Once again Phoenix Comicon was a fantastic success. Next to Emerald City in Seattle, it is my second favorite US show. Thank you to everyone that came out and got a t-shirt, a book, a sketch or just said hi. The Phoenix Phancy Bastards (fancy withe a PH) also REALLY came through with the baked goods, caffeinated goods and beboozed goods. I was able to get David terribly drunk off of too many tiny bottles of Jack (which is a necessity since he’s at least twice as much fun when he’s hammered).
If you are confused by the incident Joel is referring to in panel 3, feast your head-orbs over yonder. Despite that comic being Pre-Continuity (PC) in the HEniverse, let’s just go ahead and assume it happened in a little pocket universe of canon. Hows about a little Evil Fox Executive primer? Whether the events in these comics end up sticking in the Post-Continuity (PC… wait, fuck) HEniverse remains to be seen.
The EFE has his own reasons for hating sci-fi. He is able to cancel far more than just TV shows. He occasionally consults with coworkers on corporate strategies. He has an uncommon appetite. He has a shared history with Joss Whedon (which directly contradicts his previous origin story AND the one in this blog post). He’s a bit of a Grinch, and his secretary has to deal with a lotof bullshit.
![PHOENIX COMICON IS THIS WEEKEND!!! I will be there with Blind Ferret at booths 707/806. Other fine webcomicers in attendance will be Randy, Danielle, and Spike at booth (???), and David and Rob in Artist Alley at table 649. WHEATON will also be there and I suspect we will get into shenanigans[TM].
Last year was my first year at PHXCC and it was an absolute blast. The fans were great, the sales were great and the show is just incredibly well run. Next to Emerald City in Seattle it was certainly one of my favorite shows of 2011.
I will have: books 1 and 2, most of my shirts from the HE Store (not from Sharksplode), sketches, stickers and unexpected, nonconsensual chest bumps, bro-hugs and that move where a bride and groom drink champagne with interlocked arms. YOU are bringing the champagne.
If you choose to participate in the ancient right of a reader offering tribute to an artist at a convention, I am partial to cookies, Starbucks Doubleshot cans, Iced Soy Lattes, and little bottles of booze that can be clandestinely added to other drinks. I’m just sayin’. Here’s a map of the entire show floor, that shows where we’ll be in relation to everything else. Seems like we’re right up front, so we shouldn’t be hard to find. Click to embiggen.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4giwkIXuk1qb4neno1_500.jpg)
PHOENIX COMICON IS THIS WEEKEND!!! I will be there with Blind Ferret at booths 707/806. Other fine webcomicers in attendance will be Randy, Danielle, and Spike at booth (???), and David and Rob in Artist Alley at table 649. WHEATON will also be there and I suspect we will get into shenanigans[TM].
Last year was my first year at PHXCC and it was an absolute blast. The fans were great, the sales were great and the show is just incredibly well run. Next to Emerald City in Seattle it was certainly one of my favorite shows of 2011.
I will have: books 1 and 2, most of my shirts from the HE Store (not from Sharksplode), sketches, stickers and unexpected, nonconsensual chest bumps, bro-hugs and that move where a bride and groom drink champagne with interlocked arms. YOU are bringing the champagne.
If you choose to participate in the ancient right of a reader offering tribute to an artist at a convention, I am partial to cookies, Starbucks Doubleshot cans, Iced Soy Lattes, and little bottles of booze that can be clandestinely added to other drinks. I’m just sayin’. Here’s a map of the entire show floor, that shows where we’ll be in relation to everything else. Seems like we’re right up front, so we shouldn’t be hard to find. Click to embiggen. 
New Comic! “Discharged“
When I saw that Fox had finally, with Fringe going into its final season, purged all the icky sci-fi nerdity from their otherwise pristine network, I knew exactly where to go with the next HEstoryline. The Evil Fox Executive (can he even still be called that?) is a soldier without a war. A man without a country. A panda strangler… ALLEGED panda strangler with nary a panda to strangle. And they really are such satisfying creatures to strangle. Their fur and fluff are easy on the hands. No strangulations calluses with a panda. No sir.
So where does this leave us? Are we better off with Fox leaving the sci-fi greenlighting/cancellation cycle to the other networks? Is this like giving up on relationships to prevent heartbreak? Can it not be argued that Fox has actually produced some of the finest sci-fi that television has ever seen? Are we going to lose more than we would have gained if Fox gets out of the science fiction game altogether?
Technically Grover is a “monster,” but this isn’t what we originally had in mind.
Almost glad no one bothered to tell them it’s on a shirt.
(Source: ilovehorrormovies)
richtoon asked: How much % higher than "break even" of the costs convention (including all of the expenses, food and travel) do you begin to consider it a successful con. I have been successful to get my money back and then some... and I am starting to get a feel for how much profit I can make in a con. What would you consider "too low of a profit" to consider returning to a con? Hope this is somewhat logical of a question.
