wish half the folks who dug his take on Cap would dig into CRIMINAL. I’m probably not the only one, in that regard.

A few more sales were made as the afternoon moved along, but only about 2/3s the number of copies moved on Sunday as on Saturday. That’s probably pretty good, all things considered. By the time I’d made my last sale, the crowds were looking to the bigger retailers’ booths, working on the last-hour sales, assuming they were there to be found.

My last stop of the day was to the guys at the PENNY ARCADE booth, to pass out some promo copies (in thanks for the often deranged laughs I’ve gotten over the…years…of PENNY ARCADE), but also to talk about webcomicing (webcomicking, webcomixing?), and how really, you just need to treat it like a new kind of paper. See, I’m looking seriously at putting out the second STRANGEWAYS book as a web serial first (“It’s the only sane move,” I’ve been told). I don’t see it hurting my numbers any, and with any luck will actually increase readership for the book. So I figured it’d be good to get the ear of some Guys Who Know as I start out on this process. No, this isn’t a formal announcement or anything, but that’s the direction that things are moving in.

Overall? Good show. Some other things came up that are far too premature to discuss, so I just won’t. But I got some more eyeballs for STRANGEWAYS, got to chat with a number of creators (and friends) whose work, while perhaps not directly inspirational, is certainly fuel for the fire, metaphorically speaking. As for the show itself, there’s no doubt that Emerald City puts on a good one, one that’s still growing. One of the most promising things that I saw was a wide spectrum of comics fans at play. I won’t argue that the big mainstream creators still had a bigger draw. That’s not going to change at a show like this. But there was support for the independent (and not just Dark Horse/Image, neither) scene. I don’t believe in the zero sum audience. Never have, never will.

But those thoughts were not in mind as it was time to head north and catch up with the kids, who were in all likelihood, testing the affections of their grandparents. I know. Inconceivable.

Hmm. Now it seems that haiku is the preferred method of convention report. I’m behind the curve once again.

Posted by Matt M. at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EMERALD CITY COMIC-CON 2008: CUCKOO

A little perspective: The last time I went to the Emerald City comic show, it was a couple months after I’d murdered my baby rather than throw it to the wolves, metaphorically speaking. Yeah, that was not too long after I’d pulled STRANGEWAYS from what would have been a truncated publication at Speakeasy. I’d been >< that close to having a book out after talking my damn fool head off about it for the previous three years.

So walking those aisles was mostly a soul-sucking sort of affair, though talking to folks like Tony Moore and the Penny Arcade guys and being called over by Ed Brubaker to talk took some out of the sting out of it. But still, overall, it was kinda frustrating. I had a manuscript, but nothing really concrete. Okay, it was concrete enough to pitch to Scott Allie at Dark Horse, but nothing came out of that, other than a “like the material, not the artist, but I like this guy you got for the second book” sort of response. Which led to another six-month dalliance, which was just another link in the chain of Bad Timing that ruled 2006 it seemed.

Let’s hope that this year proved to be something a little more…concrete, then. Betrayed expectations are all fine and good, but they get old after a time.

This year, I had the bright idea to fly up with my kids and get them some grandparent time. That’s great. A whole weekend plus of a break. Except the I first have to get them there without killing them. Or at least doing so without witnesses. Don’t get me wrong; my kids are adorable and the light of my little universe, but you put them in seats right next to each other, and what you’ve got is a test of nerves. One needles the other. Waits. Retaliation. Escalation. I should be happy that they’re young now, and that they haven’t developed other, more sophisticated tortures for themselves. Not yet anyways.

I know. You didn’t come here for rewarmed Erma Bombeck essays. I’ll cut it short and just say that I arrived in Seattle with both kids intact, but my patience frazzled to a fine crisp. I slept uneasily, and not just because the hotel room was too hot, but because my daughter’s knee was either in my solar plexus or my kidney, depending on which side I chose to lay on. Yeah, I’ve gotten more rest while trying to sleep on overnight roadtrips in the driver’s seat of my Rabbit GTI, wired on a pot of coffee.

