SATURDAY
That classy hotel sold muffin tops, so that's what breakfast was. Once in the convention center I see some wiseguy wearing the plush Westin bathrobe we all have in our rooms. People are pouring in, business is hoppin'. Even the Future Comics booth looks busy. Next to them is the gang from Two Morrows selling every magazine they've ever made. Comicology, Draw!, Comic Book Artist and the rest are essentially creating a fuller historical record of the comics business and its creators. I worried that only other cartoonists buy the magazines, but I see plenty of people with non-pro badges loading up on their catalogue. Meanwhile TM part-timer Donna Nolen-Weathington has an interesting project of her own that's coming together... she's been amassing a heavy-hitting list of comics creators to illustrate classic fairy tales that she's adapting, staying closer to their original versions. It looks like it's going to be very nice, so I'll link to her when she's ready to put samples online.
Okay, you get a whole guess as to who this is painting The Hulk.
 

Bah, Puny Manners...
Okay, it's time for Lou Ferrigno to get off the autograph circuit. Sure, this is optimum time for him to get out there and charge for photos, but during the show I heard of several incidents of Lou being rude to folks as he sat under that enormous Hulk image, and the previous night at the host party he was too 'portant to walk into a different room and take pictures with the people creating the venue for him to peddle his signature. Fah-- you sir, are no Bill Bixby. The Bixby could never be replaced by a software program.

I see Andy Neal, who has just taken over Chapel Hill's sole comics store (not counting the student store on campus) Second Foundation. He's meeting writers and artists and lining up people for signings. Andy is now the link between the comics industry and the University of North Carolina, the largest school in the state. So if you want Tarheels reading your book, you'd better start being nice to him now.

In other progressive movements, representatives from the county library had a booth set up, and were actively seeking quality books to put into circulation.They seemed quite pleased when I told them that Baker and Taylor had just begun distributing The Interman to the nation's libraries, and that my book was being considered by YALSA for placement on the Best Books for Young Adults list. Librarians risked SARS to go to Toronto recently and discuss the nominees. I hope more conventions roll out the welcome mat for their local libraries as well.

Old Home Week
I finally see Mike Wieringo, looking kind of confused. It wasn't until later that I found out that Mark Waid was dismissed from writing Fantastic Four, and Mike was going to be exiting too. Too bad, that book was getting really good and Mike's art has been at an all time high. Then our other old studio chum Richard Case showed up to sign and sketch for the day. Maybe I should make a final statement about our li'l defunct studio so there's a record somewhere. In the eventuality that a far-future issue of a TwoMorrows magazine decides to touch on the subject, of course.
Artamus Studio, 1993-2003
  Artamus Studios formed in 1993 in historic Hillsborough, NC. Richard Case was already there, just wrapping up his run on Doom Patrol. Chuck Wojtkiewicz (voit-kev-itch, see Bill Sienkiewicz) was drawing one of DC's Impact books and lived in the area around Chapel Hill. Mike moved down from Virginia, and inker John Lowe came over from Tennesee. Craig Gilmore obtained enough hit points to move up from being Rich's assistant to pencilling books. I returned to the area after trying to set a record for staying in college. We all crammed into the decrepit building that Rich rented space in, and spent the hottest summer on Earth there, literally sweating over pages. Mike began working with Waid on The Flash, and would be up til late at night finishing each page. We tried to cool down the place with this industrial fan I had, but not much luck there. Hillsborough is a hippy/arts and crafts town (plus hillbillies), and there was another artist in the adjoining room. An eccentric woman who did self-portrait after self-portrait in pastel, and farted loudly.(Chuck maintained that what we were hearing were her spongy flip-flops, but I know the truth) After weeks of arguing about a name, I think Rich, Craig and Mike came up with Artamus, a play on Toys-R-Us, but everyone for years just thought we were too stupid to spell Artemis.
By the end of summer we moved into The Mercantile Center around the block, which was air-conditioned, and we all had our own rooms. Rob Haynes was in at that point for a while, and John Lowe inked everyone's pencils. Scott Hampton got tired of isolation and joined up, and later Casey Jones moved to town and came in. We had lots of weekly guests like Randy Green, but no more members until Dave Johnson came in for a year or so.Except for the leaking ceilings, it was a lovely old building with hardwood floors and tall windows which allowed us to look down upon pedestrians and judge them. Until the parking lot was expanded, there was a little field in the back where we threw the football and frisbee. As the comics field shrunk so did our numbers, whittling down to just Rich and Mike until a couple months ago. The boys took out the last book and flat file, I'm not sure what they did with the copier and refrigerator, and closed the doors right at the 10 year mark. Oh well, it was longer than Studiosaurus I guess. Most of the guys are still involved in comics in some fashion except for Chuck who's the chief designer for Blur Studios, and Craig, who works on games at Sony. Richard, who was most recently drawing Vertigo's Hunter: Age of Magic is even walking the line with the computer gaming world over at Red Storm. Some of us did time working for animation studios like me, Casey and Dave. John Lowe inks Archie comics and teaches at the Savannah College of Art and Design. I don't know what the farting pastel woman is up to.		  
 
