Oh yeah! Sonic the Hedgehog #188 hits the comic book rack in just one more week - but Archie did release the preview pages today. An extra helping of preview pages, too! =D And they look absolutely sexy. I'm so stoked to have this baby in my hands soon - it was definitely my proudest ish out of the whole story arc I illustrated for them. Check it out! 

     
     

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #188
“Beating the House”: Sonic is ambushed and captured by the Destructix, and it’s up to the Freedom Fighters to find and rescue him! The trail leads to a dingy dungeon beneath a flashy casino owned by Mammoth Mogul – but just how real a threat faces our heroes this time? The con is on in this tale of twists, turns, takes and double-takes! 

SCRIPT: Ian Flynn. ART: Matt Herms (pencils) & Jim Amash (inks).
Jumpin’ jackpot cover by Tracy Yardley & Jason Jensen.
 
Shipping Date: May 7th, 2008
On Sale at Comic Specialty Shops: May 14th, 2008
On Sale on Newsstands: May 27th, 2008
32-page, full color comic
$2.25 US.

As promised, a very small handful of the free Sonic the Hedgehog-related sketched I churned out for the kids last Saturday at Free Comic Book Day. Oh man was my hand cramped-and-killed by the end of the day. Everyone got a free sketch, though – and I’m damn proud of that.



In other news – I’ve caught a cold. =/ Bleh. It’s like one thing right after another, these last three weeks. XP

We came. We saw. We free-comic-ed all over every which place. =P

Oh man, what a long, long weekend. Like many other comic book professionals this last Saturday, I crawled out of my stark, smelly hermitage and into the sunlight (for the first time since the year before) to scare the local villagers once more. ;P Good times! No, but seriously… We’d been trying to schedule some sorta’ signing with the local comic book store here in NoVA – Phoenix Comics and Toys – since, like, February… They got back to us finally, booked us for FCBD, and the rest was history…

Ten in the mother-effing morning is too damn early for free comics, by the way. XP Karen and I didn’t roll into Lansdowne until closer to 11:00, anyway – and we rolled right into the Lansdowne town-fair. =O The shopping center was hosting a “Taste of the Town” sort of event… Which was fully rad, because it probably meant more people wandered into the comic book store than expected. What luck!

They’d set myself and fellow comic creator Jerry Carr up right outside their front doors. Totally cool – until it go so windy it was blowing away our comics! =O Not to mention it was so sunny I couldn’t even see what I was drawing, the glare was so harsh. Karen stepped into super-publicist mode and I was hurriedly moved inside – a killer move, I think, as by then we’d amassed quite a line of folks picking up their free comic book and sketch!

Ma-a-an, and that line was long. I think I drew some 100+ Sonics/Tails/Shadows/Knuckles (in addition to the random Mina Mongoose or Mammoth Mogul). My appearance was booked until 4:00 in the afternoon, and we had such a huge line… I didn’t want anyone to go home without a sketch, though. So I worked through the cramps, shrugged off attempts to close down the line, and even started drawing on backer-boards when we ran out of paper!

All-in-all, it was fucking great. Everyone got a sketch, and we were left with exactly one copy of the special Sonic the Hedgehog #1: FCBD Edition that Archie had sent out… Which I totally took home with me. =3

Anyhow, onto the photographic evidence! Brad, with camera in hand, and Constantine and Robert all dropped by early in the event. All these pics were taken by Mr. Gullickson – who left before I was brought inside the store. So it’s all outdoors shots.

Phoenix Comics and Toys, located in Lansdown, Virginia.

     

Signing books and doing sketches for everybody! (Those huge piles of books? We gave away all of 'em! =D In addition to the regular FCBD Sonic comic, Archie sent over an ass-load of copies of #s 185, 186, and 187 to giveaway.)



My lovely missus, Karen Marie, in action! She’ll be so peeved I put this picture up. >=D As if she read my LiveJournal though. Heehee. ;P (Inside joke.)



Me, with my biggest fan and humblest footstool, Mr. Brad Gullickson. (I kid, Gully. I kid. =P) 

And that's that. My first ever Free Comic Book Day - and it was awesome! =D Thanks to everyone for coming out, and thanks to Phoenix Comics for having me. I've got some stills of some of the many, many sketches done last Saturday, too - just gotta' upload them and compile 'em. (It's alot.)

Just a quick heads-up, for those of ya’ in the area: I’ll be appearing at Phoenix Comics and Toys in Lansdowne, Virginia, tomorrow for Free Comic Book Day 2008! =D I’m really excited about it – it’ll be my first ever FCDB signing! I’ll be doing free sketches and everything for anyone that drops by!

