{"id":109,"date":"2007-07-30T15:31:03","date_gmt":"2007-07-30T21:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/?p=109"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:51:44","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T17:51:44","slug":"101-oakland-super-con-may-20-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/archives\/109","title":{"rendered":"101. OAKLAND SUPER-CON DAY ONE, May 20, 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally, I was just planning on going down to this convention and having some fun. <\/span>Not getting a table or trying to sell books. <\/span>Just going down and flipping through some back-issue bins and relaxing, like ol\u2019 times. <\/span>This has been a historically fairly small convention. <\/span>I remember one year it was held in what looked like a gym. <\/span>People had told me that one year felt like a hotel convention, just in a tiny room somewhere. <\/span>So I wasn\u2019t expecting much.<\/p>\n

But as it got closer, we learned Adam Hughes was going to be there, and we thought it would be a good chance to see him and Allison again, and hopefully spend some time with them, after our nice visits at the Orlando Con.<\/p>\n

Then Eduardo Risso was listed. <\/span>And then we learned Sergio Aragones would be there, and Thomas Yeates. <\/span>And our friends Ryan Sook and Mick Gray. <\/span>Then Charles Vess and Arthur Adams and Travis Charest were listed. <\/span>And then all of a sudden, it said Bill Sienkiewicz was coming out. <\/span>I was getting steadily more impressed by the guest list. <\/span>All these people I was either looking forward to trying to get pin-ups from, or who had done pin-ups. <\/span>Also, it was announced to be a two-day convention. <\/span>So it was shaping up to be a potentially very decent con.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth finally said, if we\u2019re going down there to see all these people anyways, it would be worth it to pay for the table, just so she would have a place to sit down. <\/span>She\u2019s now up to six months pregnant, after all.<\/p>\n

So a couple weeks before the convention I sent in my table fee, and we were official.<\/p>\n

Visiting the convention website, I noticed that Eduardo Risso was no longer listed.\u00a0<\/span>I assumed this meant he wasn\u2019t coming after all. <\/span>But even without him\u2026what a list.<\/p>\n

We got to the convention and set up. <\/span>We learned early on that morning that Bill Sienkiewicz and Charles Vess had cancelled. <\/span>No surprise with Bill, because a couple of times, we\u2019d gone to conventions that he was supposed to appear but did not. <\/span>Then it was listed Travis Charest would only appear Sunday (which he did not). <\/span>The guest list became more and more sparse as the hours passed.<\/p>\n

When I came in, Ryan Sook called out my name, so we said a quick hello before going over and setting up our table. <\/span>The last time I\u2019d seen him, he told me about his secret next project, which would be with Howard Chaykin. <\/span>He said it\u2019s okay for him to announce now that this project is Iron Man, and it will be a six-issue telling of his origin.<\/p>\n

After setting up, I went straight over to Adam Hughes, because I had this foolish idea that maybe I\u2019d be early enough to get on his list for convention sketches, and he\u2019d have time and be willing to do a sketch for me of a giant monster, that I could include in my comic. <\/span>By the time I got there, maybe a half hour into the convention, they had already closed their sketch line for the whole weekend. <\/span>Man, he\u2019s in demand. <\/span>I saw someone who said he had gotten to the con at 5:30 in the morning, and waited at the door, just to make sure he got a sketch from Adam. <\/span>So I was out of luck. <\/span>However, I got to say a quick hello to him and Allison. <\/span>He was already drawing away. <\/span>I think it\u2019s difficult for him to visit and draw, and Allison tended to keep the visiting going. I asked if they’d be able to have dinner, but they were having dinner with the convention runners. Strike. Strike. Strike. Ah well.<\/p>\n

The convention started pretty slow, so I popped over and said hello to Ryan Sook and Mick Gray, who always sit together. <\/span>I told Ryan I enjoyed how sparse his artwork was for X-Factor, and how much the colorist contributed. <\/span>He said his colorist is actually a painter, and that he hadn\u2019t consciously tried to be sparse. <\/span>I flipped through his original art pages that he\u2019d brought and realized, yeah, maybe he\u2019s not any more sparse than he has been in previous projects. <\/span>We\u2019ve spoken in the past about how he doesn\u2019t want to sign an exclusive contract with any one company, and he said he\u2019s still happy that way.<\/p>\n

I went and said hello to Sergio Aragones, who seemed to recognize me when I walked up, and even said, \u201cHi Chris.\u201d\u00a0<\/span>I was impressed he remembered my name. <\/span>I reminded him I was interested in a monster pin-up, and he asked to see my book again, to refresh his memory. <\/span>When he saw it, he remembered it. <\/span>We talked about the commission. <\/span>I offered him a price, and he said, Oh no, absolutely not, that\u2019s way too low. <\/span>So I upped it, and he said, No, no, that wouldn\u2019t nearly cover it. <\/span>And we talked a little longer, with me asking him to give him a price and I\u2019d see what I could do, and when I left he said he\u2019d think about it, and come by my table later. <\/span>At our last meeting at Wondercon, I\u2019d left pretty hopefully, but after this talk, I felt less hopeful.\u00a0 But we’d have plenty more interactions before the weekend was over.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t really sell any of the mini-comics that took a few weeks to throw together, that I made special for this con, and put aside everything else on my schedule for. <\/span>The Doris Danger book continued to be the big seller, even though I’ve been selling it at Bay Area Cons already. It fascinates me that each con there are all these new people coming, even though all these conventions are in the same area, maybe fifteen minutes apart.<\/p>\n

A table down from us, there were these guys who said they\u2019d printed up these Kinkos sketchbooks and sold them at a different con for ten bucks each, and made five hundred bucks. <\/span>They\u2019d never had any published work, but I that sure wasn’t stopping them from doing so considerably better than me at conventions. <\/span>I only make half that at each con if I\u2019m lucky, at my best cons. <\/span>What am I doing wrong?\u00a0 <\/span>Do I need to just abandon my dreams of making comics, and just do commission work for hire?\u00a0 Why can\u2019t I get this business thing down?<\/p>\n

A guy across from us was doing sketch commissions, and he seemed busy the entire weekend, as opposed to us, who sat around selling nothing, visiting with no one.<\/p>\n

Overall it was a decent first day. <\/span>We were close to making the table back <\/span>(It was a pretty damn cheap table), and that was really our only expense, besides some food and some gas. <\/span>We felt confident we\u2019d break even by the end of the convention.<\/p>\n

As it closed, I peeked over at Ryan\u2019s, and realized Adam Hughes was over there visiting with him. <\/span>They hadn\u2019t met, it turned out, but were both familiar with and admirers of each others\u2019 work. <\/span>Ryan was saying Marvel wanted him to do more covers, but he doesn\u2019t really like that kind of work. <\/span>He never knows what the story is going to be, and doesn\u2019t like trying to come up with vague, anthemic poses for the same character over and over again. <\/span>Adam was saying he was a little nervous about getting into sequential narrative again (he\u2019s been telling us he\u2019s got a top-secret new project coming soon, and that it will be comics stories and not the covers he\u2019s been doing all this time). <\/span>To get his mind geared up for it, he said he pulled out a notebook one day, and just started practicing drawing little scenes, to get his chops and frame of mind back for that kind of work. <\/span>It was interesting to hear them talk, since they both felt comfortable in different arenas.<\/p>\n

<\/o:p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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