This number is different for everyone. People do cons for different reasons. I do them because they are about 1/4 of my income. If I spend $1000 on a con (hotel, flight, table, meals, etc) and I made $500 on top of that, I would consider it a light to moderate success and probably do it at least one more year to see if there’s an upward trend. Anything less than that is a definite “no return” and anything above that is a pretty good success.
Dallas Comic Con and I have always been at odds. I resent it for being so close to my home and yet such a poorly organized, terribly mismanaged convention, and it resents me for being alive apparently. In years past, Dallas Comic Con was held in a local library here in town. The artists alley was in the hallway, the dealer’s room (toys and props and t-shirts and such) was in the a room behind closed doors and the guests (A-F list sci-fi TV personalities) were kept elsewhere. I’m not sure where exactly. Perhaps on the roof. There are at least six conventions each year in Dallas that fall under the “Dallas Comic Con” banner and I only had to do two or three of them to realize they were all the same show. The only difference was who they brought in to sell autographs.
If it was “Star Wars Fan Days” they brought the guy that wore Boba Fett’s suit, David Prowse (a slightly more famous wearer of a suit), Admiral Ackbar’s puppet head operator and maybe Anthony Daniels to headline. If it was Star Trek Expo, then we get a few ensigns, nurses, latex-headed baddies and maybe a bridge crew member or two to headline. Regardless of the costume it is wearing, it is ALWAYS the same show. It is also ALWAYS an autograph show. A hard lesson I learned about doing conventions is that if Shatner is the big draw and he charges $75 to scrawl on an 8x10” glossy plus the $25 you spent to get in, then most fans don’t have any more money to spend on anything else. They pretty much get their thing signed, or get their photo taken (an additional fee), and then pace the artist alley and dealer’s room for the rest of the day NOT buying anything. You can’t blame them. Really, you can only blame people like me for putting themselves in that situation. With cons like this the autographs are the main event and EVERYTHING else is just an after thought.
The only reason I decided to check out DCC this year was because it had finally moved out of the library and into a proper convention center. I hoped the larger, more appropriate venue would bring out the fans and the vendors to really turn this into a local con that could be molded into something great. When I pulled up Saturday morning for set up, the line was already wrapped around the block twice. I had to park in field some 25 or 30 rows back because the entire parking garage AND the overflow lots were both full. Things were looking up. “If this many people are here, this is going to be a fantastic show,” I thought. Patrick Stewart was the main guest, John Delancie was there, Summer Glau too. There just might be a respectable convention happening right in my back yard. I walked onto the con floor and suddenly my hopes and dreams were dashed. The entire con floor was about the size of a high school gym. There were at least 5 times more people outside than would even fit in this room.
30 minutes after they started letting people in my fear were realized in full. Every aisle in the tiny hall was packed shoulder to shoulder and my table was in the absolute worst spot possible. There was a concession stand right at the end of my row, which meant I spent more than half of the day staring at a slowly moving line of hungry people that were blocking my table from the view of anyone that might have been more interested in silly comics than stale nachos and indigestible hot dogs. The myth that the people in the food line will buy your stuff IS A LIE! They are staring at the servers and cashiers, silently cursing them for not moving faster. They are laser focused on their hunger and their hate. They DO NOT WANT your funny books.
It became more and more evident throughout the day that the con was at least 4 times oversold for what that hall could handle. People were waiting hours to get in the doors for most of the day, and when I went up the escalator to the second floor there was nowhere for the exiting escalatees to disperse, except for directly into the bodies of the people occupying the tiny mezzanine that lead to the cafeteria with another impossibly long and slow moving food line. On the way back down I was nearly crushed. No exaggeration. People were toppling over each other like spandex and duct tape clad dominoes. It was basically a nightmare scenario from every possible angle. For me, that is.
See, here’s the problem. Even though the fans were squished and getting trampled and completely unable to buy food or drinks in less than an hours’ wait, they were still mostly able to get the autographs and photos they came for. For them it was just crowded, but still worth it. For me it was an impenetrable clusterfuck of sadness. Don’t get me wrong, all of the fans I talked to were quite kind and wonderful. But I spent a day away from my family, paid for a table and sat there for 8 hours for basically no reason. I’m sorry, Dallas. You must have done something VERY wrong, because you don’t get a good con.
This kickstarter has been advertising on my site a lot. A plushie gentleman Octopus. I think it’s pretty dang cute.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/282727914/by-jove-its-a-gentleman-octopus-plush
This is what it’s like to be friends with Randy. He seems to get a different Internet than the average person. One that is populated wholly with horrors. He is an aggregator of sadness. A curator of the macabre hopelessness of human existence. I know he knows that is meant as a compliment.