I gotta’ be at the store around 10:00-ish in the morning, and I believe the event formally starts around 11:00 or Noon, depending. Another comic artist, Jerry Carr, will also be signing books at the store. Info ya’ need:

Saturday, May 3rd
12:00PM - ??:??PM
19340 Promenade Drive Unit N-104
Lansdowne, VA 20176
703-437-9530

Archie Comics is doing a special re-printing of Sonic the Hedgehog #1 (the very first issue in the ongoing series) this year with a brand new cover by fan-fave Patrick Spaziante! =D And for those of ya’ wondering whereabouts other Archie-Sonic freelancers will be appearing:

Ian Flynn

(Writerr), will be doing free sketches and signings at Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find.

Saturday, May 3rd
1:00PM - 5:00PM
1957 E. 7th St.
Charlotte, NC 28204
704-375-7468

And Tracy Yardley

(Penciler), will be doing free sketches, signings, and commissioned sketches (with original art for sale) at Richard’s Comics and Collectibles.

Saturday, May 3rd
??:?? A/PM - ??:?? A/PM
1214A Laurens Rd.
Greenville, SC 29607
(864) 271-1104

Hope everyone can make it out to their local participating comic book retailer tomorrow! And hope to see some of ya’ folks there! =D

Holy damn, it’s May all ready!?

Ugh. It feels like April was way too short – but damn long, too. March was punctuated with stomach flu and me in a pool of my own leakage (Eew.), hospitalized for dehydration… And that feels like bloody ages ago! Where did the time go?

Karen and I went out to eat with one of her old college roomies (and her fiancé) last night. That was pretty cool. 2009 is looking to be chock-full of beginning-martial-bliss for lotsa’ folks, in fact. They just got engaged last month and are planning to get hitched in January ’09! =O That's so soon! Karen and I only just started thumbing through magazines! (When checking out at the grocery store, she picked up the latest “Bridal” or whatev while in the line and begged to have it. Cutest thing ever, I’m just sayin’. =3) 

Speaking of wedding stuff, the tornado of “Thank You” cards – for everyone that could make it out to the engagement party – has engulfed our dining room table! It’s intimidating and scary as hell. Neither of us is the personality-type for simplicity. No “Thank you for coming! Thank you so much for       insert gift name here         .” Nor are we the sorts that eloquently emote paragraphs upon paragraphs, either. So, the cards are a work-in-progress… And probably will be for the next week. XP

I mentioned previously I got a Nintendo DS from my folks as an engagement gift. That was pretty sexy. I’ve long maintained that I’m just not much of a video-gamer anymore – and it’s absolutely true! I just don’t have the time, usually. But man, I have been wanting a DS for forever. It’s the only system that seems to regularly have games I’m actually interested in playing. (I fucking horribly wanna’ play FF7 Crisis Core, but that’s on PSP… And is the only thing I want to play on PSP. So fuck that – I’m not spending $200+ for one game.)

I’ve been wasting minutes here-and-there lately playing Sonic Rush – I know, I’m fucking catching up. =P It’s awesome and addicting – probably the best Sonic the Hedgehog game I’ve played in ages. (And really, I’ve never cared for Sonic games.) Anyhow, my fellow Archie hombre Tracy Yardley posted these lines of Blaze the Cat (from Rush) on his Deviant Art page, recently – I just had to color them up! =D Took only about half-an-hour total to render this baby. Quite proud.



In other news – I’m hoping to finalize our travel itinerary for our trip to A-Kon and Houston at the end of this month in the next couple of days. Exciting! In the meanwhile, I’ve got work keeping me gainfully employed, Sonic Rush eating my spare time, and plenty of arts I want to churn out for sale at A-Kon. Hot dog, it’s gonna’ be an awesome month! =D

Pictures, as promised! =D

 

On the left is the promotional poster that sat at the front of the Spectrum Center location’s lobby for, like, two weeks or so before the signing. (The poster is also supposed to have my face on it – but their printer messed up. Ah well.) We totally snagged this sucker right after, too – we’re gonna’ frame it and put it in the office. And on the right, that’s the endcap the store had up the whole month of April, featuring my comics as well as other Sonic merchandise and promoting the event.



I was doing an interview with a local kid for his research paper on cartoonist careers right before the event – and just as we were wrapping up (still well before the event was supposed to start) kids started filling the seats! The crowd was gathering so quickly, they took me to the staff’s break room to hide-out. By the time I go out there again, the place was packed. Check it out!

