I had told Sam Kieth about my positive experiences with Idea Design Works at APE-CON, and he said, Oh, I know the President, Ted. I’ll drop your name to him. The next time I spoke with Sam, he told me, I told Ted about you, and he said he’ll be at Wondercon, and you should stop by his booth and show him your samples. Sam also told me to talk to Chris Staros at Top Shelf, who Sam was considering doing an indie project with (He wound up going with Oni, and the project was “Ojo,” which I ended up helping him draw.) He would also drop my name to them next time they spoke, he said.
So I did what he asked, and it felt pretty cool to have this high-profile excuse to talk with these companies. I immediately name-dropped Sam’s name for my introduction at Idea Design Works. Ted Adams was very friendly, but when I asked about showing him my work, he gave me the impression he hadn’t planned to look at portfolios. He glanced through the pages and didn’t have much to comment. Finally he concluded something along the lines of, “Unfortunately, I don’t really have the authority/availability of projects to offer you any kind of work.” I left a sample package, but realized my in with Sam wasn’t going to help much in this case. Either he really didn’t have much authority/availability, or he wasn’t interested and was being polite. Either way, I was out of luck.
At Top Shelf, Chris Staros hadn’t come to the con this year. So it felt like another dead end. But I name-dropped Sam to the man working the booth. I assumed it was an assistant, but it was actually Chris’s co-publisher, Brett Warnock. I left a package with him, and I really liked him. I thought he was really friendly, and he visited with me in a way that put me at ease.
Top Shelf was kind enough to send me a rejection letter in the mail as well, although it wasn’t as encouraging as my first Fantagraphics rejection letter. It was more encouraging than my second, which was just a form letter.
I walked by the DC booth with my samples in my bag, and just kind of thought, Why bother. I looked to see what editors I recognized, but just couldn’t get up the courage to talk to anyone. I visualized myself getting the same hackneyed (but true) advice, and I just didn’t want to have to live through that torture again. I didn’t end up showing them anything.
John Romita Sr. and Jr. were billed to sign together at this con. I remember I stumbled onto them early, and started to walk right up to them, because there was a big gap in front of them. Then I realized that beyond the big gap, there was actually a huge line. I wound up not bothering to try and get in line to meet them. Another dream shattered. Because of course I had fantasized about getting a sort of tag-team sketch of Spider-Man by each of them on the same piece of paper.
I ended up just falling back into my usual comics convention routine, ditching the attempts to become a comics professional, and just going through bins and looking for back issues of comics.