Sunday was surprisingly busy sales-wise it seemed to me.  I wound up (again) doing lots of sketchbook commissions and never really getting caught up with my five dollar superhero sketches.  I had someone request another Deadman, so I took care of that:

Interesting sketchbook commissions I got Sunday were a request for The Thing in boxing attire, and a Legend sketch.  Being a big fan of Legend, I knew that the makeup design for the character Blix was based on Keith Richards, so I riffed on that for my piece:

By the end of the day Sunday, I got the vibe that folks were feeling a lot better about sales at the show.  In fact, when I crunched my sales numbers this morning, I’m seeing that my sales this year were actually up 16% over Heroes ’09 with roughly the same split between original art and books.  Everyone I spoke to was having a great time at the show whatever the case may be for sales and I’m looking forward to seeing more press coverage of the show emerge, particularly coverage of the panels, since I wasn’t able to attend any of them except my own.

One of the highlights of the day for me was getting to look through actor Scott Adsit’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen-themed sketchbook.  It’s got some pretty unbelievable stuff in it–all top notch stuff by folks like Mike Mignola, Phil Noto, Darwyn Cooke, etc.

As the day wound down, I made the rounds and picked up books by other Indie Island folks like Drew Weing, Josh Latta, Brad McGinty and Joe Lambert.  Dustin was nice enough to hit me with a fantastic Kate Beton-drawn (and Dustin-colored) Indie Island t-shirt.

Thanks to everyone who bought books and sketches from me! I really appreciate your support. See you next year!

Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.  Friday was a bit slow at Heroes Con ’10, but Saturday morning was busy, busy, busy.  I still feel like I’m not selling as much stuff, but I think a lot of that has to do with my not having minis this year.  Instead of people buying a two or three dollar mini every 15 minutes, I’m selling a ten or fifteen dollar graphic novel every hour… and that ain’t bad.

As per usual at Heroes, original art is selling well.  In fact, if I’d known I’d be getting a full six foot table, I’d have brought some original pages.  I thought I was really getting ahead of the game yesterday by using some Friday down time to do some quick five dollar superhero sketches, but I sold all but one buy the end of the day Friday, and first thing today, I sold the final drawing (Deadman).  It was doing sketchbooks, sketchbooks, sketchbooks throughout the morning (rock on, Heroes Con!) and didn’t get a break until almost one in the afternoon.

Here’s a Multiple Man commission:

…and a Dr. Strange commission (the sketchbook theme was People Eating/Preparing to Eat Stuff):

I did eventually start some non-commissioned superhero sketches and will hopefully have a few of them available and inked tomorrow morning.

The Dollar Bin jam page was looking awesome. The art auction is going on now as I type this.  I hope this thing fetched a decent chunk of change:

Our “Defective Comics” panel was a big success I think.  We had a great turn-out and I was impressed by how many people stuck around for the presentations after the “celebrity panel” was over.  If you left early, you missed Craig’s snippet of Rat Fink a Boo Boo.  Your loss, my friend.  Evan Dorkin was in a particularly prickly humor for the panel… but since there was audio recorded that will likely surface shortly, I’ll say no more about that.

The comics press was out in force, which is great.  I semi-drunkenly spoke with “Mr.Phil” from Indie Spinner Rack last night at the Westin bar and ran into Heidi MacDonald, Tim O’Shea and Johanna Draper Carlson today on the floor.  Tom Spurgeon is apparently here as well, although I’d not recognize him by site.

After the show I went to some of my old Charlotte friends’ house for a great home cooked/grilled meal.  Fantastic!  The only walking distance quick food near the con is Fuel Pizza and as much as I do really like Fuel pizza, after three days I’m usually ready to cut out my tongue with a white hot butter knife.

By the time I got back to the Westin, the bar was mobbed and the art auction over.  I wound up drinkin’ the evening away with folks like Richard Thompson, Mike Rhode, Van Jensen, Andy Runton, David Duncan, and lots and lots of other comics folks yucking it up.  Generally it seemed like folks I talked to (although not necessarily the folks I just mentioned) thought the con was a bit slow sales-wise.  I heard, for example, that one publisher who was set up there had, as of the end of Saturday, just hit sales levels equivalent to what they’d taken in at the previous year’s Friday.

When I found myself trying to have a coherent conversation about Chuck Close and Sol LeWit at one-something A.M. I knew it was time to hit the sack.  Sunday wrap-up to come….

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.

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:

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!)

As we’ve done for the past two years, Craig Fischer and I will be giving another one of our mega-panels at Heroes Con this year.  The topic this go ’round will be DEFECTIVE COMICS: A Celebration Of Superhero Oddness and it’ll be held Saturday at 3:00 pm in Room 208AB.  Here’s the official skinny:

Defective  Comics: A Celebration of Superhero Oddness

Let’s face it: superheroes can be kinda dopey. For every cultural icon like Superman or Spider-Man, there’s five thousand off-beat B-listers (Bwana Beast? Sonny Sumo? Razorback?) lining up to die in the next big crossover event. For Heroescon 2010, Amelia Earhart: This Broad Ocean cartoonist Ben Towle and Thought Balloonist blogger Craig Fischer host a lovingly critical look at just how bizarre the superhero genre can be.

The event will include a presentation by Towle on the sad-sack super-man in Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library; a panel discussion with Colleen Coover, Evan Dorkin, Jeff Parker and Chris Pitzer; a talk by Crogan Adventures creator Chris Schweizer about art-comix creators crossing over into mainstream superhero comics; and clips from some of the weirdest and worst superhero films of all time. Excelsior?

If you’re going to be at Heroes Con this year (and you really should be, you know) please check it out.

Like it says, the seating chart for this year’s Heroes Con is now posted.   Given that many of the folks in “Indie Island” are long-time Heroes guests, it’s usually the case that there are a bunch of folks who know each other all situated pretty close to one another.  I was really excited, though, to see that–whether by chance or design–this year’s table assignment creates an awesome “walk of shame” on one side of the 400 block of Indie Island.  Check it out:

(The final table on the end there, is Sally Bloodbath, whom I don’t know, but whose story in this year’s Wide Awake Press anthology was one of my favorites.)