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Come Find Comic Foundry at the NYCC!

We’re over in Artists Alley! We have a half-table — you can spot us from afar by our orange tablecloth. We’ll have all of our issues for sale and have NYCC exclusive previews of the next issue, that have sweet interview excerpts from Grant Morrison and Bryan Lee O’Malley.

Find us…
Posted by Tim Leong on February 6th, 2009 filed in Conventions, Blog | 3 Comments »
Looking Back At San Diego: Photos

Kevin Chuch of Beaucoup Kevin and Boom! Studios fame.

Comic Foundry’s Laura Hudson and Top Shelf’s Leigh Walton

I was somehow tasked in getting my boss a badge well after the show was sold out. This was the only solution I could come up with.

This guy had an arm of crazy Marvel tattoos, including Dr. Doom, Capt. America and Wolverine. Well on his way to a full sleeve.

Laura Hudson and The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald at the Eisner Awards

Me and Ben McCool at the Eisner Awards. Classic!

Me and Laura at the Eisner Awards before we lost. Oh well. Photo by Lee of Lee’s Comics. Thanks!

Douglas Wolk accepting and skedaddling off stage after his Eisner win for Reading Comics.

Eisner Award Loser. Sigh.

Laura and Michelle Gomes of Virgin Comics both have issues.

Scott McCloud, like many passersby, loved our sign.

4-time Eisner Award Loser Fred Chao stopped by the booth.

The Fraction Family! Kelly Sue Deconnick, baby Henry Leo and Matt Fraction all came by. We love Matt, even though he’s a dirty Cubs fan.

Cover model Blair Butler escaped the fan mobs and stopped by.

Yay!

EW’s Nisha Golpan insists Laura smells her finger. Laura braces Eisner-winner Douglas Wolk in fear.

It was OK in the end though!
Posted by Tim Leong on July 29th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | 2 Comments »
We’re Gearing Up for Comic-Con!

Posted by Tim Leong on July 21st, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | Comment now »
MoCCA Art Fest 2008!

The Art Fest is always one of my favorite favorite shows. Always such heart, such energy. It sounds like cliched bullshit, but it’s true. The theme overall was that it was hot as fuck. People were sweating big time — there’s photo evidence on The Beat (thanks, Heidi). I finally got a chance to walk around on Sunday and picked up some stuff that looked good. I’m yet to read any of it, but I’ll make a list tonight of the goodies.

Random Thoughts from the show:

• I always pictured Karen Berger as a brunette. She wasn’t.

• The book I (and Laura, probably) was Alex Robinson’s Too Cool To Be Forgotten. Such a great graphic novel. Highly recommended.

• Related: I noticed this after I saw him walking around, but is it just me, or does the main character in Too Cool To Be Forgotten look EXACTLY like Charles Burns?

• Alex Cox’s mini comic, Camp Staff Tales, was hilarious. I wished there was more — and there is! Here.

• Douglas Wolk was telling me about his Final Crisis Annotations and his FC#1 clarifications using only the information provided in the panels (here). I read the issue last night and then read his clarifications and they certainly made me appreciate the issue more. Check em.

• There were a lot of great editorial illustrators at the show I know from the mag world including: Yuko Shimizu, Jorge Colombo, Sam Weber, Koren Shadmi and some other people I can’t remember this second.

• Famous person I saw, unexpectedly: Michel Gondry. He was doing sketches and signings at the PictureBox table.

• Speaking of PictureBox, they didn’t have any prices (at least that I saw) for the dozens of books they had on the tables. What the fuck? So any time I wanted to know how much something was I had to wave down someone and ask. And then when I don’t buy it I look like it’s only because the price he gave was too expensive. Super lame. Why would you purposely make the buying experience more difficult?

• I spoke with Top Shelf’s Robert Venditti about the movie version of his comic The Surrogates. He, Brett Weldele (artist) and Chris Staros went to the set in Boston recently and spoke highly of the director, the response from the crew, shooting the DVD commentary, watching them shoot scenes for three days and of course, the craft services.

