STAPLE, Acme Comics, and a Star Warsy Guy

Hey, everybody!  Sorry for taking like two months to update the blog!  A lot has happened in the meantime - I went to STAPLE, in Austin TX, where I was EXTREMELY well-treated, and I had a great time and loved the show, and definitely plan to go back.  Had a great time with all sorts of great folks, had the best barbecue IN THE WORLD, two meals in a row, and am salivating just thinking about it.  Also went to Austin Books, which is perhaps the greatest comic shop in the country.  It's gigantic.  Mind-blowingly gigantic.  Plus it has LOADS of out-of-print stuff.  I picked up a black-and-white Cochran box set edition of Harvey Kurtzman's Frontline Combat, which I've been looking for for ages. Here's the STAPLE poster with an illustration by the inestimably fantastic Guy Davis:

 Later in the month I did a signing with Sean McKeever and Len Wallace at Acme Comics in Greensboro, North Carolina.  First Heroes, then Acme (I don't know what order they existed in - maybe Acme came first, but I was exposed to Charlotte's store first)?  North Carolina can teach the rest of the country (Austin excepted, of course!) something about running a shop!  The signing was a great event, and I've never been treated better - they fed us, which has happened before, but they also took us to a comedy club AND gave us 50% off (or cost price, I forget which) off anything in the store, which I jumped on, buying loads and loads of their super-excellent merchandise.  I got a copy of the Blacksad sketch files which is just impossible to find these days unless you want to part with multiple times the cover price, one of the Paul books, an extra copy of the black-and-white Stupid, Stupid Rat Tails, as mine is on perpetual loan to an ever-rotating student body, and bunches of others.  The guys there were really great, it was lots of fun getting to know Sean and Len, and they had loads of foot traffic - lots of families - in and out all day.  I was expecting it to go poorly, as Vengeance is currently between printings and will be for every one of my signings and promo things for March, but It was easily the best store signing I've ever done.  So many people had already gotten the book, and brought in their own copies - it's really nice when a store pushes the book ahead of time, so that when you're there people are excited to get theirs signed.  If you're a comics person, and you're asked to do a signing here, I couldn't recommend accepting more strongly. I did an end-of-the-day interview, if anyone wants to watch it: https://youtu.be/BhBfoR4WN94

I'm also going to start posting art whether I've got news or not.  Between classes, family, and research, I'm not producing any pages, but I AM doing a lot of sketches to keep in practice/get better.  Here's one of some kind of alien, stemming from a talk in class about how old-school Star Wars aliens were all designed to accommodate people in crazily proportioned suits.  This little guy is the result. 

I'll post more art regularly, I promise!  So keep checking back.