JaMiE BaKeR: fallout

I did this BATGIRL doodle (in grey brush-pen and pencil) along with a bunch of other super-heroine sketches, while sitting at my booth during last year’s Comic Con in San Diego. Rafael Navarro put dibs on this one almost immediately, but in the hectic swirl that is Comic Con, we didn’t get a chance to meet again before the con ended. However we finally got to close the transaction earlier this month at Wondercon in San Francisco. It is nice to know that she has gone to a good home…

This is the title page for my Dad’s book “Elephants in the News”. At one point I had thought it may have been a good design for the cover, but instead the publisher used an interior illustration that had been featured on the earliest mock up, because that image had become associated with the book in the minds of so many people.

This illustration was done in coloured pencil on Canson paper and then I adjusted the saturation and contrast in Photoshop. The rough sketch for it was already posted here.

Thanks to all the people who came by the Abismo/ Nerve Bomb booth at WONDERCON last weekend. It was a low key show for me (as I didn’t have any new books and I didn’t do any shopping) but it was fun, as always, because of the people-watching and meeting old friends.

See you all at A.P.E. where I should FINALLY have my new book on sale!

Here are some of the sketches I did while sitting at the Abismo/NerveBomb booth at last months Comic Con. Drawing famous heroes is a first for me, and I had quite a bit of fun doing it. I’ll post some more when I get time.

Speaking of Comic-Con, I was only recently able to get my hands on the stuff I purchased down there, my stash was packed up in some boxes that I couldn’t get to for a week or two, but now I am spending the evenings reading through all the stuff I bought…

The daylight hours are spent drawing elephants, and I still have quite a few to go. I’ll post some of those too, as they get finished in the next week or two. My Dad, (the author of the book), is in the USA for a visit, and we will visit some Civil War sites in Virginia and Maryland later this month, along with my brother Joey who lives out that way.

After that quick break, I will be back to drawing and colouring elephant illustrations… and hopefully I will have finished all of them by the end of September.

UPDATE: I posted some more Super-Heroine scribbles:
BatGirl
Powergirl

The annual pilgrimage, by a caravan of us devout dorks, to COMIC CON (DorkWorld Mecca) has come and gone… and, as always, I had a lot of fun communing with “my people”.

The Caravan
Rhode and I drove down to San Diego on Tuesday in a heavily laden car, tailed closely by Bosco and Steve (looking like assassins in their huge, rented pimp-wagon) who kept an eye on our back wheels, which were splayed cartoonishly outwards by the load of product. (The lads also escorted us homeward on the following Monday; car weighed down with Rhode’s cash this time, breaking the trip back with the now traditional majestic meat meal at HARRIS RANCH Steak house on I-5).

Location, Location, Location
This year Abismo/Nerve Bomb had a fantastic booth location (unlike many of our friends) and we put a lot of effort into our display and were very happy with the result, even though we had to deal with Jumpsuit-envy. Most years, I experience some kind of Snafu with either a print deadline, my hotel reservation, or a shipment nightmare… This year all went smoothly at my end. Rhode schooled me in how to be philosopical when confronted by life’s mishaps, not only when he graciously went along with the jumpsuit thing (my idea) but also when the mis-direction of several boxes of his books (sent to his home by mistake, rather than the con) made him less upset than I became after paying for two Danish pastries, and later discovered only one in the paper bag when I returned to our booth.

Verilly, Rhode is a classy dude.

Speaking of class, we were BOTH treated to a sneak peek of the awesome first 40 pages of the DEATH DAY graphic novel by the Mighty Sam Hiti, who was our hotel roomie this year. I don’t want to give anything away about the book except to say that this project is very different to Tiempos Finales and is even more ambitious. I was very happy to be part of the inner circle; the rest of you will just have to wait a while to see this book. Hah!

