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Rainbow: Hitting the Road
Wed, 25 Aug 2010 17:44:58 GMTAlright, everybody - this'll be our last blog for a couple weeks. We're hitting the road for our big 2-week Convention Tour. We've never done two shows back to back without coming home in-between, and we're both excited and nervous. Excited because we're staying with friends we love the whole time, nervous because our poor baby kittens will be left at home for so long without us. They'll have Adam's parents checking on them all the time, thanks to the glory of triplex living, but we're going to miss them so much!
Baaaabiiiiies!!!
After that, we're going south to Atlanta, GA and the mighty Dragon*Con. It's our first year at that show, so try not to hurt us too much, 'kay' We're real nice, we swear! We're really looking forward to checking this one out and seeing if the hype lives up to the real experience. 
Wooooooooo! Rainbow #2 Preview Panel
A big thanks to Bryan and Judy Glass and Jeremy and Kelly Dale who are putting us up in their homes for this trip. You guys are the best, and you make everything so much more fun. We promise we'll do our best not to wear on your hospitality.
So that's all, gang. We'll be back here in a couple weeks with some con reports and updates on Rainbow. See you then!
-Adam & Comfort
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Rainbow: Issue #2 Preview and an Update on Our Lives
Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:17:25 GMTHello again, everybody. Yes, we know – we’ve been criminally slack in our blogging. We’ve barely peeped about all the cool stuff going on with Rainbow and Uniques Tales, and have been gone so much that we took two weeks just to get all our Convention Reports up to date. It’s been a tough time for us, lately. Not bad tough, just really busy. Like, really busy. We were going crazy leading up to SDCC, and it hasn’t slacked off much at all since then.
So here’s where we’re at: for personal and professional reasons, we’ve got to get Rainbow in the Dark #2 finished and off to print in time for the New York Comic Con, which is the weekend of October 8th. Normally, that wouldn’t be any problem at all. Much of this rush is due to connections made at SDCC, but from the time we got back from San Diego and Otakon, we had about 2 months before NYCC. That’s an easy target to hit, for us.
Preview panel from Rainbow in the Dark #2
But there are complications. Aren’t there always' The big thing is that we’ve got three conventions between now and NYCC, starting this weekend with the Baltimore Comic Con. Woo! But we’re doing the Baltimore Con and Dragon*Con back-to-back, so we’ll be going from Flint, MI to Baltimore to Atlanta, GA, and then back to Michigan again. We’ll be gone from tomorrow until at least September 7th (2 weeks from Tuesday). Then we get a weekend at home before going back to Georgia for Anime Weekend Atlanta, losing another 6-7 days.
We’re actually really looking forward to these shows. We’ll be staying with friends who’ve been so gracious as to invite us into their homes for the duration of the journey. We’re hopeful that Baltimore will be a better show this year than last, and all we hear about Dragon*Con is that it’s a mad-house that must be experienced once in a lifetime. AWA is a toss-up, but if it’s like pretty much every other Anime con we’ve gone to, it’ll at least be fun and energizing. So we’re planning on having a lot of fun and hoping for a lot of professional success… it’s just that we’re losing almost a month on the road (something like 21 days).
We had Comfort’s parents over this past weekend, which was great. We love them to death, and are so happy that they’ve returned to Michigan after living with Comf’s grandmother in Wyoming for something like two years. It was just so very nice to have them back and spend time with them again. We’re fortunate as a couple in that we’re close with both sets of parents, and that both sides of the family enjoy each other’s company. We took a lot of walks, ate better than we have in ages (thanks moms!) and talked and talked.
Of course, that was also another weekend where we didn’t get as much work done. They were very understanding of our schedule, and accommodated us while we continued drawing through the weekend. It wasn’t a complete professional loss, but we didn’t do as much as we usually would have. A small price to pay for the personal boost we got from being with family we love.
Anyway, we’re rambling on about the ups and downs, and we don’t want this to sound like we’re complaining. We’ve been having a very good time these past months, and are looking forward to having some really good times the next couple weeks on the road. Seriously – we’ve been looking forward to this 2-week trip pretty much all year long! It’s just that this is why we’ve been tight in our schedule and haven’t blogged as much as we wanted to.
