It’s been five years since I last did a convention in Chicago. The Wizard Conventions weren’t enough of a draw to get me back to the Windy City, plus the show itself was in and not actually Chicago. It wasn’t conducive to spending some time in Chicago proper.
This year, though, Reed Expositions was putting on a show, and I just love their New York Comic-Con. I knew that they’d pick up the ball dropped by Wizard when they shifted their focus to more of a pop culture focus. So Bob Ingersoll and I made the drive out Wednesday night.
Bob’s daughter and son-in-law live near Wrigleyville and had kindly offered to put up with us, er, put us up for the weekend. Ah, the siren call of free lodging. They’ve got a great place, too, in a fantastic neighborhood. Chicago is the basis for Deco City in Love and Capes, so it was nice to be in a neighborhood that’s much like the one Abby’s bookstore is in.
I really like Chicago. It’s a lot like Cleveland, if we had, you know, more people and stuff to do. But there’s a similarity that makes it very comfortable. I walked back to the 
apartment from Starbucks one night and it was just so nice, for lack of a better term.
My agent (yes, I can officially say that now) had offered to take me to a Cubs game, something I’d always wanted to do. I love baseball, and the Cubbies have a charm to them that’s hard to describe. My agent also got tickets for himself, Bob, Bill Willingham and Steve Sullivan.
Steve was a very pleasant surprise on top of an already great afternoon. He and I met in Chicago back in ’92, and did some work together. When I stopped doing Wizard Chicago, he and I had lost touch. So it was great to spend the game getting reacquainted.
The game itself was wonderful. It was a perfect day for a ballgame, and Wrigley field has a charm that makes it just great. It’s nice to see a ballpark in a neighborhood, rather than in a city or outside of one. It’s got a very homey feel to it.
Some of the charm became a problem, though. Wrigley’s got an old-style manual scoreboard, so it only puts up the number of every batter. Not a horrible issue, except that it was also Jackie Robinson Day. Every player, every single one, wore the 
number “42”. So every time someone came to bat, it was #42. I had no idea who was who.
The game was good. It was a back-and-forth score, with the Cubs actually bringing the tying run to the plate in the ninth. And then they lost.
So I had the complete Chicago Cubs experience.
Like many places, though, Chicago is missing the dark yellow perfection of Bertman’s Stadium Mustard. It’s just not right. The hot dog I had was tasty, don’t get me wrong, but it just wasn’t a proper ballpark dog.
C2E2 is the official name of the new Chicago con. First let me say, it’s a pain and a half to use that as a Twitter hashtag. You’ve got to go back and forth between the letters and numbers board on your iPhone. Something to think about in the Digital Millennium when you’re coming up with a name.
Name aside, the show was pretty good. Move-in was easy as could be, and Bob and I set up without too much effort at all. C2E2 has a pretty good professional pre-show, where I could actually go around and talk with some of the people that I needed to talk to. I can’t say that about 
every show. (I’m looking at you, San Diego.)
Sales were good, too. I’d never actually exhibited Love and Capes in Chicago before, so to some degree it was a whole new audience. The collected editions of the book sold really well. I left with nine, and considering what I started with, that was phenomenal. Individual issues sold much slower, but given that 1-6 were in the trade, and 7-12 are coming out in trade in a couple of months and were still available through order from Diamond and people’s local comics shop, I can’t complain at all.
The thing I have to figure out how to do better is taking commissions when in small press. I’ve got this theory that the people walking through small press can’t tell if the person behind the table is the creator or just the publisher. So I only did a few pieces over the weekend. I did a couple Crusaders, a Hellboy, and a Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. But that’s my issue, not the show’s.
So, I was pretty happy with how I did overall. There’s room for improvement, but there’s always room for improvement, right?
The show also attracted some A-List talent. So I got to chat a bit with Mark Waid and Gail Simone among others, as well as getting to see some people I haven’t seen since last con season or even my last Chicago trip.
I won’t name too many names, because then I’d forget someone. Better to err on the side of generalities. Excepting, of course, if I’ve got photos, like here.
Plus, as usual, I made some new friends. Always the best part of shows.
I did get to participate in the Iron Artist competition. It wasn’t, as I’d hoped, an Iron Man based event where we were each assigned a lovely, perky assistant and a bottle of bourbon, but instead based on the Iron Chef cooking shows. I, and three other artists, Jill Thompson, Raina Telgemeier and Jeff Brown were given an idea for a drawing, and then in ten minutes, we had to make it that cartoon.
All of this was to benefit the non-profit literacy group Reading With Pictures. 
A great cause and one I was thrilled to support. (Yeah, because it’s tough to get me on a stage otherwise, right?)
The first heat was to involve a flower pot, the Sears Tower, and poker! Yeah, go ahead, you come up with something.
I two flower pots on the ledge of the Sears Tower, one falling to his doom as he said “All right, I fall.” The other pot was saying “Dude, it’s call.” Yeah, not comedy gold, I know. I think “flower pot” made me think of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy where when the Infinite Improbability Drive is activated, two missiles turn into a whale and a geranium. There’s a page on what the whale thinks before he splats into the planet below. The geranium thinks “Oh, no, not again.” That always struck me as funny.
I thought everyone else’s was better. Jeff Brown’s awesome cartoon of Galactus playing power with a flower pot won the first heat. But then we got to do a second one. And this one was Batman on Vacation!
So I drew the first thing that came to my mind: Batman on a tropical resort, sitting by the pool Neal Adams-style, (mask, no cape, no shirt, board shorts and tons of chest hair) clinking fruity umbrellaed drinks with Catwoman, wearing a mask and a bikini, and Robin is forced to be the Cabana Boy.
This time, I hit paydirt. The judges both loved the facial expressions, and I won. I was the round two… IRON ARTIST!
Cool, eh?
You should definitely check out the show next year. I know I’ll be there. I’ve already signed up.
