www.James-Baker.com www.NerveBomb.com www.RocketRabbit.com
CoMics ArTwOrk PhoTos iNFo GUeStBoOk sToRe LiNkS NeWs
This is a sketch I did during this year’s APE show. Rafael Navarro has been keeping a CAPTAIN AMERICA sketchbook where he asks other people to draw his favourite super-hero, and this was my contribution. In retrospect, I should have drawn Captain America with Barack Obama’s face!
Due to my continuing computer troubles (the meltdown of both my G4 laptop and my backup hard-drive in the same month) I was not able to reprint some of my old mini comics, nor do the scanning and formatting for a new comic that I had planned to release at this years APE convention. Despite all those let-downs I had an enjoyable show.
I spent most of the show at my table hawking the old wares, chatting with friends and doing some sketches and though I was mainly booth-bound, I did manage to pick up a few good books during my brief breaks. ROCKET TOWN by Bob Logan, both BOOK PLATE and BELLE DU JOUR by Bill Presing, DEREKMONSTER ANNUAL 2008 by Derek Thompson and also Keith Knight’s THE COMPLETE K CHRONICLES.
The after-show socialising was especially fun this year. On the Saturday, a group of us went to HENRY’s Hunan, where we dined like Emperors, and then saw the CROM show at the nearby VARNISH gallery; an exhibition of artwork inspired by the movie CONAN. On Sunday night, we had dinner at ZANTE’s Indian Pizza in the Mission district, followed by Mitchell’s ice cream, and then walked to a nearby park where the Day of the Dead parade terminates. This event was much better attended than in previous years, and there was a LOT of creativity on display in the altars and people in skeleton costumes.. Perhaps this event has grown as the San Francisco Halloween festivities have gone sour…
Even though I heard some people grumbling about the date change (from April to October) in my view, the fact that APE 2008 took place on the same weekend as both Halloween and Day of the Dead was an extra special treat this year.
In celebration of all the glory that is the San Diego COMIC CON, here are some sketches of Con denizens that I drew a few years back…
A long way away from wherever it is that you live right now, there once was a tiny little cottage at the end of a long and winding trail, deep inside a forest of tall and tangled trees.
Inside this cottage there lived a family of misfit bears. There was an enormous polar bear, a gigantic grizzly bear, a huge black bear, and even a teeny tiny Koala bear.
As everybody who knows anything about bears will tell you, koalas aren’t REAL bears. This koala was even less real-er than the others, for it was actually a little girl. Though not a real bear, the little girl had many excellent bear-like qualities. 
She could dance just like a real dancing-bear. She could wrestle just like a real wrestling-bear. Also she was cranky when she woke up in the mornings, just like a real bear!
But best of all, like any real bear, she liked bear-hugs. The bears would hug her right back, though not at full bear-strength (they didn’t want to break her). Those bears loved the little girl as much as if she was a real little bear.
Even though she always cheated at cards.
The little girl felt more at home with those bears than she’d ever felt before and she enjoyed playing with them all year long.
Then one day, the first fall of snow painted the forest in white and announced to the world that winter was beginning.
The bears began to yawn. As everybody who knows anything about bears will tell you, bears sleep ALL through the winter.
The little girl did not feel sleepy. As everybody who knows anything about little girls will tell you, they DON’T sleep all through winter (unless it is night time, of course). The bears worried that the little girl would be lonely while they slept all winter.
So before they went to sleep, the bears gave her a present. They said “We will be asleep for a while. You may feel a lack of bear in your life. Open this if you feel lonely before we wake up.”
The bears each carefully hugged the little girl good night, and then they all went to sleep. As soon as they were snoring, the little girl felt terribly alone.
The little girl opened her present. It was a TEDDY BEAR. As everybody who knows anything about teddy bears will tell you, teddy bears have many excellent bear-like qualities, but they aren’t real bears.
Teddy Bears don’t need to sleep all winter (in fact they don’t sleep at all). So the teddy bear could keep the little girl company until the other bears woke up in the spring.
And best of all, teddy bears like bear-hugs. The little girl loved that teddy bear as much as if he were a real little bear.
Even though he always cheated at cards.
