Last Saturday was maybe the longest day ever working comic conventions. I do remember staying up all night prepping for HeroesCon back in the day, but this was waking up at home at 4am and hitting the road before 5 for Myrtle Beach.

I arrived at 8am, just after sunrise. I went ahead and walked out the 20 yards or so from the conference center to the ocean because I knew once I got started setting up and the show opened I would not get another chance. I didn’t want to drive all the way to the coast and have to admit I didn’t set foot on the beach! Needless to say, it was a beautiful morning. Not a cloud in the sky with a daytime high of 75 degrees, on NOVEMBER 1st! What a great day to be at the beach…I wish I could have spent the day out there, but duty called.

I was impressed by the cool sand sculpture the con had commissioned on the beach. Jabba the hut, Jar-Jar Binks, Stimpy, a Bat-signal and ole Shellhead’s helmet. Pretty cool.

The day was great. A first time con is always an unknown, but Chad put everything he had into it. The show drew a little over 300 fans for comics, art and gaming. I had good traffic and better than average sales all day. It helped that the dealers’ room was diverse and I was one of only three comic sellers. Our buddy Brett, of Brett’s Comic Pile and the Virginia Comicon came down from Richmond, along with Chad’s Apocalypse Comics. The ratio of fans to sellers was just right. Chad is already planning next year’s show and I expect it to just get better and better.

I was loaded and ready to drive over to Atlanta for Wes Tillander’s Atlanta Comic Con by 8pm. As I suspected, the sun was down and I had not gotten back outside to the beach. I was really wishing I could have stayed and enjoyed the awesome weather the next day. Atlanta is not a short hop from the beach–I arrived in Hotlanta at 3 am! Thankfully the clocks fell back an hour overnight for daylight savings time and I managed to get about 5 hours sleep before I had to get up and set up the comic display again.

Atlanta was better than it has been the past few shows. Wes had a good crowd, possibly due to having Georges Jeanty as the special guest. I had quite a few new faces coming by the table looking for Buffy Season Eight comics and other back issues drawn by Georges. The newly built travel stock of just the “good stuff” has been well received and Seth and I just keep tweaking it every week to make it even better.

I was loaded and on the road back to Charlotte by 7pm (another day without seeing the light of day), and in my driveway by 10:30pm. It’s a good thing I love old comics and seeing old friends at the shows, cause driving 14 hours, working 24 hours (including loading and unloading the van 6 times) in a about 43 hours is crazy! I went to bed early Monday.

And I’m not done travelling yet–my schedule is packed this winter. Next up:

Big Apple Con — The National, Nov. 14-16 NYC.

Virginia Comic Con — Richmond , VA Nov. 23rd

Charlotte Comic Con — Dec. 27th — The Crowne Plaza uptown.

Happy Holidaze!

I’ve been disappointed by most of the comic book movies. For the most part they have been enjoyable, but never live up to my expectations for story content, characterization, and honor to the source material. If a producer wants to do a superhero story, why not make it as close to the comic as possible? I was blessed this week with an opportunity to see Iron Man and I can emphatically say… Finally, someone has nailed it!

Iron Man is as close to perfect as a superhero movie has been. The origin is right. It is properly paced to give it time to develop. The motivations are correct. The casting is incredible. The sets are cool as they can be. The Iron Man tech is so believable! Subplots, characterizations and motivations are all right on target. There is real drama, lots of suspense and tons of humor, just like all good Marvel comics I fell in love with. I don’t want to give anything away, but just know that the trailer doesn’t do it justice. There is cool stuff going on all the way through. Anybody off the street (I call them “civilians”) will enjoy this movie, but there are plenty of comic book references and homage to satisfy all of us “vets.”

I can’t say enough good things about this movie. Everyone, please go see it Friday, May 2nd and we can all discuss how cool is at Free Comic Book Day (shameless plug for our annual party extraordinaire) on Saturday May 3rd. I’m so excited!