After the first day, many artists who we spent a little time with said they weren’t planning on showing up Sunday. Ryan Sook had driven home, Arthur Adams’ table was empty. Of course, this made the guest list smaller and smaller. One artist who did come out told me he had a lot of work to get done at home, and was also tempted to duck out.
On Saturday, Travis Charest’s booth said he’d be there Sunday, but by Sunday, the sign was long gone, and of course Travis was never anywhere to be seen.
The con opened, and it was desolate. About an hour in, we joked that hopefully the con would be opening soon. I snapped a photo of Mick Gray for laughs, because there wasn’t a person in sight anywhere near him, in the aisles OR behind the tables. We found out that there was a parade and a ball game, or something like that. This attracted a lot of people, but also made getting out difficult.
Someone came by my table and told me she’d picked up the first couple issues of Tabloia at her local comics shop, and she wound up getting the rest, as well as Doris Danger. That’s a nice feeling, knowing the book was read by someone, and they enjoyed it enough to pick up some more.
I took some time to go over and see if Sergio had had time to think about doing a pin-up. We ended up talking about his career. He’s contributed to every issue of Mad magazine for I don’t know how many years, and on top of that, he did maybe a dozen of those silent pocket-books. For a huge stretch of that period (ten years?) he did a monthly Groo comic as well. He’s been doing car commercials, and every week he does a comic page for a European magazine, where each one has a theme, and you have to find ten objects within the picture. His amounts of detail remind me of Where’s Waldo, where you can just stare at them and catch all these little funny nuances. But he did it first.
I told him as a kid, I’d loved those between-the-margins strips, and then when Groo came out, my limited eye still realized he was the same artist. And then I started seeing his little cartoons for Funniest Home Videos. That was all real special to me, growing up. He was a crucial stage in my developing eye.
He started opening up some of his books and showing me pages he’d drawn. He showed me big page spreads he did of the Simpsons, or of comics conventions. The comics convention pages were fun, because he’d draw all the different comics creators, or else comics characters wandering around the aisles.
It was a real nice visit, and by the end, he’s agreed to do a monster pin-up for me. He said maybe he’d have it done by San Diego, which is when we’ll see him next. I felt so warm toward him.
Popping over to Adam Hughes’ table, I heard Allison telling some fans that Adam has such a good relationship with his editor, he’s not really interested in switching out of DC at this time. He did some work for another company, where he was paid better, but even so, the editors were so fussy about what they wanted, he had to work harder and longer to make all the corrections they demanded, so his “per hour” pay probably wasn’t actually much better in the long run. Especially once you added the time in for all the re-working and the stress of dealing with these editors who wanted changes, it just isn’t worth it to him. Where he’s at, with DC, his editors are happy with his work, and happy to let him do whatever he wants, and that’s such a good working environment for him, he’s glad to stay with them for the foreseeable future.
Back at my table, with the “this-place-is-empty-and-what-the-hell” negative vibe, I noticed, more than other cons for some reason, how many of the indie artists around me had been doing this for ten years or so, and it seemed like they were still in the same place as me. Still not making much money at cons, still struggling to find work and often not finding any, still basically unknown names in the industry, still working day jobs. It was quite discouraging. They’ve just continued to put out books out of love, just like me, but I think some of them made less than I did over the weekend. How long does an artist go at this before he decides, it just isn’t going anywhere? How long do we keep paying to get our stuff self-published, pounding out all this money, and not ever making any of it back, and not getting any recognition, or readership? How long do we wait for a readership to grow, when it just isn’t growing? Shouldn’t ten years be long enough to say, Yeah, I guess I’m just not going to make it in this goddamn industry. Sobering. I guess you wait and see, and if it hasn’t happened in ten years, you think, well, I’ve still got a couple stories I want to tell. No harm if I’m enjoying myself. What’s another thousand bucks to print them up.
Overall, we did fine. We made our table cost back (it was a cheap table) and had enough left over for dinner. Like I say, that was better than a lot of the others. I’m hoping my own table figures continue to keep going up like this, because a year ago, I never even made the table costs back. If we can continue this trend of paying our table off each convention, then I’m heading upward that little amount at least. Gotta just keep plugging away I guess. Maybe for ten years.