Baltimore or Less

Have I mentioned lately that the Thom Zahler World Tour continues with a trip to the most excellent Baltimore Comicon, where New Daddy Marc Nathan will be throwing one of my favorite shows off the year? I'll be there selling books, taking commissions and not eating seafood. Really, the Baltimore Comicon is a great, great show. If you're anywhere nearby, you should definitely come.

This is probably a good time to mention the pre-Convention Love and Capes t-shirt sale. Just like San Diego, you can pre-order some shirts at crazy low prices, and I'll bring them to Baltimore for you to pick up.

I'll also be doing the new Cincinnati Comic Expo, Detroit Fanfare, New York Comic-Con and, of course, Mid-Ohio-Con this year, too. Five conventions left this late in the year? That's a lot of traveling.

In Which I Explain DC Comics Geography

According to my good friend Paul Storrie, Superman's east-to-west Walk Across America is taking him from Michigan to… Ohio? That seems like the wrong direction. It's obviously of note to us, since Paul lives in Michigan, and I live in Ohio. Paul asked me, as a Supermanologist, how this was possible. I could only come up with ten reasons. A Top Ten list, as it were…

10. Road construction detour re-routed him back into Ohio.

9. The little known Flint, Michigan Stargate messes up everyone.

8. JMS is bringing back rarely remembered Silver Age Geography Vision power.

7. Superman walked into Detroit, got scared, and slowly backed out for a couple hundred miles.

6. Lexcorp GPS sucks, although the downloadable Clancy Brown voice is pretty cool.

5. Red Kryptonite caused Superman to briefly lose his sense of direction by a lot.

4. Superboy punched the walls of reality and Ohio and Michigan have flopped places in the DC's United States.

3. Realized too late Columbus is hosting the Michigan-OSU game this year.

2. Superman tried walking backwards to reverse the spin of the Earth and fix the Ohio-Michigan War of 1835.

1.He heard about Melt Bar and Grilled and had to rush back to try it.

Of bigger note to me is that Superman is somehow skipping Cleveland, the land of his literal birth.

The One With the Bedbugs

I've decided to recount the story of my Three Week Tour of All The States In the Union with a Disney Park in bite-size portions, rather than a linear day-by-day kind of way. Today, we're going to start with the down note.

Last year at Comic-Con, I met a nice gentleman who worked at Pixar. After the obligatory gushing about Up and holding back the tears, he said "Hey, if you're ever up in the Bay Area, come on by, I'll give you a tour."

After that, it was my goal to get to San Francisco. I've heard Pixar is a great place to work, but this guy might have left for another job and he was my only contact there. I wanted to jump on this as soon as I can.

Enter Airfarewatchdog and Southwest. Southwest was having a crazy-low sale on flights within the Golden State. For $90, I could fly from Burbank to San Francisco and back the same day. Ninety bucks! I would have paid that to take a tour of Pixar if they were across the street from me. I figured it was totally worth it.

Later, at Comic-Con, I mentioned to some friends that I was going north to visit Pixar the next Thursday. One of them said "Hey, I have a friend who works at Industrial Light and Magic. I bet he could get you a tour, too." Turns out, he could. The only catch at all was that ILM's Friends and Family Day was Friday. It'd be better if I could stay over that one day and extend my trip. For the chance to be one away from the geek trifecta (sadly, Steve Jobs and Apple never called to complete it) it was a no-brainer.

So, I now needed a place to stay in San Francisco. I went to Hotels.com and found a cheap hotel (one whose name I'm withholding for now, as they're investigating the problem). It was $49 to stay about six blocks from Fisherman's Wharf. The hotel had a number of bad reviews, but there were more than a few good ones, most of which said that the place had been recently remodeled and was much better. Plus, I've found that sometimes people complain about hotels not because it's not a good place to stay, but because it's not the place they wanted to stay. Kind of the "Can you believe this Motel Six didn't have a workout center or an in-room whirlpool?" variety. So I gambled on it.

And the hotel was exactly the hotel I expected. It wasn't the kind of place you'd take your significant other on a romantic weekend, but it was totally the place you'd take her when the concert she wanted to see was only playing in San Francisco and you had a day to plan. It wasn't the hotel you wanted, it was the hotel you needed.

Except for the bedbugs.

Friday, I woke up and my right arm was itchy. Briefly, I thought that I might have developed a new allergy to chocolate. (Fortunately, this was not the case. I tested it several times over the rest of the trip.) Then the bumps started to appear, all up and down my right arm, and a little bit on my right leg. By the time I landed in Orlando on Saturday, I knew they were bites. Apparently they're often underreported and misdaignosed, and I didn't go to a doctor to be sure, but I'm pretty sure they were bedbug bites.

Still, the trips to Pixar and ILM, and the obligatory side trip to Ghirardellii's (one of three I made it to on this trip which was a different kind of trifecta), was totally worth it. It just would have been more worth it without.

That's it for now. Don't worry, I'll talk about the tours and the rest of the trip later.

Just Like Superman II

After three weeks of conventions, meetings and a little bit of a vacation, I'm back. For some reason, the "Sorry I've been away so long. I won't let you down again" scene from Superman II is running through my head.

I've started to find that Twitter and Facebook are ideal for updates while I'm on the road. I don't get to spend a lot of time in the hotel or connected to my computer. Heck, I think last night may have been the first night I've gotten eight hours sleep in over a month. It's totally worth it, but it does take its toll, especially regarding my online presence.

I think this was on my mind during my travels, because I seem to have bought heavily in the coffee mug category. I came back with no less than five new mugs, which is five more than the last few trips.

