Building My Own Mousetrap

I do a lot of conventions to promote Love and Capes. I love doing the shows, but hauling my gear to shows is always an effort. For shows I can drive to, everything fits (albeit snugly) in my convertible. The worst for transport is, of course, Comic-Con in San Diego, where I have to ship things across the country. The biggest hassle, to my mind, is shipping my wire display rack. It's too large to fit into a suitcase so I have to ship it in a big box. The box isn't so much heavy as it is unweildly, but just its size makes it expensive to ship. I've been trying to find a better mousetrap, as it were. I haven't been able to find one, so I decided to make one. Here's what I wanted my design to do:

1. Fit into a suitcase, flat.
2. Be light.
3. Display a decent number of books.
4. Be sturdy.
5. Be disposable, so I can leave it behind if I want to.

Here's what I came up with. I'll need two of them to display the Love and Capes ouevre, but that's fine. It folds down to about 17" x 27", which does fit in my suitcase. And it's even got an area for signage at the top, where I'll put a price list. I think it came out really well, and I'm a little proud of myself. My Dad is awesome at building things, and it's nice to know that I've got a little bit of that in me when I need it. I'm also going to share it, under the Creative Commons act. I've had people say that I could sell these, but honestly, I'd rather make comics than stands. Besides, not everything's got to be about profit, sometimes you should just release some good into the universe, you know? If this design helps someone else, I'm happy to help. Here's a link to a PDF of my blueprints. I figure each one takes about $10-15 in supplies. You need a 40" x 60" piece of foam core board, an X-acto knife, a long ruler, and a piece of tape or Velcro. It probably takes 30-60 minutes to build. I laid out and marked up the foam core. Here's what the flat piece looks like. (Click any picture to see it larger.) Then I scored it so that the front panel becomes like a set of stairs. I scored the side panels so that it will fold up flat. You have to be careful while making your scores, though. The design has a lot of weak points while you're trying to fold it, although once it's complete it's pretty solid. I stress tested it for a day and there were no problems. It also has a slight lean to it, by design. This puts the shelves at an angle so that gravity can help keep the books in place. The stair shelf doesn't hold itself down at first. You need the books to force it into place, but after a couple of hours, it starts to hold its shape. And I put some Velcro on the back panel to make the final connection. You could use tape, too. You just need to have a knife to cut it when you're done if you want to reuse it. Here it is folded flat. And here it is with books on it. Pretty cool, eh? Oh, what the heck, how about a little shilling? Hey! Love and Capes: Going to the Chapel, the second Love and Capes collection is available in comic stores this Wednesday! Foam Core Display Stand by Thomas Zahler is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at www.thomz.com.

It's Mocha Time!

Whew! What a week. And there's still a weekend left!

I did HeroesCon in Charlotte last week. Stories will follow, seriously, but I also needed to finish up the first issue of Love and Capes: Ever After. Yeah, it's not due out for a while, but it'll come out monthly, so I need to get way ahead.

So, today I finished the first issue. It was an odd process this time, as I took some tracing paper and the grid sheet… the same one I've used since issue #1… down to Charlotte so I could pencil pages at my table. Over the three day show, I did the three pages, so that I could bring them back and ink them on Tuesday, and start coloring thereafter. And now it's done. Yay!

I'll be starting on the next issue next week. After I appear at the Kids Read Comics event in Dearborn, Michigan this weekend. If you're around, come on by. It's my first year, but Top Men who have been at the event have raved about it. I'm looking forward to it.

I Blame the Time Zone Change

I'm back from Chicago and C2E2 where I had a pretty good time. I'd love to tell you all about it, but even though I wrote most of the con report while riding shotgun with Bob Ingersoll, I'm still getting beaten with the work stick too much today to do anything in full. So, here's a picture of me and my booth for now. More will follow, I promise.

Trading Card or Postcard?

Once again, I turn to you, the readers of Love and Capes. Con Season is approaching. Heck, there's supposed to even be a Wizard World Cleveland now. Just as long as it doesn't park on any other shows, especially Mid-Ohio-Con, I'll be trés interested to see it. Anyway, for the upcoming year, I'd like to have something new.

First, I toyed with the idea of trading cards. I figured I could sell them at each show, and then make the package available online. I though $1.00 a card might work. Anything less means making coin-change, and I don't know if anyone wants that. But the printing cost is pretty reasonable, and it could be a neat thing to do.

Then, I had another idea, which in a moment of "great minds think alike" also came across my Twitter feed to do an actual postcard. I could feature every city I'm visiting and have Mark and Abby (or Amazonia or Darkblade) hanging out in the city, with a "Greetings from [CITY]!" on them. But, if I did that, I think that they need to be giveaways.

I've got rough mock-ups for both of them displayed here. Click on either to see them embiggened. So what do you think? Do the postcard? The trading card? Both?

First Up: Chicago

I just realized I haven't announced my first convention of the year: I'll be at CEC2, the Reed Chicago show. Or, as I call it, New Chicago… which reminds me of the Buck Rogers TV show, and that's enough of a reason to call it that right there.

