HeroesCon

HeroesCon may well be my new favorite comic convention of all time. Allison and I went this year for the first time, and had an absolute BLAST. We finally got back home late yesterday afternoon, and I’m slowly, slowly, slowly starting to wake up again.

The convention itself was fantastic, with a big ole dealer’s room and artist alley (a comic convention that’s all about people who sell comics and people who make comics? That’s crazy talk!), but I think my favorite thing about the show was the fact that just about everybody from pros to retailers to fans was staying in the same hotel, the Westin just across the street from the convention center. You could hang out in that lobby before the convention center opened or after the dealer’s room closed and see literally everybody walk by. I don’t think Allison and I got to bed before 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning every day, and it was due to the fact that after dinner every night we’d run into a raft of fascinating and friendly people to talk with into the small hours of the night.

Some of those friendly people were artists, who agreed to do sketches for us. Isn’t it nice to know people with actual talent?

The first sketch we got was of Gwen Dylan by the unsinkable Dean Trippe. How gorgeous is this?

Next up was the unflappable Colleen Coover, who did a sketch of Gwen in her “normal” mode, and then another of Gwen gone totally Romero after missing too many meals. Makes for a nice before-and-after, don’t you think?

And my pal Francesco Francavilla did this dandy sketch for me in the back of his Chiaroscuro .1 sketchbook.

And just when I thought I had gotten as much awesome as I could handle, Fables fan extraordinaire Cindy McShane swung by and dropped off three little gems of fan art, depicting the iZombie gang.

Fantastic art aside, the con was worth every penny, if only for the chance to meet so many creators I’ve admired for years, and to put faces to names that previously were only Facebook profiles or Twitter handles. And I’ll be buoyed up for weeks on all the nice things that readers who swung by the table said about Cinderella and iZombie. Thanks, everybody!

I will definitely be returning to HeroesCon next year!