I’ll be in Artists Alley at table G10.

Basically, go inside the front door, go to the extreme right until you hit the wall, TURN LEFT keep walking. I’m in the right hand corner next to The Artists Choice display. Bad sale location, great for security.

My panels are:

Writers on Writing with Chris Claremont, Jimmy Palmiotti, Tom DeFalco

Friday 5:45-6:45 Room 1A18

Men are from Krypton, Women are from Paradise Island with Jimmy Palmiotti, Jamal Igle, Barb Kesel

Saturday 4:15-5:15 1 A17

Creator Resources

Sunday 12:30-1:30

Free Creator Resources list for 300 participants. Insurance, legal, online resources.

There will be a small snippet preview of the new GN I am drawing for Vertigo at the Vertigo panel, but I can’t recall when that is.

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A preview of the new graphic novel Gone to Amerikay at Comic Book Resources’ Robot6 blog, with pix. Story by Derek McCulloch, art by me.

Sarah Jaffe blogging about Men are from Krypton, Women are From Paradise Island, the very popular panel at NYCC featuring me, Barbara Kesel, Jimmy Palmiotti, Abby Denson, Jamal Igle. Much fun was had by all.

The Financial Times on the relationship between comics and film, centering on the upcoming Watchmen movie, which had New York City plastered with posters everywhere one looked. Everyone is watching the Watchmen because you can’t help it.

To nourish that urgency, there is nearly always in action comics or graphic novels an elemental contact with reality, even when disguised or encrypted. Never mind that these stories are fantasy, or in 300 fantasised history. The best of them feed on the actual or parody-actual, like meat grabbed through the bars of the frame. Watchmen makes extraordinary reading today, and must have done 20 years ago, since author Moore proposes a doom-ridden America governed into the 1980s by Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford is a supporting character. Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan might never have been born.

Another lettered state edition drawing in colored pencil, this one for Sue McLoughlin.

Things went very well at NYCC. I did better than last year with A Distant Soil graphic novel sales up a bit, which was heartening. Up by a third, I think. But it was nerve wracking, as most buyers were waiting for last minute Sunday bargains, so for awhile I thought I was going to get stuck shipping home boxes of stuff (nope.)

Here’s a con overview from The Beat.

I didn’t bring much to sell at the show anyway, since I knew I would have a very bad location (great for enjoying the show with friends and doing deals, bad for sales.) I also shipped the wrong box of art, the one with the Captain Atom pages and like works which don’t have much of a market, so comic pages didn’t move.

Still I had completed a number of advance commissions and everyone who ordered their drawings picked them up at the show, so lots of art sold in the end. I have never been asked for so many commissions before. I have raised my prices, but that didn’t slow down requests. I was unable to do them, alas, unless people asked in advance of the show.

I skipped most parties, but for the first time in my life, someone tried to hit on me AND a male companion simultaneously at the CBLDF gathering, which was quite a shock.

Rantz Hosely (who is attractive, yet married, I must conclude we looked decorative together) and I were talking quietly with one another at the bar when two very aggressive men approached us and asked, “Do you swing?”

While I stood there and blinked at them trying to process what had just transpired, Rantz quipped, “Sure, I like ’50′s music.”

Good times, good times.

At the DC party, I arrived very late and two men came to my table to sit with me.

Party crashers.

In short order, their ignorance of the event and what we were doing there became apparent as I tried to explain to them that yes, people really do draw comics with their own hands. Freelancers couldn’t get into that party, but by golly, these two dopes claimed their cousin got them in. They didn’t even look like they were the same species, much less cousins.

They asked “What’s this party for?” so that was a clue they had crashed it, see. It’s pretty bad when you don’t have market penetration at your own party. I got up to go to the banquet to get some food and they quickly gathered their things and left, but not before they had scarfed down some free eats.

Yes, I got sick again. I left the show early, and would have left even earlier had I not had a commission to deliver. The customer didn’t show until late on Sunday, and then I was out of there. Nothing major and horrible like last year’s bout with whooping cough, just annoying. And I sound like a frog.

There was one retailer selling buy one get TWO FREE graphic novels, and I did just that. I also bought an Aquaman doll from Tonner and I await delivery as they had sold out at the show. It was on sale 2/3 off.

Oh my God, it’s gorgeous. I’ll post a pic as soon as I have it.

Looks like conventions are the way to get uber-bargains. I am very much looking forward to Charlotte Heroes Con, because if the sales are anything like last year, I am going to have to back up a truck to the door to haul goodies away.

Bad news: very few vendors selling art supplies. Blue Line, where were you??????

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Well, I won’t link to them, and I don’t know why I should be surprised, but I’m surprised.

I woke up this morning to find the details of a private meeting on an industry website. I seem to recall a couple of fans in the area who clearly could not wait to send out carrier pigeons, a flair, and a satellite transmission to relate the details of this private meeting in a public forum.

Or maybe someone bugged my laptop.

Speaking of laptop, some utterly execrable person related a completely nasty interpretation of how I got it in a public forum (which I am now editing out as the posts have been removed).

It was a hideous, crappy, nasty thing to say.

And why would I say it to A FAN? Oh, yeah, right I WOULDN’T.

The very same day some creepy fan came up claiming JMS and I no longer speak because of our serious falling out over BoLS. So, either we don’t speak at all according to fandom, or he is so depressed over a comic book he sends me computer equipment as consolation prize.

Wow, how retarded that sounds when you just call it out.

It really is beyond the limit that I have to run around putting out these fires. If I had known someone would put a sleazy spin on a Christmas present, I’d have shut up about it.

Cripes, it was bad enough when we had to deal with stupid crap in fanzines, but in 48 hours, it’s the telephone game on the internet and you’ll never hear the end of it.

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Sunday, June 21st: Panel at 1:00pm in Room 217BCD: Screening of the documentary The Cartoonist: Jeff Smith, Bone, and the Changing Face of Comics, co-hosted by Jeff Smith & Colleen Doran.

The Cartoonist is a portrait of Columbus-based cartoonist and Bone-creator Jeff Smith and his impact on the field during the past 20 years. The Wexner Center is pleased and proud to host the film’s world premiere, introduced by both Smith and director Ken Mills.

The film surveys Smith’s career during the run of Bone and also captures the key moment when he shifted focus from completing his popular epic to beginning new projects, including Rasl. Shot during the run of Smith’s Wexner Center exhibition Bone and Beyond in 2008, the film is filled with interviews with fellow cartoonists including Harvey Pekar, Terry Moore, Paul Pope, and Scott McCloud. Director Ken Mills is cofounder of Columbus-based Mills James Productions. (76 mins., video)

Direct Link to Heroes Con.

BTW, blog regulars will note the site is behaving poorly the last few days. Upgrading WP SuperCache means installing new code, which I cannot do myself. Until my trusty web lady is able to get around to it, there will be some hiccups. I apologize.