That is to say, here are various things happening near to the world of indy- and webcomics, and you should check them out.

• Jim Zub was kind enough to send me an advance review PDF of his forthcoming Samurai Jack #1 and it is good. How good? Understand that I’m not precious about comics — I don’t do the collecting-for-future-value thing; if it’s not something I want to read again, I don’t keep it. Even though I’ve read it, I’m going to buy a copy of SJ#1 when it drops in three weeks because it’s damn good and people that do good work deserve to be paid for it.
• One of the way you can support people that do good work is to pay them, with money. One of the ways that a lots of comics artists get you to pay them with money is via convention sketching and commissions; you can imagine that it would be an unusual thing for an artist to decide to give up a channel for making money (and thus allowing them to keep their career as an artist), but sometimes it’s for good reasons:
  

  Something I should say in advance of Thoughtbubble next month – I’m no longer doing commissions/sketches of characters that aren’t my own.

  It’s been a long deliberation about this but I’ve finally come to the conclusion that it’s not really something I enjoy doing.

  And if I’m not enjoying it, I feel like I just rush through it and produce a mediocre piece, which isn’t good for you, or me.

  So, my apologies for anyone who was looking for Batman/Catwoman/etc sketches. I’ll still of course sign stuff.

  I’m aiming to have some nice prints, and hopefully a new sketchbook, and copies of Sin Titulo¹ which I will draw in.

  I’m also going to try and bring some new pieces of my own, drawn and framed, which will be for sale, so you will be able to buy an original. [links, empahsis mine]

  Stewart’s coming at this from exactly the right perspective — trying to make the commission game have value for the fan, while also not being something that puts work into the public view that isn’t his best. It’s laudable, and fans of artists only for their mass-market work will hopefully open up to the idea that there may other things that those favorite artists draw that are just as (more, even) compelling. I’m reminded here of an early NYCC where I watched (Stewart’s onetime studiomate) Karl Kerschl entertain a stream of Flash fans that couldn’t be bothered to take two seconds to look at The Abominable Charles Christopher.

• Speaking of NYCC, let me update our NYCC Webcomics-type Exhibitor List to include Scott C, who will be in the Artists Alley at table N2. I missed him in my trawl of the exhibitor list due to his being identified as Scott Campbell, a name I sometimes forget is his. In any event, Mr C is one of the friendliest guys in all of the comicky arts and you should go see him and buy a print, painting, book, or other tangible expression of his art².
• A’course, it is not just we, the readers of comics, that creators depend on — they must deal with publishers, editors, freelancing, and work-for-hire in varying degrees. It is with that topic in mind that longtime comics creator Kurt Busiek Mark Waid [Editor’s note: How the hell did I mistake those two gentlemen?] wrote to young comics freelancers about dealing with work-for-hire and it’s a must-read for all those that aspire to work in corporate comics:
  

  [I]f you never listen to another word I say, and I talk a lot, please know this: the only one watching out for your future is you.

  Be professional. Be a problem-solver. Be willing to compromise in the face of a solid argument. Be willing to lose sometimes because you’ll learn more that way than you will by always winning. Ultimately, if a client is paying you for your services, he or she has every right to set the specifications, just as you have a right to your integrity. But when people jealous of how you make a living try to rag you with that old truism that every company employee has to eat shit now and then, remind them that you are not an employee. You’re a contractor. You do not receive health benefits, sick days, pensions, vacation time, or any of the other considerations traditional employees receive. Your clients have zero ethical or moral ground to lie to you, to denigrate you, to cheat you, to demand more from you than they’re paying for, to unapologetically walk back on promises or treat you maliciously, or to exploit your need to put food on the table. The good ones won’t. Never trust the bad ones.

  The quality of your work is all that matters. That’s what buys you longevity. [emphasis original]

  There’s much more at the link, and it’s all worth reading.

• Let’s end on an out-of-this-world note. Sure, you can plunk US$39.95 down with a bogus registry to get a pretty certificate that a star was named after you, but the real astronomical brass ring is having the governing body of astronomical names recognize you. Randal Munroe of xkcd now has an actual asteroid named for him, and he does what any good geek would do with that information:
  

  The first thing I did was try to figure out whether 4942 Munroe was big enough to pose a threat to Earth. I was excited to learn that, based on its albedo (brightness), it’s probably about 6-10 kilometers in diameter. That’s comparable in size to the one that killed the dinosaurs—definitely big enough to cause a mass extinction!

