I love Chicago, and WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO is a nice BIG convention for shmoozing, connecting and meeting and generally having a good time. With Warren Ellis the guest of honor, the ante was upped for a swearin', drinkin' con.
Jane and I shared our hotel room with Carla Speed McNeil (FINDER), and she's a great roomie and great friend who's SANE (essential for a travel partner). We had a blast hanging out and sharing art tips and industry experience.
During his Friday night public "performance" Ellis said the most important thing a comic writer can learn is when to shut up, so without futher ado:
Oh, dude... I've missed your con reports. Hell, I miss you and Jane! Once my life is stable again, I can think about doing comics. I am now no longer "one of us" anymore and that kinda makes me sad. Then again, I do live in a kickin' pad in Harlem now, so it all evens out.
Incidentally, the staff artist that we have for one of the cons I work on recognized the Moped Army patch that I have on my black jacket (which I need to reattach soon because it went through the wash one too many times). I was all, "Moped Army represent!" and he was all, "Eeehhhh, I didn't like it as much as I liked Little White Mouse" and then proceeded to explain that the reasons he didn't like it were the reasons I liked MA.
But eh... what can one do?
Yay, my first comment in a blog where the spambots aren't trashing everything! @#$% FINALLY!
Good to hear from you, dear.I like doing con reports too. It's always interesting to see what people's preferences turn up in different works. At least the guy liked SOMETHING I did. It's like when people would come up to my booth, look at my stuff and say "Oh, I don't read black and white books." Ha! Manga took care of that response!
If that's the Trisha Lynn from Sequential Tart, I miss you too. Here's hoping for some stability for you so you can get back on the comics saddle so to speak.
Paul, glad you had fun at Chi Con. Did it give you any inspiration for your next project, and did you do lots of advance promo for BPM? If you didn't you will have upset your karma and the spambots will return. Hopefully you were on the ball, though that Ellis guy can be a bad, bad influence on young impressionable artists.
Take care and I'm glad Chicago was a blast. Man I miss living in civilization.
Dan
Dan! Good to see you! Post back often, your biting wit is needed here.
The actual profitability of the show was near zero; this is an expensive con to do, what with $300 Artist Alley tables, hotel rates, meals, parking, etc. On the floor, people were not buying a whole lot of stuff from what I could see in our row. Jane made some scratch on some cool steampunk jewelry she made, but her book sales were down also.
We both were suffering from the same problem; no really NEW product for people to buy. I handed out many promo postcards, gave away lots of free old copies of Little White Mouse and talked myself blue about BPM and gave people tons of options for spreading the word and pre-ordering BPM. Last year when Jane had her new VOGELEIN book there, she sold it like hotcakes. We've both saturated the current Chicago market, so new books should remedy this.
We'll see if this helps; in the past, the direct comic market has been about 20% of my and Jane's sales, the other 80% being libraries and bookstores. My time is better spent barking on library list-serves and forums, and lining up interviews and reviews.
We're also thinking about trying some new types of conventions, being that we both only do OK at hard core comic conventions. SPX is our next confirmed con, and we are giving serious thoughts to doing ACEN in Chicago next May, just to see if we can hit a different angle and crowd through that.
awesome photo-con report! that was so creative and fun to read