So that’s the deal. We’re busting our butts, having only around 40 days in total to complete an entire 27-page issue from start to finish. As a comparison, most artists get about 28 days or so just to do the pencils on a 22-page comic. We’re doing pencils, color, and lettering in just a little more than that. But don’t cry for us – we’re having a great time, and are actually keeping on schedule really well. We’re just not likely to enjoy the last couple weeks of production very much!
See you as soon as we can, after two weeks of travel around the eastern third of the U.S. and with a pair of convention reports in pocket.
Excelsior!
-Adam & Comfort
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Convention Report: Otakon 2010
Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:22:43 GMT
At our booth in Otakon... and LOVING it!
Welcome back again, everybody, for our final Con Report Catch-up blog! At last, we arrive at Otakon. For those of you who are pure comic fans with little knowledge of the Anime/Manga convention scene, let us begin by telling you something we learned that weekend: Otakon is the third highest attended convention of any kind in the country. San Diego Comic Con is #1, but while walking into the convention on Friday morning and seeing the line for entrance that wrapped around the building – twice – we couldn’t tell the difference in size between SDCC and this show. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves; let’s start at the beginning… 
Colossus by Adam 
The Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness by Comfort 
Pickles the Drummer from Metalocalypse, by Adam
From the time we got to Baltimore, Otakon was immediately a vastly easier experience than San Diego. Parking was a breeze, even in crowded downtown Baltimore, and when we went to check in for pre-registration and get our badges, we were in and out in no time at all. This was a huge step up in efficiency from last year, though we must confess that some of that was because this was our second year at the show and we knew what we were doing this time. We ran into the Pint-Size Dynamo Del Borovic of the hugely awesome web comic, Delve into Fantasy, and artist on our own Uniques Tales. Spent time with her in line for Artist Alley badge upgrades before heading out to spend an afternoon in Baltimore.
The crowd waiting to come inside, via Lora's camera.
We met up with Ian Levenstein of the fabulous Comic Timing podcast and his oh-so-lovely ladyfriend Kris, who were kind enough to share their hotel room with us (and three other cool people) for the weekend. The four of us went out, hit a Best Buy to grab “Batman: Under the Red Hood,” and grabbed food at the Cheesecake Factory. Walking around downtown Baltimore was nice, but it was so muggy that it was rather uncomfortable, so we wound up spending most of our night in the hotel room. We watched the huge Thor trailer (which looks awesome) and the Batman/Red Hood movie (which was a lot better than we expected), drew some thumbnails for Rainbow #2, and generally had an awesome time.
Friday morning we went in early to see if we could get our table moved. On the way in, we stopped to shoot this video of the lines wrapping around the building:
We’d convinced Lora Innes to come to the show because of how many Dreamer fans we met last year, and we’d all wanted to be next to each other, but our table assignments were miles away. The Artist Alley coordinator was kind enough to let us move our spots, and we got ourselves all set in no time at all. To our delight, we were also next to Jerry “The Franchize” Gaylord (another awesome Uniques Tales artist) and Penelope “Peng-Peng” Rivera. The show hadn’t even started and we already knew it was going to be a good time!
Once those doors opened, though… Wow. We were completely unprepared. Within moments, our table was hit by people who knew us, wanted to know us, or already loved us. Within 30 minutes, we both had commissions, we’d sold a Uniques Omnibus and a few prints, and our eyes were wide. Within a few hours, we knew this was going to be the show we needed it to be. 
Thanos and Death by Adam
Telepath headshot by Comfort; Raina headshot by Adam 
Nightwing and Starfire by Comfort 
Creature from the Black Lagoon by Adam
As faithful readers may or may not recall, Otakon is a long, long show. Artist Alley is open until midnight, and the con keeps going nearly 24 hours. And just like last year, we were doing business all the way to midnight. By the end of the day Friday, we’d made nearly as much money as we had in all five days at San Diego. Happy' Oh, yes.