Comic con or Media con?
The convention floor was arranged such that I rarely saw exhibitor friends and whenever we met, the discussion was about the layout of the con itself rather than the latest inspiring book, or new talent we had discovered. In recent years there has been a steady growth of big glitzy booths, but this is the first year that it really irked me. Previously, the stuff I was interested in was concentrated in a few areas and was easy to browse during a quick break. This time around, most of the things I wanted to see were sprinkled from one end of the show to the other, hidden away in hard to find nooks and crannies between the massive displays of huge corporate booths…. Artists trying to show their work were placed right in the maw of the media madness zone, consequently I didn’t get to see much of what I was looking for.

Some people said Comic Con is now too big. Art and Comics are being overwhelmed by other things; booths promoting TV shows, Toys, Movies, Games and so forth. I understand why media-producers want booths at Comic Con; the most elaborate and expensive booth, brimming with booth-babes, blaring music and flashing monitors, is substantially cheaper than even the cheapest advertising campaign. They get to broadcast their content to over a hundred thousand pairs of eyeballs over the course of a week, which they hope will then translate into free BUZZ that will expand in the blogosphere. But I can’t figure out why the general public pays to see what are essentially huge advertisements, but there you have it, they do. Judging from the density of the crowds in the media promotions areas the general public is very interested in what they have to offer.

Personally, I don’t mind if Comic Con becomes a general pop-culture media supermarket, but in that case “the product” should be organized so that you can find what you are looking for. I heard rumours that in future the artists alley, small press and art booths may be moved upstairs, leaving the main hall exclusively available to the three-ring media circus. Some artists were annoyed by that idea but I would welcome it, especially if you could buy a ticket to either (a) both areas or, if you preferred, (b) only one or the other. The whole thing could be called MEDIA CON and only the upstairs part; that actually deals with comics, could be called COMIC-con.

Others felt that it might be time to create an entirely NEW con, where the focus would be brought back onto artwork, artists, writers and creators. We then wondered why there are no cons after the middle of the year on the west coast and why there isn’t one in LA, a city with perhaps the densest concentration of cartoonists… Maybe its is time for a Fall convention located in LA, called CREATOR-con or CONTENT-Con (or simply TOON con)?

Anyway, that’s enough of my rambling… It’s time to talk about the good stuff: Comics, and the costumed and pear-shaped people who consume them!

The Haul
I picked up MOST of the stuff on my shopping list (the balance to be procured forthwith at shops here and there) managing to score a few great sketches in my copy of Out of Picture from my sometime Co-workers Daniel Munoz Lopez and Robert Mckenzie. In addition to the stuff I had planned to buy ahead of time I got a copy of Chris Sanders‘ new sketchbook and pretty much every comic ever drawn by Micheal Aushenker.

Con Beauties
Rhode and I were visited by a woman representing a booth full of Convention models who suggested that we contact her if we need any “Booth Babes”. I pointed out that in our nifty high-waisted jumpsuits we were our own booth babes this year, and if that she had the need for any “booth dorks” in future, she knew who to contact. As for costumed beauties, I saw the most beautiful Wonder Woman I’ve ever seen at the con (and I’ve seen a few, of all shapes and sizes over the years), a very pretty Alice in Wonderland and (brace yourself for a creepy admission) the life sized Princess Leia mannequin in the Gentle Giant booth was exerting a strange attraction on me as well…

Some other great costumes were the two guys painted in shades of grey who were MARV and KEVIN from Sin City, a teeny Supergirl with a huge presence, a great Galactus, a pretty Powergirl and the Robot Caveman guy. I saw a near perfect Chewbacca and, in a strangely disturbing sight, I saw another low-rent Chewie with his head off smoking a ciggie. This year I saw more great costumes on the floor than at the Masquerade, though dancing ninja lady was a crowd pleasing event-closer.

