NY COMICBOOK MARKETPLACE

Today was a small one-day show at the Penn Plaza Pavilion. I got a late start on the day, spending the better part of the morning digging out books to have autographed since I'd be there as a "civilian." But, some of the people I wanted to see were going to be in a panel anyways, so I took my time.

Getting there I had the unpleasant experience of running into Mark right off. I kept it short and civil, even though it made me feel sick. After that, I hit the floor and wandered around. I got autographs from Danny Fingeroth, Mark Texeira, Rich Buckler, Steve Mannion, Bob Wiacek, Sean Chen, Cliff Chiang, Chris Claremont and Larry Hama (including re-autographing two of the books that were stolen from me).

I hit a couple quarter bins, but I restrained myself. Came away with maybe 80 books or so, no boxes this time! Although, the guy didn't have any bags so I ended up with a box anyway... Oh well.

Coming home, I got the "brilliant" idea to post up all the autographs I've gotten over the years up on my Myspace and Facebook. Digging them all out, I didn't realize I had gotten SO MANY! My pile was HUGE, and not even complete as I had a couple scattered here and there. Me and my dumb ideas!

BLIZZARD '10

We had a couple decent snowfalls this year with ACTUAL accumulation. Better than we have in the last couple of years, but nowhere near the levels of say '96 or '88. Although, if you listened to the media we've had the storm of the century each time.

Well, TODAY was the REAL blizzard. It snowed all through the night to the point that the unplowed streets were buried under a good 2 feet of snow. That's an example of my walk to work from the train, since pops was at work overnight 'cause of the weather.

We had a high number of sick calls, as I'm sure the whole district did, resulting in their canceling service. But, instead of sending us home, they had us collapse all the routes into several and just deliver everything in one shot. I got the route down the block from mine and was paired up with the guy who does the one across from that.

Basically the day was full of challenges. The snow kept alternating from heavy to light. As it got warmer, the snow we were parked next to started to melt forming a puddle across the underside of our truck which cars began splashing through as they passed. Had a fair number of people who didn't come in smartly because of the snow, and couldn't make one bulk delivery 'cause they closed off all access for falling ice, leaving the regular plenty of work for Monday. Basically we were out there till 3. We dropped off whatever pick-ups were made to a sweep driver and pulled in, about the same time as everyone else, it seemed.

I had managed to go 2 years without working in horrendous weather like this. Had a good run, but was bound to catch up to me. Aside from wet socks, and having to shovel right after work, it was actually kinda fun. Challenges are what keep the job interesting...when not busy making it stressful.

WRITING ARCHIE

Heavy rain and snow couldn't keep me away from my third MoCCA panel, the writers of Archie Comics. It was a fun little panel, a little under-attended, but offered some good insights into the world of Archie. In recent months I've found myself reading Archie more and more lately. I used to read it all the time, especially at the store when I worked there. But actually collecting it? I've had maybe 4 issues and several digests to my credit. And while some stories are sillier than others, the warm simplicity of the book is a big draw for me. In fact, the panel sparked a couple Archie script ideas. I never wrote Archie before, but hey, may as well try.

RECAP

Boy have I been busy. So busy, blogging kinda fell to the wayside. But, really, the days haven't been different enough to really warrant their own individual blogs. So, here, for those out there who stuck around and really care, is a rundown of my goings on.

The books are going smoothly, and yet they're not. I had to shelve the prose book while focusing on Iconic. Recruiting ultimately went fine, as did story assignments. I did have a couple of artists unfortunately drop out, one was a real asshole...waiting a MONTH before doing so when he KNEW his life was scheduled to become hectic. Dick. No professionalism. The big problem is I'm having a hard time keeping an artist on this one story. Hopefully third time's the charm. One artist already turned in his pencils for review a whopping 10 days early. I love that.

The prose book is also underway finally. I spent all of yesterday setting it up. I just need to figure out how to get it to a printer...once I pick one. The only thing holding me back is James who's doing the cover and a story image. Then I still need to run the cover over to Willie to do mock-ups on. I was hoping to get the book out this month, but I guess I need to settle for March.

Index vol. 2 has kicked off, but since I didn't have original issues and they prefer it I sat out #1. Which was fine, let me have some time to do some of my other projects. I'm back in for #2 though, but the fun part is they've completely changed up a lot of the formatting from the last volume. One issue I did had a couple of the new changes within it so I sent that along to the editors to see if I'm following correctly. Once I get feedback on that I can polish up the other 5 entries I got (out of the dozen I requested...getting shafted due to all the n00bs on the team I think) and send those in, then eagerly await bidding on entries for #3. I'm thinking maybe it's good I got only 6, those six took me an ENTIRE day. Not easy.

On the flip side, the Iron Man entries are being collected into one big trade edition in time for the movie. I did what I could on editing, but everyone seemed to miss one thing: the variant cover to vol. 3 #1 got cut out. I know I saw it in early PDFs for edits, but somewhere between the last edits and publication it got deleted. SO, it's not gonna be a COMPLETE book, but good enough. I'm also not too happy with their cover choices, as they have a montage of Iron Man #1s interrupted by the first part of the Demon in the Bottle story. I understand why they did it, but design-wise it kills the symmetry. Ah well. Otherwise, I think it looks great...so PICK IT UP!

That is all for now.