81. MEGACON, ORLANDO, FLORIDA, FEB 24-26, 2006

This was an interesting con. It was a three-day con, so I assumed it must be pretty big. I hadn't had very good luck at Baltimore, getting myself a table in the cheapest area. But I had been told by a fellow self-publisher that MegaCon gets so much foot traffic, I would do fine in the cheap artists alley section, so that's what we signed up for.

We got up at six am, had a two-hour layover in Chicago, and with the three hour time difference, it was nine pm that we got checked into our hotel. What a hell of a long-feeling day.

I saw Adam Hughes' girlfriend, Allison checking in behind us, but didn't say hi, because I assumed she wouldn't remember some unknown, approached-her-once comics nerd. Elizabeth and I went down to the hotel restaurant for dinner, and just as we were seated, Allison came in. Since the restaurant was empty except for the three of us, we invited her to join us at our table, and she consented.

She told us Adam wasn't there yet. He was supposed to fly in with her, but DC asked if he had any sketches lying around that they could use for a cover, and he said he did. Of course he didn't, so rather than fly in, he stayed home to draw something for them, and he would drive in the next day. They lived in Atlanta, which I learned was about a six hour drive. We had a very nice dinner with Allison.

She told us that she's real good with people one-on-one, but has a tough time with huge crowds. Adam, on the other hand, can say very interesting things when he's in a panel discussion in front of a huge crowd. But when people come and tell them how much his work means to them, he doesn't really know how to react. He has trouble with strangers one-on-one like that. She even said that his fans have told her they thought he was kind of a jerk. But it's not that he's actually a jerk, they just sometimes perceive him that way, because of his uncomfortableness in the situations. I could relate, visualizing my first encounter with him. He was so sweaty, so frazzled, not real talkative, and I mistakenly assumed he was just stressed and seeming to just try and push people through the line. Again, which is justifiable, since he creates such enormous lines of fans.

Next morning, we saw Allison again, this time eating with Howard Chaykin. By the time we were finished eating, Allison had left, and Howard was reading. We must have caught his eye, because as we were leaving, he said good morning to us. That was our excuse to go visit, and he was really friendly and talkative. I told him we'd met in Baltimore and he'd looked at all the monster pin-ups in my comic, and he remembered, "That's right!" Then I told him how he snubbed me at Wondercon. How I'd called him over to visit, and then he saw Ryan Sook and said he'd be right back. Before I got to the punchline he howled, "And I never came back!" and laughed out loud. He was very friendly with us the rest of the con, whenever we bumped into him.

We got to the convention and realized this would be another con with me tucked away against a back wall. But this time it was figurative instead of literal. Everyone around me was a "hack nobody," who'd never done any professional comics work, who was just just trying to make their way, same as me. All of us losers were tucked away together in the back of the convention hall, where no one needed to feel bothered by us.

I always think to myself, how dare they put me amidst a bunch of people at the same struggling level as myself, when I'd prefer to be mixed in with superstars!

Most of these ones, I learned, as the convention went on, and as far as I could tell, didn't even have any self-published work. Instead, they all had sketches of Wolverine or Hulk, or Female comics characters in the nude.

All the big name artists were at the entrance and into the center of the convention hall. I began to think maybe this is why I tended to do better at Wondercon, where the convention runners very kindly put celebrities and nobodies like me all mixed together. It gives me the chance to accidentally be noticed by people looking for something else. The set-up at this (and most other) convention, you can see what you're getting into when you get near these aisles, so that they're easy to avoid.

All these unpublished sketchers told me throughout the weekend how well they were doing, and how many sketches of Wolverine or Hulk they were selling, and making thirty bucks a pop or something. We saw guys selling seven cent Kinkos 8 ½" x 11" black and white copies for $10 each. We saw people walking around with all this "art," and said, "Oh, that's very nice. Who drew it?" And the people who bought them didn't even know or care who the artists were.

I wondered if Florida just wasn't interested in the kind of work I was doing. I mentioned this odd phenomenon to Allison, and she said this is less of a comics convention, and more of an anime or gaming con. It's a completely different crowd. This crowd sees one artist selling sketches for $100 or so, and they think, well that artist is selling his for $30, and I like the picture he drew of Wolverine, so to them it's a deal. They could care less who draws it. They don't understand about different artists. It was a really strange vibe. It felt like people just walked by us without even glancing at what I had, day after day. They weren't interested in it. They were all there to dress like their favorite Manga character, not to buy comics.

This convention, I was approached by an artist who really liked my work, and asked if he could commission me to do a pin-up of a giant monster for his book. I looked at his comic, and got a kick out of the first page. The second page had a bizarre twist that I enjoyed, and the third page had such an odd sequence of events I really enjoyed it. His story is way out there, maybe more than I like. His art looks pretty good overall. I agreed to do a pin-up for the first time. Unless you count Caveman Robot, which I did for free, since they're friends, and I enjoyed them and their character, Cavey. You can look for the comic, "She's a Superfreak #2" by Andrew Gregory.

It's a strange feeling, not being really any better than all these other self-publishers, but having them begin to give me attention, as if I am somebody, or heading in the right direction to someday become somebody. I hope it's a good sign. I hope they don't just think that since I've gotten all these pin-ups from all my own personal favorite artists, that I must be a somebody. Because I'm really just the same as them, struggling and wondering if any of this is worth it, and losing money every issue I put out, and feeling like, what the hell's the use, if no one has even heard of me, or has any interest to stop by my table and buy my book.