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Heroes Con 2011

What an awesome con! We <3 Heroes! This year was so fun and so exhausting. Whew!

First off, BIG shout outs to Dave for the room and Miracole & Chris for being FAB roomies! Let's do it again next year, shall we?

The load in this year was SO much better than last year. We drove right up to the gate that was 20ft from our table. SWEET! Our block had some awesome artists in it! We sat next to Michael Watkins (and Brynn, his lady and an artist in her own right), Christian Sager, Eric Steiner and Chrissie Zullo amongst others. GREAT BUNCH!

Saturday night was a blast. We descended upon Rock Bottom brew pub with a group of 11 nerds which included Mike Elrod, John Bintz, Eric Menge, Brittany Michel and the rest of the posse.

We had dinner with the lovely Echo Chernik and family on Sunday night. It’s always great to see Echo, but a rare treat to hang with the whole clan! Hugs to Lazarus and the girls!

The show was pretty busy but we’re so new, we don’t usually sell much. The Duo 280 on the table got more attention than the comics, sadly. Some jerk actually said, “Oh, wow! A Duo! Who cares about that crap (indicates the comics) when you’ve got this!” Fortunately for him, he moved along quickly when I gave him the Stank Eye. Fucker. Anyway, we don’t do shows for the money at this point, we do them to meet people and get some recognition. I think the Duo will have to go. It draws people to the table, but it also distracts from the comics. We’re gonna try it again at the next con then decide.

My jewelry did ok. Apparently I was one of only a handful of jewelry vendors at the con. I sold more jewelry than Nick did comics, which does not please me. But money is money. The coasters did not sell because the freaky lights in the convention hall made the polyurethane look yellow. I knew as soon as I unpacked them that they wouldn’t sell. They looked hideous in that lighting. Meh. They look FINE in normal lighting, you can’t see the poly or the decals. I’ll have to find another way to make them.

I’ll have to ramp up jewelry production for the Knoxville con. It’s probably the only way we’ll make a buck. We have low expectations for Knoxville.

Nick will have pix up at some point.

We did the NASCAR Museum on Monday before coming back. It was OK. Seeing the old cars was great, but the tech they tried to implement was lame. At $19.99 a pop, I think it’s pretty pricey for what you get, but I’m glad they are preserving the history of NASCAR nonetheless.

It was again a wonderful con and we can’t wait for next year. :D

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Party, DnD, New stuff

The party was smashing! Just enough ppl to have great convos, not so many as to crowd the place. Perfect! Thanks to all who journeyed from Far Far Away to join us! I was very pleased by the amount of food put away. You know us Southerners, clean plates = happiness. :)

We attended Decatur Drink n Draw at Mellow Mushroom last night. Very fun! It was good to catch up with Miracole and Chris before they disappear for 5 months doing a gig. I love MM pizza! We had the Greek one and it was TASTY!

There’s always stuff knocking around in our heads for Weasel merch and such. The current ideas are, in no particular order:
– Larry the Llama (Alpaca, actually) shirts
– Weasel Pair shirts
– some sort of Weasel character Shrinky Dinks. Keychains? Earrings? Suggestions welcome!
– comic strip templates. People ask Nick about this all the time, so we’ve decided to sell them in hard copy form as well as a pdf download on the site. We’ll sell them at Cons, too.
– new pins! Not sure of which characters yet, but probably 3 more

Also, we are going to roll out two new comic sites before Heroes Con (June 3-5). We are rolling out Drama Llamas, Inc and Awkward Ninja Squad. The Intermission Comics folks will have their own space eventually as well. :)

As for my personal projects, I’ve made a ton more earrings for my Etsy shop, which I need to photograph and get up. I’ve also procured some magic marker brush pens so I can make colourful art on my jewelry boxes. These are not as good as the Japanese brush pen, of course, but fine for small stuff and in colour!! I practiced my calligraphy and art at the DnD last night. I also got some Lazertran decal paper to make coasters. I’m going to use my flower photography to make decals for tiles. Should be a fun project.

Heroes will be cool this year. Just us at the table, doing our respective artsy things. I’m going to have the jewelry displayed as well as the boxes. If the boxes get interest, I may get assorted sizes and sell those. I plan to have some coasters ready to go as well. I may give the hand painted flowers a go once more, but I tell you, I just can’t get the pure lines that I want out of Photoshop. There’s always too much grayscale. We’ll see about that one. Or I may just print them full color onto watercolor paper and sell them that way. Ooo, which gives me another idea for the shrinky dinks! I could print the flowers and make earrings out of those! :)

The stupid storms kept me up practically all night, so I’m a bit out of it today. I’ll probably collapse later. Nick overslept and when he finally got to work, most of the power was out there. They must’ve gotten it back up since he’s not been back here for extension cords.

Welp, that’s the state of Mrs Weasel. Hope ya’ll have a great day!

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Bleach your hair, change your life

OH, if it were that simple. Even though it’s not quite that powerful, I find that bleaching my hair does raise my spirits and cheer me up. Must be the chemicals seeping in!

