It's Baltimore Time!

This weekend, I'll be at my favorite show. Marc Nathan's always-excellent Baltimore Comic-Con. I'll be at booth 1605, sharing it with Paul Storrie and a certain Lady Crusader. This year, I got to be even more involved as Marc asked me to help put together the first Baltimore Comic-Con Yearbook. I was the graphic designer on the book, and all of our artists and especially Avenue4 printing really came together and made this thing happen in a scarily short amount of time. Hopefully this will do well, and next year we'll do another (with a little more lead time). I'm proud of the book and the people in it.

Here's the official press release:

The Baltimore Comic-Con is proud to announce the first Baltimore Comic-Con Yearbook, celebrating the creators appearing at the show. This book of art features some of our guests interpreting the Liberty Meadows characters, sometimes in conjunction with their own creations, in a celebration of creator-owned properties.

As a bonus, we have a scavenger hunt of sorts. When you buy the book, you'll get a list of our 36 contributors and their table numbers. Get 15 of them to sign it, and come back to the booth for your choice of an added print by either Joseph Michael Linsner or Barry Kitson. Get 20 signatures and receive BOTH prints!

Liberty Meadows was created by Frank Cho and first published in 1997, launching in newspapers internationally. This year marks the 15th anniversary of Liberty Meadows, having seen print in book, comic strip, and digital formats. "Frank has always been a fan and a friend of the Baltimore Comic-Con," said Marc Nathan, show promoter for the Baltimore Comic-Con. "We are very thankful to Frank for his willingness to trust his characters with our other guests and friends, as well as his continued support of the Baltimore Comic-Con."

The art created for the 2012 Baltimore Comic-Con Yearbook celebrating 15 years of Frank Cho's Liberty Meadows will be auctioned at this special event! Don't miss this opportunity to own original art featuring Frank's characters as depicted by artists including Frank Quitely, Brandon Peterson, Gene Ha, David Petersen, Bernard Chang, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Tom Raney, Billy Tucci, Steve Conley, Thom Zahler, Craig Rousseau, Frank Cho, and many others!

The book will be sold, and the art auction will be held in our Main hall, in Booths #2505-2507. The auction will commence following the Stan Lee/John Romita panel, at approximately 5:45pm. The book will be available at the Baltimore Comic-Con for $20.

I'll be there taking commissions, selling books (including Love and Capes: What to Expect #2 I think), trades, the Baltimore print, and more! As usual, with t-shirts, or if you want a particular convention print other than Baltimore, please pre-order here so I know to bring them.

My First Step into a Much Larger World

Here's some news I've been keeping under my hat for a while: I'm going to be one of the artists participating in the new Star Wars: Galactic Files card set from Topps. I've contributed 100 or so cards with characters from all six movies. I did hold back and not do a chunk of Holiday Special cards, as much as I wanted to draw that Bea Arthur card. A tiny selection of the cards I did are below. The cards are due out sometime this fall. As soon as they're announced, I'll let you know.

Also, I'll be wandering around Star Wars Celebration later this month, though not set up this year. Next time, who knows?

Comic-Con Has Come and Gone

Sorry this one has taken so long. I got off my plane Sunday night and started teaching a Summer Camp Cartooning program the next day. It's been crazy busy. So, Comic-Con.

Yeah, that happened.

I’ve been doing con reports sporadically since I started coming to shows, and it was fun to tell you about all the cool stuff I did and people I saw. The problem I’m running into now, as it becomes more about the work, is that I can’t talk about things.

But here, I offer you this Mad Libs version of my San Diego experience.

I spoke with [name of person] at [name of company] about doing [type of work]. [Pronoun] seemed warm to the idea and even [follow up action]. I am cautiously optimistic.

Now repeat that, say, twelve more times.

Last year, my heart was starting to harden about Comic-Con. It was the first year that I really felt it was becoming too much. This year felt a little more manageable, so maybe that was a one-year thing. And maybe it’s that I’ve decided to have a quantum mechanical con now. The only part of the show that exists is the part I perceive, which means the 50 feet square around my booth, the men’s restroom just outside the Hall C doors, and, technically, the Marvel booth since I can often hear the crowd noise from their danceatorium.

I’m can’t say I took it easy. I still do a pretty massive amount of work, I think. But the bar con scene seems to have faded a bit. I’m wondering if because of the preponderance of cool parties, that people aren’t going to dinner and hitting the bar, but going to an event and then hitting their bed.