My WonderCon sales were low this year. As to the socialising, I went to a “costume party” where about 6 people out of 200 actually wore costumes (Rhode and I being 2 of them). So the fun I had at this year’s WonderCon came mostly in making a new book.
Nothing but fun in the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth!After spending years using a fiddly time-consuming process on writing, thumb-nailing and inking my self-published comics, I have recently been looking for a looser, faster style. In order to find it, I have been trying to make MINI comics in a few days as opposed to months as has been the case before. The fast turn-around is in order to stop myself from noodling but I have a hard time keeping drawings clean, clear and appealing when working loosely. I haven’t yet found the style I am looking for, but I am liking the exploration.
I first tried this new approach last year when a professional project ended earlier than expected and I had two weeks worth of extra time before COMIC CON 2007. I decided to make a mini-comic, and in order to do that book quickly, I resolved to work about as loosely as I would normally do my professional story-boards, only draw one panel per page, have proportionally more text and no word-balloons. This removed a lot of the fiddly parts of comic-book layouts and the end result felt like a tiny picture book (at 5.25 inches wide and 3.5 inches tall). A lot of the drawing was very rough, yet I found the whole experience very satisfying. Best of all, I managed to get a 36 page comic book done in just under two weeks, a story about the little dog I got when I was 7 years old entitled, JOCK.
Drawing comics on the first day of WonderConMore recently, I decided to make a comic even faster, in a 3-day weekend. This was partly Inspired by some 24 hour comics that I saw done by Benton Jew and Anson Jew. Rather than working 24 hours in a row, I would work an 8 hour day for 3 consecutive days on the President’s Day long-weekend. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to come up with anything I liked in the 3 days that I had set aside. I had a lot of variations on a few ideas but could not figure out which idea I wanted to do. So at the end of the weekend, I abandoned the notion of having something new done in time for WonderCon, which was less than a week away.
Then, on the following Wednesday morning, the ideas I had been toying with the previous weekend clicked into place in my mind and I quickly wrote out a simple little story that I liked a lot; a silly fairy tale about a little girl who lives with a family of bears, entitled THE TINIEST BEAR. With WonderCon beginning only two days away, I knuckled down to see if I could get this idea down on paper in time to sell at the con. In order to do this, I once again decided to work very loosely and at an even smaller size. The finished book was 2.75 inches tall and 4.25 inches wide. These dimensions meant that I could print a whole 16 page mini comic on one sheet of 8.5 x 11 paper (front and back) meaning that I could afford to do it all on my slow-printing ink-jet printer at home.
As it was, I needed 3 days to get it done and I took my laptop and Cintiq in to WonderCon on Friday to do last minute drawing at my booth. I worked on the drawings that same night and printed the pages out on Saturday morning, doing the page trimming and stapling at the Con itself, where the tiny books finally went on sale, as fresh as any comic book could possibly be. I have been “down to the wire” many times but never before to the point that I am actually working on the book at the show where I sold it!
Derek reads a freshly stapled Mini ComicI was pretty happy with the story that I had written, and overall I had fun with the “3 day comic” approach. However, in order to get the artwork done in that time-frame, the drawings were very scribbly, which meant that customers weren’t immediately taken in by the artwork when they picked up the book and flipped through it. However, those few who took the time to actually READ the story usually bought it. Maybe next time, I’ll set aside more time for a polishing pass… I would still stick to the 3 days for writing and blocking-out the book and then have another 3 days to finesse the drawings add some tones and make the end result a little more palatable for the customers. It would still be satisfying to get something out under a week.
As to THE TINIEST BEAR, I plan to expand it to the proper length for a story book (24 pages, or maybe 32) and republish it myself, maybe even a colour version for this year’s Comic Con… and perhaps even submit it to a publisher as a proposal for a children’s book. I have more ideas for stories about the little girl and her bear posse… On the other hand, perhaps I might devote the time I have left this year to do other things instead… I have some comics stories that I would love to get cleaned up and put into a new comics book…
THE TINIEST BEAR; a scribbly-scratchy Mini comicwe shall see…
This Friday, Saturday and Sunday I’ll be sharing a booth with Rhode Montijo at WonderCon. 