Got any Freebies?
We saw a little camera crew (wearing name tags identifying the production company of a famous media mogul) wandering by the booths focussing their camera on the covers of various books, one after the other, as someone read the titles into a microphone. I pictured the mogul himself, sitting in a hot tub, chomping on a cigar while he watched a live feed, and drank in the pop culture cocktail from afar… Others were more direct; both small children and media folk are always hot for free comics and come by blatantly asking for them. I tend to oblige, as long as the freebie-hunter is less than 4 feet tall. The panhandling is less cute from people who got in for free and are on an expense account (if they are as important as they say they are, anyway). It especially sucks giving a free comic book to a reviewer who then tells everyone on the internet how dumb he thinks my comic is…

Ah well, that’s SHOWBIZNISS.

Quality Time
Happily, a reviewer who has actually written some NICE things about my silly comics, Michael May, stopped by to say hello in person and it was a pleasure to meet him even if only briefly. Meeting people at the booth is one of my favourite things about Cons and this year was no different, especially as I wasn’t getting about much myself. Talented brothers Mike and Matt Cossin from Las Vegas, came by and showed me their very impressive comics work for Humanoids. I met Sonny Liew Whos Malinky Robot comic I have admired for a while, and I had a long chat with Nikos Koutsis, who had come all the way from Greece to attend, about the comics biz in America and Europe the different tastes and so on. Two animation/storyboarder ladies from Vancouver bought some stuff and chatted a bit.

This year I was selling sketches, so thanks to those people who bought some: Dan Bois, Russell Vossler (who usually picks up some of my stuff), Irma and Rafa Navarro. Speaking of sketching, I forgot to attend the Drawing Board Sketch session at the Marriot this year (after coming out of the Masquerade we were so dazed that we weren’t thinking straight) consequently I didnt see as many Drawing Boarders as I would have liked…

While wandering through the maze of media noise looking for some booth (which I never located) I stumbled upon old pal and mega-talent Cam de Leon, looking very forlorn in his overshadowed booth. He later visited our booth and we swapped our legal war-stories…

The always entertaining Kirk Thatcher came by to catch his breath. It is surely proof of how draining Comic-Con can be that even Kirk looked beat down for a moment on Saturday, until the B-Minus crew hooked him up with a Tecate and we gave him somewhere to sit and drink it. He paid us back for the use of a chair by scaring away our customers with his smart remarks but redeemed himself by treating us to his absolutely perfect GREEDO impression. Hilarious. On the Thursday night I had an enjoyable dinner with both Kirk and my dear chums John Stevenson and Carol Hughes, who I see less of now that they live in LA.

In addtion to con-going pals from the Bay Area (such as the Ghostbots, the E-Ville Press folk, Maverixes, and other cronies) who I often see at home, I usually meet a few friends and ex co-workers I haven’t seen in a while at Comic con. Sometimes it is the only place I DO get to see them. This year Dave Pryor showed us all his new 2 Minute music video he has been making in his spare time. Colossal Pictures compadres Sam Register, and later Sue Crossley also put in much welcome appearances. I was happy to see (briefly) Aaron Blecha, formerly of the Bay Area but now based in London.

Rhode’s been doing cons much longer than I have, and he has many regular visitors who I enjoy meeting each time we do San Diego. Edward Artinian and his charming family visited, and I finally got to meet El Gato’s Micheal Aushenker after hearing about him for years. He led us all to a part of town most of us hadn’t visited before, and to a trendy Sushi restaurant/dance Club where we were by far the ugliest people in the room. After a tasty meal he then showed us how to sashay up to the ladies on the dance floor.

Ted Mathot demonstrated the “never say die” attitude that enabled him to pump out over 160 pages of comics since last Comic Con (in addition to his strenuous day job) when he determinedly led a tired posse of us through town on Sunday night, trying to find a pub that hadn’t already closed. Some of us needed to debate the Short Storm/Tall Wolverine thing and Sam needed to wash the broken glass (aquired at “dinner”) out of his mouth.

Rhode’s childhood pal Jeff, and his wife Lovelyn, often visited Abismo/NerveBomb HQ, as they have in years past, and they brought us sandwiches and burritos a few days in a row. We had an obscenely huge breakfast with them before we left San Diego on Monday morning. The servings at HASH HOUSE Au Go Go are criminally huge, such that not even we dedicated starch munchers can get through them, a fact proven when Jeff (a betting man) threw a twenty dollar gauntlet on the table and flat out challenged all present to try.

