The first four hours of the drive weren’t so bad, but that last hour took about three. Seriously, Chicago. What the fuck is wrong with your traffic? Still, I was in the good company of Joanna Estep and suffering is always better when it’s with a loved one.

By the time we reached the far side of Chicago, only one hour of ‘Premiere Night’ remained. We dropped our stuff off at our tables without even setting up and quickly took off to meetup with some of the ComicMix people.

Then we drank cucumber water.

Then a loud, crazy guy showed us gigantic pieces of meat.

And a lobster that looked like something out of the Dark Tower.

He called me “Chief” a lot.

The guy did.  Not the lobster.

I could explain all of that and it would make complete sense, but I prefer keeping it ambiguous as it makes my experience sound more interesting and mysterious.

Big, big thank you to Myke Amend who unfortunately had to cancel his trip to Chicago, but donated his table to me/us. I was able to relocate to what would have been his excellent position and it was far superior to my original position in that crappy, hidden, offshoot Artist Alley.

Big, big, sarcastic non-thank you to the WWC person that sticks a four (five?) year veteran of the show in what I would call the ‘freshman area’. To be fair, that spot did turn out okay for Joanna who braved it while I was in the greener pastures of the Artist Alley proper.

Friday was excellent. That’s normally a fluke, but I’ve always had strong sales on Friday at this particular con. The weekend was lining up to meet with my expectations of success. Then, Saturday happened. Sales didn’t surpass Friday’s numbers and that’s strange as Saturday usually blows Friday out of the water at any given con. Sunday, expectations were again turned on their ear as the day started off strong and bumped my total numbers from the pits of ‘Meh’ up into the heavens of ‘Good’.

So yeah, my sales were a little under par from year’s past - about 80% of the usual for Chicago. Now for all those interested in the business aspect of my small pressery:

All the regulars following LACKLUSTER WORLD came back for the new, fifth issue and my number of customers for the weekend was almost identical from last year despite the lower cash total. It gets strange when it comes to new readers. I spieled my little pitch to the same amount of people and it was just as effective as usual, but instead of buying the full run of available issues, they only bought the first one or two. That’s very new.

I think all the hubbub about the economy/recession has finally caught up to me and to be honest I think I’ve been lucky up to this point.  LW sales overall are up from this point last year, but I suspect that in order to maintain the sales levels I’m historically accustomed to, I may need to shift my present convention strategies before things get worse. My next shows are BALTIMORE COMICON and MID OHIO CON later this fall so I have some time to plot. My instinct tells me ‘more variety’.

Anyway, I would love to show you photos of the con, but I never think to take photos at these things. Instead, allow me to direct you to ComicRelated.com and it’s photo galleries along with excellent coverage of the entire show. Grand maestro, Chuck Moore, runs that place and he does a hell of job with it.  He even produced a new podcast each night from his hotel room.

So that’s another WIZARD WORLD CHICAGO come and gone. I vote that next year, they change the name to LACKLUSTER WORLD CHICAGO.

The newest issue, LACKLUSTER WORLD #5, still has that spring fresh buzz attached to it and it’s easily my best work. For everyone keeping up with the characters/story, you’ll never guess what’s inside.

I’ll be doing sketches all weekend too, so sign up for one.

I plan to arrive Thursday afternoon and be setup in time for ‘Preview Night’ which is something I’ve always skipped in the past. On Friday night, I’ll be watching a drunk, bearded cripple named Warren Ellis talk about all manner of disgusting things and maybe even a little about writing. Saturday night, I hope to catch the BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT screening,  And Sunday, I will probably leave the show around 2:00 since I have to drive home that night and be well-rested for work the following day.  If you want to meetup at these events or somewhere, drop me a line and we’ll try to connect.

The girlfriend, Joanna Estep, will be around all weekend too. She might be selling copies of her brand new third volume of ROADSONG and some art from a corner of my table.

Speaking of tables, I will either be at table #5804 or #3904 - hard to say which as I might be trading spots, so look for me at both. Floor plan here.

This is always one of my biggest shows, if not the biggest show, each year so I hope you can make it.  If not, I’ll be at Baltimore Comicon and Mid Ohio Con later this year.

I’m not making it up.

The Media and The Government and The Corporations only adjust their methods of operation to compensate for how we as consumers/citizens prefer to receive information. Furthermore, this Dumbing Down comes from our own senses of entitlement which are overfed daily thanks to the instant gratification provided by the Internet.

