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NOTE: This is a post I made a little while back on Greg Ruth’s message board about my experience at the Baltimore Comic Con this past October. Just wanted to toss it up here on me blog as well! And so… Went to the Baltimore Comic Con this past Saturday & Sunday (October 11-12, yeah I know, it was a little bit ago). It was the first time I'd been in like 3 years, even though it's in my home state! Something always comes up: gotta work, already out of town, hit a deer on the way, alien invasion, etc. but this year I decided to buckle it down and go so I was super excited to stop by. Even though I parked in a shady-style lookin’ neighborhood about 2 miles away and had to walk through a marathon to get there. No seriously, there was a marathon... and I had to walk through it. Almost was run over... literally. But I did get a really cool badge with my name on it… hehe, check it out:  Yeah, I know I'm a nerd. But I likes the little things, ya know.
So yeah, the show was really nice and had oodles of artists. David Mack being one of them and I was lucky enough to get see his pages IN person. He had TONS of them for you to just riffle through, which was really surprising. Especially since his pages were going for hundreds of dollars and even up and over a thousand in many cases (one day Doug, one day). I have to say, I enjoy his work most in person. When you see them you quickly forget they're actual comic book pages. The sequential nature of them seems put aside and you just simply gaze upon how beautiful they are. In person you gain the reflections of the paint and textures of the brush strokes. I just wanted to grab a frame and throw them all up on my wall. AMAZING work, truly. Also, went to a couple panels. One being the panel on DC Comics recent title Wednesday Comics. I'd never heard of it, which is normal when the reclusive artist-guy in me takes over as he's done so lately, but apparently it's like the Sunday comic strips from the newspaper but with DC's flagship characters; Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, etc. It's even printed at the size of a newspaper and ON newsprint. How cool is that? Sounds very interesting and was apparently a big success. Also, it was kid friendly, which I found to be quite coo, especially these days. Mark Chiarello was the editor for it, Walter Simonson, Brian Stelfreeze, Joe Kubert were a few of the artists/writers on panel and for a brief moment I could tell that the conversation wanted to turn towards the topic of how comics have become not-so-kid friendly since the late 80's and early 90's, however they did try to steer the ship back. Interesting to see others in the industry bring that topic up. Especially at a con. Saw my old MICA prof Jose Villurrubia too and that's always great. Jose led a panel with Jo Chen and her work. Very good panel. I love hearing the process of other artists and even more so I love hearing how they fit this process into "real" life. Jo is a mother too so listening to her talk about managing her time as an artist amidst parenting is something I find VERY inspiring and interesting, even though I'm not a dad myself. Showed my work to the Scott Allie too, editor from Dark Horse Comics and got some great feedback from him, as well as a few names to check out artist-wise. We both also briefly discussed our own adventures walking a couple of miles through that marathon to get there at the con. Visited the PLB Comics booth for a few minutes just to say hi; they’re a group of really talented artists from my home area of the Eastern Shore who came together to put out numerous anthologies and are based out of the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore. Really good guys. I did some sketching with them this past May on Free Comic Book Day at my local comic shop ILLUSIONS. Said hello to the eternally smiley and friendly Mr. Steve Niles, got his John Hancock on my copy of M. and chatted about his recollections of a band called NO TREND from the 1980’s DC music scene (I jammed with them this past summer at the singers BBQ. Way cool!), as well as his show with one of my all time favorite bands, TOOL, in front of 20,000 people... Nuts! Also, saw the man-with-the-plan Mr. Bernie Wrightson too... but I sorta chickened out with Bernie. The wimp in me prevailed. But it's Bernie man! Next time for sure... Showed my portfolio to Mark Chiarello, who might I add has gotta be one of the nicest editors I’ve showed my portfolio to. He actually remembered me from my VERY first portfolio review over 2 years ago in NYC at the Art Out Loud show! That just blew me away. And he also gave me some great advice as well as an address to send him further work, which I gotta say put a rather large smile on my face. Had lunch with a fantastic writer/playwright Dane Styler who I’d originally met through The Jose Villurrubia earlier in the year at the MoCCA Festival in NYC. Great to see Dane in person again. We discussed a project or two we’ll be working on together in the very near future, one of them based upon one of the plays he’s written. More on this soon enough folks! Oh yeah duh! And I bought some comics!
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This is my first post... yep. Not too exciting. We'll get to good stuff soon enough though (anxiously rubs his hands together with devilish intent).
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