this is ja.lj

Oly was the exact opposite of Emerald City. Instead of a big, frenetic room soaked in howling 60Hz florescents, we got a nice, intimate nightclub with big windows and mostly natural light. It was very chill and I had more opportunities to visit with readers and fans than I usually do.

On the way down, I thought, "hey, I'm going to Olympia, I wonder if I'll run into Jackson Tegu from story-games.com?" And blam, there he was, on stage as the bass half of a drum-and-bass duo that did a short set to start off the con. Very sophisticated, and a nice touch. Had a good visit with Jackson after the set and sent him away with some goodies.

Aside from Mr. Tegu, the highlight of the show was meeting Terrence Nowicki, a fiercely goddamn talented political cartoonist -- he's sharp, funny, and his line art is badass. ( Check his stuff out )

There are more Nowicki cartoons at MCT Campus Syndicate.

My own sales were bigger than I anticipated -- 33 CGs and 7 Greeters, which is not bad at all for a $14 table. I don't know how many attendees there were, but I'd put it somewhere between 100 and 200, including exhibitors.

I wore the Maiden t-shirt from Monday's show and made at least a couple sales when people came over to talk to me about it. Lesson: dress in something that will start conversations.

Thanks to Chelsea and her team for a great show -- I'll definitely drop by again next year.

First, I'm horrendously indebted to Ron Chan, Paul Tobin, and Colleen Coover for squeezing me into Fort Periscope and then listening to my pull my own string over and over and over and over again. Thanks guys! I registered today for ECCC 2009 so I won't have to do the embarrassing couchsurfing thing next year.

Greeter sales were 46, exactly the same as at Stumptown. CG sales fell, though, to 174. The positive spin is that it's nice to see the relative share of Greeter rising as I figure out how to sell it. I sealed at least five G sales with a new pitch line: "It's like if Harry Potter were making minimum wage."

I met a few folks who'd purchased G's in the past from me and were keen to see the G3 continuance, so that's awesome. I also had one all-table sale. It was a good one, too. The guy was browsing all my offerings very slowly, and this normally indicates that I've got a nonbuying reader on my hands. Just as I was about to quote my price list at him—that's my usual move-along prompt—he asked softly, "How much for everything?"

Also had a goddamn near-stampede when three guys who'd picked up Restrooms and Matrimony at ECCC2007 heard the corner of my pitch and rushed over to grab up the rest of the set. That was unbelievable. It was like Altamont, though nobody died. LESSON: I'm starting to get a reputation, so a big, flashy, prominent presence will really help to move product. I had no flaming loo this time out, due to the space crunch.

Starwatching: sold a Matrimony and a Pirates to Gigi Edgley at the very end. I gladly would've comped her, but that didn't come through the usual vocal paralysis I get when I try to tell a Farscape actor how much I loved their show. When she had a bit of trouble locating the final dollar for me, and I was struggling to tell her that she didn't need to pay, her handler immediately swooped in and donated one. Nice perk, that.

Didn't see JMS, Jamie Bamber, Wil Wheaton, or any of the other celebs around. Bummer; I wanted to show JMS how I totally ripped the G3 cliffhanger from a Babylon 5 episode.

I did see synabetic and I yelled "STEVEN SAUNDERS" at him in my best theater voice, but he was being squired around by geekmachine and her sweetie (whose LJ handle I am not certain of) and he did not hear. Steve, I've got product for you! Send me your snail address and I'll set you up!

Moneywise, the ECCC gross was about 70% of the Stumptown gross. Since there were 4x as many people at ECCC than at Stumptown, this needs to be thought about:

1) The competition for the fan dollar was super intense. There are huge names at the show, limited edition prints, sketches to be had, stacks and stacks of collectable toys.... Especially early on Saturday, people were unwilling to commit money before seeing everything. I gave at least 100 business cards to people who were shortlisting stuff on a first pass through the floor.

2) spanambula and I were working the same table. Typically I get my own space and he sets up with Periscope, and we double our footprint. This time we were both in with the Scopers. At a con where we couldn't possibly pitch to everyone, a double presence would've helped immensely.