Because There Has To Be An Indy Comics Panel, That's Why
Back in the present day people come to take me to the panel about independent comics, because I obviously can't be trusted to make it there myself. It's Jon Lewis, Rich Tommaso and me, telling people how to get ISBN's and how distribution works, pretty much. And Jon telling the secret to winning a Xeric grant (I've forgotten the secret now, sorry). Which reminds me; I must have heard 20 people during the weekend talk about the Epic pitch they were honing. I'm so glad I'm not the person reading all of those.
I must have caught panel fever, because I also went to watch Cully Hamner interview Wieringo James Lipton-style, even wrapping up with the Bernard Pivot ten questions.I thought I was a Mike expert, but Cully brought out new stuff. I didn't know that the Fantastic Four work was spurred by a phone call Cully made to Marvel, for instance (really that's a Cully Fact though). Mike was too nice to say his favorite swear word.
Back at my table a kid who thinks everyone ought to give him free stuff returns to see if I'm just handing out these graphic novels. I chase him out of my yard like Mr. Wilson would Dennis, I already gave him a poster. Next to me Casey Jones is sweating because he's taken on too many sketch commissions. I had a good, acheivable number this time, and didn't push for more. No odd requests-- wait, yes there were. One girl asked for an Invisible Man, and having just read the latest League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, I naturally put Hyde in there chasing him. The most unique was from Craig Zablo who runs The Stallone Zone, a website dedicated to Sly. He has a growing collection of artists drawing their favorite Stallone roles, and after some thinking I decided to draw Stallone as Hatch from Victory. You know, the WWII soccer movie with Pele and Max Von Sydow.
The terrifying Craig Rousseau.
 

Dinner and a Spooky
Later a clot of Chapel Hill-area artists are coagulating in the Westin Lobby to find dinner. I'm prepared to lead them over to some place nearby that Tom Fleming mentioned, but Casey heard me mention Lupie's earlier, and now everyone wants to go there. So back to Lupie's.
Our crowd takes up two tables, and I have to ping-pong back and forth to catch up with everyone. Tommy Lee Edwards tells me about a book of his art coming out from IDW-- excuse me, pop culture icon Tommy Lee Edwards, according to IDW's press releases. It looks to be a really lavish book. Check out his serialized Teddy Grant feature on the site, it's nice. George Pratt and I talk about a billion projects he's doing, but I'm bugging him about one in particular. He's laying out pages with a massive stack of doodles that Alex Toth has been sending to Parts Unknown owner John Hitchcock for almost twenty years, and since I have all these ISBN's laying around, Octopus will happily publish that when it's done. Tentatively they're calling it Dear John-The Toth Doodlebook, and we'll set a precedent by making sure sales actually go back to Alex. I hope to have more to say on that soon. John Van Fleet scours the menu looking for something to suit his child-like palate, like pasketti, or momato soup.

  
It feels strange to not have Steve Lieber around quoting Paul Theroux, but Scott Hampton fills in nicely by quoting Kingsley Amis at length. We both agree that Martin Amis isn't worth quoting, except when he whines about his father. And somehow from this point, I can't remember the connection, someone brings up the Ghost in a Jar auction on eBay, which Casey retells, and our small table dives into telling ghost stories for the next hour.
Mainly we talk about other spooky artifacts and haunted paintings for sale, and what parts of the stories are convincing and what details stretch things too far. So we alternated between a campfire talk and storytelling workshop--maybe I'll take a recorder and start adding audio files to these things. But what if the tape picks up dead people's voices? I badger Chris Kemple to dig out his NASA ghost picture, and he promises to send me a jpeg. When he does, I'll post it in the next report I do whether it's in context or not. I'll explain what I'm talking about too. Now I can't remember any of the spectral episodes we were recounting, but here's a Website that collects 'em and Casey is a big fan of it.

Back at the Westin, raconteuring is rampant throughout the bar, which has lots of tables and couches to hold forth on. Half of my dinner party is now sitting around writer Bruce Jones, and god knows what he's saying.

Jones, flanked by Hampton and Van Fleet.
  I start working on Patrick Hulman's sketchbook and he requests a Jean Gray Phoenix, most of which I can remember, except for the key parts which would make her recognizable. My dilemma becomes everyone's as a whole table of people are doodling trying to remember the Phoenix symbol. This becomes too much for Pat Sun, who heads up to his room for his laptop to do an image search. Friend and pre-pressman on Interman, Joey Robinson, sees Adam Hughes and walks over to him with a sheet of paper, and of course Adam solves the mystery out of his head. Wieringo, Todd Dezago, and Craig Rousseau come through but don't stop, they're on their way to go see Southern Culture on the Skids. I'm a huge SCOTS fan, but I've got to stay and talk about funny books dammit, and that's just the way it's going to be. This is a great place to hang out, but at some point the bar cranked up some godawful music to turn the place into a disco, and frowns broke out across the room. Eventually it dies back down. Tom Feister tells me about a really weird concept he's created, and I wish I could share it with you. Maybe he'll tell you at a show if you seem trustworthy. Suddenly someone breaks out the Pimp Hat, and all hell breaks loose from that point. Something about a fuzzy purple hat just makes everyone lose it.  
   
Two-Fisted Feister, and Gaijin Gone Wild!
You've made it this far, might as well see what happened that Sunday.