   

Shit you not – standing room only! =D It was awesome. After about half-an-hour or more of questions-and-answers, we put everyone in a line and started signing books and doing sketches!

 

And that’s that. Two hours later, we’d sold about 150 comic books. I’m told it was the biggest event that Barnes-and-Noble had ever had – we event beat out fucking Newt Gingrich’s attendance! =D

This was pretty cool…

A local mom came into Barnes-and-Noble the other day and was chatting up Karen about the comic book signing this Saturday. Her son’s a 15-year-old doing a research assignment on careers as a cartoonist, and wanted to interview me. I’m meeting with him and his mom for a few minutes before the signing to do the formal-thing, but he e-Mailed me the questions in advance.

For the sake of putting thought to LiveJournal in advance, so I don’t stumble for answers later on.

What can you do as a High School Student to prepare for this career?

Draw… a lot. Take whatever art classes your school offers – any art class, in fact. No, they aren’t likely to focus on stylized cartooning… But they will introduce you to concepts and tools and the traditional training every artist – cartoonist or otherwise – needs to know! Also, stuff exactly like this – introduce your passion for comics into every class you can. In American History class, my final paper was on US comic book industry history. In Economics class, I gave presentations about Marvel’s bankruptcy and the creativity inspired by a sinking-ship. If you want it, you have to live and breathe it.

Is there any education required after high school for this career?

Definitely not required. (I’m twice the high-school drop out, in fact… And I started doing this stuff right after!) But a higher art education can definitely refine your talents, and that’s always a good thing. When I met Tracy Yardley for the first time ages back, we talked about his alma-mater, SCAD (the only art school I ever came close to attending). He explained that while it taught him and trained him and refined him into an excellent cartoonist, it did an offensively poor job in preparing him for job-hunting after.

What is the salary (earnings, money) a person receives in this career?

Laughable. ;P 

No, seriously… The pay is pretty decent – especially if you can keep steady employment. We’re freelancers for the most part, though – so there isn’t any job security to guarantee we’ll be seeing a paycheck every month. Likewise, this isn’t a nine-to-five gig… We typically put in far more than 8 hours a day, and depending on your page rate… Well, proportionally speaking you could be making less than minimum wage. (We’re paid by the page, by the way – not by the hour.) 

What are the fringe benefits you may get while working in this career?

Not being an actual employee of a company also means we don’t have any benefits, either – no health insurance, dental plan, retirement, etc. We don’t have sick days, we don’t have paid vacations. We do get to work from home, though – and thus we make our own schedules, so long as we can at least meet our deadlines.

Will the number of opportunities for this job increase or decrease in the next 10 years?  Why or Why not?

Increase! While the monthly comic book as we know it is constantly straddling the line between extinction and endangered species, comics as a whole are being redefined by new and alternative formats! Manga is huge, and is introducing new readers to comic entertainment that had otherwise been overlooked by the traditional mainstream market. Webcomics are everywhere – and are quickly accessible to the world biggest audience: the world wide web. As comics evolve, so will the job opportunities.

How do you like being a comic book artist?

Fucking love it. Best job I’ve ever had. ;D 

…Also… My butt still hurts. >=( “Hermorhoids,” indeed. XP

Done for a bit of fun and practice the other day. I’ve been lucky to be pretty busy of late with projects that’ve kept me creatively juiced and financially paid for – but it’s mostly stuff outside the comic book field. I’m not in any particular hurry to take comics by storm – truthfully, I’m just eager for whenever my next Sonic the Hedgehog assignment comes in. ^_^ Ian and Mike and Tracy and everyone at Archie are wonderful to work for-and-with!

…I do hope, someday, to get my crack at some of the superheroes I grew up with. Spidey, especially. I don’t really have my heart set on drawing something in ye olde Amazing Spider-Man, actually – I wanna’ draw for Marvel Adventures Spider-Man! >=D I love the concept – it’s mostly continuity free, meaning the focus is on good and entertaining stories, rather than climactic, universe-shaking events to keep the fan-boys hooked in outrage. =P 

(Fucking Mephisto… “I want your marriage!”)