This year, we finally got a chance to lead a panel of our own, devoted entirely to self-publication. We’ve been doing this a little while and have picked up a lot in that time. If we can keep other people from having to pick around in the dark for answers, we’re happy to do it. Share the knowledge, share the love – that’s our motto. So Friday at 3, we sat down for our first ever solo-panel. Here’s some video Comfie shot while we were setting up:
By the time the panel started, it was standing room only. They had to usher people out to prevent a fire hazard! It was amazing. We wound up cramming a ton of information into 60 minutes of talking time, inviting everybody back to our booth to continue the discussion with their questions. We were surprised how many people took us up on it, and for the rest of the weekend we were getting people who had listened to our panel coming to us with their questions about getting into comics on their own. 
Talking with people after the panel, explaining things and answering questions as we're being
hurried out the door by panel ops. 
Our friend Marvin commissioned us to draw a pic of Kenji and Raina doing a panel about
creating comics, showing a slide of a comic page about a husband-and-wife duo who
make comics for a living. This... may have been the most fun commission at the show.
It was a great experience, and we hope to do the panel at a lot more conventions. We’ll let everybody know which ones take us up on it, and hopefully some time we’ll be able to get some video of it up somewhere. Friday night we went back to the hotel after midnight and hung out in the room with the rest of the gang, working on commissions we had backlogged and trying to get ahead for the next day. In the morning, we were glad we’d done so. 
Sokka and Arisia sketch cards by Adam 
X-Men Evolution: Nightcrawler by Comfort 
A fan as Street Fighter's Balrog by Adam
Saturday was the longest day of the show, running from 10 am to midnight – that’s 14 non-stop hours spent working the Alley! And it was quickly shaping up to be even busier than Friday had been. In fact, we were cruising toward a serious barn-burner of a con day when, all of a sudden, the fire alarm went off. That’s right – the fire alarm went off in the middle of the busiest day at the 3rd biggest convention in the hemisphere! The convention center was close to capacity, and all those people had to be moved outside (20 feet from the building, minimum) without anybody getting trampled. 
A photo of the fire-alarm hysteria-ish-ness, via Lora's camera.
Here’s a little video we found of the whole mess, with a bit of us trying to get out right at the beginning. You can see just how huge the crowd is, but trust us – it was even bigger than it looks here:
We spent over an hour and a half outside and then slowly being allowed back in (dealers first, then artists, then assistants, then eventually attendees). It could have been a major cluster-foo, but they managed to make it nearly painless. Well… as painless as herding that many frustrated people outside can be.
The rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but after that how could anything be considered an “event'” We were still selling hand-over-fist and drawing said hands and fists right off our wrists. The people coming by were uniformly awesome. One of our favorite parts of this show is all the people who come to the show; they’re excited, they’re optimistic, they’re so happy to be there – it’s a very different experience from a lot of the more jaded attendees at comic shows. There’s just this energy that pervaded the whole convention center. We felt about ten years younger just being around all that enthusiasm.
And can we just say – fangirls are the best ever. They’re so adorable! When she was working on a Nightcrawler commission for a girl and the girl asked her “What’s your favorite Kurt pairing'” Comfort was like, wha' “You know – who’s the best girl for Kurt!” Comf nearly died from adorable overload. And that was just the tip of the cute-berg.
Nightcrawler by Comfort 
Sokka by Adam 
Katara by Comfort 
A fan as Guy Gardner by Adam
Sunday was a much, much shorter day, only running until 2 pm. We were still working hard the whole time, and even had to stay after close to finish a commission (for the Nightcrawler girl). When we took a final tally, we’d nearly sold out of Uniques Season 1 omnibi, had moved more than 75% of our Rainbow in the Dark #1 stock, and had sold more prints than we ever had at any show ever. We had made more money than at any show we’d ever done by a big margin. After actually losing money in San Diego, Otakon was everything we had hoped for and then some.
