Heroes Con 2010 – Day 1

Friday is usually a fairly relaxed (aka “slow”) day at Heroes Con and today was no exception.  At the Friendliest Con in the Southeast, (or maybe just period) this can be a good thing though, as it allows folks on the floor to hang out and catch up for a bit.  I rode into Charlotte with Rob Ullman, with whom I rendez-voused in Greensboro and–once set up–had a bit of time to shoot the breeze with folks in my general area: Chris Schweizer, Brad McGinty, Josh Latta, J. Chris Campbell, etc.

Anecdotally, it seems like sales were slow for most folks during working hours on Friday, but that things picked up considerably from 5:30-ish until show close at seven.  I took advantage of the initial pokey sales period to do some small index card-sized drawings of superheroes.  I had a lot of success last year selling these, so I figured I’d have at it again.  There are many things that contribute to Heroes being such a fun and unique show, but one of the most notable is the incredible amount of interest among attendees in original art. There are lots of folks with sketchbooks and lots of folks buying artwork–everything to quick sketches to full pages.  After getting some reference material from the dollar bin of local comics shop, Ssalefish, I managed to crank out passable drawings of Deadman, Nightcrawler and a few others.

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There were also a number of jam pages going around.  The Dollar Bin (podcast) jam page was all Marvel characters, so naturally I contributed a drawing of Razorback:

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Thankfully, around 5-ish in the afternoon (presumably because people were getting off of work) things on the floor picked up appreciably.  I wound up selling as many books between then and the end of the show as I had in the whole previous part of the day.  I even wound up doing a commissioned sketch of a Gen 13 character (!).  All and all, not a bad Friday for Heroes Con—not one for the record books, but solid.

After a quick dinner, there was a hilarious hotel room screening of some of cartoonist/animator Brad McGinty’s work in one of the Westin’s suites.  Although there were tons of raucous folks in attendance, there were zero visits from hotel security… which is two fewer times than last year.  It wasn’t quite the usual total mob scene in the Westin bar Friday night, partially because some folks had gone across town to a Heroes-sponsored art show, and partially–I suspect–just because people were “saving up” for Saturday.

I retired early to my room for a quick glass of wine and then hit the sack.  (Ben’s tip of the day: keep a wine tool in your travel bathroom kit.  You’ll always have it with you when you’re out of town!)

2 comments

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  1. Wish I was there…maybe next year!

    • Ben on 6/7/2010 at 7:09 am
      Author

    It was a great show. Maybe next year…..

  1. […] was a pleasure to talk with Ben Towle, the organizer of said panel, and his three convention writeups, one for each day, give a valuable perspective from a working pro, including […]

  2. […] Towle peppers his con reports (day 1, day 2, day 3) with the sketches he drew when things were slow, not that things were slow for all […]

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