Eternal Con 2014 Report

The Cradle of Aviation Museum. Photo by Frank Roman.

This past weekend, The ’Warp traveled to the wilds of Long Island, NY, to attend the second annual Eternal Con, held at the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City. There were bat(men) and regular (GI) Joes, and a host of zombies roaming the halls of the Cradle of Aviation Museum, and comics everywhere you looked. So how’d it go for The ’Warp? Well…

First off, a note to anyone who might consider planning their own conventions: This is not the type of conversation that should take place when an exhibitor walks up to you to get their badges on the day of the show, as happened to me on Saturday at Eternal Con:

Me: So where do I set up?

Con: I don’t know.

Me: What do you mean, “I don’t know”?

Con: Well, they just set up the table placements this morning. I know you’re either on the second or third floor, but I don’t know where. You’ll have to walk around and find your table.

Yeah, that could’ve gone better.

Introducing new Panatics to Pan’s saga. Photo by Frank Roman.

I eventually found my second-floor table, placed at the entrance to what normally would have been one of the museum’s exhibit halls, but for Eternal Con had been converted into a house of horrors, complete with actors dressed as madmen (and women), zombies, and monsters. They were very good at their jobs, freaking out any and all people who happened to come anywhere near the area…which, from the viewpoint of the exhibitors next to and across from me in the short walkway leading up to the hall, wasn’t entirely a good thing. Because they scared folks away. It’s hard to interest someone in what you’re selling when they’re standing twenty feet away, too frightened to come close for fear of interacting with a psychopath covered in blood (and no, that wasn’t me!).

That situation may have been partly to blame, but I think it also had to do with the design of the museum, which has a lot of dead-end nooks at the end of short corridors—if you stepped into one of those, you’d have no choice but to interact with the exhibitors there, and con-goers generally prefer to avoid making eye contact with the folks behind the tables. Another factor may have been how the show was laid out, putting well-known artists on one side of the building and all the “who the hell are these people?” types (including me) on the other. From what I saw when I ventured out from behind the table, most con-goers were gathered on the “pro” side of the museum and avoided the other side entirely.

DC Comics’ Firestorm in the dealers room. Photo by Frank Roman.

Sales were down for me, a result of attendees spending all their money in the first-floor dealers room—which was right next to the building entrance—before they ventured upstairs. To complicate matters, the museum’s lone ATM broke down early in the day. When you’ve got someone counting their pocket change to see if they have enough to buy a copy of the Saga of Pandora Zwieback Annual (which I discount to $5 at conventions, from its $7.99 cover price), you know business-wise it’s going to be a really bad show.

Not that I didn’t pick up a few new potential Panatics. By talking to them about our resident Goth girl Pandora Zwieback, I certainly got them interested in her saga, but since they were pretty much penniless by the time they got to me all I could do was point them to the Pan Web site to download the free Saga of Pandora Zwieback #0 digital comic, in the hope it may lead to future sales. We’ll see.

However, sticking around for another day of poor sales and minimal crowd interaction didn’t appeal to me, so I made the decision to end my con involvement early. When Saturday came to a close my brother Frank and I packed up and headed home. I gifted my table to the young artists next to me, telling them to spread out and enjoy—but they’d still have to contend with the house of horrors, which would be open again on Sunday!

Some positive notes:

Despite there being two competing conventions—NYCC: Special Edition in Manhattan, and New York Comic Fest, in Westchester—Eternal Con had quite a big turnout; early estimates indicate around 8,000 folks showed up over the two days, a sharp increase from the 3,000 of the previous year. Long Island residents I talked to are grateful to have a comic con all their own, especially because this way they don’t have to travel into NYC and deal with traffic headaches and expensive parking (the museum’s parking was free). So at least from a fan perspective, Eternal Con was a hit and will most certainly continue to grow in size. It’d help, though, if the other cons wouldn’t attempt to step on EC’s neck by scheduling their shows on the same weekend; there’s plenty of New York summer weekends to go around, y’know.

While preparing for EC, Bob Larkin came across in his archives the original pencil art—a Pandora Zwieback drawing—for The Bob Larkin Sketchbook (still available from the SWC webstore!) and gave it to me as a gift. Sweeeeet!

Daphne Lage—artist of Dream Weaver Press’s anthropomorphic fantasy comic Tall Tails, which is written by her husband (and ’Warp friend), J. D. Calderon of The Oswald Chronicles—did a pinup of Frank and me as Minions from the Despicable Me movies. J.D. had requested it, as a way to “bribe” us to give him a ride home after the con on Sunday…but they still gave it to us after I told him we weren’t coming back. 😀 Thanks, you guys—it’s terrific!

The Brothers Roman as Minions. Art by Daphne Lage.

Bob Larkin battles Darth Vader in the dealers room. Photo by Ken Larkin.

And Bob and his son, Ken, had an awesome time, meeting Bob’s longtime fans while selling prints of his many paintings alongside copies of The Savage Art of Bob Larkin art book. “I didn’t know so many people would be interested in my Dazzler cover!” Bob told me. (For those who didn’t know, Bob was the cover painter of Marvel Comics’ Dazzler #1, in 1980; it’s become such an iconic image that whenever the character is discussed on comic-news sites, invariably they use that image.) Bob also got time to catch up with his old friend and fellow painter Ken Kelly, battled Darth Vader in a lightsaber-vs.-walking cane duel, and ended the two-day event with an enthusiastic invitation from the convention staff to be a guest for next year’s show. So at least the con was good for someone associated with The ’Warp! 😀

The next stops on the SWC 2014 convention tour are author Richard C. White’s appearance at Shore Leave, August 1–3 at the Hunt Valley Inn, in Hunt Valley, Maryland; and The ’Warp’s return to the Brooklyn Book Festival, September 21 at Borough Hall Plaza, in Brooklyn, NY. See you there!