This morning, I found an article that really says it:

Thanks to the ubiquity of text on the Internet, not to mention the popularity of text-messaging on cell phones, we may well be reading more today than we did in the 1970s or 1980s, when television was our medium of choice. But it’s a different kind of reading, and behind it lies a different kind of thinking—perhaps even a new sense of the self. “We are not only what we read,” says Maryanne Wolf, a developmental psychologist at Tufts University and the author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain. “We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

The full article: Link

Have a lovely weekend.

-Eric

I’ve been holding onto these…

——

STRAND
My Train of Concentration had derailed in a small township known as Grey Mattersville. It’s located directly behind the big graveyard.  The one where my optic nerves are buried.

The once insect-like flicker of the lighting had evolved.  My attention span was soon reduced to a single strand of mozzarella clinging to its Pizza Mother as the horrible, penetrating, Hydrogen Bomb Hand of God dispassionately lifted away a slice for consumption within his drop-ceiling heavens.

CONE
It was a ‘normal’ Thursday when I woke up, but somewhere between the ice cream machine and the donkey, Thursday took on a new, more colorful adjective. At least I have a vanilla-choco swirl cone.

MARKER
As the projectile made it’s instantaneous journey through my guts, a thousand moments passed. Each following the next acted as a marker indicating an invisible dotted line stretching from the tip of her revolver, through me and into the now blood-speckled wall behind me.

POKE
Jumpers almost always remove their glasses before taking the plunge of a rooftop. I admire that. I wouldn’t want the broken glass ground into my freshly hamburgered face either. With my luck, my autopsy would be performed by the one half-retarded coroner in the state and I’d be declared an accidental death. Or worse, a murder. There needs to be zero doubt that I wanted anything other than to die by my own hand or all of this means nothing.

And another thing… those jumpers have the right idea. This shit is taking forever. More cuts would probably expedite the process, but I hadn’t predicted how slippery the blade would become after switching hands.

Listen to me. My life is rapidly shitting out of my arms and all I can do is complain. I mean, it’s two steps. 1. Poke self with knife. 2. Die.

I can’t even die right. And where did the knife go?

Damn it all to hell, I can’t see shit without my glasses on.

HIP
The nursing home is on the phone telling me mom has fallen out of her bed again. Says this is the third time this month. Says the words “shattered” and “hip”.

My first thought is that mom doesn’t have health insurance. The second is wondering if my first thought should have been about her health and not her insurance. The third, I think I forgot to brush my teeth this morning and that doctor is kind of cute.

PEPPERMINT
I’m cleaning off the retarded kid while thrashing my short-term memory for the location of my cigarettes. God, I feel sorry for this kid. Not because he’s stuck in this place. Not because he’s stuck with embarassed parents that only visit twice a year. My pity for him is deeper than that. The poor guy will never have a job. He’ll never have sex. He’ll never be able to read a book. The limits of his accomplishment are eating all the candy out of the visitor’s bowl and stinking of wet dog and peppermint.

As soon as this kid’s hosed off I’m walking next door and smoking at least two full squares.  God does not exist.

VENUS
Our mouths split the atoms in the room with a chain reactive cadence. Spastic breaths escape between the slippery melting pot of saliva and sweat and flesh. She wants to be my Venus. Her Mars? That’s me. Too bad I’m not in the same solar system. I’m out charting new planetary bodies.

ENVY
After the doctor tells me I can go, I spend another hour trying to remember how pants work. For that matter, what are pants? I leave the office, a young woman in tow, yelling something about a bill. There’s something familiar about her and for a moment I consider turning around to conduct research. But only for a moment.

Eventually I find my car. I spend an hour trying to remember how cars work. For that matter, what are cars? An audience gathers to watch as I give the car oral commands. Open! Go! The car does not comply and my audience at how stupid it is.

Oh, how I envy my audience. They know what I’m doing wrong. If only I could know what I’m doing wrong. Maybe then I could do something right.

Wait. What are pants again?

——

© Eric Adams

My experience at this year’s Pittsburgh Comicon, my fourth in a row, is in the minority it seems because it was a smashing success.

Okay, maybe not smashing but I felt like using an adjective and smashing sounded… smashing.  Anyway, I made a killing. And that killing pun wasn’t intended, but I suppose my not removing means it now is.  If you don’t get it, you will if you read on.

THURSDAY

The drive to Pittsburgh from Cincinnati was boring.  It was five tremendously bad audiobook hours of the DARK TOWER IV: WIZARD AND GLASS.  I’ve been enjoying the DT books for the most part, but this one was almost unbearable.  Stephen King should never, ever right shmoopy romance stories ever again.

Not to get too off topic here… Yes I could have just stopped listening to it, but jou promises me the subsequent books are worth the torture of this one.  I’ve been putting off finishing it for a long time and the roadtrip seemed like the best time to get it out of the way.