So, I'll be in Artist's Alley. I'll let you know my exact booth space when I have it, but I'll be there with all sorts of Love and Capes stuff, including issue #12.

MegaCon 2009: Day 2-3

The rest of my time at MegaCon was a little slow. MegaCon was packed to the rafters with people, but their seems to be a less buying mood on the floor. That could be the economy, or the nature of the crowd, or just a one-year glitch. And I’m not doing bad, just down from last year. I’d done more commissions at this point last year, and I expected the trades to move a little better.

That’s okay. No one wins every game, and a “little down” is better than “oh, crap, I could have just set a pile of money on fire Joker-style”.

I got my picture taken in a replica DeLorean from Back to the Future. The photos cost $20, but went to benefit Foxfans, which is the Michael J. Fox Parkison's group. I love Back to the Future, and have always wanted one of these cars. It was a great recreation, complete with working time circuits that even made the same noise when you entered them. Phenomenal.

They offered a $50 package where you could go for a ride in the car. Unfortunately, the time machine part wasn't working, or I would have done it and jumped back in time so I could make my plane flight. Well, after buying some Apple stock and some choice comics.

I have to say, though, I’ve had the most fun I’ve had at a MegaCon in a while. I met up with the lovely and talented Steve Conley, who will be doing his great Bloop character as a web strip in the next year, and through him, wound up going to dinner with Marc Nathan, Grand Poobah of the wonderful Baltimore Comic-Con and some of their posse.

Nothing I say can convey the fun that was had, because it defies description. When I say I was treated to a fifteen minute recounting, or should I say “explanation”, of “Final Crisis,” that sounds dry and boring. Far from it.

Add to that a recurring Mad Hatter impression (Disney style, not Jarvis Tetch) and I really can’t remember the last time I’ve laughed so much.

We even went miniature golfing as Disney’s Fantasia Greens. The whole park is themed like Fantasia, the first, not the second. I don’t think I’ve played a worse round in my life. On the first hole I managed to knock the ball back towards me and onto the sidewalk. The last hole is basically a giant funnel at the feet of Yensid, the great wizard from “The Sorceror’s Apprentice” recreating the giant whirlpool. And I took two strokes.

As Ralph Wiggim would say, “It’s Un-possible.”

Yet, it was grand fun. I’m tempted to make reservations for next year just based on last night alone.

Sunday was about the same, although I did sell more trades than any other day. I met some very interesting people, and did the Students of the Unusual Indy Comics panel. It was a great group of people, and I think I even brought the funny.

Question: So what are the advantages to self-publishing?
Me: Well, I don't have to worry about having to find a place to store all my money.

It was a great panel, with some really fine questions. I think weeven got some good information out.

Then Bob and I packed up my booth, we said our goodbyes, and headed back to the airport. One of the storms from the Casket on Ancient Blizzards was attacking the Eastern Seaboard, but our flight corridor to the Midwest and Cleveland was unaffected. We zipped through security, had a lovely repast at Burger King (really, the only place that was open with the Orlando Airport being under construction) and hopped on the plane back home.

I managed to finish watching Men With Brooms, a Paul Gross comedy about the sport of curling, and caught another episode of Supernatural. Man, I love that thing for watching TV on planes.

Then, a few hundred miles and almost as many degrees later, we arrived in the frigid Hoth-like environs of Cleveland and got home, tired from a good show.

So I flopped on the couch and put on another good show, Battlestar Galactica. But that's another story.

NYCC2009 - Day Three, a bit late

I never did finish talking about New York, did I?

I should be used to this. It's so hard to write up the last day of a show because it tends to be your getaway day. And then you get back and you're busy and you just don't have time. Plus, things were really crazy back home with work that came in.

Anyway, the last day of the show was pretty good. The crowds were still thick, and I sold pretty well that day, too. I think as a lot of these shows max out and become almost exclusively 3-day attendees, Sunday becomes a huge sales day. After all, if you have until Sunday, why buy until Sunday? Well, because Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret? was almost sold out, of course. By 1:00 or so, I was sold out, and only had single issues left. I'll have to keep that in mind when I go to San Diego this year.

I did a couple more caricatures, including Jennifer Kale from Marvel's Man-Thing. Yeah, I had no idea who she was either, but the customer had reference, which was good. There were a couple more that escape me, too. Kale and the Spider-Woman that I did are now colored and here on this page. Make with the clickin' and embiggenin'.

Let's review: I did a panel, sold out of a product, did some sketches, and lined up some work. Yeah, I think it was a success.

Bob and I helped Toon Tumblers take down their booth in trade for borrowing some space in their van to get our gear back to the hotel. I had a taste for pizza, so we wound up at Antonio's next to where the Late Night With David Letterman show tapes. It was pricey and it seemed to take forever, but the pizza was good, and it was a great end to a great show.

On the way back, I wanted to stop at the Kubert School to buy some brushes. Good art brushes are hard to find, and the Kubert art store stocks a lot of them. I kind of need to see a brush before I buy it as there's a whole process to choosing one. They only had one of my current brush, the Windsor Newton Series 7, but they had a selection of the Rafael, a brush I hadn't used since art school.