There were just so many great people to talk to – so many people who wanted to talk to us about Uniques and Rainbow. There were people who’d been waiting to see us again to talk our ears off about the comic. There were people who bought the Omnibus, read it the same night, and came back first thing in the morning to tell us how much they loved it. It was just… amazing. There has been nothing like it for us, so far.
Having had such a successful show, we turned to our neighbors and asked if they had done as well. Even more satisfying than our own success was finding out that they had also done better than they imagined. In particular Lora, who we had talked into coming, was important to us. We had been scared that we’d convinced her to come and it might not be as big a show this year. But hearing that she had such an outpouring of support from fans at the show was incredibly gratifying for us. The Dreamer is one of our favorite comics, and we’re so happy to see her do well. 
Lora Innes: Successful in Comics, successful in busines,
successful in... Cosplay Bingo. She's a winner, ladies and gentlemen.
When we were all done, we went with Lora, her sister and her brother-in-law to this awesome restaurant that we had never heard of - The Paper Moon Diner. Apparently it's a Baltimore tradition for her, started by our mutual friend Steve Sunu. It was our first time, and MAN!!! The food was delicious! We all had a pretty nice time unwinding and debriefing. The sun hung low, we were all tired, and we all had drives ahead of us, so we parted ways and hit the road for home.
Hanging with Lora at the Paper Moon Diner.
Otakon was amazing. Nothing has compared to it. The sheer amount of things to do, places to go, and stuff to discover meant that everybody was having a blast. Plus, having done so well financially made it easier to look back on San Diego and focus on the good times we had rather than the monetary debacle it had been. It was two weeks of exhaustion and elation in equal measure, each show making us appreciate the other more deeply, and depositing us back home with such relief and happiness to be back again at last.
And now we’re back to work, harder than ever. We have to get Rainbow in the Dark #2 finished for the New York Comic Con in October, and we’ve got 3 more cons before that! We’ve got a few weeks to get at least 3/4 of the book finished if we hope to have the thing off to the printer in time. So it’s gonna be busy at the old Withers/Love abode, but it’s still good to be home.
Dragon Lady by Adam
Ms. Marvel Sketch Card by Comfort 
Batman vs. Tentacle Monsters by Adam - special revenge-request by a girl whose sister bailed on her at the last minute.
Special last-minute shout-out to our friend Marvin who made Otakon so good for us, to Lora, Franchise and Peng-Peng for being such great neighbors and great people, and to Del for being awesome and teeny, and to Ian and Kris for being great hotel roomies and for being so generous with their space and their time. Now we leave you with costumes and farewells until we’re back blogging again later this week.
See you then!
-Adam & Comfort 
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Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:08:35 GMT
And now the time has finally come to give you the grand con report for the inimitable, infamous, indefatigable San Diego Comic Con. As we said last time, we had less than a month from JAFAX to SDCC, in which time we completed Rainbow #1 and the Uniques Omnibus, got them sent off to print, and dealt with a variety of stress headaches both major and minor. In the end, we made it to California in one piece (well, two pieces - there ARE two of us...). While we talk San Diego, we'll share the con sketches we did, interspersed with our commentary.
Warning: All you dumb TL;DR people, look away now! This is a LONG post, where we actually talk about stuff. If reading hurts your eyes and you dislike words, just skim through the pictures. Anybody who isn't ultra-lame, read on!
So the first thing we’ll say about Comic Con is this: everybody and their brothers have written exhaustively about the goings-on at the show. If you want the blow-by-blow of every event, panel, preview, debut, or what have you, a quick Google search will give you everything up to and including a count of Ryan Reynolds’ nose hairs. So we aren’t going that route, we’re going to give you the perspective from our side of the table. Besides… we didn’t get to go to any panels. To be honest, we’re having to do web searches to find out all the cool SDCC stuff too. Funny how that works out, isn’t it'
So here is our final disclaimer: We are going to be honest about San Diego. We aren't going to get lost in hyperbole, because we weren't part of the blinding hype-fest. We were just two people behind a table, mingling with a crowd and seeing the show. And honestly, San Diego is a lot of hype - more than any show could live up to. Read on to find more.
