Dinner of Champions

One of my favorite parts of Mid-Ohio-Con is the dinner. Not that the food was particularly good, although it often is, but the company is always excellent. If you're lucky, you can have some amazing dinner companions.

Sunday night, I had dinner with Chris Claremont, Mark Evanier, Bob Ingersoll, Tony Isabella, Jesse Jackson (no, not that one), Carmella Merlo, Roger Price, Roger Stern, and Len Wein. Amazing.

The stories we told, the laughs we have. Man, I wish I could share them, but they're no longer in continuity.

Actually, we mostly talked comics, which was just great. We had the viewpoint of legends, readers, and sometimes even me. Seriously, this was one of the high points of the show.

Click on any photo to embiggen and enjealousify yourself.

Proof Pudding

I just got a proof on the sure-to-be-excellent Love and Capes collection. I'll be looking over this the next day or so and fixing any and all mistakes… not that I make mistakes, of course.

Reviews Are Coming In

A couple of reviews of Love and Capes #8 are hitting the interwebs. Read the full reviews by clicking the links.

From Brad Curran at CBR:

I enjoyed this quite a bit, certainly more than a lot of the review copies I’ve been sent. The story and art, which is very similar to the DC Animated Series art style (in full, glorious color, no less!), is just enjoyable…Also, the Spider-Man stand in is called Arachnerd, so that’s pretty rad…It does a good job of blending the superhero and slice of life elements. It even throws in an interesting cliffhanger which plays with an old genre trope, which is a nice way to use the strengths of the superhero genre in a book that’s not all about the fights and tights.

And Greg Burgas, also at CBR:

There’s a lot to like about Love and Capes, even though I don’t love it completely. It’s always nice to see romance comics, and the wry comments on superheroes make it more than just two people making googly-eyes at each other. If you’re looking for an old-fashioned superhero love story (and who isn’t?), you might want to track this down.

Interesting, too, was this comment about the introduction of a new character:

Then Abby hires a scrumptious young dude to work at the store. I’m not saying Zahler will do what so many before him have done, but just introducing this doubt into the story makes it dull…I could be completely wrong about what’s going to happen, but the fact that Zahler brings this up is worrisome.

That's really interesting to me, and it reminds me of the shared nature of creating a story. The love triangle that Mr. Burgas thinks might happen absolutely, positively will not happen. It was never even a glimmer of an idea of that in my mind. It's interesting that someone read the issue and got that out of it, particularly with my actual plans for the character.

I'm not bagging on the reviewer here, so don't take that message from this. It's just good to remember that when you release something into the Wild, not everyone sees it the same way. Everyone brings their own lens to view the product, and that's a cool thing.

Mid-Ohio-Con 2008: Gotta Love It!

Mid-Ohio-Con was a blur of goodness. Roger Price had one of those rare shows that, as a creator, was just so friendly. Big name to little name, you felt special and part of the Con Family. James Henry, new owner, has managed quite a feat in continuing that without missing a beat. If anything, that Con Love has just gotten better.

I did a couple panels, along with the Good Morning, Mid-Ohio-Con panel. I did a Breaking Into Comics panel with Marc Sumerak and the Joe Kubert School (of which I am a graduate). I realized how long I'd been in the industry when everyone was talking about how they started with web comics, and I said "When I graduated, there weren't any web comics."

Actually, this was my twentieth Mid-Ohio-Con. Of course, I started coming when I was in high school, but still, that's a long run. I only missed a couple when I was at art school.

But, back to this show. I've mentioned elsewhere that sales were great. The guests were great, friendly, and I got to spend some time with more than a few of them. Hopefully I'll post some pictures of that soon. And it was just too cool to see the Con Crew walking around in Amazonia t-shirts. I know some of that is because of my special reationship with the show, but still, it seems like Love and Capes is really gaining some traction.

I also did a webcomics panel with Wes Molebash, Chris Eliopolous, and a third creator whose name I can't find right now. That was a lot of fun. (And thank you Iron Fist for all your questions!)

I participated in the MOC Sketch Jam, where we did drawings on a stage that would be later auctioned for charity. I did an Amazonia sketch that came out pretty well, especially for a drawing done early in the morning and on an easel, to boot.