So, whilst slutting it up at Anime Boston a couple weeks ago, this kid asked me for an on-the-spot commissioned sketch of Samus Aran, from the Metroid video games. XP Oh man, I had to crouch behind Will’s table and Google images of this babe for reference… It’s not that she’s too hard to draw – she’s just annoyingly inconsistent. Like Marvel’s Iron Man, her armor is more a set of consistent characteristics than any definitive design…



Honestly though, I’ve never been much of a Metroid man. Last time I played a game was Super Metroid on the SNES – and even that was frustrating for me. I preferred my side-scrollers to have plumbers and dinosaurs, thank you. Still, I was inspired after doing that sketch at the con – and wanted to do a proper send up to this chick we all thought was a dude way-back-when on the Nintendo Entertainment System. ;P

Oh ma-a-an, it’s been one hell-of-a forever since I last drew any Kim Possible fan artwork! And a long-ass time since I watched any Kim Possible, too. I was kinda’ disappointed in the fourth season – you know, the one all us fans bitched and moaned and demanded be made? Mostly the thing for me was that the series two-part finale just didn’t have the epic-win quality a finale should have… Whereas “So the Drama” was practically a perfect swan-song! =/



Ah well. All good things must come to an end. At the very least, KP’s return did mark the dissolution of the ye olde 65-Episode Rule for Disney shows. =D

The big-bad-boss featured prominently in the latest story arch I drew for Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog. He was really hard to draw at first. Ya’ know, it’s funny – pretty much all the villains in the Archie-verse are like that for me… Especially Eggman! But after a lot of practice – well, hell, Mo-Gut’s probably my fave baddie to draw, now! He’s just so wonderfully intimidating and suave.



I really like him in the white suit, too – I know purple is his original design, sure… All “regal” and such. But the white is just fucking classier. It’s how I like my Mogul. ;P

Also… It’s fucking hot. The AC is totally busted in our apartment, and nobody can come out to repair it until Monday. =( So it’s off to Target to pick up a fan!

And another also… We saw "Street Kings" last night with Brad and Lisa – it was bad-ass! Totally go see it… If, ya’ know, you dig good ol’ fashioned action-violence (Without shitty “Follow the bullet” special effects that’ve been done to death.) and corrupt cop movies. =)

Wow, so not only am I currently behind at the job… But I’m extremely behind on personal commissions, too! =O

One of the cooler things about penciling for Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog has definitely been the influx of Sonic related commissions that’ve been coming in, lately. Personal fan characters or Sega canon characters people wanna’ see illustrated… It’s pretty rad, and I’m always down for Sonic art.

This first pic is actually for some fella’s tattoo! Fucking awesome! Karen and I met him at Anime Boston last month.



And this pic is for a dude I met wa-a-a-ay back when in 2005, when I’d just started doing conventions! (No, this commission isn’t that overdue… We saw each other again last March at MegaCon in Orlando, FL.) The response to this Metal Sonic pic has been awesome – so much so, in fact, I’ve been really inspired to take a crack at a Sonic versus Metal Sonic illustration! Sketched it out already and I’m really stoked about it – lookin’ to pencil/ink/color it next week or the week after. =D

So that way-old Guyver sketch I did earlier in the year has been on display at conventions as my “On-the-Spot Commissions” signage… And apparently Karen and I aren’t the only ones nostalgic for ultra-violence! In fact, reception has been so positive about that pic, I decided to light-box it and clean it up a lot, color it up in Photoshop and offer it as a print at conventions! I’m really rather proud of how it came out, in fact. 



Guyver’s a fucking bitch to draw, by the way. XP But goddamn is he cool lookin'.  

Man-oh-man, have I ever been swamped. A week on the mend did not do my work schedule any good. It’s a definite plus to be back on my feet and back in the office saddle again, though. And the last few days, it’s felt like I’ve been making up lost time in a big way! Mostly just producing a lot of artwork, getting back into a health groove (eating right and exercising), and balancing it all out with some honest-to-god-eight-hours sleep every night. 

I cancelled my New York ComiCon plans – I’m behind enough as is, without delaying for another week of con prep, travel, and recovery. XP Ugh. I’m fucking excited about it, too – I don’t have any conventions until A-Kon this summer in Dallas… Which means I have a whole fucking two months to catch up on major projects and do new artwork… Like this baby. It’s Wind Waker Link! 



Oh, and in other news… I won some Final Fantasy game from PIQ magazine, recently. Totally doesn’t help my ego, either – I saw the contest and was, like, “Sure, I can win that.” And voila. I’ve got such a fucking big head already. XD Ah well. It’s for Nintendo DS, though… And I don’t have one of those. Suppose it’s eBay or re-gifting for that. 

