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King Con: Write Club Promotes You! Pt. II

It's not just creative products people are pimping out at these cons, sometimes the potential clients are the con-goers themselves. In this case we have imPhotoGraphics who print up business cards, banners, table throws and runners--all the good stuff you may need at a convention if you wish to sell your wares. The postcard looks good, the prices seem fair, and once I'm at the point where I need to throw together a huge production, well I'll check this blog post and go there. Plus, he's out of Merrick, Long Island so I gots ta represent.

Another non-creative, but very essential, part of being a comic professional is looking after your funds (when you get to the point where you are an actual PAID freelancer). We spoke with a financial wiz who is looking to work with those of us who are doing something a bit more interesting than the average banker, trader, or whatever it is that people do to make lots of money these days. Joshua Hurni out of Advanced Wealth Solutions Group is this man and he'd like to help. So if you're interested hit us up here and we'll pass along his information.

Straddling the line between creative and informative are sites that provide you with news & reviews (much like ourselves, though we like to stress our creative side more); we had a Brooklyn couple stop by that had just heard of the con last minute, who run a site called SFSCOPE which looks to be a text heavy news/review site of all things SPECULATIVE FICTION not to be confused (aka slumming it) with Science Fiction. There looks to be a good amount of information here, so take a gander why don't ya?


Next in my pile is a postcard for Christopher Irving & Seth Kushner's website NYC GRAPHIC NOVELISTS with some bold photos by Kushner of some of the industry's top creators (I love the shot of Dean Haspiel atop the Studio). They profile some of the coolest creators that live and work in NY, as well as some reviews and articles. "A photo and essay journey into the heart and soul of New York City through the eyes of her cartoonists" as they put it on their postcard. They're both very cool guys themselves and even allowed me to tag along on their interview of Carmine Infantino; seeing as how I'm an insane Flash fan, it was truly an honor. Hopefully we'll have these guys on an upcoming episode as they try to turn this site into a hardcover book. You can read the review of their King Con panel here.


In a future post I'll be talking more indepth about Act-I-Vate covering Seth Kushner's new webcomic SCHMUCK and the documentary he co-directed on the Act-I-Vate creators the Act-I-Vate Experience.

When you don't have a slick psotcard or a business card, what do you do? Steal priority mail stickers from the post office and write your info on them apparently. A Reid Harris Cooper, writer/artist/actor, handed me this after a brief conversation. I checked out his site PopCultureSpectrum and it's a blog with some random info, and something that I think is a must see is the Spider-Man Pedicab Driver post. I gotta keep my eyes peeled for this lunatic on the streets of NYC.


Along with Bree of Sex, Drugs & June Cleaver as mentioned in a previous post, a young lady handed me her business card, with a cute graphic on it, rounded edges, and nice design pointing me to her webcomic THE GLASS URCHIN. It's a nicely organized site with a cutesy auto-biographical comic, where the main characters (and only the main characters) happen to be cutesy animals. From whimsical to philosophical to goofy, the strip covers a full range and there's a nice honesty to the art. Definitely worth a look and a nice companion piece to the aforementioned S,D&JC, seeing as they're both friends and all.

Another webcomic, launching around Thanksgiving-time, is MOONLIGHTING which I'm looking forward to. Ms. Emily Wernet's artwork is cool, the idea (a sleepwalking superheroine) sounds cool, and she fights cryptozoological creatures which is definitely cool. I'll hit this up once it goes live and pimp it out a bit more once I get to give it a read. You can see the promo image and some scratchy short comics on the site above in the meantime.

A promo poster for Kevin Mellon's Suicide Sisters somehow wound up at our table and it looked cool so I snagged it. Bad ass chicks chasing down demons on motorcycles. And it's coming out through APE Entertainment which is awesome as I didn't know they were still around. Check out the sites and look at the artwork which is pretty impressive. I'll keep my eye out for it.

Last, but certainly not least, is one of the funniest mini-comics I've read in awhile. A young cartoonist named Lauren Barnett came by and dropped off a mini-comic "A Story About Fish", which I thought was good, with art ranging from cartoony to realistic(ish) much like the tone of the story. When I got home that night I had looked up her comics on her blog MeLikesYouComics and saw the other book "I'd Sure Like Some F#*%ing Pancakes" and just loved the title, wishing I had that one as well. Sure enough, as we're packing up our stuff Sunday I found a copy lying on the table next to us. I read it on the train on my way to work after the con (yes, I had to work all night long after both days of the con) and I literally laughed out loud on the train the whole time. It's a certain type of humor, for sure, but I get it and love it. Check out her one panel comics up on the site and enjoy. It's really fun stuff that makes me smile. (She also has something coming soon called SECRET WEIRDO which looks cool and I can't deny that title intrigues me.)

That about wraps up my stack of goodies. The one other thing I'd like to throw out there is the Abrams ComicArts Book Club which is hosted by Bergen Street Comics. They had their first meeting this past November 12th, which unfortunately due to the con, a 40 hour workweek, and terrible flu-like symptoms, I had to miss, but they discussed Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, and our own Tim Mucci was on the scene, so maybe if we ask him nice he'll give us a review of the event. Or maybe we'll see you at the next one.

Til next con kids,

K

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