Click the image to see the full guest list so far and to order your 3 Day Passes to America’s Favorite COMIC Convention!

Hey y’all! Rico, your Heroes Creative Director here (I sound like Julie from the Love Boat), to tell you about our HeroesCon exclusive Secret Wars #1 variant cover. Let’s get the business out of the way first. This thing is beautiful and it’s available for pre-order now. Get it HERE.

When Marvel decided to bring back Secret Wars for 2015′s mega crossover event we knew we had to get our friends Mike Zeck and John Beatty involved and tie it all together with their appearance at HeroesCon 2015 (June 19-21). We asked these comics legends to revisit their classic Black Suit Spider-Man cover from Secret Wars #8. Once they agreed Shelton (the boss!), Justin (Store Manager), Seth (Warehouse Manager), and I got to work brainstorming which characters we’d like to appear on the cover. We placed Miles in the center and then worked out from there. This was a LOT of fun for us as you can probably imagine.

The next step was gathering character reference for Mike to work from while getting Marvel approvals along the way. We sent these over to Mike and he quickly finished his “rough” sketch. That’s the one over there that pretty much looks like a finished cover illustration. Whoa! Mike then completes his pencils, approvals again and then it’s over to John Beatty for some silky inks. Beautiful!

Now the cover heads back to us for colors and trade dress. Since we already changed so much from the original, we thought keeping a similar color scheme, the original logo and corner box would finish this off nicely. Thankfully we didn’t have to work from old scans or build all of that from scratch. Mike had already created a vector file of the entire Secret Wars #8 cover which he very graciously allowed us to use for this! A few tweaks here and there and it was finally complete! We think it’s a great looking cover that honors the past while featuring some great current characters along with favorites from all eras.

Thanks for reading and thanks to Mike Zeck and John Beatty for doing this wonderful cover for us!

Secret Wars #1 comes out on May 6th but you can pre-order a copy now by going HERE. Of course if we have any left, we will have them at HeroesCon, June 19-21 where you can get both Mike Zeck and John Beatty to sign yours.

No foolin’, Indie Island at HeroesCon 2015 is the place to be! We just updated our guest list with some great creators! Get your tickets and reserve your hotel rooms today!

Reserve your stay at the Westin Charlotte at a HeroesCon rate!

We just added 17 guests to ever-growing and amazing guest list of comic creators! Click the image above to see the update and get your 3-day passes to HeroesCon today!

Good afternoon comic fans! Because we love you and to help with your Monday doldrums, here’s another GREAT HeroesCon 2015 guest list update! Please welcome Blacksad artist Juanjo Guarnido to his first ever HeroesCon! Click the image to see the rest of the amazing creators joining us June 18-21 and order your 3 day passes today!

We also have our first hotel discounts available at the beautiful and convenient Westin Charlotte! This block won’t last long so get them while you can!

Our first Indie Island guest update has been posted! Of course you can expect many updates to this amazing list of guests as the show draws closer! Click here for our full guest list so far! Get your 3 day passes today!

We’ve announced our first 10 HeroesCon 2015 guests! It’s only 234 days away! Get your 3 day passes today. More great guests will be announced soon!

PANELS—WE’VE GOT PANELS!!

The HeroesCon 2014 Schedule is up. Just click on this link….

http://www.heroesonline.com/heroescon/schedule/

So what have we got? Take a few minutes and look through the program; we try to have something for everyone. Plan your days around a few of these gems like:

How about THE INKWELL AWARDS? Saturday at Noon–BILL SIENKIEWICZ IS THE GUEST OF HONOR At the 4th Inkwell Awards Live Ceremony! See the live results from April’s votes for the BEST INKERS of 2013 and the recipients of the JOE SINNOTT HALL OF FAME AWARD!! To read more about this annual event, click here…

http://www.inkwellawards.com/?p=3923#more-3923

Speaking of ANNUAL HeroesCon Events— we have

• COSPLAY—3 ways! Group Photo, Meet the Cosplayers Panel and The 2^nd Annual Cosplay costume Contest
• 4 SCAD Workshops
• Inking Panel
• 2 IMAGE Panels!
• 2 MARVEL Panels
• 2 ARCHIE Panels
• The 2^nd Annual convention within a convention—THE CAROL CORPS!!!
• Self-Publishing
• The Humor Panel—this is a can’t miss panel this year
• The All Ages Panel
• THE MEGA PANEL—Comics Regulation, Comics Censorship: Past and Present
•  The Comic Strip Panel!!
• TWO (!!) Teaching Comics Roundtables
• Adam & Comfort’s Workshop
•  New Masters of Horror!!
• INDY COMICS CREATORS
• And of course The QuickDraw—All Three days

Celebrate TwoMorrows Publishing 20^th Anniversary all day Saturday with

• Modern Masters: Lee Weeks, Cliff Chiang, Mark Schultz and Art Adams!!
• CONAN Panel with Roy Thomas and Tim Truman!
• A Kirby Tribute Panel
• A Conversation with Denis Kitchen
• and A TwoMorrows Roundtable

Heidi MacDonald of THE BEAT and Tom Spurgeon of THE COMICS REPORTER head our team of all-star moderators so if it is scintillating conversation you want …

• Mark Waid
• Jim Starlin and Andy Smith
• Jaime and Gilbert Hernandez!
• KEVIN EASTMAN!
• ONLINE COMICS!
• Breaking Into Comics as a Writer
• The Challenges of a famous Property with Jeff Smith and Terry Moore

AND MORE—LOTS MORE—

And make sure you stop by on Sunday to pay respects to our absent friend NICK CARDY!!! A True Titan!

ENJOY!!–This is all for YOU!!!!

Early Saturday morning we announced that HeroesCon will exhibit Bill Watterson and Stephan Pastis‘ three collaborative strips in Pearls Before Swine. While we knew that this would be huge news, we are thrilled that several national outlets covered the story. From the Washington Post, who broke the story, to TIME, CNN and Rolling Stone, the media seems rightly excited about Watterson’s return to the comic strip. Several comic sites, including CBR, Comics Reporter, Comics Alliance, Nerdist and The Beat also covered the story. And Stephan Pastis himself told the story of how his collaboration with Watterson came to be.

Remember, HeroesCon is the only place that anyone will be able to see this art before it is auctioned off. While the media coverage is nice to see, the most important aspect of this story is that all of the money collected from the auction will be donated to our friends at Team Cul de Sac and the Michael J. Fox Foundation. We’ve been working with TCDS for four years in their efforts to raise money for Parkinson’s Research, and are honored to be a part of their continuing efforts.

The Watterson and Pastis strips will be on display all weekend at HeroesCon, and we’ll have even more surprises on hand at Friday night’s Drink and Draw event. Don’t forget that you can hear all about how this art was produced and how it came to HeroesCon at our panel on Friday, June 20 at 5:30. If you haven’t ordered your tickets for HeroesCon, we’re just a few days away. Now’s the time!