3) ECCC has a much less indie crowd, more a Spiderman and Batman kind of crowd. People were there to see their faves, not shop for new things from weird locals. Especially early on Saturday, the congoers would racewalk down the aisles with their eyes fixed at the level of the name placards that the con had taped to the front of the tables, looking for famous folks. Lesson: put funny jokes down there.

4) The limited frontage of my Saturday table made it difficult for folks to browse, so I couldn't pitch to as many people as I usually do. Plus, normally I lay all my CGs out flat so people can look at them without picking them up. Some people are reluctant to pick stuff up at a con; that's a tiny step towards committing to buy it. Having browsables out is a great way to get people over that hump. Only problem is that browsables consume an enormous amount of table space.

I had a full table for my stuff on Sunday and sales increased slightly from Saturday even though the Sunday crowd was at most half of the Saturday one. LESSON: register early, goddammit. Which I did today.

By APE, if all goes as planned, my browsables will overwhelm my space, so I'm going to have to build something that'll display browsables above the table -- there was a guy behind us with a very nice PVC pipe framework and curtains that turned his table into a puppet theater. Maybe I'll put something together like that for APE. Jumbo-size laminated CG gags and selected Greeter panels that fit together like a trailer might be the way to go there, with some kind of arcade-game marquee directly overhead. Maybe 12V xmas tree lights too. Call it the Comfort Cathedral or something.

So the spring con season is pretty much over. I'll be down in Olympia next month for the Oly comics fest, but I don't have to reprint or do anything new for that show, so it'll be very chill. I need a tiny vacation from comics. Not a long one, tho -- the G4 script needs to be finished, and from the sound of it I'll have three new projects debuting at APE -- G4, plus another Comfort Guide, plus a minicomic that spanambula and I have been talking about for awhile.

Speaking of artists -- thanks so much to spanambula, porkshanks and Kat the Greeter Artist for working on my stuff. I really really really love selling comics at conventions, and without you guys none of this would've happened at all.

So I've finally relaunched comfort-guide.com. It was in such pitiful shape before, with a cheeseball "coming soon" image over the matrimony guide. The matrimony guide was like five guides ago.

I normally hate making websites, but this one took just a few days.

Now, to get the Greeter web presence in shape...

264 CGs sold. Zombies was most popular, with 77. Office, surprisingly, was the runner-up with 61, beating out Pirates at 59. My unscientific observation is that people responded more to the office bit in the pitch than the zombie or pirate bit -- people might (finally) be tiring of pirates and zombies. I got the sense that some folks tuned me out as soon as they heard me say the Z word. I ended with straight-weird-straight in my pitch -- "we've got dos n' donts for office workers, pirates, weddings, zombies, restroom users, and the holidays."

46 Greeters sold. Final pitch: "This is my regular comic, it's like Dune in a Wal-Mart, the company breeds the ultimate employee and she turns on them and leads a revolution. It's a retail revenge fantasy." I got a huge bump on Sunday after tacking on the revenge fantasy bit. Disaffected retail workers go with indie comics like shells with peanuts.

Three big / neatest stories from the show:

a) First Greeter sale was to a guy who told me that his grandmother invented the greeter job as a work project for disabled folks. "To Tricia, thanks for inventing my comic!" I signed her copies.

b) I got invited to pitch stories to a really interesting webisode series. Very intriguing proposal. Shouldn't say more because these things are always very fragile, and I've never even written for TV anyway. But yeah, intriguing.

c) Late in the day on Sunday, I met some intense and cool folks who were really really interested in my stuff -- way more curious than your normal purchaser. They'd already CGed up at spanambula's table, but they also dug the Greeter pitch and shelled out for the set of those from me. Then they got into the questions, about what my role in the work was, and I explained that I was just the writer and publisher, they said "oh, you guys work as a team, that's fine!" as if I hadn't just disqualified myself from something.

I finally worked out that they were editors who were scouting for illustrators for their honest-to-God Real Bigass Fiction Publishing House That You've Heard Of, and they were totally taken with the CG art.

