Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Catching up from Comic-Con 2010

Alright, here's my almost-complete Comic-Con update:

Got 18 hours of sleep in the last 24 hours. I have officially recovered from Comic-Con :)

Highlights of the week: Lee Bermejo, Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo all dropped by my table to check out Sweets and talk comics. For those that don't know, these are three of my favorite artists working in comics today. I had met Bermejo briefly a few years ago, but didn't really have a chance to hang. Great guy, super talented. And pick up INTERSECTIONS by Sean Phillips and Duncan Fegredo because it's brilliant. I got to flip through the actual Moleskine sketchbook at the show. TONS of inspiration in that book.

G4TV's Blair Butler loved SWEETS, she stopped by my table twice during the show to chat a bit, and I passed off some original art to her from issue 2 (hint, I drew a cameo for her in that issue). I got great reviews from all the big comic news sites including Newsarama, Comic Book Resources iFanboy, etc. Massive fan buzz on the floor, this book was selling itself all week long.

Comic pros flooded my table to see SWEETS and I had many appearances on TV news, documentaries, podcasts, and got interviewed by a Jonas brother.

I was also bombarded by producers, managers, agents, and even a couple of actors stopped by to check out the book.

Foreign publishers loved SWEETS, so we may be reprinting the eventual graphic novel version in Italian and French.

Me, Eisner-winning artist Rob Guillory (and our pal Ross) got tickets to check out Adam Carolla on Saturday night, had an amazing time. If you haven't listened to the podcast, you should give it a try. Funny stuff.

I sort of fell behind on reposting reviews of SWEETS #1 since I was so busy at the show, but here are a couple that I wanted to share:

"A brilliant start to the five-part series" —Newsarama

"…I really loved ‘Sweets’ It was an impulse buy and paid off" —ComicNews.info

I got a half dozen job offers from writers I'd love to work with someday, and a whole slew of upcoming writers were asking about collaborations. Sadly, I can only take on a few projects a year, so I've got to choose carefully. But two projects in particular caught my interest, so I'll follow up about those soon.

It's always great to hang out with industry friends and catch up. There's never enough time to hang out with everyone, but it's great to catch up a bit and share a few minutes of conversation. The smaller conventions are always much better for hanging out because there's less chaos overall. I hope to make it to the Wizard Austin show, and possibly the NYCC.

And I truly enjoyed meeting the readers that keep this industry alive. You guys ROCKED Comic-Con for me. I sold a ton of comics and for the first time ever, I had almost as many people walk up with copies they've already purchased. It's great to know that someone cared enough about the book to pack it up and fly across the country just to get it signed. I'm humbled.

Thanks for reading!

Now I'm gonna get back to work.

Kody Chamberlain
July 27, 2010

3 comments:

ben... said...

Kody, great to hear about the great time you had and all the support across the board. That must be a good boost to the confidence and motivation to keep rolling on Sweets. I must say I've been reading through past blog posts and you continue to inspire me. I'm eating up all the process of production posts. Very interesting stuff, and you've made me pick up books on figure drawing now!

Keep up the amazing work!

Jim Di Bartolo said...

Congrats on the success and the fun Con! I missed it this year, but I'll most definitely be attending next year with my oft-collaborating wife (she's a writer) with new projects we've been working on together.

And your taste in "three of you favorite" artists is quite good -- those guys all ROCK.

Continued success and if you're at SDCC next year I'll come by your table to tell you in person how much I envy that giant cork-board wall of yours (seriously that would come in VERY handy for me right now. Alas, my studio's walls are all at a slant as it's in our upstairs. Our next house will have straight studio walls dammit!).

Kody Chamberlain said...

Ben, thanks for the kind words! Glad you dig Sweets, and I am planning to do more process stuff soon. Just need to catchup on pages a bit.

Jim, I do appreciate the feedback. Looking forward to meeting you. And yes, the cork wall OWNS. :)