Regrets..
Me: STILL didn’t hook up with a Vampirella model (next year for sure, though).
Rhode: Not buying the Unicorn VS Werewolf t-shirt.

OTHER Perspectives
Don’t take my word for it; here are some more CON reports: Ted Mathot, Javier Hernandez (including a great photo of JAV chilling with GALACTUS), Sho Murase, the Out of Picture crew, Lyla Warren’s PHOTO gallery (I grabbed a few, thanks Lyla!) and the mighty Ronaldo. Also, don’t forget to check out Flickr, the AFTERMATH thread at the Drawing board, and YouTube. Still want more? How about watching a short about Convention costumes (needs divyx player) and another called nerds in paradise (thanks to Ms MONSTER for the movie links). Bosco has some GREAT pix online: gallery1, gallery2, gallery3, gallery4

And finally, Rhode and I have some cameo appearances in the magnificent Hel on Ice video, produced by the B-MINUS crew.

See you next year, definitely at Comic Con (we paid already) and who knows… maybe even at Creator Con…
ITS ON!

Work has been busy lately, very busy indeed. Which is a good problem to have in many ways, but I haven’t had much spare time for making comics this year. Even though I thumbnailed out several comics stories at the end of 2005, the combination of animation work and a side project with my Dad has meant that I haven’t had any time to finish off a new comic book in time for this years Comic Con, and the side project wont be printed till later…

Rhode and I just found out that Abismo/Nerve Bomb has landed a great Comic Con booth space this year in an excellent location (BOOTH #1428). Rhode has quite a bit of new material to sell but sadly I don’t have any new books. Once again; not the worst problem to have, especially as many exhibitor friends are unhappy with their booth locations…

To ensure that such a sweet Booth doesn’t go to waste, my NEW stuff this year will be original art, which I have never sold before. I have quite a few doodles which might be sell-able if I take the time to add in the details on the hands and feet which I often lazily leave out of sketches.

I’ll try to crank out some more water colours or coloured pencil pics in the next few weeks. Definately lots of scribbles of my own characters and maybe even some pinups of famous fan favourite characters… I haven’t made up my mind about that yet…

I actually saw this scene take place at Comic Con one year.

This illustration is for the next edition of the Field Guide to Gomers, a catalog of comic-convention goers, (and other dorky folk) that a group of us card-carrying nerds are compiling, in the spirit of “it takes one to know one.”

The first edition was hastilly put together by a group of us when exhibiting for the very first time at Comic-Con a few years ago. Despite being assembled at the last minute (while we waited for our other books to be printed) The GOMER GUIDE was a lot of fun to make and one of our hotest sellers that year. (see some pics from the 1st edition here and here)

Since then we have been able to identify and document quite a few other phylum and genus of “Gomers” (such as OBI-WANNA-BE illustrated above) so we are long over due for an expanded edition.

People said this year’s Alternative Press Expo was slower than the last, but I heard that last year too. APE used to be first on the Californian convention-calendar, and benefited from the build-up of gomer excitement during the 7 months following Comic Con. That nerd dividend now goes to Wondercon (since the date switch with APE) which may explain the lower attendance? Or, perhaps the suddenly balmy weather inspired San Franciscans, trapped indoors by weeks of rain, to forgo comics for a weekend outside…

Ah, who knows? And in the end, who cares? I enjoyed myself as I always do at APE. I don’t mind if it doesn’t get any bigger; It is a nice, human sized convention. Best of all, the attendees are hungry for home-cooked comics, which is what I was serving up (even though it was leftovers) including the 2nd printing of Rocket Rabbit #1, which is technically new for THIS show, as the art wasn’t completed till after last year’s APE (My ability to rationalise my own lameness will not be beat).

