Yeah, yeah, I know this is late… 😉
So, back on September 7th The ’Warp traveled down to Maryland to participate in the 13th annual Baltimore Comic-Con, and the one question that kept running through my mind upon my arrival in Charm City was “What the hell’s with all the steep hills, Baltimore?! What’re you supposed to be—San Francisco East?” Jeezus.
Anyway, Saturday started off slow, but that didn’t last long given the enormous line of people that started at the entrance and snaked out and around the convention center. Lots of folks I talked to were interested in Pan’s adventure, especially when I told them of Blood Feud’s availability as an e-book for both Kindle and Nook. And my buddy Rich White’s pirate comic, Chronicles of the Sea Dragon, picked up a few new fans (must be ’cause of the pirate ship’s lizard-man first mate).
Surprisingly, Pan got respect from the folks for being a Mets baseball fan, even if her favorite team’s current season turned into a horrifying multicar pileup right after the All-Star Game. See, that same weekend as the con the NY Yankees were in town playing the Baltimore Orioles for possession of first place in the American League Eastern Division, with the O’s home stadium at Camden Yards right down the street from the convention center. I guess anybody who roots against the Yanks like Pan does is okay with Marylanders! 😉
But that wasn’t all!
A longtime fan made an appearance to have me sign copies of my comics work: Lorelei back issues, Stan Lee’s Alexa, Heartstopper (now available here as a free e-comic), even NightCry #1, in which Pan’s mentor, Annie, made her first appearance. I gave him one of the few remaining copies of the Pandora Zwieback #0 print edition to add to his collection. And then he bought copies of Lorelei: Sects and the City and Chronicles of the Sea Dragon to complete his trip to the SWC booth.
“Hey, you ever think about offering this to Diamond [Comic Distributors]?” asked another man as he leafed through a copy of Lorelei: Sects and the City.
“Nah,” I said. “I’d never meet their minimum order requirements.” (Basically, Diamond’s mandate to publishers is that, if the possibility exists that your product can’t make enough money for them by generating sizeable retailer orders, they’ll either drop your product or not offer it to retailers at all.) “Besides, I doubt they’d ever carry it.”
“Well, I always liked your stuff,” the man said, and then gave me his card. Turned out I was speaking with Steve Leaf, my Diamond representative from ten years ago, when I last offered Lorelei in comics form. (I’d never met him in person before.) “Have your rep get in touch with me,” he said. “Maybe we can get your account up and running again.”
Well, that was some encouraging news to end Saturday on!
Sunday pretty much followed Saturday’s formula: slow start, quick pickup, more potential Pan-atics interested in ordering the Blood Feud e-book. One girl who bought a print copy came back later with her father, who wanted to ask me about it because his daughter is 11! (Oops. I just thought she was petite.) That led to this exchange:
Me: “Uh, well, I use ‘asshole’ a couple of times, but that’s as harsh as the language gets, and there’s a throwaway line about Pan not being a virgin. But there’s no sex in the book!”
Dad: “Oh. Okay. I was just curious, because you got her so worked up about reading something.”
Whew. And points to the girl for enjoying books!
Another girl stopped by with her mother to hear my pitch, then started digging into her purse for some cash. “I like to save up money for Comic-Con so I can pay for my own stuff,” the girl said proudly as she paid for a copy of Blood Feud. “And when you come back next year I can get the next book!”
She was followed by a guy and his girlfriend who liked what I told them about Pan—but it was the guy who wanted the book. “He’s all into vampires,” his girlfriend explained. Well, Blood Feud certainly has a lot of them!
Favorite “aaaawwwww” moment of the con: A male cosplayer dressed as Indiana Jones was making his way down the aisle when he passed a five-year-old boy whose eyes shot wide-open as he gasped “Indy!” Then he went running after the man, yelling “Indy! Indy!” until the man realized he was being addressed and turned around. That kid had the biggest grin on his face as Mom took a photo of him with his matinee idol.
And that was how the 2012 Baltimore Comic-Con closed out. Thanks for playing host, Charm City—hopefully Rich and I will see you again next year!
According to the American Library Association, there were 326 challenges reported to the Office of Intellectual Freedom in 2011, and many more go unreported. Banned Books Week is the national book community’s annual celebration of the freedom to read. Hundreds of libraries and bookstores around the country draw attention to the problem of censorship by mounting displays of challenged books and hosting a variety of events.
Just as smart a move as putting out the X-Men novels was hanging on one of the canopy’s posts a sign featuring some of the SWC titles and a large reproduction of the QR (Quick Response) Code for The ’Warp’s Web site. (They way it works is, if your cell phone is loaded with a barcode scanner app, you take a picture of the QR Code and that automatically opens your phone’s Web browser to whatever the code links to—in this case, the SWC home page.) I saw a bunch of people snapping away with their cells, so: Welcome to all our new visitors from Brooklyn Book Fest!
A couple of shout-outs: one to author P. J. Lozito, whose Shadow-inspired pulp adventure novel 
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The succubus lovefest continues! At the comics news site Broken Frontier, reviewer Richard Boom gives his enthusiastic recommendation for our new Mature Readers graphic novel, 
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