  4942 Munroe is described here, and it can be found here. And may I say that although the vast majority of NASA is shut down due to a factional hissyfit in the House of Representatives, these two websites are still up and running and therefore must be essential, QED.

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¹ Sin Titulo is fabulous and yes you can read it for free on the web, but remember what I just said about rewarding good work? Go do that.

² Once again, all about rewarding good work.

So the floor plan for NYCC 2013 is out and do you see what I see? Or rather, what I don’t see? The hazardous-to-life-and-sanity construction zone running east-west through the Javits Center is gone, praise be to whatever you find praiseworthy¹. That means that we can tell you who is webcomics-like that’s gonna be there, and where you can find ’em. As in past years, the people that you’re going to want to see are in several clusters, including Artists Alley, and aisles 900, 1300, 1600, and 2200. Also, there’s a couple of gonzo you’ve got to be kidding booth choices way the heck over in the 300-400 zone that I’m including for giggles. Let’s check ’em out.

Artists Alley
As was the case last year, Artists Alley is in the North Pavilion of the Javits, accessible via a roughly two block long passageway from the north end of the main convention center. It is my most sincere wish that the showrunners have learned how to funnel people into and out of the convention center without making it impossible to navigate to the North Pavilion². Unfortunately, the AA map requires a zoom of 650%+ to get to the point of legible table numbers, so I won’t be marking those up the diagram. Nevertheless you may here find Ramón Pérez (K10), Jim Zub & Edwin Huang (H6), Katie Cook (C10), and Strip Search hippie love commune survivors Katie Rice, Maki Naro, and Mackenzie Schubert (V5, V6, V7). Also, plentiful ATMs and natural light, yay.

Main Floor
Since we were just in the North Pavilion, let’s start from the north, high-numbered end of the main show floor (on the right side of the image) and progress southward.

The 2200 Aisle is our first cluster of interest, where we’ll find comic strip publisher Andrews McMeel (booth 2219), occasional show home of Matthew Inman. A little deeper into the hall and you’ll get :01 Books (booth 2237), Blind Ferret (booth 2246), and Cyanide & Happiness (booth 2247). For those playing at home, that’s two high-traffic booths directly across the from each other; fortunately, they’re also on a main travel aisle.

Continuing south, there’s a quick jog to the front of the hall for ShiftyLook (booth 1620), which is probably your best show of catching up with random webcomickers who aren’t at their own booths or tables. Three aisles over, you can find Boom! Studios (another possible place to find random webcomickers, at booth 1344), and 1977 The Comic creator Byron Wilkins (booth 1367).

A few more aisles along, you’ll get The First Law Of Mad Science (booth 972) close by the deserving-of-your-support Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (booth 965). A bit thin on webcomickers this year, I’ll grant, offset somewhat by the largest contingent of webcomickers as invited guests of the show that I can recall.

Oh, and for anybody looking to get away from comics entirely, keep heading south until you hit the 300-400 zone and there you will find both Brooklyn Bewery (booth 427), which I sorta get as there is a panel on comics and beer on Friday, and the Embassy of Spain Trade Commission (booth 341), which I don’t get at all. But I am going to go and ask why the Spanish love comics.

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¹ I’m chuckin’ around praise today like it’s going out of style.

² Or perhaps I should say dangerous, to the point that I never made it there last year, despite hearing that it was very nice.

Or, typing into WordPress through a phone, whee.

One correction re: a comment on yesterday’s post. MICE will be at the address listed but that’s on the campus of Lesley University, not Harvard. The fault is entirely mine, but in my defense colleges are cheek-by-jowl in Cambridge and Google Maps returned a result for that address and “Harvard”. Mea culpa.

Let’s keep this quick and I’ll see what I can do about front-loading posts from the hotel for the rest of the week.

• Do you like comics that are awesome? And do you like bargains? Then allow me to direct your attention to the Dr McOmnibus, 500 pages of Dr McNinja goodness including 24 all-new pages available nowhere else and dammit Dr McNinja creator Chris Hastings you know I’m a completist and now I have to shell out a fraction of the money I spent on the equivalent books when they came out.¹ Damn you, Chris Hastings … damn you.
• BOOM! Studios Cartoon Network tie-in alert! Adventure Time and Regular Show are heading to the Greater Boston area² for this year’s Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo this weekend, and they hope to see you there³:
  

  Catch Adventure Time comic artists Braden Lamb and Shelli Paroline along with the Regular Show comic team Allison Strejlau and KC Green at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo! MICE 2013 is September 28 – 29 at University Hall 1815 Mass Ave. Cambridge, MA and it’s free admission!

