AsburyParkCCJust some quick thoughts on last weekend’s Asbury Park Comicon…

  • The train takes two hours from New York.  If you are exhibiting, that means getting up before the sun.  I left after work, and checked in on Friday night.  Slept in, moseyed down stairs.
  • The hotel was engaged in a dispute with the restaurant manager.  So no bar or restaurant, not even a simple breakfast.  I had some snacks, and there were food trucks for lunch.  Otherwise, nothing nearby on the shore in the early morning.
  • Two levels at the hotel, but the rooms interconnect.  It was easy to move around… the crowds were not challenging, but it seemed lively.  I think the panels and food pulled people away from the booths.
  • I spent almost the entire convention chatting with exhibitors.  I did some shopping on Sunday, but all of Saturday was spent with artists.
  • J. H. Williams III is a very nice guy!  He had original art from Batwoman, way outside my price range, but fully inked!  No color needed!  Or text.  IDW or DC needs to do an artist edition off the boards.  Creator-owned work to come, but no news.
  • I bought two pages from Tim Truman, who is making his own comics as well as illustrating the Grateful Dead archive CDs.  I bought the pages for two reasons: the art is stunning, the thumbnails on the back.  A Justice League page had rough crayon sketches (in reverse).  For a more recent Hawken page, Truman took a thumbnail, then used a 3-D pose program to create each panel’s staging.  That was printed on the back of the page, then lightboxed for fully rendered inks.
  • Serendipity smiled… while chatting with R. Sikoryak and Kriota Willberg, I was privileged to peruse preliminary pages from an upcoming Kickstarter Windsor McKay project!  Keep an eye out!  It’s gonna be amazing!
  • I had lots of fun brainstorming with people!  Some ideas I gave freely to the creators, others I might develop myself!
  • Comics?  Oh yeah!
    • Jinx, Volume 2: Little Miss Steps (While Archie Comics does a great job with The Gang, this series is woefully ignored.  J. Torres!  Rick Burchett!  Terry Austin!  John Workman!
    • Astro City: Shining Stars (a duplicate, but on sale, and I’ll probably gift it onward)
    • The “Nam, Volume 3  (Hey, Marvel! When do you plan to reprint this series?)
    • The 100 Greatest Marvels of All Time, #21-18 (A “Best Of” series, from 2001, reprinting:  Avengers #1, Uncanny X-Men #350, Amazing Spider-Man #122, Captain America #109, )
    • Imagination Rocket: Sicence and Social Studies Volume (a comics textbook with some great creators!)
    • Band SAMSUNGErin Humiston, with his self portrait, and that of the author, Christine Humiston.
    • Dennis the Menace: Dennis and the Bible Kids: Moses (Published by Word Books, Dennis is taught about a biblical hero.  Drawn by Hank Ketcham, the pages alternate between Dennis and biblical full page illos.  The color registration is off, which is very noticeable in the “real” illustrations.)
    • Uncanny X-Men #401 (The “‘Nuff Said” issue.  Co-starring President Clinton!)
    • Wimmen’s Comix (#14) Presents Disastrous Relationships (1989!  What a list of creators!)
    • 1974 Comic Art Convention program book.  (Forty years ago!  Where are they now?)
    • San Diego Comic-Con Comics #3 (1994.  Dark Horse.)
    • Classics Illustrated #9: Tom Sawyer (adapted by Mike Ploog)
    • The Comic Reader #159 (August 197  “DC Axes 23 Titles!”)
    • God Nose: Snot Reel (Jaxon, 1971)
    • 9th Art Ink, by Jude Killory
    • Kid Blastoff #1 and Biff-Bam-Pow! #1 (Good clean wholesome fun from the House of Fun!)
    • Schmuck Comix #1
    • Invisible People S&N hardcover  (Only $35!)
    • Consumer Comix (A PSA comic funded by the government, produced by Kitchen Sink, detailing all sorts of frauds and cons.)
    • Abortion Eve (A 1973 comic explaining the new law.  Straightforward, without the baggage of forty years of arguments.)
    • Visiting NASA #1 (a mini-comic by Alison Wilgus, who has an upcoming book with First Second!)
    • boobage, by Monica Gallagher (good stuff!)
    • Kurtzman Komix (intro by R. Cummb!  Lots of early Kurtzman one-pagers._
    • Dirty Diamonds: Break-UpsSAMSUNG (Carey Pietsch, Kelly Phillips, Claire Folkman!  Next issue is about how they got into comics!)
  • Best cosplay?  Hunter S. Thompson

A great show… a mixture of MoCCA Fest, a hotel dealers show, and a comic-con.  Definitely attending the New York Comic Fest in Westchester June 14th!

3 COMMENTS

  1. Good report, Torsten. I checked out Monica Gallagher’s work (there is a lot of it, and she has a great online store) and was fascinated by your information about Tim Truman working with the 3D program. Would love to know more about that page, and how he uses software tools in his work.

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