tengu productions

What a long weekend! Its Monday and I had to work a short shift, but I feel like I’ve been disconnected from life for weeks. My girlfriend and I had an awesome time. We met a lot of great creators for the first time, and got to catch up with some people we see every year.

This year I didn’t spend much time at all waiting for signatures on books. By now, I’ve pretty much got anything signed that I’d want. I got a bunch of sketches and had creators sign the back of my sketchbook instead. I don’t do the panels either, because that cuts into my getting sketches time, but honestly, its Seattle, its April, they don’t announce anything new and amazing at this con.

Ron Marz is definitely one of my favorite creators I met this year. I’m a fan of most of his non-Big 2 stuff and he was so extremely cool to talk to and I’ve interacted with him on his Comic Bloc forum. On the second day of the show, I scored the greatest deal ever. There was a Samurai: Heaven and Earth statue on the floor at the TFAW.com booth. First, let me state, these guys did me right and I HIGHLY recommend them to people who have thought about shopping with them. Anyway, I asked how much the statue was and one of the guys tells me its $20. I’m like, you’re kidding right? The box was damaged, so they opened it to see if it was broken. Turns out there was just the tiniest nick on the bottom of the base of the statue. I literally jumped like a 5-year old on Christmas morning for joy. They hooked me up with a $175 statue for $20 and I got the Valeria and Thoth-Amon busts from the Dark Horse Conan series for $10 each. Again, these guys did me right and they deserve much respect.

I promptly took the Samurai statue over to Ron Marz and he signed it, of course. We chatted about The Path, Samurai: Heaven and Earth, and about how damn phenomonal of an artist Luke Ross is. If things go the way Ron and Luke want, we’ll see more of Samurai: Heaven and Earth after this 2nd series is over.

I surprised my girlfriend by getting her a sketch from Mike Avon Oeming. Her birthday is April 8th, so I had him do a Joker holding a birthday present. She was very excited about it. She loves going to these shows and seeing these guys do their work and she really appreciates my hobby (obsession) and the art.

Oeming is a real cool guy, as well. His upcoming Mice Templar comic looks amazing. I told him I was Godfather on Newsarama and we had chatted in posts before, and I had asked him about that last issue of Stormbreaker that was a strange curveball from the rest of the series. We had a good chuckle about it. I’m very impressed with him branching out his art style with the watercolors. Great writer, great artist, and I’m always down to support his books. (I guess I should read Powers, huh…)

I had to stop by and chat with Rick Remender. He’s always a blast and he did another amazing sketch for me this year. Can’t wait to see the new Fear Agent series and his End League series that’s coming up. I’ve been told I have a man crush on him, he is pretty cute!

I have to hype another creator we met over the weekend. Michael Broussard is a young artist at Top Cow. He has some Darkness work coming up, and is also a part of the Top Cow/Marvel crossover stuff. This guy rocks. He’s very humble and its refreshing to see someone that draws for the love of it. He was doing free sketches all weekend. I asked him for a Harley Quinn sketch. He worked on it for at least an hour, including standing up, hunched over the sketch pad, and his markers were running out of ink. All of that, and I tried to pay him for the sketch, and he wouldn’t take it. Mike is a complete stand up guy who deserves success.

As I mentioned in another post, TMNT the comic appears to be on an indefinite hiatus according to Jim Lawson. Click here to read more about it.

Aside from the awesome statue deals, I did manage to score a few comics I’d been after for a while now; a borderline very fine copy of Captain Marvel #1 (Marvel Comics 1968) and a Fables #1.

We had a great time, and we can’t wait for next year. I appreciate everyone who took the time out to chat, shake hands, and especially sign and do sketches, except Aaron Lopresti, apparently he was too busy to sketch, and didn’t appear to be all that interested to be there really. I don’t want to dump on the guy, because if someone doesn’t want to sketch, I can totally appreciate that. Mark Bagley and Frank Cho weren’t sketching at all. Lopresti told me he was too busy, that’s cool. He did say I could try checking back on the second day, that’s great, if he would’ve shown up. The owner of the LCS I go to tried to approach him about a signing at his store, and apparently he doesn’t like doing them because he doesn’t like sitting around for hours and/or doing sketches and all that jazz. I can appreciate that. Why do the cons then? Oh, well, guys like Mike Broussard make it all worth it for me. Enjoy some pics of creators and my sketches.

Bendis	Chris Giarrusso	Dexter Vines	Jeremy Haun

Jason Metcalf	Rucka and Waid	Steve Sadowski	Shane White

The sketches:

Batmankoff	Captain Marvel	Jonah Hex
Shane White	Jason Metcalf	Jeremy Haun

Lobster Johnson	Mad Hatter	Superman Red Son
Sean “Cheeks” Galloway	Tim Sale	Dexter Vines

Wolverine	Robin	Golden Age Sandman
Chris Giarrusso	Chris Giarrusso	Steve Sadowski

-Mike.M