San Diego 2006<\/p>\n
A few more of the usual convention excitements.\u00a0 <\/span>I said the usual hellos to Matt Wagner and Jon K. Snyder, who I always enjoy.\u00a0 <\/span>I found William Stout and apologized I couldn\u2019t afford to get a pin-up from him (we\u2019d discussed the possibility through emails), and he was as friendly as can be, and even let us take a photo with him at our booth.\u00a0 <\/span>I got to visit a bit with Tim Bradstreet, who I always absolutely adore.\u00a0 <\/span>My wife laughs at me, because I have the biggest crush on him.\u00a0 <\/span>I tried to get him to hang out with me one evening, but we weren\u2019t able to hook up.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>He told me where he was planning to be one night, and I went there and stayed pretty late, and never saw him.\u00a0 <\/span>The next day I asked him, and he said, Oh yeah, sorry, that place was so packed, we went somewhere else.\u00a0 <\/span>The way he said it with such empathy, and since I\u2019ve got such a crush on him, I didn\u2019t get the impression he was sending me on a wild goose chase.\u00a0 <\/span>I asked about hooking up another night, and he said, Well, this night is the bladdy-blah party –\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019re familiar with it?\u00a0 <\/span>It\u2019s an invite-only for professionals – I thought maybe you\u2019d be going.\u00a0 <\/span>I spoke with other friends, who it turned out were also invited and going, and it made me feel low, not actually being invited.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>I got to visit a bit with Adam Hughes, who confirmed he couldn\u2019t let me publish a pin-up by him since he\u2019s exclusive with DC, and said he didn\u2019t even think it would be a good idea if I got a monster sketch from him to post at my website.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n At one point, Elizabeth and I were just wandering around, and happened to see Ray Harryhausen just sitting quietly at a booth.\u00a0 <\/span>We ran up and got our picture taken with him.\u00a0 <\/span>I didn\u2019t bother him about pin-ups, just wanted to see him.<\/p>\n When we had first checked in at our hotel, we bumped into Joshua Dysert, who I\u2019d met at Wondercon this year.\u00a0 <\/span>And he recognized me and pulled me aside to say hello.\u00a0 <\/span>We wound up spending some time with him in a bar one night, and he told us how well his comics career has been going this year.\u00a0 <\/span>He said he hooked up with some editors at Darkhorse and DC, and he\u2019s been offered so much work, he doesn\u2019t know how he\u2019s going to be able to do it all.\u00a0 <\/span>But he says he\u2019s never been in this position before, and he\u2019s really stoked that his career has gotten to this point.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s got to be a great feeling.<\/p>\n The night the convention ended, we went out for ice cream and realized we were sitting next to Roger Corman, but I was too timid, while he was having ice cream, to butt in and ask if he would take a picture with me.\u00a0 <\/span>I watched him get up and leave, another missed opportunity.<\/p>\n Even so, I got a ton of great photos with a ton of great comics professionals.\u00a0 <\/span>I think it will look real nice at my website.\u00a0 <\/span>It will make me look so impressive to the average passer-through-of-websites, don\u2019t you think?\u00a0 <\/span>If I have met and rubbed shoulders with all these greats, I must also be a great, and then everyone will be bound to want to buy my books, right?\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019ll be \u201cthat guy who would have a ton of great photos if he hadn\u2019t butted his face into all of the otherwise great shots.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>What an ingenious marketing ploy!<\/p>\n On the last day, Matt Silady, who\u2019d shared the booth with us, said something that made me feel really good.\u00a0 <\/span>He said, It will be interesting to see where your career is at this time next year.\u00a0 <\/span>Because after this convention, it kind of feels like I\u2019m getting close to the cusp of something, and I just keep waiting for it to tilt in my favor.<\/p>\n Ironically, a year from San Diego 2006, it would wind up being Matt and not me whose career seemed to really publisher-wise, critically, sales-wise, and media-wise just absolutely skyrocket.<\/p>\n But back to me.\u00a0 <\/span>If you look at each of my San Diego Cons (and just generally how I\u2019m doing as a struggling self-publisher)\u2026Even if it doesn\u2019t look like I\u2019m able to get work, and even if I continue to struggle every issue I self-publish (in that I lose money every issue, and I spend all this time and effort and money trying to get reviews, get word out, go to conventions, get my work better distributed, and just drum up more interest and it doesn\u2019t happen)\u2026even with all that, I feel like every year, I\u2019m more and more professional, making more and better connections, getting just that little bit more known, building just a couple new fans, and more and more fun is happening!\u00a0 <\/span>Not to mention I think my art is getting better every year, my control and understanding.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019m getting better and better all around at figuring this game out, and that feels pretty good.\u00a0 <\/span>And what a hell of a good time I had this year at San Diego!<\/p>\n And just like, another amazing San Diego Comic Con was over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" San Diego 2006 A few more of the usual convention excitements.\u00a0 I said the usual hellos to Matt Wagner and Jon K. Snyder, who I always enjoy.\u00a0 I found William Stout and apologized I couldn\u2019t afford to get a pin-up from him (we\u2019d discussed the possibility through emails), and he was as friendly as can […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary-of-a-struggling-comics-artist"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"woocommerce_thumbnail":false,"woocommerce_single":false,"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"cwisnia","author_link":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/archives\/author\/cwisnia"},"uagb_comment_info":25,"uagb_excerpt":"San Diego 2006 A few more of the usual convention excitements.\u00a0 I said the usual hellos to Matt Wagner and Jon K. Snyder, who I always enjoy.\u00a0 I found William Stout and apologized I couldn\u2019t afford to get a pin-up from him (we\u2019d discussed the possibility through emails), and he was as friendly as can…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}