And maybe I’ll even have something new to sell (fingers crossed now). So please come by and see us, either at the show itself or at the After-Party on Saturday evening, which will be held nearby at good ole Maverix Studios.
Here’s a tiny doodle done while riding on the train, with a little tone added in Photoshop.
The 2008 comics-convention season is about to start with San Francisco’s Wondercon at the end of next week. The California cons will be more evenly spread out this year; Wondercon in February, Comic Con in July and APE has been moved to November. I prefer this new spread, rather than having all the California Cons in the first half of the year, which meant that I wasn’t able to prepare something for each of the shows.
I am hoping to get a down-and-dirty mini comic ready for Wondercon (though it will have to be very loose and scratchy) and with the new date spread, I may even be able to make something new for each of the California cons this year…
I started drawing this silly doodle, of HAN SOLO and his co-pilot CHEWBACCA the Wookie, while sitting at my booth at Comic-Con.
It made my pal Rhode laugh so much that I knew I would have to give this drawing to him when I finished it.
Then I put it aside for a while and then forgot about it altogether, until I found it recently, tidied it up a bit and finally gave it to Rhode for his birthday.
NO Credit? NO Problem!
Here, at last, is the Abismo/Nerve Bomb San Diego Comic-Con report for 2007.
JIMMY “Easy Terms” BAKERSFIELD and RODDY “Deep Discount” MONTECARLO working the CON.A COMIC CON trend that some small-press and indie exhibitors complain about is the growing presence of huge media companies using Comic Con as a place to pimp their wares and offer previews of up-coming games, toys, films and books. Their enormous displays with all the bells and whistles, and appearances by Hollywood movie stars are crowd pleasers for sure (judging from the spike in attendance since this trend began) but it makes it hard for the little guy selling home-made books to get any attention.
With these deals, we must be CRAZY
In the spirit of “if you can’t beat em, join ‘em”, Rhode and I resolved to go CORPORATE. Salesmanship itself was going to be our marketing “angle” this year.
But what do a pair of self-publisher fly-by-night cartoonists know about MARKETING? Plus, after paying for the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth space, we didn’t have much money left over in the budget for booth decoration, which makes it hard to compete with all the full-scale Pirate Ships, Giant Robots and sexy Booth-models of other displays. What’s a down at heel indie self-publishing duo to do?…
Thankfully, two expert salesmen came to our rescue and offered to help out in exchange for taking a controlling stake in the burgeoning Abismo/Nerve Bomb business empire.
Our new C.F.O. RODDY MONTECARLO and and C.E.O. JIMMY BAKERSFIELD took over the booth display this year, and really came through for us. Who better to work the CON than two bona fide ? Thanks to their oversight, the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth was transformed into RODDY and JIMMY’s Discount Emporium which was, without a doubt, one of the classiest on the showroom floor this year. To match their natty jackets, pumped up sense of style and full-bore salesmanship, Roddy and Jimmy tricked out the booth in snazzy signage and covered it in plaid, even though finding THAT much LOUD fabric was no easy feat.
As seen on !
The customers were really pulled in by the crazy mark-down signs, especially the FREE TOASTER deal, though sad to say, nobody spent the $1000 on comics that was required to take it home (as mentioned in the fine-print). That may be just as well, otherwise Roddy wouldn’t have anything to make his breakfast toast with.
The FREE TOASTER SCAM DEAL.Everything must GO
The New C.E.O. of Nerve Bomb anticipated higher sales this year but even despite all the NEW product (my Dad’s elephant book, a new mini-comic and some Giclee prints) sales were not much more than in 2006, when there was nothing new to sell. It is tough to figure out the key to sales… it isn’t simply a matter of new product, good booth placement and high attendance, that is for sure… because all those things were on hand this year, and KILLER salesmanship as well.
Act to avoid Disappointment!
Roddy works a sucker customer!Thanks to Roddy and Jimmy’s help with the booth, Rhode and I both had time to do some socialising. One of my favourite things about Comic Con is the chance to meet friends whom I haven’t seen in ages, including a lot of people that I only see at cons. Each evening, there are so many people that I would like to spend time with that it is getting progressively harder and harder each year to organise a get-together when so many people are involved.