So while I wait for the bleach to finish up, I thought I’d make a catch up post with lots of little stuff. Sort of a round up if you will.

– Heather’s moving to Vegas. Part of me is sad and part of me is jealous. The party this weekend will be fun.

– The Middle East is unraveling and all dumbass Americans can say is “Go Democracy!!”. ::shakes head:: If more Americans had a vague clue about the history of the region and OUR part in it, I think there’d be more people like me who are a) not surprised by the violence and b) VERY worried about how this will affect those countries such as ours who are totally dependent on them (the countries that are melting down now) for oil. This is SERIOUS, people. And “democracy” has nothing to do with it.

– The bullshit in WI. This comes down to the traditional debate of whether unions are beneficial or not. I fall on the NOT side of that. They artificially inflate wages and entitlements. You’ll never hear a union member offer to give up his entitlements for the sake of the company or the bigger economy. Look at the auto companies. UNIONS destroyed that industry. Yet far left hippies think that unions are the answer. Nope. Not even a little bit.

– Trek Trax was OK – what little we saw of it. We got busy around here on Sat and blew off the con but did go up Sunday to check it out. Met the Duras sisters, which was my main goal, and saw the Miss Klingon Pageant. They really need to work on the flow of that for next year. We might get a dealer’s room table next year just for fun and to support the con. It’s small enough that we might actually sell something! LOL

– We also wold love to do Furry Weekend Atlanta, but damn it’s pricey. You’ve got a cheap table ($65) but they don’t give you any passes with the tables, so you end up paying $80 for 2 passes + $65 for the table and that’s $145 for a table. Quite a bit, for such a specialized con. But we may do it anyway next year just to see how we do.

– This year will be an interesting one for our finances. We plan to have a whole new outlook by this time next year, I can promise you that.

– The Mirena is still causing light bleeding. It’s been 6 wks now, with 5 of that bleeding. ::sigh:: I NEVER get a break. NEVER. The good news is that there’s no pain, but still. What a fucking hassle.

– I’m loving this weather! 70s in Feb? Yes, please!

– Go buy something from my Etsy store – I’ve got some bracelets in there, now. It’ll help raise my spirits. Or buy a sketchcard from ThinkWeasel!.

Now, I’m off to rinse this bleach out. Tsaketa!

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Why DC and Marvel are Soap Operas

I’ve never been much on superhero comics. I like the movies well enough, but not the actual comics. I’ve always been put off by the convoluted universes and myriad characters that DC and Marvel churn out.

That being said, I must point out that my very first comic I ever bought was Angela, which was a Spawn offshoot that I just recently realised was created by Neil Gaiman. (I could also do a post about the whole McFarlane and Gaiman lawsuit, but I’ll just say that McFarlane is a dick and leave it at that.) Spawn is published by Image Comics which is a big company right up there with Marvel and DC. So I have read some superhero (villain?) stuff before, but rarely. My very first comic that I liked was Courtney Crumrin that I got at Free Comic Book Day years ago. Totally indie!

Anyway, the point of this post is to share a realisation I had the other day about WHY I don’t like superhero stuff very much. And it has to do with soap operas.

I used to watch the soaps with my mother and grandmother when I was a kid. I even watched General Hospital during the Luke and Laura days. But as I got older, the genre started grating on my nerves with all the convoluted stories, people dying and coming back repeatedly, changed backstories to suit the current writers…

Sound familiar? Yah, I thought so. Marvel and DC are soap operas for comic book nerds. They have convoluted stories, multiple universes, characters being killed off and then magically coming back, changed backstories to suit the writer at the time… It’s the same. Exactly the same. No wonder I don’t go for superheroes!

I watched soap operas in my early years and I’d still watch them if I didn’t mind this nonsensical writing style. Well, I do mind. I know it’s all fantasy, but when you need large books just to keep the stories and characters straight, it’s just too much work for me, man.

So I’ll keep reading my indie comics from Oni, SLG and self published artists. I do my part for the big guys by also reading from Image, Vertigo and the occasional superhero story. But I tell you, I’m just not going for the whole soap opera vibe of traditional superhero story arcs. I can barely keep track of which heroes are with which company!

I encourage all comics readers to explore self published and web based comics. There are tons of us out there who work hard to produce comics every week and could use your support! So, go clicky-click and check out some of our indie and/or web based friends! Buy something! Help us become full time comics nerds! Did I mention BUY SOMETHING!!!

Think Weasel!
Ted Naifeh (Courtney Crumrin, Polly and the Pirates, Princess Ugg)
Little Vampires
Steam Crow
Last Res0rt

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Mini Convention! Sun Oct 17!

Atlanta Comix Factory and Atlanta Cartoonists invite you to join us at Oxford Comics for the first mini convention for local comic artists. It’s 11am-7pm in the parking lot of Oxford on Piedmont road. Come by and support your local comics!! If you’d like a full res pdf to print and distribute, email me and I’ll send it to you! misangela at gmail.

comics Sun Oct 24
Mini Con at Oxford Oct 17 11-7!