The Books
I believe that you haven’t really been to a comic convention unless you (A) see a Klingon eating a hotdog and (B) go home with your bags stuffed with comics. As APE is an EXPO (the THINKING person’s con) there are no pear shaped people in heroic outfits… but thankfully you can still get comics. I was able to get some good stuff by swapping my books, but had to pay hard cash to those people that weren’t bamboozled by my Nerve Bomb dollars…

CRIMSON CLOVER by Johnny Siu. I had exchanged some emails with Johnny earlier in the year when he was looking for printing options, so it was pleasant to see the finished product: a sweet little full colour story book.

PYRAMID CAR and ADVANCED TALK by Scott Campbell. Do you like dumb gags as much as I do? This guy REALLY understands the full, comedic power of stupid. Most people do not realise that it takes amazing smarts to do good “dumb humour” and this guy has Mensa-level powers of dumb-comedy. Pyramid Car is a funny little book. And so is Advanced Talk. Find them and buy them. Do not read them when eating or drinking lest you honk cup-ramen out your nose.

MALINKY ROBOT by Sonny Liew. This is a whole book by one of the contributors to FLIGHT. There are a lot of things I could compare this to, but it has a unique look and flavour so why do that annoying “compare” thing? It is best just to say that the artwork and writing are both fun and evocative.

BASILISK by Kazimir Strzepek. I have picked up all of Kaz’s comics work that I have found (most of it at last year’s APE) and it has all been really fun to read. This particular mini collects a 16 page funny fantasy story that was drawn for an anthology called ELFWORLD, which is being put together by Jeffrey Brown.

FISHCHILD STORIES by Mary Patterson. This is a tasty little collection of her charming paintings of animals in mundane human settings (my personal favourite is the rabbit shaving himself while looking in a bathroom mirror). For this collection Mary added some captions beneath the pics that evoke a story on every page.

NOBLE BOY by Scott Morse. My APE table was near Scott’s, and I could see him painting and drawing the entire time, he never stops creating. Scott works at a major animation studio, is a prolific comics artist in his SPARE time, AND has a family… I don’t know how he does it all, and so well….

CAUGHT CREATURES by Daniel Davis. Not a comic book but a collection of Daniel’s creature designs with a brief bio on each in the form of a wacky haiku poem. This book is beautifully printed.

One of the funniest comics I saw wasn’t even on sale. It was by a guy called Raz, who sadly didn’t get the story finished in time for APE, but he gave us an advance screening of the rough cut when he let us read it in his sketchbook. Powerful stuff. Rude. Wrong, but SO good. I saw, but didn’t buy, some great minis by Tom Gauld. I have seen these around town (at Super7 I believe) so I hope to get them later, I will kick myself if they aren’t there, though.

Apart from comics, I picked up a hand-made Journal by Kate Ranson-Walsh. The trouble with nicely made sketchbooks and journals is that I am afraid to sully them with any of my sappy writing or crude little pictures… let’s see if I can brave it with this one.

The Show
While sitting behind the exhibitors table, I chatted with lots of great people; old friends, total strangers and everything in between, which is always a pleasant aspect of exhibiting for me. Here’s a day by day breakdown of the show.

Friday: APE 2006 started a day earlier than usual when we got our Abismo/Nerve Bomb badges Friday night at the Last Gasp mixer held in their rambling, comics stuffed facility. Rhode said it was like the warehouse scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, only stuffed with comics. The staff was trusted the geeks and let them into their Ali Baba’s cave of pop-culture goodies; booze in one hand and comic books in the other.

Saturday: Rhode’s just released CLOUD BOY books went on sale for the first time after they were brought directly to the con by Oscar (Rhode’s new bodyguard) who handled all the many sales, leaving Rhode free to indulge his mob of fans. A few people who bought my books at previous shows came by to tell me that they had enjoyed them. So if you are one of those people, thanks for taking the time to do that.

KAZU visited our table and Rhode and I were able to express our admiration for all that he is involved in; his personal books and of course FLIGHT. Kazu recently posted a link to my blog from his own site which drove an unbelievable volume of traffic my way and I was able to thank him for that in person. Then we talked about story writing, creative blocks, and whether there is any guide through that process… which is something that Rhode and I swap notes on all the time.