I now have, going clockwise from the upper left corner, a mug from Pixar, a Disney coffee mug based on the artwork from their tasty and well-designed coffee products, a Javva the Hutt mug from Industrial Light and Magic, a "Have You Seen This Wizard" Sirius Black much from The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, and near as I can tell, the only product Disney makes that features their villains, including Jafar, Cruella DeVille, Captain Hook, Ursula, Scar, Malificent and the Wicked Queen from Snow White. Missing: Chernobog and the guy who took the villians out of the Villain Shop.

Day Zero

All right, things have been crazy already. I'm not sure how many of these I'll be able to punch out. And, for now, I can't really post photos here on the site because of a Photoshop issue. That said, I am posting photos over at the WMJI.com site where they're taking my raw photos and making them work.

Today was Day Zero, preview night here at the show. Things started at 5:30, which was odd, because the San Diego Comic-Con website said 6:00. I got there right at 5:30 to set up, and was rushing to get everything out.

I must have done okay, as by 5:32 I sold my first trade. She ran over and said "I love you!" I responded as James Taylor does, "It helps that we don't know each other." She was a fan of the book, obviously, and it was nice to make a sale so quickly.

I met some great people, fans and professionals alike, and saw some friends, too. It was pretty packed for 180 minutes of show. Kind of makes me worried/hopeful about the rest of the show.

All right, I'm big with the sleepy. More tomorrow, I hope. And keep watching the Twitter and Facebook!

I've Hit the Big Time! USA Today and Pop Candy!

Hey! I wrote a guest blog for Whitney Matheson over at the USA Today blog. She was taking a well-deserved vacation, and asked for some guest bloggers. I threw my oversized hat into the ring and she, in a rare moment of poor judgment, said "okay". Click here to check it out. It's all about what it's like to be an exhibitor at a Comic-Convention, San Diego in particular.

I've been bad about posting panels, I know. It's been a crazy summer, and it's just getting crazier, in a good way. And soon I'll be heading to the aforementioned Comic-Con in San Diego and off doing the LA thing, and a side trip with some friends, for three weeks or so. I'll try to post, but expect a little slowdown to be sure.

This is an image from page six of Love and Capes: Ever After #2. Charlotte's got a bigger part in this issue, so we'll see more of her.

I like throwing little things in to amuse myself. Here, you might recognize some of the other patrons of the Café Mobius.

Here, Fishie Fishie

When I went to the Lake County Captains game with my father, I got some of these stuffed Racing Fish from the Cargo Hold shop. These fish are based on the Bobble Fish designs I did a couple of years back. I have to say, they look pretty darn cool.

Carry On My Wayward Bobble Head!

This Saturday, July 3rd at the Lake County Captains game at Classic Park in Eastlake, Ohio, you can get this Skipper bobble belly. Hey, wait… I designed it! I knew there was a reason I was posting it here.

It's the second of three promotions that I've been involved with this year involving the Captains. The first was the Captains Free Comic Book Day comic. And coming later this month, there'll be a Skipper leg lamp, to tie in with the Christmas Story house.

As soon as I get one of those, I'll show it off here, too.

In stores now: Love and Capes- Going to the Chapel!

The second Love and Capes trade is in stores now! I've gotten my copies and it looks pretty good. Issue #7 of the series was the last issue that I thought printed a little dark, and it's nice to see it printed the way that I meant it to be seen. And the word balloon glitch in issue #10 is fixed, too.

(Full disclosure, pages 120 and 121 are reversed in order. It's a little speed bump in an otherwise great book, and not all that confusing, really. And, if you all buy enough that we sell through, we can fix it on the reprint.)

I'm thrilled with the IDW people and their collected editions. And, coming soon, IDW will be publishing the new mini-series, Love and Capes: Ever After. I'm working on the second issue of that right now, in fact. Heck, have a panel of it.

I really dig that image. It's got just the right feel to it. I love the darker colors and the lighting. It's always a bit of a challenge to make Mark and Abby work in the same space because of their size difference. The poses are pushed just enough to. Mark's really putting his weight onhis right hand, and Abby's leaning back against him just enough.

Anyway, the second trade's in stores. Please buy it!

Painting my Old School at my New School

If there's one thing I learned in art school, it's get paid!

But, if I learned two things, it's I hate painting.

I do. I hate acrylics, it's like painting with toothpaste. The only thing I hate more is oils. Like painting with butter. I hate not being able to wash my brushes with water. And I don't really care for airbrushing either. (Actually, I'm okay with watercolors, but just barely.)

But, in my second and third years of art school, I had to do a fair amount of that. I took a painting/color theory class with Joel Naprstek, a talented artist, wonderful painter and great guy. As opposed to other teachers whose names I won't mention here, Joel actually worked with you. I can't say I liked painting, but under his auspices, I got better at it.

As I recall, about the same time I went through a breakup and kind of threw myself into my work. One classmate of mine remarked on my improvement and said "You need to get dumped more often." Ah yes, pain, the great motivator.

It does work though. Later, after getting back together with that same person, we broke up again, and I threw myself into getting work on the Warner Brothers comics just to spite her. (She was a WB cartoon fan.) And, yes, I did wind up lettering three books for them. So, you know, win.

Anyway, this is one of the paintings I did that actually looked decent. It's of my home church, Immaculate Conception in Willoughby. It's where I went to school. You may also recognize it from Love and Capes #12, as it's the basis for the church in which Mark and Abby get married.

It's weird looking at it now. Part of this assignment was to work off a photo, and take a piece of white cardboard with a small square cut in it to isolate areas of color. This way you were looking at just the color and you could try to match it and learn how color worked. I remember thinking I did a good job, but that something was off.

Now, I can look at it and say "the front of the building is way too cool". I know exactly how to fix it. In fact, I've done so here if you want to see it.

Sometimes, it's good to see how far you've come and that you have really made progress. But I'm still not planning on doing any more painting anytime soon.