We got into San Diego on a Tuesday without a single setback, and were picked up by our friends Josh Finney and Kat Rocha of Titanium Rain fame. We met these two at the Super Show earlier in the year, and have gotten to be good friends in the time since. We’re totally on the same wavelength, and talking to them about storytelling, comics, and just stuff in general is so much fun. As a bonus, this is the first convention in as long as we can remember that we had time to actually enjoy the city we were visiting. Josh and Kat showed us around, took us to some places the likes of which we’ve never seen in old Flint, Michigan, and gave us a real nice day. Thanks, guys.
Banshee by Adam
Phoenix by Comfort
Ichigo and Renji from Bleach by Adam
That night we were dropped at our hotel room which we were sharing with Jeremy and Kelly Dale and Bryan J.L. Glass. We just can’t say enough how much we love these guys. The only sadness was that Bryan’s wife, Judy, couldn’t be with us. We caught up on events, heard them describe the hall (they’d already dropped their stuff off at the con center earlier) and generally got pumped for the show.
The bathroom door had frosted glass which we were assured you couldn't see through.
Adam put it to the test, Han Solo in Carbonite style.
Wednesday was “Preview Night,” so advanced pass holders could get in and see the show an extra day. Our chance to be at Comic Con was a long, winding road, and among the many twists and turns were that only Comfort got a full-on Exhibitor Pass, while Adam got a lower-clearance Professional badge. That meant Comfie could go in early to set up, but Adam had to sit outside and wait for the doors to open like everybody else. To get around this some (and take some of the burden off Comf’s shoulders) Adam and Jeremy switched badges for a bit so he could go in and help set up the hard stuff, then switched back so Jeremy could get back to his own business. 
The view from our booth, thanks to Jeremy's phone-cam.
And the view OF our booth, thanks to Jeremy again. That's the lovely lady Kelly with us, by the way!
Bushido by Comfort
Wonder Woman/Diana Prince by Adam
Nightcrawler Sketch Card by Comfort
We were all sharing a big booth with the delightfully smiley Pat Loika and Dial R Studios – featuring Eisner Award Nominee Dave “Citizen Dave” Wachter! We’ve been passing friends with Dave for a little while, and we were super excited for his nomination (which we were sad he didn’t win, but that in no way diminished the value of his accomplishment). We owe a huge debt to Pat, without whom we wouldn’t have been able to be part of the show at all. Thanks so much, Pat – you’re the best.
The Dial R gang!
Preview night was Wednesday, but we couldn't get in to set up until later in the day so we had a leisurely lunch at Seaport Village and enjoyed a bit of San Diego for the morning. It was weird, having so much time to relax and just hang out in the city before the show. Strange, but refreshing - the food was delicious, and we would appreciate the restful morning later on.
Lunch with the gang, via Kelly's camera.
Preview night was our first impression of the majestic beast that is Comic Con. What can we say that hasn’t been said' The first thing that struck us was our own bias. See, we’ve been doing cons a long time; we had already done eight shows prior to SDCC. We’ve seen big shows, small shows, media shows, comic shows, and all the stuff in-between. So our first impression of Comic Con was actually the feeling that it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before. The major difference was that it was the only place where everything we’ve ever seen at a con has been in the same place at the same time. We’ve never in our lives seen anything this big before! It was just… immense. The show floor seemed to go on forever. Seriously – we were there for five days and we didn’t see everything that was there, that’s how big it was.
At the same time, there’s no way the reality of Comic Con could live up to the hype. It’s a show that’s almost impossible to get table space at, the expense is so high, the anticipation even higher… the challenge of getting there creates the illusion that it is the single greatest convention experience in all of the world. It’s mythical. It’s legendary. But like all legends, the truth doesn't measure up. In this case, the truth was that it was still just a convention. There were no centaurs farting fairy dust that turned random sheets of paper into issues of Youngblood #1 holofoil cover variants. No minotaurs waving scepters that opened portals to hell from which demons screamed outward with Evil Ernie grins, Dio music blasting, while pelting the crowd with laser discs containing previews from Tron: Legacy and Green Lantern. It was just a convention-- albeit a con with the biggest attendance of any trade show or convention in this hemisphere. 
