Otakon!

I made a small surprise visit to Otakon just last weekend and peddled Neozoic issues 1-5 and our FCBD special with Atomic Robo. I didn't expect to find comic fans familiar with Red 5 walking around the Artist Alley, but they seemed pretty happy about picking up a bunch of FCBD issues that their retailer ran out of or didn't stock back in May.

There were plenty of OOOHs and AHHHHs when con-goers were flipping through pages, but I had something else on hand that made them go completely ballistic:

I included a 5 page sneak preview of Neozoic #6 in my pop-up portfolio, everyone made happy stank faces at a certain double page spread that looked as if it'd come out straight from a videogame concept art book [best analogy I can come up with].

By Sunday afternoon, all my Neozoic issues were GONNNNNE.

Comic fans I'd tend to think are hard to please in general, but if they like what you have, they'll always come away from your table all happy and super lit. I think that's one of the best kinds of compliments an artist can get.

I survived Toronto Comicon, and all I got was an Atomic-Robo t-shirt.

Everything you need to know about my two days at Toronto Comicon is in the image below:


[Horrible photos and LOLZ-inducing narrative deftly written and edited by moi.]

Toronto Comicon was fun. Short. But fun.

Met shitloads of artists and con goers, most of whom were very nice and generous people. Met a TV personality and didn't know about it till I Googled her. Liana K co-hosted a show with ED THE SOCK. That's so awesome.

Sunday morning sucked for me though. Woke up at 6am. Got to the train station at 7am. Found out the trains wouldn't run till 9am, so I was stuck out in the drizzling rain zoning out with a mp3 player for 2 hours while dying for some form of caffiene.

My badge kept falling out so much I swore it was prejudiced against asians. At least until someone kindly handed me some duct tape, and some wine gums. Yum.

Over the weekend I yoinked an Atomic Robo trade from Scott Wegener's table, and later on grabbed one of his t-shirts for twenty bucks. I didn't go around asking for autographs or sketches from some of the big artists wandering around like Greg Land or Joseph Linsner, but I did get to shoot the breeze with them for a bit.

There was a Women in Comics panel that I missed the intros for, at first I was paranoid it was going to be some sort of feminazi schtick, but I was surprised at the boozing and schmoozing going on at the hotel bar and grill. While I was there I had a Sling and a Mike's Hard Lemonade, nothing crazy as I had to be sober enough to make the 2 hour trek home on public transit.

Now that it's all over, I'm fried and happy. Now to get busy on the last half of Neozoic #6!

Just a heads up

Neozoic 5 is coming out this month, so be sure to call up your local comic retailer to reserve a copy!

In other news, Korim and I will be heading down to the Toronto Comicon on July 12-13 and the FanEXPO on August 22-24. No idea where we're sitting just yet, but be sure to look out this table easel with the issue 6 cover on it.




EDIT: Hold up! I got something better instead! Take a look at this -



What do you guys think? Should hopefully make it easier for people to find us in the crowd, yes yes?

In any case, I just remembered Scott Wegener from Atomic Robo's going to be coming up for the Toronto Comicon as well. It'd be great if the convention staff had our tables next to each other. Then we can call our tables the official Red 5 booth! Except we've only got Atomic Robo and Neozoic issues to hand out. Heehee.

#06 Cover

By far, the best cover we've done yet.

Back from FCBD 2008

I RETURN, WITH PHOTOS~!!!!
I'm not in any of those btw, I'm not very photogenic so I stayed outta these ones for peace of mind. The turnout was not bad actually considering how crappy the rainy weather was.
[Click for more ▼]
I stopped by the Labyrinth before hopping over to the Beguiling at noon and picked up the Imaginary Friends FCBD special which btw was very pretty to look at.

I was all like "WHERE THE FREEBIES AT~" and got pointed over to the back of the store where the owners Dan and Jessie had the stuff. They were gonna put it all outside until it started raining, and now they're trying to set it all up inside their tiny tiny store space.

I was running outta time so I speed-walked over to the Beguiling and met up with owner Chris Butcher, who was nice enough to point me over to a pub right beside their store where the local guest artists could sit and draw away from the rain. Unfortunately for some people the pub wasn't open for business so asking for alcohol was outta the question. But we had pizza~ And my goodness I had the best slice of Thai Pie evarrrr~

J.Korim swung by later and we got ourselves all nicely set up on these really cute small tables. I was told to bring in a bunch of extra Atomic Robo/Neozoic FCBD freebies because they didn't have enough, so I brought in like 20 or so. Big mistake, we were running low within half an hour LOL. Someone came in later on with a partial shipment of the issues so we were back on our feet giving out the freebies and signing or sketching stuff whenever people asked. There were a lot of kids who stopped by as well, they were adorable when they asked their little questions on who did what on the book and made their sketch requests <3.

I didn't meeta lotta Neozoic fans per se, but I did meet a bunch that liked what Red5 put out so far, and new fans that would love to see more Neozoic. There were ads all over the place for the general public to come stop by the comic shops, so of course there were many people who came in all new and fresh to this comic reading deal who could pick up a bunch of freebies to dig into.

When we nearly ran outta books to hand out, we ducked into the Beguiling and checked out some graphic novels they had since guest artists got a 10% discount on top of the already discounted price for FCBD. Korim got some trades of The Losers, and I grabbed me Wanted cause I kept hearing how good it was [which the dreaded movie adaption with Angelina Jolie will appear sometime this summer I think].

Before long it was around 3:03pm and we had to head on over to the Silver Snail. I thought the turnout at Beguiling was busy but Silver Snail was effing crowded!

I suppose it's a given if you got guests like:

- Stuart Immonen (Ultimate Spider-Man, Next Wave, etc.)

- Leonard Kirk (Marvel Adventures The Avengers, World War Hulk Aftersmash: Warbound, Agents of Atlas, etc.)

- Ty Templeton (Howard the Duck, Bongo Comics, Exterminators, etc.)

Aside from a bunch of Star Wars cosplayers loitering for fanboys at the front, there were a couple of police officers on the job as well to make sure no one was shoplifting during the mayhem. It was kinda hard wading through a lotta people up on the second floor of the store to get to our tables. By then we had our stack of freebies ready for giving away and did our thing until we ran out. There would've been more downstairs but they've been swiped by all the customers in the morning rush, so the manager dressed as Silent Bob tells me.

That's a good thing innit?

I came home all happy and glowing with all the free swag I managed to get. Aside from the Imaginary Friends special I got these sample freebies as well:

- Maximum Ride
- Hellboy
- Gekiga
- The Death-Defying Devil
- Ignatz
- Iron Man poster

So yeah, that was my FCBD in a nutshell. How about you guys? How was it over where you were?