Anyway, the pain of that ended in the early evening once I arrived at the hotel.  Got into the room with no fuss, set down my bags and WHOA…  Largest hotel room I’ve ever had.  Granted, I’ve seen larger, but this room was as big as the penthouse and I am certain of this because the penthouse is where I went shortly thereafter.

Not much later, Tim (archeon) showed up.  He and I were splitting the place for the weekend.

Enter the penthouse party.  The folks from Luchador Entertainment were holding a small gathering for all the exhibitors. I had some free drinks, talked with Andy Bennett and Dave Aikens for a while, said ‘Hey’ to Aaron Douglas (Chief Tyrol on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA).  He’s said ‘Hey’ back.

And then, Thursday ended. The time to pilfer comics was at hand.

FRIDAY

If you haven’t heard, there has been recent drama surrounding this show.  The co-founder of the convention, Michael George, was recently convicted of murder. Many were concerned the negative press would damage the show itself and those concerns were valid. The number of dealers was clearly  smaller than in years past - perhaps half the size.  On the floor, I was hearing that some people were protesting the convention and pressuring some creators to not go. I suppose I can understand not wanting to support a convicted murderer, but let’s be real… he won’t be seeing any of your money while he spends the rest of his life in prison.

Anyway, the show had a lot going against it and the poor turnout on Friday had myself and my fellow creators/artists repeating the phrase, “Well, it’s Friday.”

To those on the outside of this sort of thing: Fridays are notoriously slow at comic conventions.  So much so that I among others regularly consider skipping Fridays. We always say “I might start skipping Fridays.” This also applies to Sundays– perhaps even moreso.  Anyway, this Friday was an exceptionally slow Friday. It wasn’t until 5:00pm that I was commissioned for a rather large piece of art, making up for the measly 4 or 5 comics I had sold since 10:00am.

At close, Tim and I went to some brewhouse for dinner and nerded out about comics, movies, books, etc. We’re pretty good at nerding out. Oh, Tim was also my neighbor on the convention floor.  This is he:

Tim Lantz, Lord of Darkness and Photoshop:
 

And here’s Neil Fitzpatrick aka Neiljam.  He was the friendly con neighbor on my left:
 

After dinner, I mosied down to the Make-A-Wish Karaoke Event.  It was sadly, kind of empty and after 30 minutes of failing to invoke enough courage to sing, I left to check out the bar.  Peeking in, I didn’t see any familiar faces, but as I turned away to go back to the karaoke, Ryan and Lauren (if you guys are reading this, do you have sites/blogs for me to link to?) screamed my name in the tune of Bloody Murder and bought me a drink.  Good times.

I went to bed early in preparation for what I sincerely hoped would be the polar opposite of Friday…

SATURDAY

…And it was.

Oh my science, Saturday was a hell of a day to sell comics.  I would say my sales were split evenly between repeat customers and new customers and that is a little surprising to me.  Granted, I knew I would distribute a large number of LACKLUSTER WORLD #5 (the new issue), but having so many people buy the full run — issues #1 through #5 — was quite unexpected.  I think psychology was at play here…

See, ever since #5 was released, I’ve been selling the full run for a $20.  That’s only a few dollars off the price, but I believe that we as consumers see $20 and think “Hey, that’s only piece of paper.” If we see $19 or $23 we think, “Hey, that’s like… more paper.”

By the way, you can buy my comics.  Yes.  Buy.

Ryuk from DEATH NOTE:

Robo-panda guy:

And that’s about it for the show on Saturday. I sold a lot of comics. There were costumes.

At close, we went to Olive Garden with 20-30 fellow artists and after that we eventually strolled into the bar downstairs.  Ran into Adam Talley, Robert Knight, Ryan McClelland and Lauren down there. After a few drinks I closed the arc on the previous evening’s didnt-happen and sang “What a Wonderful World” in my best Louis Armstrong voice. The first time in my life I’ve sang karaoke.

The bar party soon became another penthouse party and that place was packed to the gills with people, balloons, smoking, free drinks and general noise.  Sans the smoke, it was great fun.

SUNDAY

Sunday was pretty much what one expects on Sunday. “Well, it’s Sunday.” I did moderately well, but only stuck it out until 3:00.

On the way home, I spent another five torturous hours listening to that audiobook. OUCH OUCH OUCH. Stephen, stay away from teenage romance.  Focus more on killing the teenagers.

——

In closing, I just wanted to mention my new hat. I wore for nearly the entire convention and I think it is going to be my new convention staple.  If you want to find me at a con, just look for the guy in the fedora, looking gangsta’ like so…

Cheers.

http://indiespinnerrack.blogspot.com/2008/04/indie-spinner-rack-issue-120.html

See you there.