• The after party was a super trendy cluby place. Was a great space, very airy but didn’t seem very MoCCA-like. I’m not complaining though, even though we got kicked out of our booth.

• I ran into the cartoonist Neil Fitzpatrick, who does his comic NEIL JAM. Backstory: Back in college I was the Production Manager (Art Director) for this kick-ass newspaper, The Maneater. We had a comics page and NEIL JAM was one of the mainstays, so it was definitely crazy to see it 6-7 years later.

• Bloggers represent! I saw a bunch: Kevin Church, Chris Mautner, Marc Sobel, Heidi MacDonald, Brian Heater, Jillian Steinhauer, other TK.

• Quote from David Gallaher: “Zuda was the best comics experience of my life.”

• The MoCCA staff seemed to try and be as accommodating as possible. 1) There was an accident at the exhibitor check-in entrance in the morning and there were delays getting exhibitors inside, so they held the line while people got set up. 2) Because it was so hot on day 1, they went and bought some extra fans for day 2 (I personally didn’t feel them). 3. And when everyone had to evacuate because of a fire alarm, they extended the show hours 30 minutes.

• Coolest fashion item: Hope Larson’s custom neckerchiefs for new book Chiggers (which she sold many, many copies of). Second coolest: R. Stevens’s Diesel Sweeties socks.

• I brought my tpb of Cover Girl on Sunday so Kevin Church could sign it. He did.

More Later!
Posted by Tim Leong on June 9th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | 3 Comments »
Video Interview with Michael Avon Oeming at NYCC

This year at the NYCC I did a couple spot interviews in Artists Alley for Complex Magazine. The first installment, which is up now, was with the fantastic artist and writer Michael Avon Oeming. Watch the vid here and keep an eye out for more episodes.

I wasn’t the only video host for Complex that weekend. Adult film star and anime-lover Justine Joli also took her turn, and you can see her view from the con floor here.
Posted by Tim Leong on April 29th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog, Videos | Comment now »
New York Comicon, Year 3

In each year of the New York Comicon I’ve had a pretty different experience. The first year I was just covering the show for CF when the traffic went into lockdown mode. Year 2 I was the host of the official video podcast for the show and just wandered with a cameraman and a producer. Both were fun, but they didn’t compare to Year 3 this weekend. We had a great table stationed in Artist’s Alley, where we sold issues 1 and 2 of Comic Foundry Magazine, as well as subscriptions.

Highlights!

***
Meeting the Readers
Selling books is great and all, but the best part about being behind the table is meeting the people who read the magazine. It was just amazing to meet everyone. I’m sorry if I forgot your names or am yet to reply to your email, but thanks so much for coming by the table. We had people coming up to the booth THANKING us for making the magazine. That’s how much they love it.

***
Seeing all the bloggers in person
For the first time I got to meet Johanna Draper-Carlson in person. It’s so funny how you always imagine someone looking a certain way in your head. I always envisioned her having red hair. (She doesn’t.) I also saw Kevin Church, Brian Heater and the rest of the Daily Crosshatch crew, Douglas Wolk, Digital Femme, Auggie De Blieck, Neil Alien, Heidi MacDonald and the quite dapper Tom Spurgeon, who I’d never seen in a sports coat before. Spoiler alert: It looked good!

***
Buying Books
I love having a home base to retreat to at a con, but it also means you get stuck behind the table for most of the show. Luckily we were able to take some shifts and rotate out to the floor every once and a while. I made it a priority to pick up some new stuff this weekend,

Bottomless Belly Button
This is the book I was most excited to pick up. It’s a mammoth book by Dash Shaw and I’m incredibly psyched to dive in.

Amelia Rules! Funny Stories

Amelia Rules! #18

The Baby-Sitters Club: Mary Anne Saves The Day (which I plan to read while listening to Better Than Ezra. Anybody?). Raina did a very cool sketch inside for me, so I’m twice as psyched.

