King Con: Write Club Promotes You! Part I

A fun part of any con are the random goodies people will come up and hand you. I'm going to try and run down some of the business cards, flyers, mini-comics, comics, and stickers I got during the two-day crazy that was KING CON!

First on my stack are a handful of stickers from TheAngryPenguin.com. I've already sticker bombed the West side from 34th Street to 14th along 9th Ave, and I still have a good stack o' stickers here.

I checked out the site and other than a very bizarre webcomic, it mostly seems like a brand character on t-shirts and dolls, and in YouTube videos running amok. He even sponsored a concert over the summer. Weird, but looks like they had a huge expensive booth on the Big Apple Con and Peter Lazarski, the artist of the webcomic, was at King Con. Stickers away!

Next up is a postcard for Astronaut Elementary by Dave Roman. Looks like AstronautElementary is done for now but it's a fun read so far. He's done a lot of Nickelodeon work and even co-created TEEN BOAT! I've always seen this comic floating around various cons and read a funny mini-comic of it way back when. Ooh, and Jax Epoch/Quicken Forbidden which I've read. Cool. He's got a cool style, so check it out kids!

From slick postcards to folded photocopied paper--yet this is no ordinary photocopy paper--this one made me laugh out loud, four times! (half a letter size, folded in half, four comics!) Four comics and the website SexDrugsAndJuneCleaver, that's all! Well, that and pure hilarity! This comic really did make me laugh, and every now and then I think of any of these four and laugh to myself. Looks like Bree (no last name) has been doing it since 2007 and the first ones have got me laughing already. I definitely recommend this one.

Now back to a slick comic, with an ISBN barcode and everything! BAD GRAMMAR by Marie Condenzio. The production of the yellow covered comic is great, the art, although a bit rough, is in the raw American manga style, sort of.

The illustration work on her site is great, and I think this book would definitely be helped by adding some color to it.

The story is: new kid in a new school making friends, and it reads a bit awkward, but I wasn't sure if that was the point--ala the title Bad Grammar. Interesting work nonetheless, I'd like to see how her work develops.

This one was given to Rick Lacy, and I snagged it from him cause I just loved it so. SheSkull Skeleton Warrior! by Sara Antoinette Martin.

I really love her style, very detailed, has sort of an old school tattoo vibe. The story in SheSkull is very reminiscent of Fletcher Hanks. It's the bizarre story of a finned female skeleton warrior (hence the title) with extremely well rendered artwork. I can't wait to see more from Ms. Martin! (And, seriously...skelecore? Rule!)

Sitting next to us were a few guys selling Pug figurines (as well as some very detailed and large Juggernaut, Cable, Wolverine, etc. statue/figures). Dave Cortes sculpts figures for just about everybody (Toy Biz, McFarlane Toys, etc.) it looks like as his site InuArt shows a ton of his designs (including the never released because children could kill other children with it, giant tree man from Lord of the Rings [no I don't know his name as I'm not a Tolkien fan. Deal.) His own personal project is PUGZEE who has his own comic and backstory as a gangster pug on the run from Johnny Law. It looks like there will be a different Pugzee for each neighborhood in Brooklyn. Pretty cool and smart money focusing in on the dog lovers.

I think the Pugzee guys also gave us a card for Alpha Godz Entertainment who I've seen at multiple shows over the past few years, and they even had a story or two in Reflux, the comic anthology that Chris Chua and myself had a few stories in. (Just found this link which mentions our story as one the highlights! Sweet! And here's a link to the story itself: COOKIES!) Anyways, it seems Alpha Godz is an umbrella for the Montalvo Brothers, Christian & Antonio, as well as Jason Claudio.

Didn't mention you yet? Stay tuned for Part 2!

K