Warning: There's A Monster at the End of This Blog
Hey Heartbreakers,
Nick and I just spent a wild-ass weekend in New York City at the ambiguously named New York Comic Con. We did not have a table there, instead we were walking around and showing pages from the next Heartbreak graphic novel to potential publishers.
The good news is that a lot of people seemed to like what they saw from the new Heartbreak stuff. Looks like we haven't lost our touch just yet.
The better news is that the weekend got real insane, real quick. After spending Friday alone at the con, I went out for some drinks with some friends from Dark Horse. A very pleasent and civilized evening.
Saturday got a little more intense at the con. Nick, Vasilis Lolos, and I got a chance to meet the cast of Hellboy 2 briefly during their signing at the Dark Horse Booth. We saw a woman almost get dragged out of the con for screaming at Amy from DH for not giving her a bracelet to the ticketed Hellboy signing. This wasn't DH's fault by the way, the woman didn't pick up a ticket for the bracelet raffle...she just thought huffing and puffing would get her what she wanted. I haven't seen a meltdown like that in a long time...and it's moments like that which make life worth living.
We also got a chance to catch up with Grant Morrisson and his wife Kristan after Grants panel (which was very well done...good job NYCC). Unfortunately, we had to say our farewells pretty quickly before Grant found himself surrounded by fanboys...hungry for flesh. During the panel we even bumped into a Heartbreak fan! (Word up, Rachie).
Saturday night we were very graciously invited out for dinner with Jim Lee, some friends, and several artists. We ate a ton of Korean BBQ, and drank Sapporo's until we all fell in love, apparently.
Afterwards, we went down to the lower east side to meet up with some friends from Dark Horse. This eventually ended up in a all-out karaoke battle which lasted until 4am. Here are some highlights...
The next day, after a hearty three hours of sleep...Nick and I dragged our corpses to the final day of the con. Where we met up with some friends like Abede Lovelace (City of Walls) and Carolyn Belefski (Curls Studios).
Here's a picture of us and Carolyn...bringin' drama...
Then we met back up with Vasilis Lolos, for some more fun. For those of you who may not know Vasilis' work. He did an amazing comic for Oni Press called "Last Call". He's also worked on the series "Pirates of Cony Island" for Image, and the Eisner nominated mini comic "5" along with Becky Cloonan, Gabriel Ba, Fabio Moon, and Grampa. He is also going to be one of the contributors to the next Heartbreak graphic novel! (
Check Out His Myspace Page)
Anyway, whilst walking around...we suddenly made the discovery of the con! The Ultra Racist Car-Toon!
Sure, that car looks cute, but lets take a closer look at some of the cartoons on it...
Whoah...
How Ink is Made??? Are you kidding me!
Holy Shit!!!
THAT'S RACIST!!!
Ah well. Now to be fair, this car was showing all aspects of cartooning and pop-culture. And racism is as much a part of Comic and Animations histories as anything else. But looking at some of the surrounding cartoons...does anyone find it kind of eerie that they put Will Smiths smiling Fresh-Prince era face next to all the racist black cartoons? I'm not one of those people who look around for stuff to get outraged by, but this was some poor judgement on the con's part. Especially since these cartoons were by the passenger side front tire...so easily visable to all the little kids who were drawn in by this fun looking car.
Not saying we should hide and ignore this part of history at all, but when you put cartoons like that next to cartoons of Superman and Batman at an all-ages, family-orientated, public event. C'mon man.
After our fascination with the "Racist Racer" we all said our tearful goodbyes, and went off to our respective bars and got wrecked on a beautiful Sunday evening before eating four pounds of pizza in the greatest city in the world. At least, that's what Nick and I did.
COMICS!
-j
P.S.
Meet our new friend, Heartbreak Howdy! Sent to us from Kristie, who runs our awesome fan site
The Heartbroken. I'll try and put some more pictures of him up soon.
Whoah, look at that...I think I'm actually dying.