Oh, oh! And in other news, too… Sonic the Hedgehog #187 came out today on the comic book store racks! Uber-excited! Karen and I picked it up at the store today. Sending a copy of the book with Leslie (from ArtInsights) to NYCC to give to Mark Chiarello, got a copy for Brad who we ate dinner with at the California Tortilla, and I got another copy set aside for framin’. Gotta’ send out some copies of #186 to some important-o clients-and-contacts, too. Busy!

Comin’ out next week, oh yeah! =D

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG #187
“Mister Popular”: Sonic’s immortal enemy Mammoth Mogul is back and their battle has taken on a whole new twist. Can Sonic find out who or what Mogul is going after? With hordes of villains from today as well as from Sonic’s past emerging to attack the blue blur, does Sonic have a chance of defeating the massive power of Mammoth Mogul?

SCRIPT: Ian Flynn.
ART: Matt Herms (pencils) & Jim Amash (inks).
Mammoth mayhem cover by Tracy Yardley! & Jason Jensen.
Shipping Date: April 2nd, 2008
On Sale at Comic Specialty Shops: April 9th, 2008
On Sale on Newsstands: April 292nd, 2008
32-page, full color comic
$2.25 US.

…In other news:  Man, it has been an eventful-slash-craptacular week. XP Last Saturday, Karen and I went to a local art gallery’s event here in Reston, featuring paintings by Mark Chiarello (the editorial art director for DC Comics)! Leslie, one of the gallery’s co-owners, had dropped into the Barnes-Noble to promote, and my name came up (what with the whole signing this month and all). Anyway, she agreed to introduce us, made sure it was okay for us to give him complimentary copies of my first couple issues, etc. Cool, right?

So we get there, and I basically have a panic attack. I’m not lookin’ to hook up with DC anytime soon, ya’ know… But this guy is still a big deal. (He also wrote “The DC Comics Guide to Coloring Comics,” by the way… Which was my bible when I just started doing colorist work in the biz, so I’m already fan-boying out.) Anyhow, the gallery is rather small and the paintings are like $3,000+ each and there’s a two-kid-stroller parked in there and kids dressed as pirates wailing and guys there to talk about baseball and I know nothing about baseball and Mark’s there to talk about baseball not comics and I only know comics and not even DC comics all that much and…

Panic. 

So I step out to get some air, wander over to Starbucks to take a whiz, and meander back where Karen calms me and informs me that it’s all set up – they’re ready to introduce me. I don’t think I really exhaled until after the event.

Mark is, in fact, uber nice! And he has kids, that friggin’ love Archie comics. (Especially Sabrina the Teenage Witch – apparently my editor, Mike Pellerito, sends them comp copies from time to time.) He knows my inker, Jim Amash. Really friendly! So that was awesome. 

Twenty-four hours later, I get sick. Uber sick. With some sorta’ stomach bug. I haven’t spent a whole night leaking from both ends in quite some time – and Karen, quite the trooper, was right there through the thick of it. Had to go to the emergency room to get re-hydrated, in fact. It sucked, and I’m still on the mend! =/ Which is putting me behind schedule in such a big way, and heavily jeopardizing plans to be at New York ComiCon in a couple weeks. It all is major, major suckage. 

But, eh, it’s nice to be keeping food down again, at the least. XP

So MegaCon was something of a homecoming for me.

See, I signed up for MegaCon way-back-when in August, when Karen and I moved down to Orlando. We’d kinda’ assumed we’d be living in O-Town for awhile – longer than the five/six months we were actually there – so MegaCon was gonna’ be just a quick drive up-the-road for us... Though it happened to ultimately be a nice, lengthy plane-ride, instead. XP

Despite my altogether already insanely busy schedule, I just didn’t have the heart to skip the weekend. My family was gonna’ drive down from North-West Florida to hang out – and I hadn’t seen them in awhile. (I’m hoping they’ll come to the Barnes-and-Noble signing… Karen’s sister Jessie will probably be throwing us an engagement party right around that time, too! =3) So I journeyed back into the tourist-infested hell that is the Disney-mouse’s playground… And sat at the airport for a few hours. XD

Scheduling difficulties, I suppose. My fam was picking me up, but couldn’t make it until nearly midnight. So after trying – and failing – to work on Sonic pages under the worst hallway lighting ever, I used the time to catch up with friends, instead. ‘Cause really, I just don’t call them nearly enough. Plus, it made the hours fly-by fast, and soon enough my family arrived… With the plague.