Met Jeff (you know, that AGENTS OF ATLAS guy) outside the show and tried to get set up over in the artist’s alley along with the rest of the Periscope crew. Great folks, every single one of them. But there weren’t no room for me there. Which had pretty much been my plan.

Time to put that Maxwell resourcefulness to the test. I did a quick pace of the hall, marking down the name and number of empty stalls and alley spaces, gathering a vagrancy list up on my iPhone and then marching over to the exhibitor liaison to see if any of them were actually available or if folks were just running late. I was in luck. One of the alley spaces I’d found was actually empty, vacated at the last moment. “Well, I’m 99% sure they’re not showing up,” I was told.

I’ll roll those dice.

Set up with a space to call my own, or at least close enough to that for me to get to work, I rolled out the maroon tablecloth, pitched the banner, struck the signs and set out the merchandise. And only then did I let myself get some real bearings.

Emerald City was a much bigger show than I remembered. I’ll go out on a limb and say it was twice as big as the last one I attended, though in reality it was probably only 2/3 larger. Either way, there was a healthy line formed up out front before the doors opened on Saturday morning. People were READY for this show to start up, dig? This was a big switch from the last show I attended, that being Stumptown in Portland. There, people made a strong showing on Saturday, but there wasn’t the same feeling of revolutionary zeal at work.

When I’d made my pace of the aisles, looking for a place to set down, I had room to move, but not a hell of a lot. I had to dodge and weave, spinning on my toes like a running back breaking past a linebacker corps mired in molasses. This was a real crowd, certainly one to rival recent Wonder-Cons. The room didn’t feel like a small regional show, but a much bigger sort of affair. It didn’t hurt that they had a great deal of talent there, not to mention that both of the big two were fielding teams, as it were. Dan DiDio was roaming the halls, when not running panels (and yes, he ran one of his “Why We Love Comics” sessions, which I recommend you attend if you ever can. I was unable to attend this time, sadly.)

Now, it didn’t have the same vibe as San Diego did, even when San Diego wasn’t appreciably bigger (like the first year I attended), because even in those days, San Diego was still The Big One, the one shindig a year that you tried to make if you were in comics. Emerald City doesn’t have that going for it, but it has a substantial group of talent (it helps that Portland, which is obscenely loaded with comics folks is just a short drive away) and good enough local retailers to build into a solid base. The new venue, that of the Seattle Convention Center is fresh and attractive as these sorts of buildings go, feeling not so much like an overlit basement or converted gymnasium.

As for my digs, I was over in artist’s alley, in-between Phil Noto to one side and Erik Thompson on the other. And that was an interesting study in contrasts, as Mr. Noto is known primarily for fairly realistic rendering and Mr. Thompson is very much in the Gennedy Taratovsky school of clean-line cartooning and exaggeration. Remember people, there’s on one right style, but there’s the style that’s right for your project. Though I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t envious of Mr. Noto’s ability to make Prismacolor markers actually do what he wanted them to. They never did that much for me. Stupid Prismacolors.

Once again, the combination of Cowboys and Werewolves proved to be a strong persuader when it came to the buying public. Hook ‘em with the high concept long enough for the story to do the rest of it. At least that’s the grand plan. Oh, and if you’re wondering, the fans of “werewolves” seem to outnumber the fans of “cowboys” by about 1.66 to 1. Who’d have thought it? Not me, certainly. But then some folks think that Darwyn Cooke’s style for something like JONAH HEX is “completely wrong” and I say they’re “completely nuts,” so go figure.

Yes, I got a lot of people asking “Is this a complete story?” and I got to answer “Yes, sir/ma’am, it is.” That makes some sales, lemme tell ya. So does knocking the price to ten bucks. Yeah, I’m one of those jerks who sells it for less than retail. But I’m also the jerk who flew up to the city in question and am manning my booth instead of being with my wife and kids.