And my Captain Hammer shirt was quite the hit. In fact, I had people complaining that they had "Everyone's a Hero in Their Own Way" stuck in their head after seeing me. So I flexed the deltoids of compassion and sang a couple lines of "A Man's Gotta Do What a Man's Got to Do" to get a different song stuck in their head.

I live to serve.

There's still more to write, and I'll be parceling that out over the next couple of days. Hopefully a couple more sketch scans will come through, and I was interviewed on the Comics Related podcast. As soon as that goes live, I'll let you know.

Commishalicious

I did a boatload of commissions at Mid-Ohio-Con this weekend. According to my list, I did a couple of Power Girls, a couple of Supergirls, an Alfred E. Neuman, a Wesley/Fred/Ilyria, an Abby from Love and Capes, an Elektra, an Amazonia, a Devil Girl, and a caricature/wedding sign. Whew! That was a lot, and that doesn't include any quick head sketches or the inevitable things I forgot, too.

I took some photos of a couple on my wicked cool iPhone, and some are being sent to me so that I can color them and finish them up. I'll post them over the next couple weeks and show them off. Some of them came out particularly well, and they were all fun. In particular, I really liked this Devil Girl I did. It was fun having a generic theme, rather than a specific character, and playing in that world.

The other commission here is Power Girl, and she's always fun.

Black is the new Hot!

You saw these at Mid-Ohio-Con, now wear the awesomeness.

Yeah, that's right. The Amazonia shirts are now available in the Love and Capes store!

Ca-ching!

Some of you may remember the tragic lunchbox story from last year. I made some money at the show, and proceeded to lose it in one of the non-fun, non-gambling ways. I left it somewhere and I don't know where.

Well, I can say now that my earnings from the weekend made it back, and are now safely stored at my bank.

Although, these days, that may not be all that safe.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Con

The New Mid-Ohio-Con debuted this year, and I'll write much about it. The prêcis version: Awesome. I had my best sales at a show evah. Tons of good at the show.

Here's a quick hit, and one of my favorite parts. It also illustrates why I love the Con World: It's that unique parallel universe where stuff like this works and is appreciated.

So, good friend and great writer Paul D. Storrie and I were having a war of words. Lyrics, actually. The truly-excellent Dr. Horrible (written by Buffy scribe Joss Whedon, and starring Neil Patrick Harris, Nathan Fillion and Felicia Day) musical features songs that are darn-near instant earworms. You can't get them out of your head.

Paul and I would go up to each other, sing a phrase like "Everyone's a hero in their own way…" and know that the other person would have it burning in their skull for the next couple of hours. On Sunday, Paul went nuclear by calling me and singing the Bad Horse song.

Not one to be outdone, I set upon a plan. I went to Paul's booth and said "It's time for my revenge." And I sang (if you can call it that) "I hear it's better the second time/I hear you get to do the weird stuff" and, on cue, my friends Mariann and Sarah popped their heads through the curtain behind him and sang the chorus "We'd do the weird stuff."

Paul even got caught up in the moment, singing the chorus before he knew there would be a chorus, and inadvertently putting him in the role of Creepy Fan from the show. Thom Zahler for the win!

To do this, Mariann and Sarah had to walk through Darryl Banks' booth. I went up to explain the situation, which I swear went like this: "Darryl, I'm Thom Zahler. We've met before and I work with the show…" Daryl had an inquisitive look on his face, not knowing where this was going. "Oh, hell, I need to play a joke on Paul Storrie."

Darryl smiled and said "Do whatever you need to."

Man, I love conventions. Especially this one.

More updates as I find the time.

Here I Go

I am outta here and on my way to Columbus for Mid-Ohio-Con. (Well, there's the printer I have to stop at, and the bank, and probably some car food, but after that, straight there.) I'll be there doing commissions, on a couple of panels, and participating in a live charity drawing event.There's lots of coolness to be had, so come on by!

They Have Mass and Take Up Space

Some of you may remember the horrible events of 2004 and the missing Mid-Ohio-Con program books. I've always been gunshy about shipping since then. But, I cansay without question that the 2008 Mid-Ohio-Con program books are done and printed. They left on a truck yesterday, and are guaranteed to be there tomorrow.

Well, assuming the truck doesn't flip over or drop through a wormhole or something. It's as guaranteed as a thing can be.

But, the books are done and it's always great to see them and hold them in my hands. Here, the Last Daughter of Krypton plays spokesmodel to the printed Program Books.