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John Holland, Embedded Reporter At New Orleans Wizard World Comic Con

Published Sun, 30 Jan 2011 07:00:11 -0600

John Holland writes for Bleeding Cool from the floor of New Orleans Wizard World.

It's 9:30 and the room is filling up with dealers and artists. We're only 30 minutes from opening. I've heard that anywhere from 4,000 to 8,000 tickets have been pre-sold. Either amount would be a good showing. Aside from some smaller shows New Orleans hasn't had a convention in over a decade and that one didn't turn out so well. So here's hoping this one will be a success.

For me this convention means something different than it does for a lot of people attending it. Years ago. (okay a lot of years ago, I'm an old fart) I used to write comic books. Nothing fancy, just for a lot of the independent companies, at that time there were a lot more independent companies around. I've been published by Fantagraphics, Kitchen Sink, Malibu, Innovation and at the end I even went the self published route and did two issues of Diebold with the artist Brian Clifton. What writing I've been doing has been more towards musical subjects, with my online site Voices To Hear. But I want to write comics again, so I'm looking at this convention twofold; get myself back out there and hopefully network with some artists. A writer in the comic industry without an artist is a lonely person. End of aside and back to the convention.

As always I'm early. I can't help it, I have an anal fixation of always being early for any event I attend. I live about an hour outside New Orleans so I left at seven and was in the Hall a little after eight, and that's even after turning down the wrong street and having to come back around. Once inside I find my table has been moved from where it was listed online. It looks like everyone that was on the row I was on has been flipped to the other side of the area. The table across from me is for James O'Barr, the creator of The Crow, but we won't see him the whole day, he stays at the booth of the publisher of his newest comic.

It looks like a pretty good selection of dealers. I see comics, card, statues, fan clubs, a litle of everything it looks like. And of course the Boba Fetts and Storm Troopers. I haven't been to a convention in a long time so I'm not sure which to compare it to.

The doors open and there's a small crowed trickling in. By 10:30 the crowd has grown from a trickle to more of a rush as I see more people walking around. Larry Guidry stopped by the table to show me the page of a comic proposal that we are working on. It looks great and I'm excited. This is what I'm coming to the con for, to meet artists and hook up for work. There's a couple artists that I've been talking to that I want to meet with and I want to try and meet some new artists this weekend. And it'd be nice to make a few sales, but so far I'm not having much luck on that front.

On the table to my left is a giant head of Galactus that everyone is stopping to take a picture of. The creator told me that the head is make of Styrofoam.

It's 10:50 and I just made my first sale. Someone bought the second issue of Diebold. Not that they had the first issue, they just liked the look of the second issue. I'm not going to argue, a sale is a sale.

There's a young man standing in front of my table looking at my sign that reads "Writer In Search of An Artist." He tells me he's an artist, unfortunately he doesn't have any samples of his work with him. (Just a tip: always bring something to show if you want to talk about your work.) I give him a card and tell him to send me something.

Note to self: Always make sure you have enough change. I've started selling more comics now and someone just handed me a twenty and I don't have change. He tells me he'll come back later. He never makes it back.

Lots of Green Lantern shirts. If it's any indication the movie should be a smash hit. Larry watches my table for me to give me a chance to take a stroll around. As I move from the back of the Artist's Alley I discover that there is a lot more people here. And I mean a lot more. The aisles are full, some artists have lines. The photo ops are doing extremely well, I see long lines there.

I talk to a few dealers and they all tell me that they are doing very good. One dealer says he's so busy he recruited some friends that were visiting to help him sell.

Back to my table. Someone from the Con comes by and asks if I need one of them to watch my table so I can take a bathroom break. They see I'm sitting by myself so they want to make sure I get a chance to take care of business. Now maybe this is something that Cons do nowdays, but I don't remember any of the Cons doing that back in my day. I just thought that was a nice thing to do.

One guy comes up and buys seven books. I'm usually lucky to sell two or three at a time, so selling seven at once is pretty cool. By the end of the day I've sold a few books and made some money. I'm working with a double handicap since all the comics I'm selling are more than a few years old and none of them feature a character from the Big Two. Heck, I thought having a cover by Sam Kieth and Mike Zeck would help, but it's almost funny to realize how quickly fan favorites become fan whos? When I mentioned to one person that the cover was by Mike Zeck I could see the question marks in his eyes.

More importantly I've talked to some artists and exchanged cards and hopefully made the start of a beautiful working relationship. I've also managed to talk to one artist that I felt like I had screwed up with, but he felt like he had did the same, so we both laughed about it and agreed to give it another try.

To sum it up I have to give a thumbs up to the Wizard World staff for putting on a fun show. Everyone looked like they were having a good time I didn't' see any problems or hear any people grumbling about what went wrong. Everything seemed to go right and hopefully tomorrow will be just as much fun.

Wizard World New Orleans Comic Con continues today at New Orleans Ernest N. Morial Convention Center

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