One thing I didn’t do a lot of was wandering the floor. I was away for bathroom breaks (not having mastered the teleurination manuver that I’ve heard some cartoonists have indeed mastered), or to grab an overpriced Caesar salad for lunch, or to get a badge to one of my longtime friends (without whom I probably wouldn’t have read half the interesting comics that I did back in college.) About the only other trip I made was to deliver a book to Boom! Studios’ Ross Richie. This I did because I’d given him a galley of the first issue of STRANGEWAYS back when it was going to be a monthly, and I wanted to prove the point that I could Get The Job Done. Ross seemed to be down wit’ ‘dat, as we say in my stucco-encrusted hood.

Aside from that, it was all about selling the book and getting people to at least walk away with a postcard which would lead them to the preview chapter online. And I can tell you that more than one person who bought a book on Sunday told me that the preview is what led them to putting their money down. Maybe there’s something to this webcomic thing after all. Gears are turning in this regard.

Oh, one interesting person I ran into was Max Banks. He used to draw this comic book you might have heard of called THE TICK. Yeah, that was funny. He had some very interesting stories to tell about crazed TICK fans and Woody Allen when he (Max, not Woody) and Ben Edlund visited New York City. Nice guy, mostly crackers, but that’s pretty much par for the course in comics, isn’t it?

The day was over too soon it seemed. Mostly because I knew that Sunday wasn’t going to be nearly as busy as Saturday. But also because, well, it just rolled right by. Lots of talking, lots of selling, some actual books sold. Not as many as I’d done at Stumptown on the first day, but still, more than if I hadn’t gone at all.

Spent dinner with Parker, the PERHAPANAUTS crew and Karl Kesel (not Kerschel, who I always mix him up with. MARVEL APES? Who knew? Longish night. Tumbled into bed late, dreaming of bleu-cheese crusted Buffalo ribeye steak. Which was pretty damn good as I remember.

Posted by Matt M. at 10:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Travels With The Troll - Emerald City Comicon 2008

Laura with the Norweigan name that I don't dare try to spell from memory trolled me. You're gonna have to go way down the page to find my picture, though. After J. Michael Straczynski, but before Brian Churilla.

Not a bad picture, really...

Posted by Matt M. at 09:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Done with the Emerald City Comic Con. Better that I'm done with it on a Sunday evening than done with it on a Saturday, midmorning (which is how it might very well have played out.) Sold some books, made some new friends, managed not to alienate any old ones (I think), and generally kept the ball in play.

Working past a righteous headache, probably brought on by not enough water and drinking with cartoonists the night before. Will likely report more later.

Posted by Matt M. at 10:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Soviet Sci-Fi Illustration!

Dark Roasted Blend: Soviet Futuristic Illustration: Oodles of Optimism

Posted by Matt M. at 03:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

MILK! AND! CHEESE!

Go now! Read!

Posted by Matt M. at 05:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Spoke with the organizers of the (5-17/18), and I am indeed scheduled to exhibit there. Hooray.

Come to see me, but stay to say hello to Jordi Bernet, like I am.

Getting my stuff together to appear at Emerald City this weekend as well, thanks to the magnanimous Mr. Parker and those folks at Periscope. If you're in Seattle, stop by and I'll try to write something spooky in your sketchbook.

Posted by Matt M. at 03:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

-Wilde

Full Bleed 21

I talk more about reviews and their value. Oh yeah, and the ever-lovin' SANDMAN effect.

Posted by Matt M. at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There was a time when you learned about new comics by word of mouth. Not by advertisements, or being hand-sold books because they just littered up the newsstands or spinner racks and the clerks didn’t know anything about them, or by the internet.

I know. You’re wondering how we got along. I assure you, we got along just fine.