Blue Beetle: Road Trip

Green Lantern Corps: To Be A Lantern

Punisher War Journal Vol. 2 HC

***
Costumes!
Two superhero costumes really caught my eye. The first was a very portly but very awesome Colossus. The second was a fantastic Static Shock — who even had that metallic disc he flew on. Awesome. Photo help?

RANDOM NOTES:

1. About 10 different people asked me to autograph their copy of Comic Foundry. It’s happened before and it’s always more weird than flattering, but what’s funny about this weekend is that just about every single person thought I was Matt Fraction. Hmm. I guess it’s because Matt is on our cover and we had a poster version of it behind me…but…I don’t look like Matt Fraction. In the photo he’s got a beard. A big beard. I don’t have a beard. I can’t even grow a beard.

2. G4’s Blair Butler is super-nice and absolutely loves Madman Atomic Comics #3.

3. I think I saw Gareb Schamus walk past the table. He didn’t buy a copy though.

4. Denny O’Neil’s table was across from ours. He didn’t show up and his table was used as a trash receptacle for the weekend.

5. The Information Center at the show had very little information. I asked where I could find a close bathroom and they told me I had to leave the show floor, go down an escalator and then traverse some labyrinth of hallways. I used a bathroom about 50 feet away instead.

6. One more reason to like Tom Spurgeon: He watches Battlestar Galactica.

7. I was accused of stealing the layout of 1) Time Out New York 2) L Magazine. Neither is true. Thanks for playing though!

8. If you ordered a subscription between last Thursday and now — thanks for being patient. Issues will go out tonite. We’ve been bogged down with the con! Sawwwwyy.

9. I did a quick series of video interviews at the show for Complex.com. We talked to a few guys and girls in Artist’s Alley. I tried to keep the energy going and mispronounced Arthur Suydam’s name twice — I’ll link when they go up.

10. My favorite sales pitch of the weekend:
Customer: The design looks really slick
Me: Well, we tried to come up with a design aesthetic that matches my hair.

PS - I have a few hundred emails to get through before I’m back at full-speed, so if I owe you one I’m sorry.
Posted by Tim Leong on April 21st, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | 8 Comments »
Report from the NYCC

I just got back from the Javits Center. I was there this morning to drop off a bunch of boxes because I have to work the real job today. Yesterday and today they had a cool thing, the Lend-A-Hand program — I don’t know if this is new or not — where if you come in either a car or van there are workers that will help you unload and move the boxes to your booth. This was great for me as I hauled all my stuff in cab from my office. What wasn’t great, however, is that they didn’t have any of the Artists Alley people on their lists. Similarly, none of the tables in Artists Alley were marked. So, I pretty much just guessed where my spot was and am crossing my fingers. (Sorry if I actually put my stuff in your spot, fellow Artist Alley member). In any case, it was good to see so much hustling and bustling on the show floor. People were unpacking, moving boxes, setting up fancy displays that I can’t afford — all I really wanted to do was drive one of those industrial construction golf cart things. They wouldn’t go for it.

Anyway, come find us in Artists Alley this weekend. We’re over theeeeeeerre.
Posted by Tim Leong on April 17th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | 1 Comment »
COMIC FOUNDRY AT THE NYCC!

Comic Foundry Magazine will have a table at NYCC! Please stop by to say hi or buy an issue. Or both! We’ll be at table H-19 in Artists Alley. We miiiiiight be listed in the program as “Tim Leong,” but there are certainly worse tragedies in life.

So please, if you’re one of the thousands of people going to the show, come by for a complimentary high-five.

