MicroCon report

Well, MicroCon was a blast as always. I got to catch up with a bunch of other local comics creators whom I only see a couple of times a year, and that's a huge benefit of the show. Got to talk to Tyler Page for a bit about his recent Xeric award and what that means for his upcoming print edition of Nothing Better. Sam Hiti and I chatted about his Fist-a-Cuffs blog and how cool it is that everyone's suddenly paying attention to it. Bought a copy of the new Spider Chronicles anthology off contributor Martin Powell. I know I'm forgetting people, so I apologize for that.

I also met some cool new folks. Joel Vollmer, artist on Dust to Dust, for one. Joel showed me his portfolio and I couldn't be more excited that he's the one illustrating our Jesse James/Machine Gun Kelly gunfight. I also got to re-meet Sarah Morean whom I'd briefly met at FallCon last year, but didn't realize that she was a creator, much less someone whose work I needed to check out. (It's not surprising, but Shawn Hoke knew that already.)

The most fun about the local conventions though is hanging out with my usual convention pals: Grant, Jess, Darla, and Alex. Paul Taylor and his wife and baby also hung out with us for a while, and new this year to our neck of the convention was Charles Raymond and his wife Jennifer. I bought some great, oversized Hulk comics from Charles, sketchbooks from Jess and Grant (I already had one of Darla's), and a copy of Josh Howard Presents: Sasquatch, which Alex and Grant had both contributed to.

As for my own self: I wasn't really there to sell this year. Tales from the Inner Sanctum has pretty much found its audience in the Twin Cities, but I did okay with Cownt prints. My real goal for the show though was to get folks interested in and excited about Kill All Monsters! Mission accomplished. Everyone who stopped by the table checked out the unlettered pages I had on display and when I'd explain the pitch there was a lot of enthusiasm for the book.

I also had a couple of folks ask me for advice about finding artists or otherwise breaking into the biz, which is happening more and more at shows, but is still flattering and humbling.