Comics, by which I mean largely superhero comics, since this was the dawn of the 80s, and both Marvel and DC had tossed their eggs into the basket crammed full of leotards and domino masks (soon to be replaced by black vinyl cut at arresting angles), were a hermetic order. Sure, anyone could pick up a comic at any time and get into the storyline that was unfolding in the sawdust-yellow pages (thank you, Jim Shooter, for getting me hooked on monthly Marvel books). Remember, these were the days of “Every comic is someone’s first comic and we gotta get them up to speed on the whys and wherefores.” Yeah, it makes for clumsy reading in trades of the material from that time, but back then, it was like, electra-glide smooth entry into the polychrome universe.

And if you were lucky enough to find guys who knew the lay of the land, then you could get steered to the good stuff. And let’s not kid ourselves, in the 80s, it was almost always guys: I met one, singular, solitary female comics reader, before I went to college. I didn’t exactly go out of my way to avoid the distaff gender, either. There just weren’t many female comics readers out there (though I’m assured that nearly every woman I meet in the field now read either UNCANNY X-MEN or AMETHYST back in the day). But there were guys out there who’d been reading comics long before I regularly started (I was late in the game, not starting until I was 12 or 13). They knew their stuff.

At least when it came to Marvel books. For some reason, none of ‘em, to the last dude, were current DC fans. Some of them might have been into the reprints of stuff like SWAMP THING or the Kirby books or even the horror books from the 70s, but none of them were down with Superman or Batman. X-Men, though? You got it. John Byrne? He’s the guy, man. Claremont wrote it, or even Starlin or Gerber? Hit me. What’s more, these four-color monks always urged me to dig back a bit and to dig the crazy seventies books. So when you found a Ditko reprint, you weren’t urged to make fun of the chunky, sinuous inkiness. Instead, this was to be enjoyed like bleu cheese. Sure, it tastes kinda funky at first, but once you get the taste for it, you’re not going to want to give it up.

Of course, I was passingly familiar with Ditko’s work, and that of Kirby (though I always though his faces and hands were a little wrong) and a few others, thanks to ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS, which was kind of a Rosetta stone in this crowd, the ur-texts of our chosen comics contained within. So when I found reprints of Ditko Spider-Man stories, I jumped in with both feet.

But you know, the first comic book that I picked up on my own volition, aside from that titanic ORIGINS book, was a copy of THE MICRONAUTS. And why would I choose that when there was so much other choice out there? Well, one, Michael Golden covers (I actually came in on Pat Broderick’s run), which didn’t so much as ask for your attention as they did cross the room and smack you around some. So yeah, the covers were good, but more importantly, I knew the toys.

The. Toys. Toys sold me my first comic book.

Well, I guess that might be an exaggeration. I’m thinking that I probably put down my own money for the giant treasury edition of the STAR WARS adaptation. Which I probably plastered with stickers from my ever-growing STAR WARS card collection at the time. I had no sense for collector value, even then, see?

I just find it funny looking back at this and realizing that I was led into comics by things that were not specifically comics. Whether it was the trade collection of ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS (bought for me at a young age because I’d seen a FANTASTIC FOUR origin story reprinted somewhere), or a movie tie-in or a toy tie-in.

But from there it was easy to hit up another toy tie-in, ROM, in this case. And who did ROM fight in issue 16-17? I’ll give you a hint, their first initial is X. Yep. That’s right. I got sucked into X-MEN by a damn toy comic.

And man, it was all downhill from there. At any rate, to get back to my monastic brethren, one of the stories that they told me I had to track down, at all costs, was this little thing called “Days of Future Past,” which is what I meant to write about before I got all sidetracked. Perhaps next time.

But seriously, toy-tie ins can move the world.

Posted by Matt M. at 10:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

To get a nod at The Horrors of It All, which is a favorite horror/comics blog of mine. Sandwiched between Bill Everett chillers and a Cramps video, you'll find a quick post about my humble book. It may not be greatness itself, but I'll take a little greatness by proximity between Saturday chores.

Posted by Matt M. at 10:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)