I am going to try and get through this all in one post.
Wednesday 2 days befoe the con:
All I did today was prepare the books for the van. I also picked up the van and the table and chairs.
Thursday:
I spent a good few hours in the morning moving a ton of boxes fom my basement to my main floor and then to the van. I am in horrible shape. After that, I said goodbye to the family and shot off to New York. ONce through the Lincoln tunnel, it was a fairly easy jaunt to the Javit's Center. I was not looking favorably on the prospoect of moving all of the product from the van to the booth by myself. I was then, therefore relieved at the sight of Harry Markos and partner X as well as his firend, Charlie. They helped immensely as we got the product to the booth. Unfortunately, I had to drive Partner X back to his hotel, then we went to dinner...Harry and I. We ended up eating dinner at the diner at the New Yorker Hotel. After dinner, we hung out in the bar at the right of the lobby to the hotel. Bruce McCorkindale, my friend and collaborator on the HERETIC comic which we are adapting, got a late start due to a delay and finally came in. Tony Fleecs also made it and we had the four people who were staying in the room. Tight fit to be sure! We hung out a bit more and had drinks with Steve Bryant and a few others. Of course, I was the last to hit the sackin the room.
FRIDAY:
On Friday, the con began. For the first half of the day, it was industry folk. Mainly...librarians! We love librarians! Laverne (Redhead Fangirl) was in for the show. I killed her in the first issue of the 2nd volume of OBS. She also runs a comic show which makes her incredibly cool. I dig her. At four o'clock, we switched over to a general admission and that is hwen we did about five times the sales as we did during the first half of the day. It was great to hang with Sal Cipriano who was excited because he could finally talk about Vengeance Of The Vapor, his creation...which Markosia is putting out in a couple months. Chris Dibari was there in all his Starship Trooper glory. He is the new ongoing artist for Troopers. It was good to see Jose Torres as well. Ryan Stegman and his girlfriend, Erin were also in ton for the show and I was glad to hang with them too. I am racking up friends in this biz, I just wish I could see them more often! The OBS TV announcement must have done well because the OBS trade dominated sales of the books at the Markosia table with a close second being Heretic #1. Bruce was a great salesman and that was it. Nobody else really sold at the table. Sal was ok at it. :)
The evening brought a super-secret meeting with Partner X and Harry and me. We discussed the future months for Markosia as well as a name change. Good stuff coming up.
After that, it was mainly staying close to the hotel. Chris Jones from Batman Strikes basically said a gay joke that had to do with comic business and ended with, "so that gives a new meaning to back end deal" and I about died. I am not kidding. Bruce and Sal and Chris JOnes and Mrs. Jones and Ryan Stegman were there as I collapsed backwards and basically must have passed out. I came to and the waitstaff were calling 911. I stopped them and all was good. I was freaked out for a while. I think I just had so much oxygen leave my head so fast due to talking and coughing, that I had no where to go but down. Chris is a very funny guy, though. I basically almost died laughing!
SATURDAY
My buds, Tom and Chris showed up today. I had told them I would get them in. They had a blast. They were able to see Stephen King, Stan Lee and the cheerleader from Heroes among others. They said Gary Coleman looked somewhat mean the whole time. Oh well. They were able to go wherever they wanted due to the badges. Later we went out together. More on that in a bit.
Joe Devito came as well. He is the creator of KONG: KING OF SKULL ISLAND. Markosia is adapting the book as a limited series. I am writing it and it was awesome to see the creator. Dan O'Connor and his wife were there so we had essentially the whole team for KONG, minus the colors and letters. Harry and Joe signed the contracts and Joe invited us to his house in PA (only twenty minutes or so from us) for some Kong schoolin'. We are calling it KONG Camp. Joe is very particular about how he wants his KONG, and Dan has been very patient thus far.
I continued to sell hard as did Bruce. We sold more Heretic #1 than anything else today with OBS the TPB coming in a close second.
In the evening, Harry and Tom and Chris and Bruce and myself went to the Comic Geek Speak dinner. We felt we should go since the CGS listeners were coming in huge numbers and buying books at the show. We certainly appreciated the CGS family this weekend!
After that, we took off for a club for which I can not remember the name. It was the Zenescope, Silent Devil, Arcana party. Harry went home.
We had a great time. We met up with Sal. I wanted to catch the Marvel party, but there are only so many hours in the day. I met up with Dave from War of The Independants and we came up with an idea to do over 50 variuant covers and a super secret variant.
That was the booze talkin'...
All in all, we went to bed around 3:30-4:00 AM.
SUNDAY
Man, this must be boring to read.
We sold more books today. The show ended. We packed up and loaded the truck. Bruce and Harry and I went to Times Square and had pizza atan awesome place called John's.
I really have to go to a con someday and not exhibit.
:)
BEST BOOK OF THE CON:
Of course, other than HERETIC :)
GEARHEAD published by Arcana. It is written by a fella named Hopeless and drawn by a fella named Mellon. Kevin Mellon is amazing! I told Phil Hester he should be drawing 13 Steps. We'll see what happens and if Phil agrees.