  That’s on the campus of the esteemed Harvard University, accessible via the MBTA’s Porter Square stop.

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¹ Actually, the problem is more shelf-space related than monetary. My damning stands.

² Cambridge. Anytime you see a reference to “Boston area”, it always means Cambridge.

³ To the extent that non-person artifacts like comic book series can want anything.

This post was going to be about the upcoming New York Comic Con‘s webcomics-related exhibitors, but as the floor map isn’t up yet, that’s kind of a useless thing to do. NYCC showrunners ReedPOP have informed me that the map should be up this week, so we’ll tell you who’s gonna be there then.

In the meantime, I did notice that Reed have invited a number of webcomicky types as actual guests of the show: Kate Beaton and Ryan North are Spotlight Guests (Saturday only); Chris Hastings (Saturday), Ed Brisson, Jim Zub, Lucy Knisley (Friday/Saturday), and Tony Cliff (Friday/Saturday) are Special Guests.

I’m not sure what the difference is between Spotlight Guests and Special Guests (or, for that matter, Featured Guests); my guess is that when Beaton, North, and Hastings have their panel presentation together on Saturday, Hastings will get a slightly less fancy name card and have to drink still water like a peasant while Beaton and North imbibe fancy mineral water straight from a Canadian glacier.

• I’ll confess, I all but lost the faith, but then on Saturday afternoon an item popped up in my RSS feed¹ that caught me by surprise: Ramón Pérez was talking Kukuburi:
  

  it’s been a wild year and half. my career has skyrocketed in various different directions. 2012 was full of promotion and travel, i was barely home, and when i was i was squeezing in what work i could to make ends meet. 2013 has been a continuation, though i purposefully cut down on travel in order to refocus on work. while fantastic it’s been a blur. it seems time moves quicker and quicker as you get older and take on more responsibility.

  but i wouldn’t change a thing.

  things are still busy, but i’m exerting more control rather than blindly riding the wave. over the past two years i’ve talked with many people who have expressed their love of kukuburi, and others who have pronounced it’s TOD.

  over the past month i’ve slowly begun to dust off the proverbial cobwebs as i ramp up towards kukuburi’s imminent return. it’s been almost two years after all. i’m not making an official proclamation of a return date, but rather to let those readers who have been patient know that i am gearing up. realistically, i’m saying early 2014. january or february is my target. [spelling original]

  Let me say not About damn time (after all, Ramón Pérez has provided Kukuburi free, from the goodness of his heart) but rather Thanks. I’ve reconciled myself to some stories never reaching their end, but that doesn’t change my desire for them. The fact that Kukuburi will get a finish is a gift and I’m grateful.

• Speaking of unexpected returns, thanks to Zach Weinersmith for pointing out the return of Liz Greenfield to webcomickin’:
  

  OH MAN @lizgreenfield is doing a comic again. http://swallow.fr/

  Ms Greenfield, or the John Cusack of webcomics storytelling, has been engaged in other forms of creation for some years since Stuff Sucks wrapped (with no real home left online, except for a hit-and-miss presence in Wayback Machine snapshots to September 2007), but now she’s back. In her words:

  Swallow is the story of a young American in Paris whose spirit animal is social networking, following a fantastical event. Grab yourself an attractive chair and hunker down.

  One update so far, and I’m confident in recommending this one to you with that little to go on. Greenfield is one of the great storytellers, full of characters that can’t wait to get onto the page so you can share in their lives. Bookmark it now, return MWF until the story’s done.

• Okay, not a return, but definitely an opportunity; I have in the past mentioned Christopher Bird and Davinder Brar’s Al’Rashad, which is a very good weekly comic full of adventure, intrigue, and sly humo[u]r. It seems that Brar (the art half of the partnership) will be a bit busy in the near term, which may necessitate some delayed updates; Bird wishes to keep the comics flowing with a side-story or two, but will require an artist:
  

  This would be a straight work-for-hire gig, moderately fast turnaround time, with compensation – not token compensation (“exposure” is not money! A few bucks per page is not ENOUGH money!) but not big-leagues compensation either. If you’re interested or know someone who is, shoot me an email and we’ll talk. [boldface mine]

  Good on Bird for his approach to artistic partnerships — pay your artists, with money. If he finds somebody half as good as Brar, the Al’Rashad prequel stories will look fabulous, and just as importantly I’ll get background on some of those oh-so-slowly-revealed characters².

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¹ Obsolete technology, my ass.