Saturday evening has been The Isotope mini-comics awards party for the last several APEs. Apart from it’s obvious appeal of being a place to buy comics, I enjoy the Isotope for the people who work and hang-out there. I hear the funniest conversations each time I visit, including the party this year. As the store filled up with partyers, some of us chatted out on the sidewalk in the fresh air, as the glamour of Mini comics’ most prestigious awards ceremony played out before us through the front window.

Jared filled me in on the details of his on-going special effects make-up gig on a feature film. He’s never happier than when slapping artificial gore around. You can read more about his encounters with Michael Berryman, Ruth Buzzi and co on Jared’s blog.

Marc and AK regaled me with their hilarious hard drinking tales, and Marc gave me tips on how to pull off a discreet booze-puke in a social setting. It is not a technique that a boring old tee-totaller like myself really needs, but it made for hilarious listening, which is always the case when any of the B-Minus crew get on a storytelling roll. Plus, I got to hear all the inside scoop on the Ms Monster back-story and heard previews of some outrageously hilarious stories from upcoming B-Minus comics.

I was in the middle of telling Marc and AK about The gomer consultancy idea that Lon, Derek, Bosco, Rhode and I have been bandying about as our latest get-rich scheme, when we all had to talk Rafa down from the precipice of a harsh Midichlorian freak out! An embittered Star Wars fan having a crisis of faith is a hard thing to watch, and distraction is the best remedy… It was only by reminding him how cool the new Battlestar Galactica is that we were able to calm him down. BSG was a healing, soothing balm to his prequel ravaged soul… (It has been observed that it would be tough to convince someone just walking out of The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 that by 2006 Star Wars would be be so much flabby ass, and Battlestar Galactica would be THE SHIT…)

Sunday: By early afternoon Rhode’s Cloud Boy books were all sold out, which didn’t surprise anyone, except perhaps the modest Mr. Montijo himself. At the end of the day, Cold Cut distributors picked up a LOAD of each of my books which definitely put me firmly in the black financially, and meant that I had much less stuff to lug home.

The day ended at Chef Jia’s Hunan restaurant on the border between North Beach and Chinatown. I had signed an exclusive agreement for a pleasant deCONpression dinner with Javier and Rhode. A pleasant easy going end to a fun, easy going con.

Having been labelled pretentious for posting about Fellini, (and by an Italian no less) I’m now in tactical retreat back to lowbrow territory with a post about comics. Specifically Wondercon 2006, (AKA: the Nerd Prom) which I exhibited at this last weekend.

When exhibiting at conventions, Nerve Bomb international has been affiliated with the Abismo multimedia giant for the past few years. However on this particular occasion, Abismo CEO and CFO Mr Rhode Montijo, was attending to urgent affairs abroad, and so the fabulous Ms. Michelle Ritchie came along to move product in his stead.

The Bizniss:
There was a great reaction to the advance copy of Rhode’s latest book, CLOUD BOY. It was a tractor beam; stopping people in their tracks and reeling them in with its magnetic powers of cuteness. Everyone familiar with Rhode’s oeuvre agreed that this book is a huge creative breakthrough for him, because although it continues his focus on cute characters, this one doesn’t get murdered, mutilated, maimed or mauled by the end of the story.

Sales of Nerve Bomb titles were lower than last year, even though Saturday was so crowded that potential attendees were turned away at the door. I assume that my entire customer base was amongst those turned away. It has always been a mystery why sales are better some days than others. The calculus of sales are influenced by so many factors: attendance, booth-placement, booth-layout, sales-pitch, quality of display, quality of material and whether I have a shitty look on my face, or not.

