I'm Back From Indie Comics Creator Con!
Last Saturday, I was in New Haven, Connecticut for the second annual Indie Comics Creator Con and it was AMAZING!
What a great weekend!!!
As the name implies, this year’s Indie Comics Creator Con was an immensely cool convention that had no big companies announcing that their comic was becoming a movie, no vendors selling walls of Funko Pop figures, nor any artists selling fan art prints of characters they don’t own. Curated and run by
, IC3 is a convention solely for independent comic creators!I was glad to have my good friend and fellow comic-maker
as my booth buddy! He’s and old hand at convention tabling and travels the country promoting his books a lot, so he had plenty of wise advice for me throughout the weekend, on both traveling and tabling!
There were over 170 exhibitors there, and the level of artistic skill on display was simply astounding. It was “All Killer, No Filler”, as creator and fellow IC3 exhibitor Christian Meesey described it! The only downside of the show was that I didn’t get out from behind my table for long enough to meet them all! I really am bummed about this! To anyone reading this whom I may have said “I’ll be back later to chat”, and never got back to you, I’m SO sorry! I just ran out of time.
I did pick up a lot of cool stuff, though, and did trades with other creators, exchanging issues of Steamroller Man for so many cool comics! I cannot wait to dig in to all these books!
The photo above is literally only a fraction of the comics that were available at the convention, and my one regret was that I had to split my time between manning my table and dashing quickly around the con to check out other creators’ work! Being new to convention tabling, it was hard to gauge how much time I could spend away from my table. Every time I returned, James would say “someone came by looking for you”… GAAAHH!! If only I could be in two places at once! If only the convention was TWO days instead of one… Oh well… That’s just more motivation to go back next year, which I definitely want to do!
I had a lot of lovely interactions with people, some of whom already knew about Steamroller Man! One particularly exciting moment was meeting indie comics legend
, who already was a fan of Steamroller Man!! This floored me, as did his kind words about my work. Honestly, my brain’s still spinning over this, with the word “WOW” echoing in my head since Saturday!
Wow. Wow. Wo-- sorry, where was I? Oh yeah -
Another absolute highlight was meeting Ethan Young in person! I had discovered Ethan’s work on Twitter a few years ago and immediately appreciated his deft ink work. The variety of textures this man can create with his ink line has inspired and informed my own work. I own a couple of original art pieces from Ethan, so it was a delight to connect in real life! I’m currently reading his Reuben-award winning graphic novel NANJING: The Burning City, which I picked up at the show, and it does not disappoint!
It was also delightful to connect in person with some fellow students of
ComixLaunch course, Robert W. Radau and Sarah Cooke. Respectively, they write and publish the comics The Devil in Disguise and No Spell Lasts Forever, which are very different from each other but both engaging reads!There was also a mini-meeting of fellow
listeners with Allan Liska, prolific creator and publisher of Green Archer Comics, and Joshua Smith Jearmon, creator of the Bad Natures comic series. These guys both put me to shame with their creative output!
Lessons From My Second Convention Table Experience
I did a previous post on what I learned from my first table experience, so I thought I’d add to that here. I hope to learn something from every convention I do! Here are a few things that exhibiting at my first out-of-state convention taught me.
Southwest Airlines doesn’t have assigned seats! I’d never flown with them before and so had no idea that they have a first come, first served approach to seating passengers. So check in as early as you can to give yourself the best chance of getting a decent seat, not to mention room in the overhead lockers!
Try and fit all of your convention paraphernalia (banners, tablecloth, art supplies, table signs, etc) into a carry-on sized case, and then bring your clothes in a backpack that can fit under an airplane seat. Then box up your convention stock of books, prints, etc and ship them to your destination - either a FedEX or UPS pickup point, your hotel or the convention location. Then you don’t have to check any bags on your flight and risk them being lost or delayed.
Shipping your books to the convention ahead of time is a great way to avoid lugging them there yourself - BUT - buy a return shipping label ahead of time and print it out to bring with you, so you can ship your books back after the convention is done! I didn’t think of this until I was driving around New Haven after the convention trying to find a FedEx or UPS store that was open at 8pm (Ron Howard voice: there weren’t any).
I discovered that I don’t actually like drawing on-the-spot commissions! About 30 minutes before the convention closed, a customer wanted a sketch cover commission. I told them that there wasn’t enough time to do anything of good quality and would rather not take the commission, but they said “anything would be fine”. So I charged them less than 20% of the price, and gave them a very rough drawing. They seemed to like it, but I wasn’t happy with it. My table buddy, James, suggested doing some sketch cover artwork ahead of time and offering them for sale as original art pieces, rather than drawing them on the spot. I think this is a great idea, and I’ll try that approach next time.
You can’t land the shots you don’t take - I brought my email signup sheet with me and had it on my table, but I didn’t really urge anyone to sign up. As a result, I only got one person who noticed the sheet and spontaneously signed up. I think if I’d pointed it out to more people I would have gotten at least a few more signatures. I’ll have to remember this at my next convention.
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed my wrap-up of IC3 2025!!
Keep Rolling!
Matt