Well, I attended my third comic convention yesterday. For the third year in a row now, I've gone to Wizard World Chicago, which was renamed to Chicago Comic-Con this year. I took a similar approach to what I did last year and spent most of my time trolling the artist alley, meeting creators (writers and artists) and watching them work. I enjoy seeing the different approaches various artists take toward their work. The remainder of my limited time at the show was spent attending sessions. I didn't even break for lunch!
For some reason this year, I felt much more restricted by time, even though I left the convention only an hour earlier than I did last year. I attribute this to feeling more comfortable walking through "the alley" so I spent more time chatting with different artists, especially some I met last year. It didn't help that I had a time by which I needed to leave the show to get back to Milwaukee to meet up with friends to celebrate Steve Grobschmidt's birthday. (I'm definitely not complaining - we always have a good time with them, and dinner was at The Silver Spur, one of our favorite restaurants).
I started at one end of the Artist Alley and made my way up and down each aisle so I could see the different work out there. One of my first stops was at Casey Heying's booth. One of his prints of Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) surrounded by glowing emblems for the other "ROYGBIV" lantern corps with a large Black Lantern emblem at the top. I talked with Casey a bit and ended up picking up the print along with the first couple of issues of his series The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles, which uses Dorothy and Alice grown up as protagonists. I will state right now that I have not yet had a chance to read anything I bought yesterday, so I will need to write about them more later, should I be inclined and able to find the time.
I thought I would take more pics of people in costumes along with the creators, but I never seemed to be in a good spot to get one (too many people making it too difficult to get a picture or the person in the costume too far away to get a good shot). I did manage to get one of someone dressed as Zatanna, which elicited some comments from Michelle.
Continuing my way up and down the rows of artist, the work of Stuart Sayger caught my eye. I really liked the work he had for display in his portfolio. After chatting with him a bit, I picked up his comic Shiver in the Dark.
After some time, I made it over to Freddie Williams II, who I have enjoyed following this year on twitter and his email list. We chatted for a bit while he worked on a commission piece, and I got him to sign my issue of Robin 183 (the final issue). I was able to stop back later to pick up his third sketchbook (which Freddie does comic sized - I wish other artists would do their sketchbooks this size) and chatted some more while he worked on a Flash commission. While working, I saw him looking at the piece in a mirror. He said he uses it for balance: when he looks at the art in the mirror, he can see if it needs more work somewhere to better balance it. I thought that was very interesting and one of the little things I enjoy about hanging out in the Artist Alley.
Next stop of note was comic writer Sean McKeever. I chatted a little with him (I enjoyed his recent work on Terror Titans and the Ravager backup story in Teen Titans). I talked with him a little about artists with whom he enjoys working most (Takeshi Miyazawa and Mike Norton if I remember correctly, because he likes how they are able to convey his words so well sometimes that he can take out some of his dialog). I picked up a copy of the X-Men Origins he wrote and got it autographed.
I finally made it to The Uniques booth and got myself caught up on this series by Comfort Love and Adam Withers. I first met them at last year's show and picked up the first issue of their book. I liked it so much I later ordered the next couple issues and the first graphic novel over the course of the year. I am now all caught up on the series, complete with an additional "Certificate of Awesometicity." Adam and Comfort have been fun to follow on twitter (@TheUniques) and their blog.
One artist whose work caught my eye was Chris Samnee. The art he was displaying (and working on while we spoke) is black and white and based on shapes and shadows. I've tried making art like this and found it to be extremely difficult. It was intriguing watching him fill in the light pencil sketch of Daredevil with the shadows to give it form. I suppose I am just to line oriented when I draw. I picked up his sketch book.
Other artists with whom I visited and spoke with some quick anecdotes (in no particular order):
Jason Sobol - I liked some of the work he was displaying and picked up his sketch book which is made up entirely of "Reflections" of enemies (Batman/Joker, Frodo/Gollum, Luke/Vader). I chatted with him while he worked on a watercolor commission of a dog.
Neil Chenier - Neil modestly describes himself as "an aspiring comic book illustrator" in his comicspace page, but I love the detail in his work. I picked up his sketchbook, which shows the art in various stages of progress so you can see it in its rough form and a more final state.
Josh Johnson - Josh has a different approach and mixes the drawing with printing and watercolors. He has a book called The Spindletons, and has pictures of the printing press he uses to make the prints he was selling.
Jeremy Sorrell - Jeremy was sharing space with Drew Jones. I liked both of their portfolios being displayed at their table and ended up picking up a watercolor Jeremy did of Batman.
Christopher Darden - edgy and dark, his work reminded me of a cross between painting and scratch board. He was working on a Batman piece while I watched.
Phil Machi - Retail Sunshine is Dilbert for the retail world. The art is just stick figures in shirts for the most part, but I like how he captures little anecdotes from his work in retail.
Gerald Cooper - Gerald bills his book Genecy as "Conan meets the Silver Surfer" and was proud to point out that the art was colored for the first half of the book in pencil while the second half was colored over ink. Hopefully when I read it I will understand why he really wanted to keep highlighting this point. Annoyingly, the bag that the book came is is filled with annoying little sparkles in it. Gerald is hoping for feedback to submit the book to DC. I hope that doesn't negatively impact my view of it.
Kurt Wood - Kurt wasn't there the first time I stopped by his booth (solo this year), and I didn't have much time when I stopped by later so I sadly didn't get to talk with him much.
I finished off the show with a stop into a couple sessions. First up was the Hero Initiative session which I unfortunately only caught the Q&A. I was curious to see what kinds of things are under work to support former comic creators whos work touched the lives of many, but for various reasons can no longer support themselves. Unfortunately, I was not able to gleen much from just the questions in the session to know what was covered in the session.
I finished off my convention day at the Comixology session. I have been using the website and their first iPhone app for the past couple months to track my pull list (not currently tied in with my retailer). The manager of my shop jokes around as the app being the "bane of his existence" because a couple times I've found out about issues that weren't on my pull list but I added so that I could check them out, but they were gone already. Or maybe he just thinks I'm checking up on him. Their other app is a comic reader that was released just before SDCC. I downloaded that to try out a couple nights ago and it is really slick for reading comics. Unfortunately there isn't a certain file format that could just be used to identify things like the transitions between panels today, so it does require some work to get the books readable. The session was a good overview of the tools, and I particularly enjoyed hearing questions from the perspectives of all their target audiences: consumers, retailers, and creators. At the end, I actually won the giveaway for the session (an iPod Touch loaded with the comics available today). I'm looking forward to receiving it!
On my way back to the car, I saw this license plate. Not something you would be likely to see in a French speaking country, but I thought it was funny and had to snap a pic.
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