I was set up with Toon Tumblers, but being out of the comics section, sales were not brisk. I didn’t want to bring the books back with me, so I wrote a number of them off as advertising and passed them out to people waiting in line. My feeling is, somebody gets #2, they might buy #1 and #3.
I also passed them out to some creators who were particular inspirations to me, like Kyle Baker, and friends of mine, and to Podcast Alley.
We’ll get to the podcasters in a minute. I happen to know Feedback from “Who Wants to be a Superhero.” I met him at Mid-Ohio-Con, and we’ve been friendly since. He liked Love and Capes and I wanted to bring him the new issue. I was politely waiting in line for him to get done talking to his fans, when one of his boothmates, Nitro-G, also from “Superhero” saw me and my books and shouted “Hey, are you the guy who does Love and Capes?!” Turns out, he’s a fan. That was nice to hear. And, I don’t usually get yanked out of line to talk to the guests.
(Although that did happen when I saw James C. Leary from “Buffy” signing at his booth. But still, not that common.)
Anyway, podcasting…
One of the neat things that the New York show has done is embraced podcasting. They produce a series of podcasts to help promote the show and interview some creators, and that’s cool. They also have a section of booths specifically for other podcasters.
If you stop by the blog often, you know I’m a crazy Podcast fan. Comic Pants is one of my favorites, but Raging Bullets and Comic Geek Speak are climbing the charts.
So I passed out some books to the podcasters, hoping to score a mention or two. Any publicity is good publicity. So I went to one table and did my pitch and they said: “You’re Thom Zahler?”
Puzzled, I said “Yes...”
“The guys on Raging Bullets talk about you all the time. They love Love and Capes. You have to go see them.”
No fool I, I went over there. Turns out, there are big fans of my work. They’ve got the Love and Capes webstrip on their site. They even love Raider. One of them did the Wayne’s World “We’re not worthy” thing. Man, stuff like that keeps me going sometimes.
And, while I was passing out Love and Capes, I was surprised at how many people have heard of it, or have read it. I was talking to a colorist from England, and mentioned “Oh, I do this little book called ‘Love and Capes’ and…”
She cut me off. “Love and Capes? I know this book. I saw it in San Diego.” So, the word is getting out there, I just need to capitalize on it. And not screw up.
There’s this scene in the tragically-unwatched “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” that haunts me. Matt (Matthew Perry) has a countdown clock in his office, letting him know how long he’s got to write the next episode of his weekly sketch comedy show. After writing his first show, and having it go over well, he walks back into his office, and the camera whip pans to the countdown clock, starting over. Sometimes that what Love and Capes feels like. It’s a hungry monster, waiting for me to misstep.
But getting the support I did from the people who have read the book, that’s a pretty nice crutch to lean on.
So it was a great show, and one I’ll do again next year. A lot of fun, and a great crowd to be sure.
Then, beaten and batterd but optimistic from a good show, we went home around 4pm. It was Sunday night. Perhaps you heard about the snowstorm? Well, Paul and I drove through it.
New York to Timberlake should take around eight, maybe nine hours. Well, we hit some snow. Bad snow. At times, I was driving at 25 miles per hour. It wasn’t scary, as there weren’t a lot of other cars or trucks on the road, and blessedly, there weren’t many bad drivers among them, but still it was thick.
I gave up coffee this year for Lent, but deciided that Sundays didn’t count. (It’s a Catholic thing. Check it out.) That was good, as I made sure to have a couple of cups along the way home. And Paul was great. We had several heated discussions about writing and comics and all sorts of stuff. He stayed up the whole time, and honestly, as tense as the driving was, I was never really tired thanks to the conversation.
Around 3:30am, we pulled back into Casa de Zahler. (For those of you doing the math, that’s closer to eleven hours.)
I decided to skip kickboxing in the morning. I think you can understand why.