Holiday Wars

I’m back from Baltimore and I have to say that the Baltimore Comic-con was simply fantastic. We sold a lot more copies of “Holiday Wars” then we expected. Even better is that it was pretty much an easy sell. I’d tell people the basic premise, or they’d read the back of the book and then they’d want it right away. That’s a good sign that it might be fairly marketable.

My favorite non-sell was when a guy came over and thumbed through the book. He asked me about it and he seemed generally excited about it. However right before he actually he bought it he put it down and said, “I would totally buy this but I don’t read comics. I only came to the convention for Fine Art.” How hilarious is that? It’s the Baltimore Comic-con! It’s not like SPX or a very artsy convention. It’s a very main stream comic book convention and the guy was only there to buy fine art. I know I probbaly should’ve been offended but I laughed really hard when he said that.

Signing my name is new for me so one of the first things I was told I had to do was figure out the right signature to use when signing copies. That sounds silly but my hand writing is a step above a doctors hand writing. I’m not an artist and simply signing my name and having it readable isn’t easy. So these are the practice attempts I made. A vote was taken and I ended up signing copies with “Scott King” followed by a crown.

Our publisher is Th3rd World Studios so we were at the Th3rd World booth in Baltimore. The rockstar book of Th3rd World is “Stuff of Legened” (They even had a cosplayer dress up as the Indian from the book!) so of course it’s co-writer Mike Raicht and it’s artists Charles Paul Wilson III were there. I’ve known both for YEARS and it’s always cool catching-up with them.

Here is Mike Raicht talking to a fan.

Here is Charles doing some water colors. At least I think it’s water colors. I’m not an artist so I don’t really know for sure. You’d have to ask him.

Here is a closer shot of what he’s working on. In addition to doing a butt-load of commissions he was selling original artwork in a pooh-hero inspired series where he would draw super heroes in the same style as the original Winnie the Pooh.

This is our publisher Mike Devito. He’s pitching a copy of “Finding Gossamyr,” Th3rd World’s newest property. If you haven’t checked it out then you seriously need to do so right away.

“Finding Gossamyr” is written by this guy, David A. Rodriguez and is drawn beautifully Sarah Ellerton.  The story is all ages but has enough action and adventures that adults can enjoy it just as much as kids. I’ve never met Sarah, though I really want to, and this was my second time meeting David. The best way i can describe him is by saying that he’s a flat-out nice guy. He was cracking jokes, trying to sell my book as much as his own, and he was fun to hangout with.

With David was Jeff Bellio. He’s one of the cover artists from “Finding Gossamyr.” He spent most of the convention doing video game sketches and random commissions.

In the front corner of the booth is where I set up shop. It was so cool to be at a convention and to have a fiction book to sell. I’m proud of my first graphic novel “DAD!” but I was more of an editor/creator on it. However with “Holiday Wars” I’m the writer and it’s so nice to be able to share it.

Rounding out our booth was Tony Devito. He’s our publisher’s little brother and he spent most of his time doing custom paint jobs of a new property he’s developing called Snuprs.

Snurps are what happens when you sneeze and burp at the same time!

So that was our crew. The convention was insanely packed Saturday. I’ve never seen it so busy.

There were times when I couldn’t even see across from our aisle. The downside is that Sunday was a much slower day. Everyone I talked to (not just our crew) said that their sales numbers on Sunday were about half of what they were on Saturday.

On the plus side because it was slower on Sunday I got to actually walk around and check things out. More importantly I got to talk and meet some of my twitter friends, some of which I had never met before in person. There was Dawn who does the very funny “Zorphbert and Fred“. Thom and Kam from the steam-punk “Shadowbinders” were also there and they made me jealous because they had a crazy amount of cool swag. I also talked to CDowd who does the fun “Lilith Dark.” I got to speak with Tyler James of ComixTribe who was also one of kickstarter backers. I even got to chat with Mike Maihack who does “Cleopatra in Space.” So all in all it was a great show to meet and speak with fellow creators.

One of my other favorite moments of the show was on Sunday I sneaked out of the booth to take a pee break (I drank a LOT of coffee this weekend) and when i got to the bathroom a security guy wouldn’t let me in. I asked why and he said that Stan Lee was using the bathroom. So I naturally asked, “Is Stan Lee doing number 1 or number 2?” The security guard just shook his head and sighed.

Stan Lee was definitely the star of the whole convention. I had never seen him before at a convention and I didn’t realize how much of a crowd he draws. There were people there who were only there to see him. Even crazier is that he makes mad dough from shows. They put him behind curtains so that no one can take pictures of him and then they charge people $40 to have a quick 30 second meet and great where a photo is taken. You can’t blame the guy because he truly is a super star I guess I just had no idea how much money people were willing to shell out just to have a picture taken with him.

There were tons of costumes. I think I saw more Doctor Who’s than I had ever seen before. There were several David Tennant versions but Matt Smith seemed to be the most popular. In fact woman were cosplaying as the Matt Smith Doctor Who than guys were. There were also tons of Tardis dresses and shirts.  I think the second most popular character I saw was Deadpool. There were lots and lots of Deadpools. Then of course there were Batmans, Catwomans, and tons of random anima/manga characters that I didn’t recognize.

Even more than cosplayers were families. The Baltimore convention is only thirteen years old but it seems to have found it’s niche. It’s a comic centric convention and it is by far the most kid friendly convention I’ve ever been too. It was great having parents come over excited about books and thus in the process their kids were also getting excited too. There were also a lot of female comic fans and not just young girls, but moms and older woman too. Anyone who thinks that comics are just for guys is stupid cause I saw first hand this weekend just how into comics woman are.

One of my other favorite moments of the show involved “Finding Gossamyr.” A woman in her twenties came over to talk to David and she was just flat out gushing. Talking about how she loves the art and the story and how it’s her favorite comic. She was truly start struck and it was amazing to see. David and Sarah managed to win this woman over and she truly loved and cared about the comic and it’ characters. It was soooo soooo cool to see.

On Sunday, David’s family and Mike Devito’s family showed up (remember I said it was a family friendly show) and during some down time I hired David’s son to do a commission for me. So here is the first commission ever of The Bunny. I mean sure I could pay a couple hundred bucks and have a real artist do a real commission, but honestly there’s something nice and more genuine in a piece like this one.

Of course we had copies of “Holiday Wars” at the show and I was shocked at how good the book looks. It doesn’t look like a webcomic. I don’t mean that in a bad way. I mean simply that it doesn’t look out of place in printed form. In fact it looks even better. On the website you only ever get to see half a page at a time but in the book you get two full pages side by side and the artwork flows way better than I ever would’ve realized.

We almost sold out of the copies we had at the convention and I only brought two copies home with me. One for myself and one to mail to Michael Odom. Here is what the book looks like at home on my bookshelf. It blends in really nice doesn’t it?

All in all the convention was just AWESOME. I’m super happy with how it went and I’m proud of the book. There were actually four sales we made to people who knew who we were and had already checked us out online or were established fans.  I’m also even more excited now for Interventioncon which happens on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd!  Hopefully I’ll see some of you there.