This crowd was INSANE!
We got lots of lookers, but not much business. It was preview night and there was too much to pre-view for anyone to spend much money right off the bat. We left the show, met up with Josh and Kat and some of their friends from Archaia and grabbed some Middle Eastern cuisine. We will say this for San Diego – it’s a city with a huge variety of foodstuffs. We hit the Hyatt and hung out for a while before heading back to the hotel with hopes of a good night’s sleep to prep us for the first full day of the show.
Thursday was a pretty big day. We started getting some commissions, we sold some books, and we made some impressions. The crowd was big, but we were assured this was just the tip of the iceberg. If that was the case, sign us up – we were ready to be amazed. Our group grabbed a quick bite at a TGIFriday’s after the show and had planned to hit a Drink & Draw event, but there wasn’t anybody we knew and the bar was too dark to really draw in. Instead, we called it a night early because we were seriously beat and had a couple commissions to finish.
Jubilee by Comfort
Nightwing by Adam
Mermaid Bureaucrat by Comfort
Friday was hands-down our best day at the show. We were drawing a lot and getting a lot of people into Uniques and Rainbow in the Dark, which are our two favorite things to do at a con. Adam got to meet a couple people from an online forum he frequents, which is always awesome. Overall, our business was really picking up. Even so, we took some time out to walk the aisles a bit and see what there was to see. It was a zoo, let us tell you! There were light-cycles, alien carcasses, Asgardian thrones, giant mecha, and at least one Naavi standing atop a pillar and watching us all while coiled and ready to strike. We got to see Rock Band 3 in action (Yessss!!!) and Marvel vs. Capcom 3, which made us both feel old when we realized we weren’t excited about it so much as confused by the spastic, seizure-inducing movements and blink-and-you-missed-it gameplay.
Friday night we were feeling good. We hooked up with Dirk Shearer and Marcus Almand for some Thai food, then went to get some rest to prep for the biggest day of the show. It was a long, busy day and we were ready to be demolished by the Saturday crowd.
The streets of San Diego on Friday after the show let out.
Saturday came. It was… not what we expected, honestly. There was a huge crowd, sure, but our business actually dipped from Friday even though the crowd seemed bigger. We did some business, but were really surprised at the inverse proportion of crowd size to purchasers. We got tons of interest and gave out lots of cards, got a lot of “I’ll definitely be back tomorrow” guys, and that was pretty much it. It was strange and a little worrisome. This is easily the most expensive show we’d ever done, and yet up to that point we were only doing average financial numbers. Talking to others, ours seemed to be a typical experience. Color us concerned.
Saturday night, however, was a blast. We got Italian food from a place where the head chef was a pure Italian, and it was some of the best we ever had. Also, apparently, there was a bunch of mafia guys right behind us. We’ll have to take Jeremy and Dirk’s word for it. That’s if Dirk survived – his crème brûlée may have been poisoned. If it was, we got some too because he shared. Totally worth dying for – best crème brûlée ever! We moseyed back to the Hyatt where we relaxed for a bit and Adam payed too much for a piece of chocolate cake that turned out to be a tiny square of fudge (never ever buy hotel food, people). We were there when the Con crowd roared in and mixed and mingled with some really good people. It was a long night, and it wasn’t until at least 2 am that we got back to our hotel to sleep.
Nightcrawler by Comfort
Wonder Woman & Ares by Adam (Original Ares design by the fan himself)
Narutardiness by Comfort
Sunday was even more anachronistic than Saturday was. If anything, it was the largest crowd we ever saw passing by our booth. And yet we did worse business on Sunday than any other day. It wasn’t for lack of interest – we got tons of people really digging what we were doing. But most either didn’t have any money left or just weren’t buying anymore. By the time it was said and done and we’d packed it in and left the show, we’d wound up coming short of breaking even on all the costs we’d accrued in getting to the show; the first time we’d failed to make a profit in over three years of conventioning.
