{"id":141,"date":"2008-02-18T10:36:12","date_gmt":"2008-02-18T16:36:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/?p=141"},"modified":"2010-04-26T11:25:06","modified_gmt":"2010-04-26T17:25:06","slug":"129-a-1-comics-small-press-day-signing-june-24th-2006","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/archives\/141","title":{"rendered":"129. A-1 Comics Small Press Day Signing, June 24th, 2006"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my limited experience, I\u2019ve found that when I do local store signings, I\u2019m just an unknown and no one excitedly rushes out to meet me.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe a few friends pop in to say hello, and that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 <\/span>So I\u2019ve stopped asking shops if it would be all right if I come out special and do a signing.\u00a0 <\/span>But on the other hand, if a shop invites me, then I\u2019m happy to oblige.\u00a0 <\/span>I think it\u2019s important to support businesses that are so supportive of me, and it builds good relations.\u00a0 <\/span>Plus, I have a good time.\u00a0 <\/span>I got a couple of these recently.<\/p>\n

June\u00a0 <\/span>24th<\/sup>, 2006 A-1 Comics Small Press Day Signing<\/o:p><\/strong><\/p>\n

Every year, A-1 Comics invites local artists to spend a few hours in their shop for \u201csmall press day,\u201d which has been on \u201cFree Comic Book Day\u201d the last few years.\u00a0 <\/span>I assumed it would be the same this year, and I would miss it, because I had scheduled a trip out of town, but they picked a different day, partially to celebrate the opening of their new location.\u00a0 <\/span>When I found out, I wound up contacting a number of my local self-publishing friends (local being Northern California) to see if they might like to join in the fun.\u00a0 <\/span>I wrote to some slightly bigger names in the industry as well, but none of them ended up coming.\u00a0 <\/span>Of all the people I wrote, three people said they were coming, another seriously considered it, and only Matt Silady, who shared our table at San Diego, came up.<\/p>\n

Brian, the owner, however, convinced Ron Lim and Thomas Yeates to hang out for awhile.<\/p>\n

Also appearing were \u201cThe Nice Guy\u201d creators Michael O\u2019Connell and Tim Watts, Leigh Dragoon (\u201cSpidric\u201d), Dan Cooney (\u201cValentine\u201d), Mike Hampton (Captain A*hole), and Zac Henderson (\u201cProject i.O\u201d).\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

I got to the shop, and I was sitting by Ron, who is just about the friendliest guy around.\u00a0 <\/span>I see him at all the local cons, either at a table, or just wandering around.\u00a0 <\/span>He\u2019s always smiling and friendly, and real positive about my work.\u00a0 <\/span>We got him talking about his art style, and how he\u2019s made a conscious decision to simplify his backgrounds, because he was tired of seeing all his detail flattened out by a one-color-wash from his colorist.\u00a0 <\/span>So he\u2019s started having to think in color as he\u2019s drawing.<\/p>\n

I found this interesting.\u00a0 <\/span>It reminded me of some of my monster pages Dick Ayers inked.\u00a0 <\/span>When I studied them, I realized that some color could easily add some depth to the linework, but in black and white they felt a little flatter.\u00a0 <\/span>It made me aware that I was beginning to visualize my work in black and white.\u00a0 <\/span>If my work began getting colored, I would have to re-imagine my line quality.\u00a0 <\/span>You don\u2019t think of this stuff\u2026until you have to think about it.<\/p>\n

Ron was only there maybe an hour, and I was sad to see him go, but soon after, Thomas Yeates appeared, so he just took Ron\u2019s seat right by me.<\/p>\n

We were talking a little about my comics, and I mentioned how I\u2019m a big fan of film noir and EC-style horror, and Thomas said, \u201cReally.\u00a0 <\/span>I would have thought your stuff comes more from the pages of Mad Magazine.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Somehow, the thought that people would have this kind of view of my work surprised me.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t know why.\u00a0 <\/span>I should take it as a compliment, because I try to be funny with my work, and I do a fair amount of parodies, so maybe Mad Magazine is where I belong.\u00a0 <\/span>I just never really realized that\u2019s what I was doing, I guess.\u00a0 <\/span>It can be sobering when people tell you their perceptions of you, if it doesn\u2019t match with your perceptions of yourself.<\/p>\n

