BALTIMORE COMIC-CON 2015 IN THE REARVIEW pt.1

 

  

A week ago, Dan and I, along with Matt, were in Baltimore for the Baltimore Comic-Con.  It’s been ten years since we tabled at our first convention in Chicago, and in that time we have learned a lot and grown as writers.  That doesn’t always translate to sales, which were less than “soft.”  But we did have a lot of great interactions with fans, and creators, so I can’t complain. 

Caveats, vis-à-vis sales: 

Despite always entering these conventions with high hopes, I don’t believe Dan and I have ever deluded ourselves.  We are certainly working against the tide—offering anthologies that include prose stories as well as comics, most often in black and white, lacking superheroes or Dr. Who or zombies (for the most part) or manga-influenced art, all of which are big draws at these cons.  And we aren’t into the hard sell.  Add to that the fact we are only able to attend a single convention a year, and the chips are stacked against us really gaining any type of foothold.  But that’s okay.  

Because getting a table affords us opportunities we might not have going to these as “just fans.”  We get early entry, don’t have to wait in line, have a place to sit and store our stuff, and, even if sales are not what we hope for, we are proving to those professionals and publishers we do see regularly that we are persistent and committed to our writing. 

That said, despite soft sales, we did have some great interactions with fans attending the show.  One of the items we had available, for free, was a distinct nametag with your sci-fi name on it.  I crafted a Lego coliseum within which anyone could roll two dice—a 6-die and a 20-die—to find out their character type (alien, smuggler, bounty hunter, star pilot, explorer, or universal despot) and their specific name (from a list of 20 each for male, female, or neutral).  Kids and parents alike loved these.  They were rolling dice all weekend.  And it was great.  The kids, regardless of age, were all excited to find out their strange, otherworldly names such as Tiik’Al or Quellon or Axlotl (keen-eyed science fiction buffs will recognize that last one), and the parents were equally intrigued and enthused by the prospect of finding out their sci-fi names.  That was a surefire hit and we got to have some nice conversations with people about the show, when they rolled for their nametags (including meeting someone originally from Lebanon, Maine). 

So, did we sell a lot of books?  No.  But did we get to interact with fans and have a good time behind the table?  Oh, yeah. 

But what about walking the floor and meeting artist and writers and other professionals?  Find out about that, tomorrow, in the second half of my Baltimore wrap-up.

chris

Looking Back – A Decade Since Warrior27 #1

By 2005, four years had passed since a handful of friends and I had first discussed self-publishing our comic anthology, with nothing to show for it.  We all harbored ideas of one day being (magically) discovered as the brilliant creators we knew ourselves to be.  That road is more difficult to hoe when you don’t do the work.  We wrote some scripts and got some pages penciled, but we did not create enough content to fill a proper book, and, even more to the point of why we never published anything, we left all the production stuff to a single person rather than taking on that responsibility as well.  So, in January of 2005, Dan and I decided to finally do something about it and published the first issue of Warrior27.  [see here, here, and here for more on that].  2005 also saw my first published work outside of Warrior27.  That was the year I started to take my writing seriously – emphasis on “started.” 

That first issue, and our first time exhibiting at a convention, was a bust.  But Dan and I learned from the experience and moved forward.  With a bit more lead time, we were more successful in finding artists for the next issue (a few who agreed to work on the inaugural book fell off the face of the earth…or just didn’t return our emails).  Having not found our audience at Wizard World Chicago, we wrapped the new book with a thematic spine across all the stories and decided to exhibit at SPX in 2006, a crowd more in tune with what we were doing with Warrior27.  That second time exhibiting was a great experience.  (might’ve helped that our writing had improved, as well)

Two years later, taking Steven Grant’s advice to write within genres or mediums outside those one aspires to, both Dan and I began writing for the Pulse, a pop culture website where Heidi MacDonald had written.  I wrote the weekly column, “For Your Consideration,” at the Pulse, spotlighting online and small press comics and creators.  Dan wrote, “Am I Alone In This?” encompassing his personal reading journey through comics.  As Grant stated in his own column for CBR, if one wishes to be a writer, one needs to write and take the opportunity for publication wherever it may come, because any and all writing can only help you improve your craft and evaluating one’s writing upon publication affords one a different, and often better, perspective on its success, or lack thereof. 

Dan and I published two more issues of Warrior27, in 2008 and 2009, with ITMOD co-founder, Matt Constantine, joining us, along with some more great artists.  Dan and I also started finding some publishing success outside our own venture.  He got a short story published by Arcana, in their second Dark Horrors anthology, and I started writing some short fiction for a couple of burst culture sites – 50 Years From Now and Elephant Words.  In my mind, I was going to take the Harrison Ford route – just keep plugging away at this creative endeavor until, through atrophy, those others who started at the same time I did will have fallen away like leaves, deciding it was too much effort for too little reward. 