See, my sister is a kindergarten teacher – and a walking incubator for disease, it would seem. =O The parents of kindergarteners are assholes. Your kid is sick? Why, of course you should send them to school! It’s not like you can take your day off of work to take your coughing, sneezing, vomiting five-year-old to the doctor, god forbid. Fucking assholes. So it’s common that my sister is sick second-handed from these kinder-goblins… Which was the bane of my existence when I was living with her, as it was every-other-week that I, myself, got the kinder-flu. XP

But anyway, we rolled into the Lighthouse Key Resort and Spa – I shit you not, my parents rented a “room” at a friggin’ spa while I was there. (And by “room,” I mean three-bedroom, full-kitchen, giant-sized and extravagantly furnished suite. This place puts every apartment I’ve ever lived in to shame.) I turned in as early as possible – MegaCon was tomorrow! =D And I was really, really jazzed about it. 

I hadn’t been back to MegaCon since 2005 – and that was, in fact, my first ever convention ever! XD I didn’t work it, oh no – instead, me and two of my high-school chums, Rick Cook and Griff Crocker, geeked out and roamed the hallways. It was the con that made me fall in love with conventions – culture-shock to what I thought was an already pretty saturated geek-culture-mind! It was pure, absolute awesomeness! 

…It didn’t live up to what I remembered. For one, this was the first time I’ve ever worked a comic book convention – which I’ve always feared just isn’t my audience. (The kids love me. But comic books don’t really have a strong presence with the kids anymore.) Davey Stanworth and I rendezvoused and set-up our spaces, only to sit in boredom for the rest of the day, text-messaging each other dirty thoughts. I think Dave summed up our Friday, best: 

“…Now I know how a girl feels after sex – bored and unsatisfied.” 

As craptacular as our Friday was, though, Saturday more than made up for it. Stan – author of the webcomic Titan Sphere – and his wife made it in, making this the first time we’ve ever had three Snafu comic-ers in one place, at one time! =D And traffic picked up to an insane degree! In fact, I was so busy signing books, drawing sketches, and chatting up readers that I didn’t even notice Rick Cook and my buddy Tim-O standing overhead! Gotta’ say, I didn’t expect them to show up at all. We didn’t really get to reminisce much – but it was really good seein’ ‘em again.

And seeing them was something of a sobering experience, I gotta’ say. Of late I’ve been feeling kinda’ old – wonderfully psyched about everything going on in my life right now (career, marriage, future), but feeling like in all the shuffle-and-hustle of work and such I’m missing opportunities and outlets to just be 22-years-old. =/ That said, after seeing some of my old posse from high school, I’m rather relived that I’m not going to be that 22-year-old guy that’s fresh outta’ college soon. I’m glad I got those first few years in the real world under my belt. ^_^

So anyway, Sunday arrived and all the excitement of the day before had pretty much been abandoned. Oh god, seriously… I think Dave was just about ready to give up on life (though that coulda’ just been ‘cause he was getting sick with the uber-flu). The only really cool thing about Sunday was that I got to meet Sanford Greene, who I fucking love, and pick up his sketchbook. Tight as hell. Sanford did about six covers or so a couple of years back for Sonic the Hedgehog – and they were awesome! 

Dave had already hit the road by the time I found my way back to the table, so I was kinda’ bummed about that… Not that I won’t see him again in, like, a week at Anime Boston. XD And though I saw Jared and Lindsay, I never really had the chance to chat with ‘em. Ah well. Overall though, the con was a nice one – definitely reassured me about the prospects of New York ComiCon in April… =D

I got to put this together yesterday and today in some spare minutes. ^_^ Barnes and Noble has never actually done a comic book signing before, to my knowledge… So while we’ve been trying to stress to the store’s management that this really should receive the same treatment as any other book signing they do, there is admittedly some differences that make this event a totally different animal.

 

For one thing, we’re peddling wares from newsstand – 32-page full-color books that retail at $2.25 apiece. So we expect to probably sell out of each issue of the book with ease. (I’ll have three books out by then, and we’re expecting to order 100 copies of each for the event.) Likewise, I’m an artist, not an author – so I’ll be doing free sketches and things for the kids during the signing/discussion. And last, B&N isn’t altogether sure how to promote the event. 

Hence a lot of that street-team-ing is gonna’ be on Karen’s shoulders. I put together this flyer, and she’s gonna’ hit a few of the spots locally whose clientele would probably be interested – Hot Topic, Game Stop, anime stores, etc. I’m really pretty stoked about it. =D 

Anyhow, back to work, back to work.