I know I certainly did when I went to [exclusive party] and then, instead of running by the Hyatt bar, I just went back to the hotel to get my five to six hours of sleep before starting the fun parade again.

Energy on the floor seemed better this year. My sales seemed better, and traffic seemed steady. The only exception to that was Preview Night, which was a little dead because the show only had one point of entry, and that was down by the Hollywood booths. The result being that people stopped to see all the cool stuff, like KITT and the Trolls from The Hobbit, and slowed progress to the rest of the floor. I’d like to see that changed.

The show security certainly seemed tighter, and I think overall better. The new security team was a little more strident, but there were things that the old team was lax on. I’ve heard good stories and bad stories, and I’m willing to chalk a lot of them up to growing pains for now. We’ll see next year.

I’ve set up a photo gallery plugin to my website now, so some of my favorite scenes of the show are below. Click on through, there’s a lot of cool there.

Not the least of which is the lovely Ms. Amy Ratcliffe dressed up as a female version of the Crusader. She was inspired by the cover to Love and Capes: What to Expect #5 which, oh, yeah… you haven’t seen that yet. Guess you’ll have to wait, won’t you?

San Diego. It’s still the place to be. And, after so many years, maybe I’m starting to figure it out… or at least how to do it so it doesn’t break me. Having good friends to help me out certainly makes it easier.

#sdcc Saturday Love and Capes Deal please RT

This year I've decided to do special deal coupons for Comic-Con International. Each of these coupons is good for one day only. To use the coupon, either print out the attached PDF, or download it to your phone and bring it to my booth.

Today's deal is on con prints. I have the San Diego-exclusive print of the Love and Capes characters at the Kansas City Barbecue (as seen on display at the restaurant right now). Normally, those are $25, but you can get them for $20 with this coupon. I've also started offering the con portfolio, containing all sixteen of the con prints that I've done over the past year. With this coupon, the $200 con portfolio is $25 off. While supplies last.

Remember, we're at Booth 2000!

DOWNLOAD THIS COUPON

Comic-Con, San Diego, and ME!

Hey, Comic-Con in San Diego is next Wednesday! And I'll be there at my usual haunt, Booth 2000 in the Independent Press Pavillion. I'll be set up alongside Ben Thompson of the awesomely-awesome Badass book series (which has even featured a piece or two by me). Together we're the LOVE and HATE tattooed on the knuckles of the hand of the convention. Or something like that.

I'm not doing any panels this year as far as I know, so if you want to hear me blather about Love and Capes, you'll have to come see me. You'll have to come down here, Khan!

Sorry, I thought I was William Shatner for a minute. That happens sometimes.

In addition to talking and chatting and posing for pictures, here's some stuff worth stopping by for:

Thursday, from about 9:30am-12:00pm the lovely and talented Amy Ratcliffe will be cosplaying as a female Crusader. This was inspired by a cover for Love and Capes: What To Expect #5… oh, wait, you haven't seen that yet, have you?

I'll be signing at the IDW booth, Thursday from 3:00pm-4:00pm.

I will have all-new copies of all three Love and Capes collections, including the so-hard-to-find third trade. There are some fixes that have been made in these new printings, including fixing the two pages that were flopped out of order in the second one.

I will also have the first new issue of Love and Capes: What to Expect in glorious con-exclusive form! This cover features Mark and Abby figuring out baby names. You'll notice Abby's notepad has a blank area where I can write your name (or other name of choice) onto the cover. Since I drew it and lettered it, Abby and I do have the same handwriting.

And, thanks to Geekdom War over at booth B-04, I will have some brand-new Love and Capes t-shirts, including this Chibi style shirt that I'm thrilled to see actually produced! Be sure to stop by their booth and see their selection of Love and Capes and other shirts.

I'll be debuting my Rhinos Bowling art book that was started by Kickstarter. If you're already a backer and are attending already, contact me and I'll have it at the booth ready for you. It's available in softcover ($25) and hardcover ($50) and in limited numbers here at the show.

I'll also have some of of my San Diego Con Prints, showing Crusader and Darkblade enjoying some fine ribs at the Kansas City Barbecue.

As usual, I'll also be taking commissions, and feel free to e-mail me and be sure to get on the list! I'll be selling a lot of the pre-drawn con pieces that have been on my site this last month or two, too. And I'll be signing and posing for pictures and all that fun stuff as well.