² Wulf! Do Wulf! My guess is he’s the Rex the Motherfucking Wonder Dog of the Al’Rashad world and I want to know more about him.

Welp, I promised you a trawl through the New York Comic Con 2013 programming, with an eye towards webcomics, and you people owe me.

For starters, this is less a comics show and more a whatever we can call pop culture¹ show, and everything goes into one, largely non-filterable list by day — TV, videogames, screenings, and autograph sessions are all mixed in with actual panel discussions. I had to wade through time & place notifications of Hulk Hogan autographing your stuff to find actual content.

Secondly, this year (at least I don’t recall it from prior years) NYCC is putting in untitled placeholder sessions; I encountered at least three of these TBA sessions with no description, title, or topic, but an assurance that we’ll love it. They did say that two are on the videogame track and one from TV, so let’s assume they’re not of interest.

Thirdly, there’s a lot of stuff to work through; the preview “night” begins Thursday at 3:00pm, but programming begins earlier that day for professionals (with a number of actually interesting-looking sessions on comics in libraries and school curricula). But, chances are you won’t be attending those sessions, so let’s focus on what happens once the doors open to the great unwashed.

Friday

Saturday

Sunday

We’ll have a list of webcomicky exhibitors in the coming days.

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¹ For example, the single most-repeated item in the panels list I could find was autograph sessions with this young woman, who appears to be notable mostly for not wearing as much clothing as you or I might [MSFWDOYC]².

² Marginally SFW, depending on your circumstances.

A couple of things happened that people have been kind enough to email me about, and I figure I could share those with you. That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Sure it would.

• The accolades keep rolling in for Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints, which has been included in consideration for the National Book Award (where it is the only graphic novel this year). This is the longlist, the finalists have yet to be determined, but Yang’s got a proven track record, considering that American Born Chinese was an NBA finalist in 2006. Not only that, but if my search skills are correct, ABCwas the last graphic novel to get an NBA nod, and Mr Yang also appears to be the only repeat nominee in the Young Adult category in that time. Interesting.
• New York Comic Con is fast approaching and I’ll be keeping an eye on webcomicky goings-on from the show floor again this year; programming has appeared on the NYCC website, with all four days populated as of this writing. As usual, watch out for last-minute changes, and as others have noted, there are some interesting scheduling conflicts:
  

  @NY_Comic_Con has programmed @KodanshaUSA‘s panel against @shonenjump‘s, & the @FUNimation+Kodansha panel against @yenpress. Nice.

  And the Funimation and Vertical panels are also at the same time! Yay!

  I’ll do a thorough schedule-trawl and let you know what happens in webcomics world on the floor; if nothing else, you can meet/greet Maki Naro, Katie Rice, and Mac Schubert of Strip Search in the Artists Alley, as a result of having won reward challenge #4.

• Speaking of big-city cons, Pittsburgh Comic Con kicks off a week from Friday, and you know who will be there, at the booth of Official Fleen-Approved Cool Place The Toonseum? Caroll Spinney. If you don’t recognize that name, perhaps you recognize his work in the personages of Mr Bird or Mr The Grouch? It’s Pittsburgh for crying out loud, the hometown of Mr Rogers, so take a cue from him and do the neighborly thing: if you’re at PCC, drop by the Toonseum booth and thank Spinney for his contributions to the world. If you don’t, I’m not mad, but I will be disappointed in you.
• Speaking of museums and the weekend of the 28th, the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco will be participating in the Smithsonian magazine’s ninth annual Museum Day Live event:
  

  The Smithsonian magazine Museum Day is a nationwide event and offers free admission to any visitor and one guest with a Museum Day Live! Ticket to a participating museum or cultural institution.

  Inclusive by design, the event represents Smithsonian’s commitment to make learning and the spread of knowledge accessible to everyone, giving museums across all 50 states the opportunity to emulate the admission policy of the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. Last year’s event drew over 400,000 participants, and this year’s event expects record-high participation.

  The Museum Day Live! Ticket is available to download now at Smithsonian.com/museumday. Visitors who present the Museum Day Live! Ticket will gain free entrance for themselves and one guest at participating venues for one day only.

  For those that don’t happen to be in San Francisco on the 28th, there will be plenty of other venues participating, so grab your tickets now (one per household, per email address, more information on the tickets page).

I mean, any show where Jeff Smith and Kate Beaton discover that in addition to each being comics royalty¹ they are related to each other is going to be hard to beat. But as just about every tweet from the floor talked about enthusiastic audiences, creators selling out of books, and fun had all ’round … well, that’s just great. I was stuck some 320km away on EMS duty for the weekend and missed it, but at least I treated a woman for smoke inhalation after a house fire so that’s something.