Book editors???? At my table? I tried to be cool as I totally busted out my 2005-vintage elevator pitch for The World of Deeds. ("It's Treasure Island meets Heart of Darkness!") That didn't seem to rock their world, tho I should follow up in email, because maybe Greeter did. But my long-term idea about backdooring into the book biz suddenly seemed.... feasible.

Onward to Emerald City.

The zombie and pirate comfort guides went off to the printer last night at 3:05AM. All my prepress work is done.

Everything now rests in the hands of the printers. If everyone delivers on their promises then I will be flush with new product at the spring cons.

( 1: get sued by Apple. 2: linked on Boing Boing. 3: profit! )

Here is a new combination of a couple of long-running themes here on ja.lj:

You know who is awesome? V is awesome. During her downtime from school, she learned GIMP and ( colored some comfort gags for me. )

This freed me up to work on the thornier Greeter prepress stuff. Now I've got a decent shot at getting to Stumptown with three new items, just like I planned in January.

Sweetie, you rock like a Bill Haley weeble.

( Submitted with apologies to mechanteanemone... )

And also with thanks to spanambula, who has been rocking my inbox with the choicest pyrate inks all this week.

Today cool artist spanambula was my inbox Santa. I got to see all the cg-zombie inks and they are the sweetness.

( I am dying to see how this one looks when that carrot is flaming orange. )

Thanks, people, for being my zombie guinea pigs. I liked how that gag sounded when I wrote it down, but I wasn't sure if Kiss and Michael Jackson were still relevant, so I needed some discriminating eyes on it. And yes, Devo would be an awesome zombie dance band.

Also, thanks very kindly to cool artist spanambula for rushing me the gag so I could test-market it.

Tonight I did some more Comfort Guide / Greeter crossover work -- we need something to put on our G3 inside back cover and we don't get enough mail yet to warrant a letter column (tho we're getting there!) So, I figured, why not ( advertise? )

( Funny? Not Funny? )

Greeter & the Comfort Guide both got a real nice writeup from Steve Saunders at Silver Bullet Comic Books woot! thanks Steve!

(photo by dirtylibrarian)

I can't believe I spent ten years jamming science fiction stories into envelopes, mailing them to overworked editors, and then tying a yellow ribbon around the mailbox or (occasionally) cashing a small check. This direct-to-consumers business is so much more rewarding.

( This will be scattered because honestly, the con was pretty much a happy blur for me. )

Look at what porkshanks made for our comicon display!



And we're not done yet. When we're done, it will appear to be on fire.

Holy cow. Comfort Guide: Matrimony is printed and ready for Emerald City Comicon. My print run is sitting on my desk, waiting to be scored and folded.

A taste:



Next week: porkshanks and I have evil plans about how to display these attractively in the 12 square feet we'll have at Emerald City.

Hi all--

It has been a super-busy month here, and with Emerald City Comicon upcoming, it's only gonna get busier. But I've gotta take a breath to tell you a bunch of fun comics news:

First, you can finally buy actual paper copies of Greeters 0 & 1 from Comixpress. You can get 'em both for $3.25. You can't even get a damn coffee for $3.25 anymore, let alone a fun comic book that exposes the breeding experiments of the world's last retailer. Assuming comixpress comes through, we'll have these books in quantity at Emerald City.

Secondly, if you aren't interested in forking over a few bucks (and I've got cheap Danish farmsteader blood running through my veins so I would never begrudge anyone their thrift) you can read Greeter 1 online totally for free and without commitment. And if you'd like to start from before the beginning, G0 is available for online reads.

Thirdly, Greeter 2 is roaring along. I am lettering. Kat is inking. Katie is coloring. We have three sharp cover concepts. I am optimistic about us hitting our print deadline for Emerald City.

Finally, I have the finished Comfort Guide: Matrimony artwork in my hands and I am preening over it like a proud papa. No web preview for this yet -- but soon, my pretties, because I really want to share the totally sweet job that porkshanks did. When we started the project, she said she wanted to take the CG to the next level and I think she succeeded.

We will definitely have CG:M at Emerald City -- including, hopefully, gold-embossed samples that will show what this baby might look like as an actual wedding invitation. Comics are awesome and fun, but weddings are the long cash.