Comic-Con is a huge show and a massive part of my career. I've often described it as not so much a sprint as a Battaan Death March. And while there's a lot of hurdles to the show, travel and shipping and printing and setup and forms and taxes and booth space, here's the thing: If the worst part of my professional year is the part where I have to spend a week in San Diego and talk and promote the work I'm proudest of and the thing I know without a doubt that I was put on this Earth to do, it's not so bad.

I mean, some people have to wear ties to work.

Con Piece: Brave

Last piece before Heroescon!

Brave comes out this weekend, which I'm very much looking forward to. Pixar consistently knocks their movies out of the park, and it seems like each movie raises the bar on the last. Water's hard to render? Let's do Finding Nemo. Hair is hard? How about Monsters, Inc.? Let's make our protagonist an 80-year old guy. Up. Every one does something new.

It's at the point where if Pixar said they were going to do a black-and-white movie about paint drying, I'd be there opening night. Their track record is so solid that I just assume every movie is going to work until they prove me wrong.

So, I've drawn Merida from Brave, as well as her brothers. It was a challenge, since I don't know the characters or the movie yet. But it was fun, especially drawing her hair. And I tried to make the archery accurate.

And you know where I'll be Friday night. No, HeroesCon. I won't see Brave until Tuesday when I get back. But that's because I put my fans and convention appearances over even my movie schedule. The things I do for you.

Gettysburg!

Author, friend, and San Diego and Seattle boothmate Ben Thompson is a the author of the awesome Badass history books. The third one will be coming out sometime soon, and he was kind (or, arguably, drunk) enough to ask me to illustrate one of the sections for him. I pulled The Battle of Little Round Top at Gettysburg.

I got to tweak my style and do a very different subject than I normally do. I'm pretty happy with it, too. I'll be sure to let you know when the book is on the stands.

And be sure to read more of Ben's Awesome Writings at his site.

Con Piece: MJ and Gwen's Tug of War

When I was at FanExpo last year someone commissioned me to do a Mary Jane vs. Black Cat piece of them fighting over Spider-Man's uniform.

I liked it a lot and decided to revisit it for my portolio piece. I thought Gwen was a more natural foil, especially since she's prominent in the new movie.

I guess I have a running theme of Redheads vs. Blondes going. Tomorrow's post won't be that, I assure you.

Again, there's some nice body language here. They both look like they're really yanking on that uniform, and they've both got different poses. I scanned the pencils, too, so you can see what it started out as.

This, too, will be in my portfolio at HeroesCon and available for purchase at table AA230. It's the standard 9x12 brstol, colored with Copics.

And I'm not doing FanExpo this year, but its never far from my list. Hopefully next year they'll bring me out.

Con Piece: Queens Black and White, in Color

The newest piece in my con portfolio is this duel of wills between the Black Queen and White Queen from X-Men's Hellfire Club. Originally, it was going to be a Scott and Jean piece, and then it became Scott, Jean and Emma, and then I decided Cyclops was superfulous. I love Cyclops, and I'm still bothered that he ever dated the White Queen, but I thought he got in the way of the duel of wills here.

I think drawing one of these nearly every day, along with drawing a page of Love and Capes close to every day, is helping push my drawing again. I love the poses here, particularly the White Queen's body language and the Black Queen's hands. It's nice to see things start to click. That doesn't always happen, so I'm riding that wave.

I scanned the pencils so I could reduce them to transfer them to board. Pencils always have a little more life to them, so I wanted to share them, too.

The final piece is 9x12 on bristol with Copic color and will be for sale at my table, AA230, at this weekend's HeroesCon.

Avengers Auction Piece for Heroescon

I finished my auction piece for HeroesCon! Avengers were on my mind because, you know, there was a movie and stuff, so I thought they might make a good subject. I decided to marry that with my Child of the Eighties heritage and do the movie lineup as they looked back then. I was really tempted to give Thor a beard, because I do like that look, but it would have placed it outside the era I was going for.

The original is brush and pen on bristol, 11x17, and there will be a full color digital print along with it that will be donated to the auction. I also took the original pencils, moved some figures around and made a 9x12 version that I will have for sale at my table.

I'm still aiming at getting another couple of commissions done before Heroes. I'm thinking of doing The Marvel Family, because I'm such a fan of them. Maybe one more super couple.

And, if you want to get on my commission list, be sure to e-mail me and make sure you have a spot!