People that were at SPX that have additional news include:

• Templar, AZ and Poorcraft creator Spike got some attention from the hoity-toity New York media for her other high-profile gig of Smut Peddler wrangling. More precisely, New York Magazine took note of the open call for SP2 submissions and officially approved of the notion, although I’m not sure if the placement on the lowbrow axis is because it’s smut or because it’s comics.
• Evan Dahm, who would like you to know that he’s part of a shared-world series that’s Kickstarting:
  

  Cartozia Tales is an all-ages fantasy series, with nine stories in each issue, all set in the same world.

  We are really committed to making this an all-ages series, because we think the world needs more comics that can be shared across generational boundaries. We won’t be including things that aren’t suitable for even very young readers. (Several of the core creators are parents of young kids, so we know that part of the target audience.) We are focused on telling the sorts of stories—of mystery, wonder, and discovery; of searching and striving; of trials and betrayals—that engage us as adult readers. Because we take kids seriously as readers, we know they enjoy the challenge of the occasional new word or a moment of narrative complexity. We especially want to honor the child’s playful impulse to discover and invent complicated imaginary worlds.

  Cartozia Tales has published one issue already, the second is at the printers, and the Kickstart is to bring that up to ten issues, with contributions from the likes of Dylan Horrocks, James Kochalka , Kelly Sue DeConnick, Meredith Gran, and more. It looks like a great project in the vein of BONE (or Dahm’s own Overside creations), and I’ll be watching it carefully. They’ve got eight days to go, are only at 2/3 of goal, and the project runner is doing that most honorable thing and paying his creators. Give it a good look.

People that were not at SPX that have news include:

• Zach Weinersmith, who found himself stalked by a dangerous Boulet last week, has a chance to turn the tables. It appears that Mr Weinersmith will be at the same eurocomics festival, representing America at its best. If anybody can get a picture of the two of them together in that moment before everything descends into madness and violence, I will pay them a dollar.
• K Brooke “Otter” Spangler, who finds herself getting even more free book shillage than previously thought possible, via a very kindly fan:
  

  So! A very generous reader purchased an extra copy of the paperback version of Digital Divide. She requested this extra signed & sketched version to be given away to a reader. If you want to be entered in the drawing, please tweet at me (preferred method) or email me (if you do not do the Twitters) with something like “Gimme free book!” or the whatnots. I’ll pick one winner at random on Thursday.

  Since this contest is only open for three days, I won’t give Otter² the usual grief for not having a linkable newsbox. I will reserve the right to give her all kinds of grief for anything I feel like in the future, though.

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¹ As opposed to American royalty.

² Fun fact about otters via Wikipedia: With the exception of the sea otter, they have anal scent glands that produce a strong-smelling secretion the animals use for sexual signaling and for marking territory.

On occasion, I get people asking me how you put together a press release. For those still wondering, this is how you put together a press release:

September 10, 2013 (Portland, OR) – Shocking fans, battery wholesalers, and his many cats, pioneering web cartoonist R. Stevens disappeared last Monday from the art-deco mineshaft he famously confined himself to since starting the world’s most popular webcomic DIESEL SWEETIES in 2000.

Through the blinding electronic din, those steadfast and lucky few were met by an image of their new pixilated messiah, cradling a cat in each arm and beckoning them forth.

Usenets across the globe reported seeing a similar image, followed by a mysterious message: “Awesome. I AM ALL. RS3.”

The reaction from the public was remorseful and swift. Coffee stocks plummeted, cats gathered from around the world at Stevens’ favorite donut shop to hold a round-the-clock vigil, and many of the world’s record store owners simply set their shops ablaze and moved back in with their parents.

Vice President Joe Biden attempted to soothe a grieving planet Monday night, but was overtaken by his emotions, saying “I’m gonna need a few weeks, you guys. This is really messed up. I know it’s silly, but in my heart of hearts, I really hope this is some kind of bizarre stunt. I just don’t know what I’m gonna do without Indie Rock Pete.”

“All we can do now, is hope that Stevens uses his infinite power to remake this turd of a planet in his own image, ya know?” Biden continued. “More donuts and cats. Stuff like that. I don’t know, man. That sounds pretty awesome to me. We could all use a little more DIESEL SWEETIES in our lives as far as I’m concerned.” [boldface original]

Honestly, just go read the whole thing, it’s great; bonus points for the Onionesque version of Biden.

