Saturday, October 17, 2009

The Con Report - The Creators

In my earlier Baltimore Con post, I talked about the business side of the Con. Well, enough of that! Let’s talk fun! As usual there were a ton of creators there and they were all very willing to chit chat to the masses. Or me, as the case may be. I got my usual bevy of signatures but a couple of booths really stood out.

The first was the Image booth. Not necessarily the big name guys but the little creators under the image umbrella. They were some of the best, and most entertaining, creators around. To start, I got sucked in by the awesome selling skills of one DJ Kirkbride! A fine mixture of “sob, please buy my book, sob” and “This excellent book was only read by a little old lady in Pasedena. She didn’t own any cats and only read it once!” With a sales pitch like that, how could I say no? So, I purchased a copy of Popgun Vol 3. So far, an excellent anthology that I’m still working my way through. I’ll have a review up at some point but I can easily recommend it now.

DJ and I chatted for awhile and he hooked me up with some of the other guys to sign the book. DJ is really nice guy who went out of his way to talk to the ordinary fans. Nothing makes a convention more fun than talking comics and life with the pro’s. No matter how big or little the pro is, he’s still bigger than me. You can see pic’s of DJ at the con here

DJ, also introduced me to Andre Szymanowicz. Andre, one of the artists in Popgun and future artist of Elephant Man 22, can flat out draw! I’m a total art guy and I was amazed by his stuff. I got a sketch for me, and even managed to get a sketch for Jim too! Both of us agree, Andre is going places.

And, like DJ, Andre talked to me for a long time. I’m sure he was sick of me but I really enjoyed it. Anyway, Andre and I got into a long discussion about Manga and he let me watch the Tekkon KinKreet movie on his ipod. I wasn’t planning on buying the movie but I am now! Visit Andre here it’s well worth the trip!

Oh yeah, buy the Tekkon KinKreet video here. The five minutes I saw were amazing.

2 comments:

  1. Was I that needy... ? Hm... Maybe I should work on my sales technique. Still -- it worked!

    Thanks so much for picking up the book and for the enthusiasm. Good times!

    ReplyDelete
  2. There may be been some slight exaggeration regarding the sales technique.

    Slight, very very slight.

    And, you're right, there's no need to change because it worked!

    ReplyDelete