Night Of The Head-Touchers . . .

. . .And other Orlando Weirdness.

I’m back from MegaCon and what can I say? It was pretty awesome. Brian and I were able to pull together about 50 sets of Robo Vol.1 (#1-#6) from our comps and they were all sold out by the beginning of Saturday. Brian put in an order for Robo t-shirts and those were ravaged, as were my old copies of the Robo Sketchbook. I got to meet some new folks and see some old friends from Mike Oeming’s Forum.

It was amazing how many people hunted us down like the dogs we are. It hadn’t occurred to me that this is the first Con I’ve done since Robo started getting noticed. Despite being hidden in the back of the Con, in the shittiest part of Artist Alley (across from the nerds hitting each other with foam swords), all sorts of Robo fans came by to say hello.

There were some really fantastic costumes at this show. My favorite was done by Justin Stanley. I really thought I took a pic of him! He has this great steam-punk alter-ego that he uses to promote his work –I can’t even begin to describe it, so hopefully he reads this and he can send me a picture to share. Had fun hanging out with him for a bit.

Here’s a few other’s though.

 Tank Girl(s). A Classic. Exploding bustier are always in fashion.

 A Red Scout and Medic, from Team Fortress2. There was an entire Red Team (minus the Heavy, unless I missed him) at the show. It made my little day.

By random accident there was also a Blue Spy! He was not with the Red guys and he even had the little white paper masks that “disguised” him as a member of Red Team.

To the four individuals who asked me to please, please, PLEASE, bring my Punisher work along, because you were going to be there and wanted to buy pages, I’d like to say thanks. You owe me $25 for pushing my suitcase over the weight-limit on Southwest Airlines and then NOT showing up to buy any of those pages. Jerks.

Note to self; ignore requests like that in the future.

So lets talk about Orlando for a bit. Wow. Its like one giant, overly landscaped mall/golf course. Good Christ, how do people live with all that fakie-fake shit? Speaking of Christ; they have a Jesus Land in Orlando! Can you believe it? Our Lord has a mother fuckin’ theme park?! Which basically shows you that there is no such thing as “going to far” in Orlando. I really wanted to duck out of MegaCon on Sunday and go to “The Holy Land”. I hear that Moses actually parts the Red Sea wave-pool every half-hour. But then I wasn’t sure; would a religious theme park be open on Sunday? I hope so. The irony would be delicious.

The weather was nice. DAMN nice. At least on Saturday and Sunday -it was almost cold. Thursday and Friday varied between raining like a bastard and being humid like dog breath. Brian tells me that that was very mild humidity. In retrospect, the weather was weird. I was either sweating or shivering. But the climate control in all the buildings we entered was very nice.

It was fun to finally meet Brian’s girlfriend. Lydia was awesome. She has a sweatshirt with a rhinestone Stormtrooper on it. What more can I say?

Brian’s 3 cats, on the other hand, and a fucking waste of space. They all have some sort of eating disorder, mental disability, or projectile hairball issue. Of course, friendly cats can be forgiven for being retards. But Kurt, Charile, and Macio were not friendly at all. They weren’t hostile or anything –just supremely indifferent. Those dudes are lucky that Brian and Lydia are such big hearted suckers. They would not last in my house.

I’m sitting here watching Cupcake playing in this canvas bag and popping out every now and then to meow at me and trot over for pats before returning to her bag. This little cat is paying her rent in CUTE. That’s what cats do.

Really the only headache of the weekend was the flight to and from Orlando. Going down the air was smooth as glass, yet my attempts at sketching were foiled by the 5yr old in front of me who more or less shook the entire Boeing 747-300 with his nervous energy. Or at least my fold down dinner tray. So then I thought I would sleep instead –I put my head back and I’m just about to nod off when something brushes my head. Then again a few seconds later. Were those someone’s fingers?

Now I knew that seated behind me was a family of 6 and one of their kids was autistic, so okay, I have a brother with a disabilities, I can totally understand that this kid is wound up and is only able to express himself in a limited way. I’m cool.

300 head pats later and we land in Orlando.

As we are getting up I turn around just to look at the kid and he’s not there! The family is actually TWO rows back. Behind me the entire time, for two and half hours TOUCHING MY HEAD was some Bud swilling mook from Quincy Mass decked out in crooked Sox hat and dirty Patriots t-shirt.

WHAT THE FUCK? WHY DID YOU KEEP TOUCHING MY HEAD!?!

Ugh!

The flight back was worse only because I was exhausted. I got crused against the window seat by a pair of pot-bellied, pig-faced morons. And I don’t say that to be mean. These guys (father and son) looked like giant, pig-men. For serious. And they were so inarticulate that it was almost impossible for them to hold a coherent conversation. Though they tried. Loudly. For hours. And then entire time “Dad” was sort of spilling over into my seat. There should really be some sort of dip-stick to see how deep you lie in the gene pool. If the water only comes up to your ankles you should not be allowed to reproduce.

I hate flying. Its almost as bad as the bus.

Today I am trying to recover. I got to bed about 1am this morning and then woke up at 6:30am to get Emma to school. Then I went to a local high school to talk to a small group of students who are doing a sort of independent study into anime and manga. It was great. The school’s librarian is mentoring the group. They’ve really been exploring some very interesting aspects of the art and I was quite impressed. Obviously I talked more about Western comics and Robo since those are what I know, but I brought along a wide selection of American and European TPBs to give them some more exposure to the stuff. One of the students –a senior who was sort of sitting in on the group- was familiar with Robo. She was a damn good artist as well. Super-cool. She really had an eye for the creepy.

For the rest of today I plan on just relaxing . . oh wait. Its 9pm. Today is almost over.

Crap.

We’re into our last round of reviews for Atomic Robo Vol.1 as Issue #6 starts to hit shelves. It looks like we’re going out on a strong note and people are excited for Vol.2. “This first series ends as it started: smart and fun! . . .his series is the perfect blend of wit and action wrapped up in a pulp sci-fi package worth the read to any fan. . . .The art is fantastic, the writing is flawlessly funny and within issues the overall book flows like a classic. Issue #6 leaves the Robo fan wanting more! Unless it’s outrageously high priced, the Vol 1 trade will probably be you best purchase of 2008.“

-Team Robo at the Big Apple Con way back in November. We look like ass.

 RANDOM SPLENDOR

-LEGO Batman? Yeah, we got that.

-Why Children Should Not Be Allowed On The Internets Unescorted.

-And a Really Funny Response To Her. This guys has a host of amusing videos. I think he treats the internet with all the respect and seriousness which it deserves.

Just a reminder that there are still some primaries going on. Make sure you vote kids.

If Yogi were real . . .