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.

The Coolest Thing Since Cool

New Love and Capes news. Click here to see what!

Or Not

My travel schedule is getting in the way of me being on This Week in Media, unfortunately. Daisy was very gracious and hopefully I'll be on sometime soon. It's still a great show, though. Check it out.

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.

NYCC 2009- Day Zero

So tired, so very tired.

After a semi-successful Pub Quiz last night (we came in second… horrors) I got home a little before midnight and did some clienty stuff, so that I'd be clear. Then I woke up at six, did some surprise clienty stuff, left a half hour late and picked up Bob Ingersoll to drive to New York.

Then I drove. And drove. And drove. And drove.

It's far. Really far. Pennsylvania, you are one long frakkin' state.

Bob and I got in to NYC, dropped by booth stuff off at the convention center and headed back to our hotel to freshen up before seeing the new production of Guys and Dolls.

I am tired, so I may gloss over things and come back to them later, but here are my initial thoughts on it:

It was in "previews", which I knew. That's how I saw Dance of the Vampires (and why I'm one of the few who did). No biggie there. What I hadn't realized that this was, essentially, opening night. It was their very first performance.

Guys and Dolls is one of my favorite musicals. There are a lot I like, but out of all the Broadway I know, Guys and Dolls may be the Broadwayist. It's a pretty traditional musical, with characters who talk and then will break into song rather than sing the whole thing. There are huge dance numbers and set pieces and so on. And I just dig it.

I saw the 90's revival, with Nathan Lane and Faith Prince, which was excellent. In fact, it was so good that I originally considered not seeing this one. When you've seen that performance, you know everything else is going to have a hard time competing.

But the cast included Oliver Platt, Lauren Graham, and Craig Bierko. Oliver Platt alone was enough to get me in the door. And the performance, in a much smaller and more intimate theatre than the one I saw the 90s version in, was just great. There was much more immediacy to the production.

Craig Bierko is great as Sky Masterson. He's got the charm and the confidence. He doesn't have quite the powerful voice as Peter Gallagher (who was the original revival lead) or even Tim Wopat (whom I saw in the role). But he more than makes up for it by being Sky Masterson. Boston Legal, you really wasted this guy.

And Lauren Graham is great as Adelie. Faith Prince had the voice and the charisma, to be sure. Graham brings just as much funny, but in a different way. I was impressed with how good a singer she was, too. Plus, she's the best-looking Adelie I've seen.

I don't really know Kate Jennings Brant, who played Sarah, but she did a great job. She played her strict character with a lot more warmth than I would have expected, and when she lets her guard down, it seems like it's the personality she's been hiding, not one grafted on.

Oliver Platt, though... Man, I love Oliver Platt. He was great in West Wing and Diggstown and so many other things that I feel weird saying "eh" about him. He plays a very affected version of Nathan Detroit, kind of a cross between Fat Tony and Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons. It just didn't sparkle the way everyone else did. Now, he certainly could be looking at Nathan Lane's performance which was so memorable and saying to himself "Whatever I do, I can't do that." Maybe people who didn't see the 90s version will like it better. It's not bad, it's just I was expecting him to blow me away and I wasn't.

Also, Tituss Burgess as Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Mary Testa as General Cartwright almost steal the show. Testa is funny all the time. And together, they vrought the house down with Sit Down You're Rockin' the Boat.

Okay, that's enough for now. More later.

I Like to Think of Myself as the Antithesis of Decompressed Storytelling

More good words about Love and Capes from Blake Petit:

With so much fear about the price hikes (argh!) I have to single out Thom Zahler’s Love and Capes from Maerkle Press. The book is $3.95 an issue, but it’s worth it, not just for the story, the characters, or the artwork – as splendid as those things all are. No, it’s worth it because of how deep the book is. This is a comic with actual words, and lots of ‘em, and the rare silent or sparsely-dialogued panel is always worth it. This ain’t no comic you can read in five minutes, that’s for sure.

You know, Blake brings up the reason I can't watch people read LNC. It takes 2-3 months to make an issue, and watching someone fire through that work at a minute a page… well, it's just too much.

Read more stuff from Blake here.

New York Comic-Con Bound!

I'm heading up to New York for the fourth annual New York Comic-Con tomorrow. I'll be there all three days, set up at booth #2446, in Small Press. So you can plan your shopping accordingly, I'll be doing/bringing:

• All nine issues of Love and Capes, as well as the trade paperback collection, Love and Capes: Do You Want to Know a Secret?There will be deals a'plenty on multiple issue purchases, too.
• Both the "Mark and Abby" Love and Capes t-shirt, as well as the new "Amazonia" shirt. I've got sizes small to extra large, and even some double and triple XL sizes. Quantities are limited, though, so stop by early.
• The set of Love and Capes trading pins, with Mark and Abby, Darkblade and Amazonia designs.
• I'll have the Love and Capes Valentine Cards that I had printed for this show. And there may even be an exciting announcement at the table.
• Freshly printed copies of both Powerful Women sketchbooks. How fresh? I'm picking them up today, in fact.
• I'll be doing commissions left and right, of course. As a baseline, all commissions are finished inked drawings. $20 per character, and we can do color if you send me a scan of the image or if I take it back home and scan it myself.

Not going to be there? You can order everything at the Love and Capes store, and order commissions here.

We Have a Winner!

We have a winner! The first annual Love and Capes Valentine's Day contest is over, and David and Carla Rose have won! Yay! Clapping sounds! Woo-hoo. Tell them what they've won, Johnny…

Well, Thom, David and Carla will enjoy all nine issues of Love and Capes, signed by the creator, two matching Love and Capes t-shirts, a set of Love and Capes pins, a heart-shaped box of Ghirardelli chocolates and they'll get a shout-out in the forthcoming Free Comic Book Day issue of Love and Capes #10. Hey, a FCBD issue of LNC? Someone should have mentioned that somewhere.

This contest was a resounding success. I may have to do another one sometime.

Browsing the Shelves

Since it started, I've had half-page previews of Love and Capes up on the Love and Capes site. A strip, from the already-published run, appears on the site every Monday and Friday. I think that free sample has been part of the reason of the success of the strip.

The thing I didn't have was any sort of way to view previous strips. There are lots of reasons why, mostly how I wasn't able to properly write the HTML code. No more, though. Thanks to the Comicpress plugin for WordPress, I've been able to create the Love and Capes Archive site. It's accessible off the main site, but you can check it out directly here.

The online strips cover the book from issue #1 to (currently) the beginning of issue #4. And, thanks to that same Comicpress plugin, I've got the next three months live and ready to go. You can even subscribe to it with your RSS reader.

And, of course, if you don't want to read online, there are a plethora of ways to order the book as well.