The 2012—and final, as it turned out (because the promoter is retiring from organizing comic cons)—New York Comic Book Marketplace was held this past Saturday, at the Penn Plaza Pavilion at the Hotel Pennsylvania, in Manhattan. It was a dreary, rainy day, but the bad weather didn’t appear to keep the fans away, with the attendee line stretching around the block.
Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be there to see me—or maybe they just couldn’t find me. 😉 As you’ll notice from the photo here, I was relegated to a shadowy corner of the pavilion’s second-floor artists’ alley, positioned in such a way that made it easy for folks to either zip past my spot without a glance, or (when they did notice me) avoid stepping into the gap between my table and that of the exhibitor in front of me (author C. J. Henderson) to check out The ’Warp’s releases. And if two or three people stood in front of C.J.’s table to speak with him… well, I became practically invisible.
Things weren’t much better for my next-door neighbor, artist/filmmaker Sandy Jimenez, who was there to promote his Vampyrotechnic Studios projects, including his comic series Marley Davidson, about an ass-kicking vampire slayer. Most people who stopped by to listen about his work didn’t buy anything—but, hey, at least he was located along the aisle, so attendees could actually notice him! 😀 We wound up exchanging sample T-shirts: he got a Pandora Zwieback T; I got a Marley Davidson shirt.
It wasn’t all bad, though. One of the con volunteers came over to tell me how much she loved Blood Feud—the first Pandora Zwieback novel—and was looking forward to picking up its sequel, Blood Reign. Thomas Deja—co-host of the podcast Better in the Dark pop-culture podcast—stopped by to catch up (I hadn’t seen him in six or seven years) and to tell me about his three-book deal with pulp fiction publisher Airship 27. Artist Louis Small Jr. swung by with Vanessa (one of his lovely models) to chat, and to purchase a Pan T-shirt for her. And former Marvel editor and Spider-Man writer Danny Fingeroth and I talked for a bit; we both used to work for the late publisher Byron Preiss, back in the 1990s.
Rounding out the day was a visit from Elsie Ginsberg of TwitchTwitch Productions. She and I discussed Pan and my use of Elegant & Gothic Lolita vampires in Blood Feud, and then she invited me to check out her organization’s first Macabre Faire. It’s a steampunk and Lolita-fashion convention being held on Long Island in April; their special guest is Doug Jones, one of Guillermo Del Toro’s go-to actors in such films as Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth.
I decided to pack it in about an hour before the show was scheduled to close, ending my shadowy lurker status in the corner by selling a few more Pan T-shirts before I headed home.
That makes it two stops down on the SWC 2012 Tour. Next on The ’Warp’s agenda: Boston Comic Con in April. Hope to see you there!
As you may know, today marks the big-screen debut of the fantasy Mirror Mirror, starring Lily Collins and Julia Roberts. It’s the first 2012 entry in Hollywood’s latest who’s-got-the-better-movie-adaptation contest, this time involving “Snow White,” the Brothers Grimm’s classic fairy tale that celebrates its 200th Anniversary this year.
The annual gathering of the Institute of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction—hosted by Blood Moon Rising magazine—is being held this coming Saturday, March 24, at the main branch of the Queens Public Library, in Flushing (just a few blocks from Main Street—the final stop on the #7 train—and smack in the middle of the borough’s own Chinatown). Not only will I be manning the StarWarp Concepts table, but I’ll be doing my first public reading of Blood Feud. (Now that’s terrifying!) 
The Institute of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction runs from noon to 5:00 p.m. on March 24, and admission is free. The Queens Library is located at 41-17 Main Street, in Flushing.
March 4–10, 2012 was the eighth annual Read an E-Book Week, and with the goal of expanding our readership The ’Warp joined e-book distributor Smashwords’ tie-in to the event by offering our young adult dark-urban-fantasy novel, 
Disney’s John Carter is probably the most talked about genre movie of spring 2012, with a great deal of praise being heaped on this first-time adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’s science fantasy epic A Princess of Mars—and today is the day it finally hits theaters. So while you’re standing on line, waiting to meet the gentleman from Virginia and his soul mate, Martian princess Dejah Thoris, why not pass the time by reading The ’Warp’s special edition of the classic novel, which celebrates its 100th Anniversary this year?
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