Can I tell you how much I love the first day of comic con? Love it. It is like a dysfunctional family reunion where you are all smelly and weird but never have to deal with the drama a family does. Great! Setting up is a drag, a huge drag, but darn is it fun to see familiar faces. I am doing a split-table set up now where art is on one side and books on the other and it works great. GAH! My banner, cool as it is, keeps falling down though.
Lame.
Totally got to nerd out and school a kid working parking when we got there. So we roll up and the kid is laughing to his cohort that ‘this guy’ got upset because he was Danny Hicks and the kid should know who he was. I was like, oh, yeah, from Evil Dead 2, yeah, well, not many would know him. He was like, uh, yeah, I dunno him. HA! So you work a comic con and don’t know that movie?
NERRRRR…oh, nevermind.
So, the bummer of the day, for ticketholders, was that a LOT of the guests don’t come Fridays. Not at all. Some did, for sure, and they appeared approachable and cheery, which was good. But it sucks if you went for the celebs and not all are there. Though, I will say that the con does make it clear who will and will not be there all weekend.
For me, it was a bummer because I didn’t really sell much. Sold a small painting to a rad artist I met at an art fair I did last Summer, and sold a couple buttons. No books. BOO! The heck of it with these comic cons, at least in this area, is that the climate has changed. People seem to come for the celebs, for the comics and toys, and once in a while to see a comic artist but not for the whole experience. Maybe it’s the economy, maybe it’s that the damn celebs charge so much for autographs (and we did it to ourselves, I guess, by getting crap signed then rushing to EBay), or it’s that the cons themselves are SO pricey, I dunno, but I know that not many of us are making a lot of loot. I am having fun this year but the thing is that I need to make some dough, and maybe it’s just me, and maybe that having paintings and books are not things that will sell, but for me, it’s worrisome, for sure.
And why do I keep getting placed next to other ‘new’ writers that are doing better than me? GAH! What is with that? I need a gimmick, like, like, like dressing up like a Meep Sheep. Or a wizard or something.
Can I tell you how nerdy I still get when I walk past celebs? It’s hilarious! It’s like – ohmigawd, you are totally So-and-so. HEE!
All in all, day one was fun, but not fruitful. Hopefully day two is much better for everyone.
c
The Spooky World of Chris Ringler 