E-7 -- Where Comics Live!
How many breaks do you get in a lifetime?
Comic-Con International: San Diego has once again come and gone. I’m happy it’s over, and happy because I thoroughly enjoyed it!
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| Apparently redemption comes acute, obtuse, straight and right! |
Just as Comic-Con has changed over the years, so has the make-up of the Bare Bones Studios booth. Mike (our bunny-eared leader), Killer Robot Rob and I shared table space while Carlos roamed the vicinity. This year we were joined by Alethea (a-LEE-thee-a), who published her novel Angels Of Redemption. With my latest issue, Pretty Vacant: Final Repose, combined with Bare Bones Studios t-shirts, current copy of Pocketbook Heroes and a seemingly endless supply of free action (stick) figures, we were ready to rock!
Not only was the product different from last year, so was the group dynamic. Alethea brought two of her children, Gabriel and Sterling, and this year my sister and my friends David, Steve and Courtney joined my nieces and me in San Diego. I received no end of teasing regarding Courtney’s youthful appearance, with Rob jokingly (I think) questioning if I was a sexual deviant. As a tax preparer certified by the IRS, I have to ask the date of birth of all my clients, including Courtney’s, and yes -- she’s legal!
Between selling Pretty Vacant and drawing customized faces on stickmen, there wasn’t as much time to spend with family and friends. Yet a reprieve came from an unlikely source: Sterling. He also started drawing faces on stick figures and began handing them out. My primary function at the booth temporarily halted, I was happy to enjoy the Con! I made the most of it, squeezing in my traditional Friday lunch at Dick’s Last Resort with my best friend (at Comic-Con) Rodney, watching the “Chuck” panel and the Captain America (in 3-D!) movie with my nieces, while hanging out at Dustin and Sandra’s booth behind Bare Bones.
Sandra sold her Banzai Chicks items while dressed as characters from the late, lamented “Legend of The Seeker”, while her husband Dustin presented his iPad app Poker With Bob in a playable format for the show. So playable, in fact, that Rob and I had fun pointing out which attendees had gambling addiction problems to Dustin! It was ideal to have the two behind me, as it was easy to pass on attendee-paid copies of Pretty Vacant to Sandra to autograph with me, as Sandra did paint the cover to my comic!
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| Sandra and I posing with a copy of Pretty Vacant: Final Repose. |
Thanks to Mike, I was still able to sell out at the show! Hardcore selling at the last hour of the Con ensured this, even if Rob bought my last book just to shut Carlos up! I returned the favor to Alethea by purchasing two out of the last five copies of her novel left at the show.
With Mike away from the booth for part of the last day, Rob and I had our one serious discussion. Rob wondered if we had wasted our breaks. We have all been relatively successful with comics, television and film in the past. Now, here we are in our 40s trying to sell comics at a comic convention that really isn’t about comics anymore. We (minus Sandra) still have our day jobs. However, Rob’s son drew the inside cover of Pocketbook Heroes, my nieces have said the reason they took up drawing was because of me, and Alethea’s sons like to cosplay as the Killer Robot with Rob and tell me that their faces on stickmen are better than mine. All I can say is that it doesn’t really matter what we do now, but what we leave after we’re gone…
… and that’s what
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| Rob made the front page of the San Diego Union-Tribune with his costume! |
Lastly, I do hope the lady with the best smile in Comic-Con comes back next year!
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Labels: comic con pretty vacant
posted by John Villalino @ 8:55 PM
3 Comments
3 Comments:
I was wandering the same thing a couple of years ago (I took a break from Comic-con from 2005 - 2008), thinking that drawing comics and going to conventions was a waste of my time since I was growing older. Then I came across an epiphany, the truth of the matter is that comics is integral to who we are, its in our blood. So what we are in our forties and not successful like Jim Lee. We love what we are doing, it's all about the creative process! Ayn Rand's objectivism preaches Man's pursuit of his own happiness. We do comics because we enjoy it, it's self-expression and and a positive reflection of ourselves. I only was able to quit my job because of Dustin, not because I achieved success on my own with my art. As I was cleaning out the garage and going through jumbles of boxes, I found comics I drew when I was in grade school, stories I've written when I was in high school and journals full of ideas from when I was in my 20's and 30's. Guess what? The urge to draw comics is even STRONGER! I'm planning my return! If we are not satisfied with our present lives, we have to create an imaginary world and populate it with characters...a world we would like to exist in...yes, in comics form! So no more lamenting! I say we charge onward! Comics...here we come!
1st off, thanks John for always being so insightful and capturing the feel we all share during SDCC. i guess i have drive and energy but lost deal compounded by lost deal has sucked some of the direction and focus from what i am after(if i ever "really" knew what that even was...) i look at my friends like evan and know that, in all honesty, having a good job with a pension and medical insurance, i am in a better position but there's something freeing and bohemian about chasing a dream to it's end no matter the result and revelling not in the success or lamenting over the failure but enjoying the ride and the attempt that i am missing. at 44 i've accomplished more than most i guess and it's certainly been a fun ride but i don't want to be a t-shirt vendor or hawk decade old comic books. i miss feeling "relevant" to the small press world. when PBHeroes 1st started we were the only game in vegas. our zines generated buzz and made us psuedo-celebrities in that niche. we had articles in every local indie paper and, with the birth of the robot, we even picked up some TV notoriety. then heroes inc came and we actually accomplished some critical success but how do you live off of that? my ego, as always, is stroked by every autograph request or smile i put on a person's face with a joke or my expected abrasiveness but i wonder when narcissism steps aside and that's no longer enough. a puffed up ego doesn't put food on the table. but there's the rub. with the "safety net" of my full-time gig i don't need my other ventures to do anything but stroke my ego. maybe that's the problem. my ego stopped being hungry years ago for that attention. it is frustrating to be in a world where you feel like you have a lot to add but lack the artistic ability to make it happpen. and with 3 kids who has the energy to pop-off their "great american novel"? this con left me flat. our comic sales where dismal. we did sell a crap-load of t-shirts but, as stated above, t-shirt salesman wasn't what i signed up for. i had hoped the shirts would augment the sales and increase the profit margin not remove the comics from the equation entirely. i suppose i can revel in the fact that my writing ability spawned some of the funny sayings that sold some shirts but hard to get excited about that. i enjoyed the anthology book we created very much but, again, at the end of the day i couldn't even fit myself into it so i picked up an editing credit. i am, as always, grateful for having the opportunity to provide a spring board for fledgling artists and talents. i know our zine spawned several artists who went on to some level of commercial success and that is very satisfying but, when i look in the mirror, i sorta always wanted to be one of those people. anyway, we plug on. new t-shirts coming. perhaps the launch of a web-based zine of sorts. and more of me waxing prophetic on my soapbox to come. be well old friend and thanks again!
Thanks John. Can't wait for my copy of the comic to read. :) Really, I had a great time spending the day in San Diego at the Convention thanks to you!
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