Cya there!
Posted by Tim Leong on April 16th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | Comment now »
This Past Weekend

This past weekend I moderated a panel at SPLAT about self publishing. It was my first time moderating so I was a wee bit nervous — that and the fact that the entry fee was $125. With that kind of price tag I wanted to make sure the audience really got their money’s worth. There were a lot of variables to hurdle:
1) The audience was more trade and industry focused than your average eager self-publisher
2) The topic was more about breaking into the book industry, which isn’t my specialty
3) I hadn’t met most of my panelists

But, I think overall I think the panel went really well. The panelists were lively and a lot of great advice. There was a lot of nuts and bolts information that didn’t necessarily fit the rest of the show, but was apropos for this particular panel. There was a good Q and A at the end and I thank everyone who contributed and participated.

I was also able to catch a few other panels while I was there — the tail end of the kids comic panel, the webcomics panel and the Scott McCloud Q and A. McCloud is guaranteed entertainment in any public arena and the webcomics forum was pretty entertaining once they got the discussion going. That Ted Rall…He’s got a future, I tell ya.

Then something odd happened to me at the end….which may or may not come to fruition…
Posted by Tim Leong on March 18th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | 1 Comment »
SPLAT Tomorrow!

SPLAT, the first-ever graphic novel symposium from the New York Center of Independent Publishing is tomorrow — and I’m moderating a panel.

How To Get Published: A Comics Publishing Primer
• Bob Mecoy, Agent
• CB Cebulski, Marvel Submissions Editor
• Tricia Narwani, Del Ray Manga Editor
• Kate Farrell, Henry Holt Editor
• Moderated by Tim Leong, Editor of Comic Foundry

Do you want to write a personal, gripping black-and white memoir? Do you want to write a great superhero script and submit it to your favorite DC editor? Do you just want to get your foot in the door of the industry, and figure it out from there? No matter what genre you work in, you will need to face the age-old problem of getting your work out to the reading public. This panel is here to help answer your questions! The comics industry often works quite differently than the book industry, so you’ll want to know the ins-and-outs up front.

It’s a steep entry fee, but there are a lot of great industry professionals speaking and there’s sure to be great bits of information. And Scott McCloud is the keynote, so that should be enough right there. Check it.
Posted by Tim Leong on March 14th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog | 1 Comment »
New York Comic Con Tries Clever PR/Advertising

Late this afternoon Peter Tatara of the NYCC posted on the NYCC blog that the parent site, newyorkcomiccon.com had been hacked by someone with a butterfly fetish. Turns out it’s The Monarch from the fantasticly awesome show The Venture Bros. I like that they’re reaching out and trying some clever advertising. (The Venture Bros returns for season 3 in June, hint). Though, attempting a “stunt” at 4 PM on a Friday seems slightly ill-timed if you’re trying to cause a stir.

PS - if you’re DYING to get a season preview of The Venture Bros you don’t need to wait until NYCC, just 2 weeks when the new issue of Comic Foundry Magazine hits stands.

Posted by Tim Leong on March 7th, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog, Press Release | Comment now »
New York Comic Con

The New York Comic Con has released its first promo video for the show. The guy who did the I’m a Marvel, I’m a DC shorts produced it. It brings back all kinds of memories of last year when I was the host of the official video podcast. It was weird basically being a PR guy, but the experience was too cool for me to complain. I got to talk to a lot of interesting creators, fans and media people. We basically shot for three consecutive days and got a ton of content. They made about 15 videos out of it and below is one of my favorites, an interview with Brian K. Vaughan. You can check out the rest here.

PS: Look for Comic Foundry at the show this year!
Posted by Tim Leong on February 22nd, 2008 filed in Conventions, Blog, Videos | Comment now »

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Conventions

Come Find Comic Foundry at the NYCC!

Looking Back At San Diego: Photos

We’re Gearing Up for Comic-Con!

MoCCA Art Fest 2008!

Video Interview with Michael Avon Oeming at NYCC

New York Comicon, Year 3

Report from the NYCC

COMIC FOUNDRY AT THE NYCC!

This Past Weekend

SPLAT Tomorrow!

New York Comic Con Tries Clever PR/Advertising

New York Comic Con