Wizard World 2007 Con Report

Wizard World Philly was easily my best comic-convention appearance to date. It was good for Wizard, too. I can’t find confirmation, but I was told they broke their previous attendance record, and the foot traffic seemed to back that up from my perspective.

I was busy from opening to closing with convention sketches, and the books sold so well, that I had to place an emergency call to my wife to bring more books midway through Saturday.

I was so busy, in fact, that I neglected to take very many photos, and I wasn’t able to take many notes of the weekend as it progressed. As a result, this report just might be a little on the light side.

Convention Sketches

I had commissioned sketches lined up all day during each day of the con. Convention sketches are a really interesting feat to pull off. The surroundings are less-than-condusive to doing a finely-detailed illustration. The table is always getting bumped, and it’s always a little jarring to look up in the middle of working on something realize that you’re being watched intently.

Not that I’m complaining — far from it. I love doing them. And, if I may say so myself, I churned out some real doozies.

Books

Something cool happened with the books this year. Since I have Volume Two out, I dropped Volume One to ten bucks to encourage people to jump in from the beginning. Several people bought Volume One on Friday and came back for Volume Two by Sunday.

I figure I do well over half of my sales to people who never heard of me or my strip before. I hand them a sample, give them a quick pitch for the comic, and then I show them the book. Several of the peple who bought copies of Volume Two this year had been sold Volume One last year, having never heard of me then.

Speaking of books, I had the pleasure of meeting Eric Cooper (he’s in the black Spider-Man costume in the photo to the right) of Knight Seeker. Cooper is a talented writer whose sci fi books are truly inspired. Knight Seeker is a human who has been given certain powers in a unique way that enable to protect our world. But, in the grand tradition of superheroes, it’s his human side that will grab you.

If you’ve been to a major comic convention in the last few years, you’ve probably seen Eric. He often attends in costume — both Spidey (red and black) and his own character, Knight Seeker.

Media

I did a lot more media in Philly this year than I had done anywhere else earlier. I don’t know whether any of it got used, but I sure talked to a lot of people. I talked to a reporter from Trend, an 800,000-circulation newspaper delivered throughout the Philly suburbs, and I did a brief drop-in for local TV station myphl17.

Last but not least, I taped an extensive interview with a couple guys that are trying to develop a cool reality show called Villain 101. In the show, they try to see whether you could ever become a super-villain in real life. Their goal is to try to pull off crime without getting arrested. Sound familiar? I gave them some tips based on my comic strip.