After we published a 254-page of Warrior27, which included all the best stories and articles from those four issues, along with extras like the interview I did with Joe Quesada in 2001, Dan embarked on a year-long blog adventure, My Year In Crime.  For the entirety of 2010 and half of 2011, Dan posted every day on his crime blog.  It was a great exercise and it garnered him a bit of attention, as he landed short interviews with authors Duane Swierczynski and Victor Gischler.  Achievement unlocked.

Not being a fool – and hewing closely to the paraphrased adage to steal the best ideas – I started my own year-long blog project in 2012, Reading Watchmen.  For years, I’d been thinking about writing my own page-by-page analysis of this seminal work by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons. With the template Dan provided, I finally went all in.  Each month was dedicated to a single chapter of the comic, opening with a quick thematic overview of the issue at hand, followed by examinations of the cover and then the page-by-page annotations – a page a day, every day, with the issue’s full annotations at the end of the month.  It was a big project, with daily deadlines, but incredibly fulfilling.  In the end, I wrote a bit over 87,000 words on Watchmen and did not miss a deadline. 

At this point, the writing continues, for both Dan and myself.  I’ve met with some success, having short stories published – comics and prose, alike – every year since 2010, with two more scheduled, hopefully, for publication this year.  Right now, Dan is hip-deep in his non-fiction novel, while I have begun the second half of a novel that’s been sitting in the back of my brain ever since I taught on Matinicus Island, twenty-four miles out in the Atlantic.  We’re not done yet – Dan and I are too damn pig-headed – and with the tenth anniversary of that first issue of Warrior27 coming up this August, we’re thinking of publishing something new.  I don’t know what it will be – and I can’t even say, for certain, that it will get done – but it’s exciting to think we’ve come this far. 

Here’s to the next ten years.

-chris

Baltimore in the rear view - being the 2nd part

My summation of the recently completed Baltimore Comic-con, where I, along with Dan & Matt, exhibited for the first time.  Sales weren't as brisk as we would have liked, but does that mean it was an unsuccessful convention?  Click the link and find out.  [spoiler: it was a good show, as a fan and aspiring writer]

LINK

-chris

Baltimore in the rear view - being the 1st part

Over at In the Mouth of Dorkness, I offer a personal retrospective on the recent Baltimore Comic-con.  In this first part, I write about how it was, as a fan, for me to return to the Baltimore show after ten years.  Spoiler:  it was a pretty good show.

Look for part 2 soon.

-chris

Baltimore Comic-con -- We're bringing some books to the show!

Dan and I, along with "Mouth Dork" hosts Matt & Brad, will be at Baltimore Comic-con this weekend, and we're bringing some books.  Here's a quick rundown:

-  Mainelining is the over-arching title for my series of chapbooks that include one short comic story and one short prose story written by me (with the exception of volumes 2&3, which encompasses my 20,000 word novella, "In Search Of").  Between 24 and 28 pages, these are stories that have been published in Warrior27 as well as through other publishers like Dark Recesses Press, Black Tome Books, Ape Entertainment, and Top Shelf Publications.  

- Warrior27 - the comics/prose anthology that Dan and I started in 2005.  We'll have three issues there, with comic and prose stories as well as interviews with key comic people such as Chris Staros and Gary Groth. With more pages than your typical Marvel/DC book, at 3 bucks each, they're a steal.  [and Indie Comics Horror #1 is 48 pages of horror comic stories set in space, ancient Rome, and all points in between, including my story, "Minister to the Undead," with art by Dan Lauer]

-  Reading Watchmen - my 87,000-word examination of Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons's seminal graphic novel, in 3 handy volumes.  If you love Watchmen, or are just curious about what "all the fuss" is about, give these a try. And if you want a taste of what this entails, check out our sister site.

-  New Orleans by Gaslight is the steampunk anthology in which I placed my story "You Gotta Give Good."  You'll find many more great stories and poems set in a steampunk-era New Orleans inside, as well.  

-  Warrior27: the Collection.  256 pages of all the best bits from our original issues, along with new and never-before-seen stuff, including interviews with Bryan Talbot and Joe Quesada (only a year into his tenure as EIC of Marvel) and teases of stories we're working on.  You can get the physical copy or the digital, in both cbz and pdf form.

Hope to see you there.

chris

Baltimore Comic-Con: Here's where we'll be.

In a little over 10 days, Dan, Matt, Brad, and I will be in Artist's Alley at the Baltimore Comic-con.

Table A301.  Click the map for a larger image.

Hope to see you there.

-chris