• In other news, we have more information on the mysterious, Ryan North/Shelli Paroline/Braden Lamb produced, original comic book coming from BOOM! Studios. Well, original in that it came out of North’s brainmeats, but much like the central hook of the Machine of Death anthology, it’s taken from an old musing by one Mr T-Rex. Namely, what happens if the fabled Midas Touch was weaponized.

  BOOM! seems to be giving all the good scoops to Chris Sims over at Comics Alliance on this one, so you’d best head over there for the details. When you get back, I’m considering running a contest: which other of T-Rex’s random musings from the past 2400+ comics will be made into an awesome comic/book/opera/radioplay/whatever next?

• Going to SPX this weekend? Sara McHenry has a post that is chock-full of good advice for exhibitors, a significant part of which is also good for attendees. She even has thoughts on what to do with the many bits of comics ephemera that you will inevitably collect but may not consider long-term keepers; key takeaway: don’t feel guilty.
• Two weeks ago, Angela Melick¹ suffered a break of the wrist of her drawing hand. I just wanted you to see how she’s managing with her allegedly “off” hand. Naturally, Kory Bing’s coloring job [Editor’s note: see here] is a big help, but Jam deserves a nod for how much she’s improved her non-dominant art skills so quickly.
• In case you missed it last night:
  

  Goal: $9,500. Amount pledged: $141,085. Holy crap.

  Holy crap, indeed. Jeph Jacques has become the most overfunded (that is, exceeding goal by the greatest percentage) musical campaign-haver in Kickstarter history with Permanence, and thanks to the stretch goals will have KC Green following him around with a videocamera to make a documentary of the recording of the album. One can only hope that the footage gets … exotic.

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¹ My sibling in engineering: Iron Ring 4 Lyfe, yo.

You’re going to have to forgive a little slowness on my part today, as last night was EMS duty night and we got three calls back to back¹ which means I’m running on about two hours of sleep today. Let’s keep this one brief.

• Know who else is getting used to the idea of not enough sleep? Karl Kerschl. In lieu of a strip yesterday at The Abominable Charles Christopher, Kerschl posted an animated announcement:
  

  Yup! Got another baby on the way! I’ve been working at home and waiting around to zip off to the hospital, so it’s been tough to juggle the comic with life duties. I whipped up this low-rent animation as a substitute, but I’ll be back soon with more real comics, concocted in a haze of sleep-withdrawal and madness.

  Congrats to Kerschl and his entire family, and all our best wishes that the new little one arrives safe, sound, and with a minimum of fuss.

• Also not so much with the sleep? Everybody at a comic convention, of which several are coming up in the immediate timeframe. Howard Tayler is representing the webcomics contingent at the first Salt Lake Comic Con, starting now-ish and running through Saturday; given the demographics of the area, more people are likely to be at church than a comic convention on Sunday, so it looks like the organizers acknowledged that reality and wrapped things up a day earlier than another city might.

  Not that the lack of Sunday should be held against SLCC, where I see a three-day pass is a mere US$50 for adults, US$30 for kids 11-16, and free for those 10 and under. By modern con standards, that’s an incredible bargain, which may help to explain the 30,000 tickets pre-sold for a con that nobody’s ever been to. If the showrunners do a good job, it would be within the realm of possibility to see 50,000 tickets for SLCC 2, and suddenly there’s another regional show to consider.

• Meanwhile, about two time zones due east of SLC, Baltimore Comic Con is one of those established regional shows that SLCC may soon be, and will be running Saturday and Sunday. The scruffy, independent arm of comics will be represented on the guest list by the likes of Natasha Allegri, Ed Brisson, Dean Haspiel, Carla Speed McNeil, Ron Randall, and Jim Zub on the main floor, with Chris Giarrusso, Mike Maihack, Dave Roman and more grouped together under the name Kids Love Comics Artists.

  Exhibitors will include Oliver Mertz and Mike Isenberg, BOOM! Studios, and for some reason the Embassy of Her Most Britannic Majesty. Artists Alley is where you’ll find Danielle Corsetto, Darren J Gendron, onetime personal assistant to Dave Kellet Cari Corene, Chris Flick, Monica Gallagher, Jamie Noguchi, and the Embassy of His Most Guigarian Majesty. Oh, and about a zillion other people whose names I didn’t catch on a fast read-through, and also the Harvey Awards.

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¹ Actually, four, but no matter how good my crew is, we can’t handle two calls that come in simultaneously.