But that needs to be qualified a bit. We made about as much money as we did at C2E2 earlier this year, and that was a very successful show for us. The difference was that our costs at San Diego were more than double that of Chicago, and so our needs were higher. A friend of ours in a similar situation put a positive spin on it and said that, while he wound up losing a few hundred dollars overall, “Would I have been willing to pay that amount for the promotional and professional opportunities I got at this show'” His answer was an easy yes, ours… we’ll have to wait a while and see how it pans out.
We look at the show in three categories: Personal, Financial, and Professional. Personally, we had an amazing time. Seriously, it was so much fun! We stayed with some of our best friends and favorite people, got to see some of San Diego and relax (which we NEVER do at cons), and got to meet a lot of great new people in the process. Financially, it was just so-so at best. Like our friend said, the loss we took was paying for the professional opportunities we got at the show. We were crossing our fingers that Otakon the following weekend would make up the difference of what we lost at SDCC. Finally, professionally, we had some very exciting opportunities. We got to pitch to several major publishers, getting face time with people that could only ever be seen at this show specifically - people you almost never get face-time with. And a couple of them showed sincere interest in what we were doing, one going so far as to tell us in detail how impressed he was with what we’ve been accomplishing and the quality of our work. Will that pan into anything' We don’t know. It’ll be a long time before we know. But it’s certainly possible, and absolutely more possible now than it was a year or two ago.
Centaurs Can't Ride Motorcycles by Comfort
Our SDCC experience was very limited. We didn’t get to do the coolest stuff – see the panels, watch the costume contest (or “masquerade” if you will), see the big debuts and meet the stars… all the things that make Comic Con what it is. We spent most of our time behind our table. What we did see was the biggest convention floor we’d ever seen, the biggest crowd we’d ever had to wade through, and the most spectacle you could want at a show. Maybe more spectacle than you'd want. Definitely more than we needed. We didn’t have the full Comic Con experience, we had the view from our table, and from where we sat it was an amazing show to see but a tough show in which to exhibit. It was just... okay. But okay isn't enough when the cost of attendance is so astronomically high. We’d be curious to find out how people in Artist Alley did, or those in the Small Press Island. Real numbers, mind you, not just vague whoops of joy just to have gotten space at the show at all or the sort of bluster most people feel they have to front with so they can maintain the appearance of being a "real deal" or a "mover and/or shaker."
Maybe it wasn’t a money maker, but we still had an amazing time. We debuted Rainbow #1 to great fanfare and got a wonderful response from fans and professionals alike. We got a lot of people hooked up with the Uniques: Season 1 Omnibus. We got to be at Comic Con, and there aren’t a lot of people who can say the same. It was a hell of a time, and if anything major comes of it down the road, you’ll read about it here for sure.
So that was San Diego from our seats. Next up is our Otakon recap, wherein we discover that people really, really like us. We’re looking forward to having a few weeks at home before the next batch of shows churn into gear. Take care of yourselves and we’ll be back soon!
-Adam & Comfort 
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Convention Report: JAFAX 2010
Tue, 03 Aug 2010 18:02:00 GMTOkay! We’re back from Otakon, which was insane, and ready to tell all about it! But that's gonna have to wait—we’ve got three conventions to talk about: JAFAX, San Diego Comic Con, and Otakon. We’re going to go through them all chronologically so that you can sort of follow our journey, and by the end of the week you might be as tired of conventions as we are right now! HA! Let's start at the top with JAFAX, featuring con sketches from the show through the post...