I bought three.

I even got to go into the school, which had been extensively remodeled since I'd been there. The school, the old Dover High School, had been lopped in half and a chunk of the JKS parking lot had been sold off. Kubert had a lot of unused space in it, including a full auditorium and a gym. Now those are gone. Computers are all around, the windows have been replaced (a source of contention for all of us in the old days) and they even have air conditioning now.

Man, these soft, coddled artists today. In my day I drew in the cold and the heat and lived off a box of Captain Crunch because I couldn't afford it and... well, I hated it, but I did it anyway.

Mike Chen was kind enough to give Bob and me a tour, and we even dropped into a couple classes. Bob had asked if I got the shakes coming back into the building. Truth be told, I did get the wiggins when we waited in the waiting room. I don't think I'd been in there since my first day at the school, or maybe when I came out for my interview when I was applying. That room brought back some worries. Everything else was fine, though.

Bob also said he had to get used to seeing classrooms without desks and instead with drawing tables. That never occured to me. I'd just gotten used to it.

The school looks good. The students seem the same, bantering with Mike when he brought us in. Well, there is one big difference: girls. The school got girls since Iwas gone. There were I think three women in my first-year class of 150. Now, with the success of manga and the like, there's a bigger female component, which is very cool. The school even has dorms for them now, which previously they weren't able to provide.

Big thanks to Mike Chen for taking the time out of his day to bring us around the school. It was a great time.

Now I'm back and working again. I've got a couple of weeks before my trip to Orlando for MegaCon, so I'm trying to clear some things out before then. Thankfully, Love and Capes #10 is done, so it's just doing client work, of which there is a lot, thankfully. I've got some cool things coming up, which I'll tell y'all about as soon as I get a chance. So stay tuned, cool things are happening.

NYCC2009 - Day Two

Second day, more of the same.

The show started out slow. I think that the Hollywood Presence and the Ticket Sellouts are being felt. There were so many good media panels that I think they drew from the floor early in the show. And, since the show is so successful, most of the ticket sales are three-day admissions. And, if you can shop on Sunday, why shop on Saturday? There's no impetus to buy more.

That said, I'm almost sold out of the Love and Capes trade. Sold out of what I brought to the show, I have pleny more at home. If I sell out. and I expect to, well, that alone is a good number.

I only did a couple of commissions. Today I did Star Sapphire and Medusa, yesterday I did Gwen Stacy and Spider Woman. The Spider-Woman's a color job, so when I get home, I'll scan and post it.

I had a couple of cool meetings with people I can't mention yet. And I did ride in the elevator with Bruce Timm this morning.

But, my highlight has to be the couple that came by the table near the end of the day. They were a little older than me, and the woman was palpably thrilled to see me. They brought their copy of #9 just on the chance that I'd be there, and she was so excited to have it signed. Then she bought a pin, too. She told me she hated Amazonia because she was always in Abby's way.

Really, you should have seen her. She was so excited. And it is so frakkin' cool that something I did touched someone like that. It's a special moment, and makes me think I'm doing something right wth the book.

Then Bob and I had dinner with our friend Josephine and caught up since we saw her last year. We wandered Times Square a bit, hit the Toys R Us and, oh my, there was a Starbucks there, too. How fortuitous.

So, it's to bed with me soon. Don't forget, tomorrow I'll be on This Week in Media. It's gonna be fun.

NYCC2009 - Day One

Today was the first full day of the show. There's a pro part that started at 10:00am and then the regular portion began at 1:00pm or so and went until 7:00. Whew! That's a long day. But it was a good day, too.

I met a couple of TV and film production companies. You never know what's going to pan out, but it's never bad to make those contacts. I met the lovely and talented Whitney Matheson from USA Today and we spoke of comics and conventions and Love and Capes. I did Douglas Wolk's character design panel, which was a lot of fun I met some friends, chatted, maybe even lined up some work.

One thing I didn't do, though: Twitter. Now, I'm sure you think it's because I was so busy and important that I wasn't able to get to my iPhone to document the day. You'd only be partially right. The big thing is that the iPhone is so frellin' popular that the 3G network is overtaxed at the show. I had a spotty connection at best, which is okay for some light e-mail, but is Of The Bad for Twittering.

I suspect tomorrow will be even worse. Well, better with the crowds and the selling and the awesome, but less good for the communicating and the writing. Sorry.

Guess y'all will just have to come here next year to experience it.

In Which Thom Goes to New York and Does a Panel

Hey! I'm going to be doing a panel at the New York Comic Con! Douglas Wolk asked me to be on the panel, and I was jumped at the chance. It's great to be on the other side of the panel more and more.

Panel info follows:

Her Face Was an Open Book: The Art of Character

How does character design play into a cartoonist's working process? Does a creator's idea of who a character is ever change after that character appears as an image? How hard is it to draw a character that fits a prose description? We'll discuss these questions and more with Christine Norrie (Breaking Up), Dash Shaw (Bottomless Belly Button), and Thom Zahler (Love & Capes). Moderated by Douglas Wolk (Reading Comics).

Friday 6:00pm Room 1A24

The full schedule is up here.