Another year past, another pop-culture Thunderdome survived! So, what happened during The ’Warp’s return to NYCC, this time with actual printed books to sell, instead of promotional handouts to give away? Read on!
Day 1: “Are You Somebody?”
Thursday morning found my brother Frank, Mat Postawa—designer of Blood Feud and The Bob Larkin Sketchbook—and me driving to the Javits Center for the move-in. Setting up the booth didn’t take long, and after Frank headed off to work, Mat and I wandered the show floor.
After Mat left, my buddy Richard C. White arrived on the scene, fresh off the train from Baltimore. Rich helped me deal with Preview Night, which was open to the press and ticketholders who’d paid for the entire con run.
Traffic was certainly busy, but there was one major problem in the aisle where The ’Warp’s booth was located: a Chinese publishing company had installed the same eight linked booths that they use for Book Expo America (a bookseller and publisher gathering held the last few years at the Javits Center). This created a “cattle run”: a narrow corridor down which congoers were funneled, the end result being that, as they came out the end near the SWC booth, they just kept going.
It was even worse for the guys next to me from ComixTribe. The end of the cattle run put them up against one of the publisher’s booth walls, shoving them into a corner that nobody could see from the aisle unless you approached from the opposite direction. Eventually, they were forced to step out from behind their table to try and get some attention.
On the plus side, I was reacquainted with Red Stylo Media’s Enrica Jang, whom I hadn’t seen since the Big Apple Con in May. Enrica was promoting the second print issue and third online issue of Azteca, the comic she writes, about a vigilante serial killer trying to prevent the long-prophesied 2012 apocalypse from happening. (I bet she’s got my pitch committed to memory after hearing it all weekend, too!) 🙂
With an hour left in Preview Night, a man in his late fifties came to a halt as he was passing by, and stared at me. Hard. Like he was trying to figure out if I was the guy who’d stolen his lunch money once, or something.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
His eyes narrowed. “Are you somebody?”
Nice.
I smiled. “Well, I like to think so.”
Photo © Tom Savini
Again with the staring! Then his eyes widened. “Tom Savini!”
Yeah, no. But I guess there might be a slight resemblance. You know how it is—all us guys with goatees look alike.
The rest of Preview Night passed rather uneventfully until just near the end, when a young couple stopped to hear my pitch for the Pan series. The woman seemed very interested, the guy less so, but no one was buying Blood Feud so they wandered away—until five minutes later, when the man came jogging back to purchase a copy. Seems that if he got the book for his lady, he was… er, going to get lucky that night.
My first sale of the show, and a great way to close out the day—thanks to the power of true love (or an acceptable substitute).
Day 2: Ashcans and E-books
Friday started with Matt McElroy, head of DriveThru Comics (where Blood Feud and Carmilla are sold as PDF e-books in StarWarp Concepts’ DriveThru Store), stopping by to chat with Rich and me. I showed him The ’Warp’s 2012 publishing catalog (which you can download if you look over to the right-hand sidebar).
Matt’s eyes lit up when he saw I was reprinting Edgar Rice Burroughs’s science-fiction novel A Princess of Mars—with brand-new illustrations by Carmilla and Pandora Zwieback artist Eliseu Gouveia—in time for the March release of Disney’s big-screen adaptation, John Carter. We talked about running a promotion on the DriveThru site for that, as well as a smaller one for the reprint of The Brothers Grimm’s Snow White—The ’Warp’s version will contain full-color illustrations first published in 1883.
(I’ll have more news on those projects in the coming weeks.)
Sales were better than Thursday’s (I even sold some Pandora Zwieback T-shirts!), although I can’t remember the last time I had to work so hard to give away a free comic. Lots of shaking heads and timid smiles and outright brush-offs. Whatever. On the other hand, I met some librarians on the lookout for young adult material, and Blood Feud was right up their alley. They all bought copies, so hopefully that will translate into orders for their respective libraries.
The day ended with a visit from Dezi Sienty, a talented small-press artist with whom I used to work at publishing house ibooks, inc., back when he was an art department intern and I was editor-in-chief. Dezi gave me an ashcan copy of his latest comic, One Last Step, a fully painted, touching story of dealing with loss. Well done, Dezi!
And then it was time to prepare for Saturday Madness…
To be continued!
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