Adam and Comfie at JAFAX, courtesy of Chris' camera
Shadowcat & Lockheed by Comfort
Spawn & The Violator by Adam
Storm & Beast by Comfort
Ash by Adam
So, JAFAX is a little Anime/Manga show in Grand Rapids, MI. This works out great for us, because (having lived there for ten years prior) we have some good friends in town that we rarely get to see since we moved. Two of our favorite people in the world, Chris and Jennifer, put us up in their apartment for the weekend, and we just had a great time. We took a walk in a park we never knew existed yet was only a couple minutes from the apartment we used to live in. We got to see the Lord of the Rings MMO in action and witness some highlights from Weatherstock ’10. We had intended to watch some movies and stuff, but spent most of our time just talking and catching up. Oh, and Chris had balloons strewn around for Adam’s Birthday (which had recently passed at the time). All this and delicious Oreo-pudding pie! And a candle!
Adam proclaiming it's "This guyyyyy!"'s birthday, via Jennifer AKA Camera Ninja
JAFAX itself was a really good time. Only a two-day show, it’s nestled in the Grand Valley State University campus, and Artist Alley is in a long hallway that loops around the video rooms. When we got there, we dropped off the big Bleach piece we’d done for their auction and set up for the show. We proceeded to get hit by tons of people who had seen us last year and had us on their “list” to see again. We met tons of new people and old, and did lots of sketches and stuff while talking about what shows we were watching and which books we were reading and all the usual convention chattery-do.
Saturday night, we went out to eat with our old friends
Luke Skywalker vs. the Starkiller by Comfort & Adam
Farscape: Sikozu by Adam
Dumbledore by Comfort
Sunday was more of the same fun at the show. One of the great things about JAFAX is that, because it’s in Grand Rapids, we got to see a lot of our former students at the show. It was so good to see them again. Some of them were even exhibiting in the Alley themselves, which was awesome! And, in the spirit of fun (and being a total goofball), Adam gave in to one student’s request that he engage in some tomfoolery – doing the Caramelldansen with a bunch of Anime girls. Oy. Naturally, the whole sordid mess was captured on video for his embarrassment and your entertainment. Thank you, YouTube!
Comfort and our student, Riley. Riley gave comfort this neat "Thank you!" painting. The kid's got a lot of talent - check out her deviantART page, and remember she's still just 15! Also, Riley was part of the inspiration for Motherboard. Look at that face and think of Motherboard at 15. Adorable!
We went out for food afterward with some of our students and filled up on pizza and grinders. We played some Circle Game (where somebody draws a circle in the middle of a blank page, then it’s passed around and each person draws something connected to the previous drawing, often turning into a battle of little drawings fighting each other in progressively silly ways) and everybody left happy and smiling.
Original Character by Comfort
Original Character by Adam
…By the way, only having a 2 hour drive to get home is frakking amazing! We’ve gotten so used to 6-9 hour drives that 2 hours is like taking a nap. It barely counts! We really enjoyed ourselves at JAFAX, and are already looking forward to next year. In part, it reminded us how much we miss our Grand Rapids friends. You guys are all awesome, and you made our lives great when you were around. Thank goodness for the internet and Skype, keeping us all connected long-distance in the internet age.
JAFAX was June 26-27. We got home and immediately kicked into high-gear to finish Rainbow in the Dark #1 and prep the Uniques Season 1 Omnibus for SDCC. Less than a month later, on July 20th, we left for California. The rest will be covered in our next blog post in just a couple days – the big Comic Con ‘Stravaganza!
See you then-
Adam & Comfort
CommentsBack for a second before leaving again. Otakon!!!
Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:39:30 GMT
Can haz con report' No! Can not haz!
Hey, everybody! We're (barely) back from San Diego Comic Con and (barely) still alive! Want to hear how it went' TOUGH! Seriously, we're already packing for our trip to Baltimore for Otakon this weekend. We're leaving in just hours. Hours! We've been home barely more than 24 hours and we're already leaving again.
But we'll have full con reports for SDCC, Otakon, and JAFAX all next week. It's going to be a week FULL of stuff for you to see, so we hope it makes up for not having anything much to see here this week.
Instead, go check out Rainbow in the Dark #1, available for download as PDF or CBZ (if you haven't already). It got HUGE love at SDCC, so go on over and see what you've been missing.
Catch you next week-
Adam & Comfort
CommentsMore of Comfort and Adam's Blog