I had brought some copies of the Ojo trade paperback to sell, and that caught Thomas\u2019s eye, and I began showing him, page by page, what I had done, and what Sam had done.\u00a0 <\/span>I\u2019d turn to one page, and he\u2019d say, \u201cOh, wow, Did you draw that?\u00a0 <\/span>Look at how well you\u2019ve drawn water there.\u00a0 <\/span>You can really feel the fluidity!\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s amazing!\u201d and I\u2019d have to say, \u201cNo, Sam drew that one.\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019re right; it is a great page.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>And then he\u2019d say, \u201cWhat a great image that is!\u201d and I\u2019d say, \u201cUh.\u00a0 <\/span>Yeah.\u00a0 <\/span>That\u2019s Sam\u2019s page too.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>I know I\u2019m no Sam Kieth, but here I was hoping my pages held up okay, and Thomas, with his artist\u2019s eye, could really nail it.\u00a0 <\/span>I felt just as transparent as can be.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

He was really impressed with Sam as an artist, and was asking what Sam used to get his thin white lines.\u00a0 <\/span>I told him it was Pentel \u201cPresto!\u201d correction markers, but Thomas said he\u2019d tried using them, and couldn\u2019t get such a thin line.\u00a0 <\/span>I later emailed Sam on Thomas\u2019s behalf.\u00a0 <\/span>Sam confirmed that he was using Prestos with medium tips, but then he recommended something new he\u2019d found that he liked even better, called Gelly Roll fine and medium point pens.\u00a0 <\/span>Sam said they\u2019re the he\u2019s found, although they dry up and clog with india ink.\u00a0 <\/span>On the other hand, they\u2019re cheap, so I passed the info back to Thomas.<\/p>\n

Thomas said he\u2019d recently been drawing on HUGE paper.\u00a0 <\/span>I think it must be like 22\u201dx28\u201d or something crazy.\u00a0 <\/span>This is, of course, how the old, OLD pros used to do their work.\u00a0 <\/span>Flash Gordons and Prince Valiants and such.\u00a0 <\/span>Thomas found he really enjoyed the look of the work, once it got shrinked down to comic-sized pages.\u00a0 <\/span>The drawback was that no comics company has scanners that can scan these images at this size, and it\u2019s an absolute pain-in-the-ass to scan each half and then try to splice them together.\u00a0 <\/span>It more than doubles your work.\u00a0 <\/span>Probably quadruples it, I\u2019m guessing, and I know, because I tried scanning pages on a smaller scanner, before I bought an ultra-expensive 12\u201dX17\u201d scanner.\u00a0 <\/span>He said what he has to do is take his pages to Kinkos, and have them make a reduced-size copy, which I think he said costs two bucks (maybe one) a page.\u00a0 <\/span>He finds this extra cost and work worth it, for the product he\u2019s able to produce as a result.\u00a0 <\/span>Interesting process.\u00a0 <\/span>I was really fascinated.<\/p>\n

I knew he was interested in things like Zorro and Tarzan, and so I told him I had recently been reading a lot of these books.\u00a0 <\/span>I don\u2019t think I told him, but I\u2019ve never been particularly interested in the adventure genre, and I realized how little I\u2019d read when I was trying to figure out who all the characters were in Alan Moore\u2019s Extraordinary Gentlemen.\u00a0 <\/span>So that led me to read 20,000 Leagues, Dracula, King Solomon\u2019s Mines, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the Invisible Man (or at least listen to them on audio book).\u00a0 <\/span>From there, I just continued reading stacks of other books by H.Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Jules Verne.\u00a0 <\/span>I enjoyed it enough to continue onto the adventure\/sci-fi line with stacks of H.G. Welles, Tarzan and \u201cPrincess of Mars\u201d and \u201cLand Before Time,\u201d Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson, Moby Dick, Three Muskateers and Count of Monte Cristo, and anything else I could think of.\u00a0 <\/span>So we spent some time talking about good adventure books, and he mentioned that he was surprised how much he had enjoyed \u201cThe Adventures of Robin Hood\u201d recently.\u00a0 <\/span>It was one I had enjoyed too.<\/p>\n

At this signing, I think one guy bought one of my comics, and maybe two other guys came over and talked to me for a while, and that was as much as I expected.\u00a0 <\/span>But I still had a really nice time, got some professional tips, and visited with everybody and hung out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my limited experience, I\u2019ve found that when I do local store signings, I\u2019m just an unknown and no one excitedly rushes out to meet me.\u00a0 Maybe a few friends pop in to say hello, and that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve stopped asking shops if it would be all right if I come out special […]<\/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 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excitedly rushes out to meet me.\u00a0 Maybe a few friends pop in to say hello, and that\u2019s about it.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve stopped asking shops if it would be all right if I come out special…","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","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=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chriswisniaarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}