If you live on the East Coast and have not been to
HeroesCon, you owe it to yourself to go. It is one of the nation's oldest and largest events. And, frankly, it's pretty great. The Charlotte Convention Center is an ideal venue, one of the few large enough where there can be 30 people in line waiting to talk to Matt Fraction and still allow the flow of traffic between the aisles to move freely. Also, it's fairly well ventilated, so none of the comic-con funk that you are forced to endure at smaller cons. The folks at Heroes Aren't Hard to Find make sure HeroesCon is always exceptionally well run, everything starts on time, everyone on staff is friendly, and the admission price is actually affordable. You can't really beat this con.
While I love that there were so many well known creators, inkers, and colorists in attendance, my favorite part is always walking through the indie section and getting to meet the up and coming illustrators. It's always fun to see what hilarious creations people are having artists do on commission. I couldn't help but to giggle as I watched
Brockton McKinney from Lost Story Studios draw Shawn of the Dead fighting zombie Jesus! Also, I got an unbelievable print for $3 from
Logan Faerber! We will certainly try to interview him in the coming weeks.
This year, HeroesCon also had their very first gay themed panel discussion: LGBT Characters in the Comics. Hosted by Bryan Pittard from the The Nerdy Show's
Flame On podcast, the panel featured Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez of
Love & Rockets, Terry Moore of
Strangers in Paradise, and Kate Leth of
Kate or Die! We went to a grand total of 8 panels this weekend, and hands down, this was our favorite, though the Afterlife With Archie Panel and Kevin Eastman of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles panels were pretty entertaining, too. Fortunately, we were able to film the entire LGBT panel! If you have 40 minutes, you should watch. It's well worth your time.
My pal Steve M. has been going to HeroesCon quite some time. He is a huge comics buff. He has more comics and boxes of comics and closets of comics than anyone I know. This time around he said one of his favorite panels was
Using Digital Tools to Make Comics.
"They were a great panel because they were so excited about talking up the programs they used and how they would flow between digital and traditional sketch-on-paper work for everything they do. Brandon Peterson is a long time photo shop user and expert, and he was talking about a particular tool within the app that cuts merging scans together seamlessly automatically. The other two artists David Marquez and Juan Doe went nuts because they spend hours merging scans by hand for their larger pages. The best thing overall about that panel was how enthusiastic the artists were about sharing with each other and with the audience." Steve's husband Jason adds, "I love watching established artist still getting excited about their work."
So, we already posted our
Drink and Draw photos from the Friday night charity event raising money for Parkinsons research. Here's our favorite pics from the rest of the weekend. We purposely left out cosplay pics (except for one), as we are certain there will be a million of those floating around the interwebs.
Click on any pic to enlarge!