Spending an hour or so on Wednesday evening (after Preview Night) wandering from pub to pub with a huge group of hungry people, who were steadily growing HANGRY (hungry and angry) I resolved to thereafter venture out to eat with a group only it had a reservation. A few years ago, it was possible to just luck into some place that had space to seat your huge party of chums but that just isn’t possible these days, at least in the nearby Gaslamp area.
San Diego is our town, Baby!Thursday evening we really hit the jackpot when a stripped down, special-ops task force of hand-picked and hungry folks successfully mounted a raid on a fantastic “all you can eat” Brazillian BBQ place called Rei Do Gado, which was scoped out by our San Diego food recon team of Jeff and Lovelyn (who took us to Hash house Au Go Go last year). Along with them, I spent a very enjoyable evening with Rhode, my good friend John Stevenson and the always hilarious Kirk Thatcher. We got an early reservation and hunkered down together to climb the meat Materhorn pausing between mouthfuls to disturb the surrounding patrons with both the tone and volume of our conversation.
Group Discounts
The next night, I had a very enjoyable dinner with another old friend, David Gordon, who now lives in New York. He introduced me to a whole table of his friends from Blue Sky. The service in the restaurant was slow but we weren’t in any hurry and had a very enjoyable time just chatting away about publishing and animation, while our food showed up bit by bit. As we ate, cellphone calls came in from reservation-less and hungry pals who were wandering the wasteland outside, looking for a place to sit and eat on a busy Gaslamp Friday evening, so by the end of the night our table was full of cronies from Pixar, ILM, Maverix and Blue Sky, as more and more friends came our way. Saturday night there was a big group heading off to dine in Old Town but I was very tired and the fact that the group was going a long way with no reservation made me balk (even though I later found out that they all had a fun evening and were seated no problem) and instead I went to dinner close by the convention center with Benton, Anson, Deanna, Bosco, Steve, Steward and his family and an old crony from my Colossal Pictures days, Antonio Toro.
Luscious French Toast.When you spend all day surrounded by nerds in spandex, it is good to have a hearty breakfast, which I did most days, starting with Rhode and Sam Hiti at the hotel we all shared a room at. Saturday, I had breakfast with John, Kirk and Dave at a Hawaiian themed diner by the harbour. The morning of the last day of the show started well with a HUGE Buffet Breakfast with Vincent Stall, and my hotel roomies Sam and Rhode.
Sunday evening wrapped the show with the traditional BBQ at the home of Derek Thompson’s ever gracious parents Barbara and Larry. This is the nicest end to the con for me. A large group of weary but happy attendees and exhibitors got together to wind down over gourmet hotdogs and drinks. Monday morning we slept in a little and had a breakfast at the SUN CAFE before we all made our separate ways home.
I managed to fit in a lot of socialising this year but I still missed out on eating with a lot of friends. That is what NEXT YEAR is for.
New Inventory!
No No No! Buy LOW sell HIGH!My SWAG for this year includes a book I have been seeking for some time, namely TIFFANY, written by Yann (prior collaborator with the great Denis Bodart) with artwork by Herval, an artist I first became familiar with through the Drawing Board. Herval has a clean style with great figure drawing and warm, clean colour palettes. The book is in French and although my ability to speak that language is close to zero, I can read it a little and I am battling my way through the book with a dictionary at the moment. The story is a whodunnit, concerning an elegant young woman, descended from the same family as Joan Of Arc, who takes over her brother’s detective agency after he is killed, to investigate his murder.
MONSTER ALLERGY by Alessandro Barbucci and Barbara Canepa, the husband and wife team that did Sky Doll. This time their artwork is an appealing fusion of both European and Japanese cartoony comics drawing styles.
GYPSY COLLECTED is an omnibus edition of 3 graphic albums, written by Thierry Smolderin and illustrated by a Swiss artist whom I admire very much; Enrico Marini. I first became aware of him when he drew in a very Manga-influenced style on a series called “Olivier Varèse” (also written by Smolderin) which was collected in an English edition called Negative Exposure. More recently, he illustrated a series called RAPTORS which was drawn in a different style. Gypsy shows his artwork in a transition between those two styles.
