It's been a crazy couple of months, if you haven't read previous posts, a few friends and I got together about a year and a half ago to put together a 5 story compilation graphic novel. To top it all off we got a great artist who worked on Thor and other popular DC and Marvel characters over the last thirty years to draw our cover, Walt Simonson. It was a little too expensive to make the books here in the states so we had to outsource to China--sorry big Red, White and Blue you were just too hot for our ugly asses. anyway the books came in we didn't have any problem with customs--buuuut, yeah they couldn't open the damn crate on the boat. I was on my way to Philly when I got this news, needless to say I was kinda pissed. But it worked out in the end we got all of our books and we did quite well for the weekend. Whew!
Now onto Philly Con, it was very different from the others that I have been to in the past. Obviously it's not as big or as popular as the New York or San Diego Con but it was a great place to meet up and coming artists and writers and pick their brains for a while. Like Riley Brown an upcoming artist for Marvel who's kicking ass drawing the Cable/Deadpool mag. Or Tom Raney, who does an unbelievably awesome version of Sabertooth for the Ultimate X-Men and Khoi Pham who does an incredible job on X-Factor. These guys were really great, they, both of them were very cool to give us an idea on how to get started and get noticed on the business side of comics and for that I am very grateful. These guys put in a lot of hours to make the art work look top notch for the fans and these guys do not disappoint. We also met an upcoming artist named Joe Quinones who, when I walked by his table had a very cool looking Electra. You can check out his site at joequinones.blogspot.com. Next to him was a very cool painter named Paolo Rivera who is working with Marvel on Origin stories for popular characters like Spider-Man called Mythos. I also met Rags Morales (Identity Crisis), Rodney Ramos and Jim Calafiore (DC's Countdown).
Our guys from the book Ori, Ian, Greg, Dezi, Jeff Z. and Jared must have done about 80 -90 free sketches combined for the entire weekend. They did a great job bringing people to the table by offering anyone and everyone to draw whatever they liked. They had a great time doing it too. They had so many people coming back for more. Usually at these things the artist charges 5-15 dollars a sketch and 20 - 100 or more for a commision depending on the artist. Since we are of course unknowns, the guys decided to go all out using inks and colors to give the guests at the Philly Con something really nice to take home and frame. It was pretty wild being behind the tables instead of ogoling the art from the other side, but it was a really great experience and I hope to do so again. So this coming weekend is the Big Apple Con--I won't be able to attend cause of a Family Reunion but I think Ori, Greg and maybe Ian will be trying to get a table so if you're in the Big Apple this weekend you should check out the Big Apple Con June 23rd and 24th.
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