I’m back in Dallas for WizardWorld Texas. It’s a great show for me, because I get to stay with my good friend Jesse Jackson. The con is a bonus on top of that.
There’s a lot of talk about WizTexas not doing well, and it always seems to be on the bubble of cancellation by Wizard. Last year I thought Wizard had reached that point of maximum compression from which they could build into a bigger show. With Friday in the can, color me ambivalent about that.
Friday’s a slow day in general. It’s hard to get a read on the convention in general based on that. I think any show that takes place outside the summer and has a Friday start is going to have some slowness. And this year’s WizTexas is no exception.
That said, I’ve made my table costs on Day One. Since there were years where I didn’t make that at the end of Day Three, I think I’m certainly in the win column here. I’ve got more stuff, and more popular stuff, than any year before, so I think I skew the results, too. Still, whatever worlks, right?
The only problem I really had was that, stupidly, I left both my drawing paper and my brand new display rack, built by McGyverDad, at Jesse’s place. Jesse takes the role of my Ace Assistant here at these shows, so drove back to his place to cover my stupidity.
I could have lived without the rack, cool though it is and I’ll post a picture soon, but the art stuff was a neccesity. Commissions have become a huge chunk of my business at cons.
I did two commissions: a Princess Leia and an Invisible Woman. Both turned out well. I also sold the Mary Marvel piece that I did for the first Powerful Women book. I sold a bunch of issues of Love and Capes as well, including my seemingly-constant “first issue to a girlfriend who doesn’t read comics”. They’re there for all three days, so I expect that she’ll be back to buy the rest. I’ve seen it happen more than a few times.
I may have lined some work up out of the show, so that’s always good. And I’ve locked in some participation with the excellent Heroes For Heroes group, supplying comics and pop culture stuff to our armed forces abroad. Tonight they’re having a fundraiser which I’ll be going to. Last year was fun, and they promise tonight will be better.
Jesse and I had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. The Defuser, of Who Wants to be a Superhero fame. I ran into The Defuser last at Comic-Con, and we saw each other for a few minutes in a restaurant, but never hooked up again. We got to rectify that by going out to a great dinner at Po Melvins (Food so good it’ll make you want to slap yo mama, that’s their slogan. No, seriously.)
The Defuser told us more about his charity haunted house in Austin. I’m not much of a haunted house guy, but, man, it sounded cool.
So it was a pretty nice first day.
We’re leaving for the second day in a few minutes. I’m expecting to sell decently, and do more than a few commissions. If you’re bored or just have the equivalent of computer-based ADD, you can always check me out on Twitter to see posts live from the show.