MASSIVE SWERVE by Robert Valley. I have bought about 4 variations on this book so far… hopefully Robert will actually put out a NEW Massive Swerve (rather than reprints and colour variations) sometime soon.
POPPING THROUGH PICTURES by Amanda Visell is a charming modern picture book in the tradition of little golden books; thick card stock pages and vivid painted, fun and cartoony illustrations. She also makes fantastic little toys which she sold at the con, and more of them can be seen in her Blog.
BUBBLES SKETCHBOOK by Luca Tieri was one of my favourite scores this year. This guy draws cartoons that leap from the page (or screen) with a crazy Pop-Rock energy. I’ve been a big fan of his energetic line and electric colour choices since I somehow stumbled onto his website a few years ago, so it is wonderful to finally own his book. Luca came all the way from Italy to attend the con and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person when he came by my booth with Rajesh from the Department of Art and Power.
Comic-Con exhausts even the super-salesmenI came by some great little books by way of swaps, including Marty Ito’s PAINTMONSTER book and
Doug Holgate’s SPAGHETTI WESTERN/CHECKMATE WORDSWORTH Mini, both of whom had come a very long way to be at the con (from Japan and Australia, respectively). In exchange for some hits of our OLD SPICE, Marc Nordstrom from B-Minus Comiks swapped me an anthology of their previous hilarious stuff plus a NEW issue of GO GO CHANGEBOTS, which is their very funny Transformers parody.
There were a few things that I wanted to buy but didn’t get, and I hope to pick up later. These include Chris Sanders’ new colour sketchbook, and Bill Presing’s beautiful BELLE DU JOUR book.
Close-out Sale!
2007 was the 10th year that I attended Comic Con, the 7th time as an exhibitor and the 4th time sharing an exhibitor-booth with good pal mr Rhode Montijo. In the time that I have been attending, Comic Con has not only grown in size but the focus and tone has changed as well. 10 years ago it was already huge but my memory of that time is that it was mostly about comics and the people you saw about the place, both exhibiting and attending, were overwhelmingly nerdy, pear-shaped or skinny, men.
In those days, the few women in attendance were most likely models paid by booths to be in costume. A few years later the numbers of women fans started to climb when we began to see tubby ladies dressed in Sailor Moon outfits. Now the Con is attended by a broad range of men women and children, and a lot of the fans walking around wearing HERO outfits are actually good looking… but thankfully there are still plenty of pear-shaped anime characters, fat Spidermen and skinny Hulks about the place because that is what Comic Con really is about, for me. On the subject of costumes I didn’t attend the masquerade this year so my costume watching was limited to what walked past my booth. This year there were a lot of buff-dudes strutting around in capes and speedos brandishing cardboard shields. Most of them were “spartans” methinks, but some had a Viking vibe.
Red-Light Special
Highlights of this year’s con (apart from those mentioned already) were:
Product Recall
The only bummer this year was the Faulty air-conditioner in our hotel that blew piping hot toilet smell into our room.
No interest ’till 2008!
See you next year!I came away from this year’s show very inspired to do some new stuff for next year. The quality of self published books has really soared from the Black and White sketchbooks done at Kinkos a few years ago, to square bound books, and then to the hardbound full colour books that we see now. The affordability of quality small-run printing means that it is a great time to be a self-publisher but on the other hand it means that you really have to raise your game if you want to stand out these days. The number of indy artists producing their own beautiful figurines and toys is also very inspiring… it gives me a lot to think about!
See you all NEXT YEAR!
(thanks to Rhode Montijo, Jeff Hansen, Sam Hiti, Jav Hernandez and Bosco Ng for the great photographs!)
I am writing up my lengthy Comic Con report at the moment, but I am waiting on some photos that I want to add to the report before I post it.
Plus, I actually need to fill out my much-delayed tax return this week, and for a guy who is as feeble with numbers as I am, that takes up more brain power and time than it should…
In the meantime, here is a sketch I did for Irma Navarro, while I sat at the Abismo/Nerve Bomb Comic Con booth.