The People:
But for me the cons are not only about selling my books (just as well, eh?). I also go in order to buy other stuff and to socialise, not only with people I get to see around town (such as Nate, Ted, the Ghostbots, the Maverix, Enrico, Ronnie and Tess), but all kinds of fun, cool, and crazy folks that I don’t see anyplace else but at cons (such as Mark and Anne, Ragnar, George, Amelia, and others). Where else can you chat with Spiderman and his Dad?

Although he was away for the con itself, the night before the show Rhode morphed into a Roadie, and helped setup the Abismo/Nerve Bomb booth, which is when we met the folks from Steam Crow. Thankfully, they took this photo (below) that provides documentary evidence that Rhode was physically present for at least part of Wondercon 2006. As you can see in this pic, Daniel is ready for action and that pumped up ‘tude is evident in the Steam Crow art and their fine booth display. The booth especially so, considering that this was their first show. I still haven’t got a nice vinyl banner, after a few years doing these things…

Socialising got off to a great start this year when I found out that we were sitting next to Rafael Navarro (who is also in that category of good friends who I only see at cons). This year Raf introduced me to some of his cronies, Mike Wellman and Joshua Dysart. The three of them lounged around like lazy rockstars strumming guitars, while waiting for their hangovers to wear out, occasionally leaping up to serenade any passing ladies with a pitch about their comics, and then languidly slouching back in their chairs again.

On the Friday evening a whole gang of us (including Mark and Anne, Rafa, Mike, myself and more) went out for Hunan Food. We managed to find a table that would seat about 10 of us in a place (the always good “Henry’s Hunan”) that would tolerate our loud, obnoxious conversations about a broad spectrum of assinine subjects.

Ms Monster and the B-minus crew graced me with their presence at my booth, (for photo evidence, see below) and I got to feel validated by their cool a few times during the weekend. Also I had quite a few fun and interesting chats with people who’s names I didn’t catch; just people who bought something and stayed to talk for a while, and that was a really fun aspect of the show for me this year. So thanks a lot to all you folks for coming by.

Early one morning, before the doors opened, I got talking to Stuart Ng at his booth. He told me of his recent trip to the Angouleme comics festival in France, and his meetings with the artists and publishers there. I droned on about European graphic novels and my desire that more of them would be translated into English and distributed more widely in the English speaking world. To thank Stuart for patiently tolerating my bending his ear, I then bought almost my entire swag of stuff from his booth… As I said before, buying books was on my list of things to do. So without further ado here is…

The Swag:
“Claire de Nuit” is by one of my favourites, mr Jordi Bernet. This is a French collection of his strips about a cute streetwalker (”Clara de Noche” in the original Spanish) who is reminiscent of the pinup icon Bettie Page. (in English translations the character is called “Betty by the hour”). The art style is more cartoony than Bernet uses in other titles, such as “Torpedo” and the drawings are so full of appeal that he makes hooking seem wholesome and fun, so this book requires a lot of suspension of disbelief and certainly isn’t for everyone.

“Tao Bang” is an epic comics series that feels like an over the top fantasy film. The formula for a Gomer piece of popular culture is, any two fanboy obsessions plus sexy girls, so the recipe for this book is: pirates+dinosaurs+sexy girls=Tao Bang. The artwork is a superb collaboration between Fred Blanchard and a fellow I once worked with, the super talented Didier Cassegrain. Years ago, at the Paris Disney studio, he would distract the rest of us layout artists with his drawings of beautiful girls (usually featuring curvacious bottoms).

“les Lumieres de L’Amalou” by Claire Wendling. I’ve had my eye on this series of beautiful comics albums for a while, looking through the pages at cons before, but the cost of all 5 seemed exhorbitant. I finally broke down and bought the BIG album that collects the series. It was expensive but well worth it, as the art is simply amazing, page after page. Plus, at the slow speed that I read French, I have reading material to last me a year, so it wasn’t expensive at all, if I look at it like that… (rationalising guilty pleasures is one of my super-powers)

Without question Wendling is one of my all time favourite artists and she has exerted her influence on many others as well, including an artist I had never heard of before, but whose brilliant work I became acquainted with at this year’s Wondercon….

