Overall I had a pretty good time.  It was strange being on my own for the most part, and despite an impressive roster of guests, attendance seemed lighter than last year.  Also, the Small Press, Indie Island and Artist Alley sections of the show comprised more space than the Exhibitors, taking up just over half of the hall.  I can’t decide if this is a good thing or a bad thing, or just a thing.  Regardless, it was a fine way to blow a weekend and a wad of cash, and waste some time.  Hopefully, come next year, I’ll have some copies of Art the Amoeba and Oh, Heavens! to trade.  We’ll see…

Here’s the list of loot:

Trades (all either $5, ½ off, or BOGO)
Appleseed: Book One – Masamune Shirow
Cerebus – Dave Sim
Easy Way – Christopher E. Long/Andy Kuhn
Fanboy – Mark Evanier/Sergio Aragones/various
Flaming Carrot Comics – Bob Burden
The Groo Jamboree – Sergio Aragones
Jack Staff: Soldiers – Paul Grist
Mister Blank: Exhaustive Collection – Christopher J. Hicks
Nevada – Steve Gerber/Phil Winslade
Stray Bullets vol. 1 – David Lapham
Stray Bullets vol. 2 – David Lapham
Stray Toasters – Bill Sienkiewicz
Superpatriot: Liberty & Justice – Tom & Mary Bierbaum/Keith Giffen/Dave Johnson
Marvel Essentials: Tales of the Zombie – various
Trasition: Phase 7 #010 & #011 – Alec Longstreth

Singles (all from $0.10 – 1.00)
1963 Book Two: The Fury
1963 Book Five: Horus, Lord of Light
Teen Titans Spotlight on Aqualad (early Erik Larsen art!  Sienkiewicz cover!)
Iceman #1-4
The Thing #2
Miracleman #2-6, 9 (ok, ok, these were $5 a pop, but that’s a steal)
Nightcrawler #1-4
Power & Glory #1 and 3 (I already had 2 and 4)
The Awesome Slapstick #1-3 (no 4, DAMN IT, but I’ve wanted this book for a while)
Sludge #2-9 (more Gerber!  I was on the hunt for plenty o’ Gerber)
Wildstar: Sky Zero #1-4, Born to Be Wild #1

Minicomics, Zines, etc.
Cosmic Adventures: A Mini-comic for Coloring! #1 – Justin Gammon
The Dvorak Zine – Alec Longstreth
Phase 7 #005, 006, 012-014 – Alec Longstreth
Weirdotoys – Justin Gammon
 

Seven pages left to letter and ink and I’ll have issue 2 of Everyman in the bag (except some tones and cover colors, but that won’t take too long)!  The page today has gone by easy as pie.  Just some blacks to fill and that’s a wrap!

Oh, Heavens! was initially intended to be a 12-page tract, but I’m already up to 8 pages pencilled on that, and I haven’t even got God back into Heaven yet.  Initially I struggled with coming up with a clever beginning, and then I opted to keep the narrative straight, with little humorous flashbacks where needed.  I think this will probably top out at 20 pages, but the dimensions are considerably smaller than a normal comic page, so the work is much, much quicker on them (a page of this is 4x8; I can do two pages on one 11x14 sheet of Bristol).  Plus I’m using my cartoonier style, which saves time.  I’m trying to find a decent reconciliation between my streamlined, exaggerated impulses and my more traditionalist ones.  It’s slow going in Everyman, because I want that to be really, really comic booky, but stuff like Oh, Heavens! is wide open.

It’s getting easier to see why comic artists usually do their best work toward the end of their lives.  It’s neat to work at a craft where I’ll only get better, as opposed to something like rock n’ roll, where it seems to be general consensus that you lose the magic the older you get.  That’s not necessarily true for all musicians, but still it’s nice to think I could be 70 years old someday and doing the best work of my life.  That’s exhilarating. 

I worked on comic stuff all day today.  The progress feels good, but man am I beat.  Hard to believe how much it takes out of you, hunched over a drawing board, making all these meticulous little lines over and over again.  My neck is sore and I’m hungry; I haven’t eaten since around one o’clock.  Nevertheless, I’m past the halfway point on Everyman #2, so there is that.

It’s hard to keep my enthusiasm up.  I have all these other stories I want to tell, and a lot of ‘em aren’t superhero yarns.  I keep asking myself, “Do I really want to put out just another superhero book?”  They’re rampant.  I enjoy the characters in Everyman enough to keep working with them, but I have other things I could be doing that would stand out a lot more, and therefore more likely to get published.  Or maybe I’m just deluding myself all around.

Anyway, with last night’s song and this little missive, that’s a double post today, which means I can have a day off from this thing sometime.  Daily journal entry is an immense challenge.  I’m glad I’m doing it, though, my writing is improving exponentially for it.  See?  I use words like ‘exponentially’.  And I can spell ‘em right, too.

Good night, dear readers.  Time to walk the dog, and scavenge for food.