Long Beach Comic Con Nov. 3&4

The Long Beach Comic Con is coming up this weekend! It's our last show of what has been a really exciting year for us. We've attended every year of the Long Beach Comic Con since its inception and have enjoyed ourselves each time. The show is a nice, manageable size with a good variety of publishers, creators and vendors all in a hassle-free location (a.k.a. easy to park!). So it should be fun to be on the opposite side of the table this time around. If you're planning to attend, please stop by and say hi to us at Table 1406.

APE 2012 Recap

The 2012 version of the Alternative Press Expo has come and gone, but it was without a doubt one of the most fun shows we've done so far. APE has a wonderfully upbeat vibe, coming from all the amazingly creative artists who exhibit, that makes the show feel unlike any other around. Last year we scoped out the expo as attendees and had such a blast we were super stoked to exhibit there for the first time. APE did not disappoint. We managed to catch up with old friends and make new ones. We saw a lot of great artwork and bought a lot of great comics!

On Saturday night after the show, we managed to make it out to the Cartoon Art Museum for the Los Bros Hernandez art gallery showing. There were a good number of pages from the brothers, but also a lot of incredible pieces from other great cartoonists.

All in all it was a fun weekend! We're really hoping to exhibit at APE again next year, but we'll just have to see if that'll be doable when we also want to try out some other conventions (travel can be darn expensive!) For now, we have the Long Beach Comic Con next up on the schedule. We've attended every year of that show and enjoyed each time, but again it'll be our first time exhibiting. It's a semi-local show for us, so it'll be nice to catch up with other SoCal comic folk and close out our first convention-going year in style!

Sign in front of the Concourse

Concourse Exhibition Center: Home of the Alternative Press Expo

Entrance of the Concourse

Making it official

Lower level of the exhibit hall

Back of the exhibit hall

View from our table

Love & Rockets Gallery Show

Mario Hernandez

Gilbert Hernandez

Will Eisner Spirit page

Charles Schultz Peanuts page

Popeye animation cel

Outside of City Lights Book Store

Spilled a drink on the flight home...... so long APE!

We're going APE!

This weekend the Ginger crew will be headed to San Fran to setup for A.P.E. We're excited to return to a great city and great expo. We heard there's an exhibitor mixer on Friday and we'll try our damnest to make it. But otherwise, hopefully we'll see some old and new faces come by our table. We're at Booth 915 on the right hand side of the exhibit hall. Free high fives for all!

Comikaze 2012 Recap

Last weekend we tabled at Stan Lee's Comikaze Expo and it was a great turnout. Although some things could've gone smoother (sign in process, long attendee lines) it's their second year of the show so I'll cut them some slack. It'll be interesting to see how it grows in the next few years; LA needs their own version of Comic-Con. Hopefully we'll be back next time, depending on our schedule of course. Meanwhile check out our pics below.

Jared's convention sketches.

  

All Yehudi's comics fit into a pizza box

Comikaze Sept. 15th-16th

 

This weekend we're going to be at the Comikaze Expo at the Convention Center in Downtown LA, from 10am-7pm on Saturday and 11am-6pm on Sunday. We're really amped up for the show and we know it'll be a great turnout. There's going to be lots of events going on besides comic books like: a Salute Your Shorts reunion, a zombie apocalypse, a cosplay contest, quidditch match and of course, us.

As you see on the floor plan below, we're located at that nifty orange 'X'. We'll be set up above the Star City Games section at booth number 520. Stop on by, and we'll try to entertain you with our charming witticisms.

Comic Meet-ups

With us not attending this year's San Diego Comic Con and on top of the lull in our convention schedule, we still wanted to keep up our comic book socializing. It's pretty much assumed that we're an indoor-type of bunch, with our deadlines and all. But we're not all anti-social vampires. We like to get out, occasionally. But at a convention, it's difficult to have a real conversation with creators, cause most of the time you can barely hear them or there's too much foot traffic around their booth. I've been searching for other ways to meet writers and artists in the comic community, so I signed up for a couple of groups on meetup.com. 

Living in a large city you're bound to find more than one comic book pow-wow. The first one I checked out was Comic Makers LA which meets once a month in Downtown. It's mostly artists, some working professionals and others still honing their craft. It's a casual atmosphere where everyone sits around a long table, sketching and chatting. It's kinda like stitch-and-bitch but instead of sewing you're drafting. It takes place on a Sunday so depending on my weekend warrior schedule, I'll try to attend the next one.

The other meetup group is Koffee & Komics. This takes place at a cafe, where it's more of a social setting. From where I was sitting I can see veterans and newbies making the rounds introducing each other. And for the next four hours people were coming and going, talking about podcasts, showing their sketchbooks and sharing industry war stories. At this point, I know somebody, who knows somebody else, who used to be Jim Lee's landlord. The world gets smaller and smaller. I'm definitely looking forward to the next one.

And finally there's Comic Book Sunday where recently we chilled out with lots of creators and fans, post SDCC. This took place during a hot afternoon where it could've easily been mistaken as a BBQ. Alas, there were no grilling meats, but there was a healthy dose of "whatcha' reading these days." Price of admission is hard to beat, a donation of comic books for the swap table. We donated a handful of single issues and picked up a few as well. And since it's on a Sunday, availability may be an issue, but I'll try.

All in all, we met quite a few local creators whom we hope to bump into again soon. Like with most social gatherings, strange faces become familiar faces. And possibly, acquaintances can become friends...or collaborators. You just never know who ya gonna meet.

Clown Fight Review

Dale Wilson over at BuyIndieComics.com was kind enough to review Clown Fight last week. I met Dale at the Long Beach Expo back in May and his enthusiasm for indie comics was so wonderful to see that I immediately had to check out his website when I got home. The site, Buy Indie Comics, is great at spotlighting creator owned books and offering up articles on making indie comics by the creators themselves. Go on over and check out his Clown Fight review!

Freak Scene - LA

Rob and I recently went to Freak Scene LA at Synchronicity. Friday, July 6th was the opening night of the exhibition and it's scheduled to show through the rest of the month. We stopped by to support some of the artists we admire, including our friend Shalo P whom we first met at the Alternative Press Expo in San Francisco last year. Rob picked up a few zines as well, a sketch book by Jim Rugg called Notebook which was designed to resemble a spiral bound notebook, and a wonderful Popeye inspired mini comic by Tom Neely called Doppelganger.

It was a great turnout, lots of people mingling and admiring the gallery pieces. The following day they had live performances by Tom Neely, Josh Bayer, Pat Aulisio, Victor "Bald Eagles" Cayro, Keenan Marshall Keller & Shalo P just to name a few. All in all, it was a cool event that allowed these underground artists to really shine.