“AYANIMEYA”, the beautiful colour sketchbook by Alina Urusov, was the prize find of the show for me this year, and I recommended it to everyone that I could. The range and depth of her drawing skill immediately blew me away, but when I found out that she is a recent graduate from Sheridan college and is about 20 years old, It didn’t only blow my mind; It made me want to blow out my brains. But I quickly thought better of that particular plan, instead, I went home broke all my pens and pencils, threw my art supplies out the window, then set my portfolio on fire and danced around it in the nude, wailing and gnashing my teeth.

I’m hoping that in exchange for this ritual sacrifice, the gods of drawing talent will finally send me some… If not then I guess I’ll just have to do some more sketch practise…

Another Comic-Con has come and gone, and I had a really great time this year. When I got home and had the Nerve Bomb accounting department tally up all my profits, I discovered that I actually did better financially LAST time, but I had a much more enjoyable time of it this year. Probably because I had a new book that I was pleased with, a great booth and a cool booth-buddy.

Rhode, Bosco and I drove down to San Diego on the Tuesday before the con, breaking the trip with a stop-over in LA that night, where Tony and Gale played host to the three of us, and we all shared an enjoyable meal at their house. Later, we watched “Still life with animated dogs“, which is a really unique film by Paul Fierlinger, in Tony and Gale’s newly built home theatre.

The good vibes continued when this year I managed to side step the annual screw up with my hotel reservation. It was becoming something of a tradition for me to be jerked around by whichever hotel I was booked at. My buddy Bosco wasn’t so lucky however, having found himself checked in to the Hillbilly Hell Hotel, so he came and shared the suite with Rhode and myself.
Despite the cramped quarters and nightly snoring wars (poor ole Rhode being caught in the crossfire of honking blasts coming from me and Bosco), we all got along great (especially after Jenny gave Rhode some earplugs).

To the left is a sketch of Rocket and the Professor that I did for Russell Vossler while at my booth. He was kind enough to email me a scanned copy.

This year, in addition to the usual suspects, such as Ronnie and Enrico (who had briefly toyed with the idea of NOT exhibiting this year), The sketchbook sessions guys, and the folks from B-Minus, even more of our pals got into the act as exhibitors, namely the E-Ville press crew and the Bunny Mouth kids.

Each night we were able to take some time to socialize in Town, even managing to pull off the amazing feat of seating about 20 of us in one restaurant. I find that most nights I want to spend time with so many people that organising such a big get-together becomes impossible, but somehow we made it work at least once. Plus, the sushi was great.

I was able to hang out with a lot of people (which I regreted not doing much of last time) and I got to meet some people who I’d only previously known through email or by their art websites. (including Douglas who took this pic) So it was nice to be able to match faces to the talents.

The con isn’t the same for me without one of our mini-traditions, a Sunday night get-together over hot-dogs at Derek’s parents’ place in San Diego, and this time it was done in their newly purchased home. A very pleasant evening was spent eating hot dogs and geeking out on comics lore (even some people who’d prefer not to admit it were geeking out… HARD).

The drive home to San Francisco on Monday was a straight shot up boring old Highway 5, but interrupted briefly by a tasty evening meal at HARRIS’ steak house. A possible NEW con tradition that I learned last year from Bosco.

I picked up a lot of neat books.. but even so, if I have any regrets about this year’s con it’s just that I didn’t do more shopping around… and that I missed out on hooking it up with Vampirella again…

Oh well.

We have our BOOTH assignment and it turns out that Rhode and I will be pretty much in the center of the action.

Headquarters for the ABISMO/NERVE BOMB media assault is booth #1229.

The booth right next to ours will be the base of operations for the mighty SAM HITI (creator of last years indy hit Tiempos Finales) and his pal Doug Tennapel (creator of Gear, Creature Tech, and a whole bunch of other coolness).

The map also shows the location of various other artists from the DRAWING BOARD community, including my buddies Ronnie and Enrico and the super talented lads from E-VILLE press.