Nerd time!
Because my Philishave electric razor has become angered, and has recently been trying to remove my face, I finally relaxed the no-blades stance I've had since I got removable hair, and got a set of these:


It's not bad! I only have two issues: the goo-leaving moisture strip is not unlike wiping one's face with a snail; and it contains a battery. Being a stick with a knife on it, it doesn't functionally require a battery. I can only assume that the manufacturers felt that it needed one to attract the gamer market. Probably they just couldn't figure out a way to get a thumbstick on that bitch.


I bought one of these last week. I already own a 4 GB thumb drive, which was much cheaper than this one--and when I bought that one, I didn't already own one. Nevertheless, I couldn't build a little vroom vroom car out of that one, and that's an important feature.


Last weekend was the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, and while I haven't heard about numbers yet, it looked spectacularly well attended from where we were sitting. I wish we could have seen more of it, but we were there to work.



Lexington, in particular, pimped out his little green tail-less ass.

Kyle sold out of his Tarot cards again, and Lisa did a brisk trade in little My Little Pony magnets, obviously spurred by the San Diego exclusive super ponies she had on her table. We refer to them as "mascots" to the people who want to buy them, but in actuality they are bait.

People didn't seem to get what buying prints was about, for any of us. It was certainly useful to have the binder of them so they could see what we could do, but they were more interested in 8x10 commissions than anything else. I drew a four-winged gargoyle, Robin giving the Trickster an epic wedgie, and Tank Girl; Lisa did four marker commissions. I wish I knew how to colour with something portable.

Nobody had any idea what the deal with sketchcards is, either, so I can probably ignore them in future.

I can't recommend the iPhone enough to people who sit behind tables drawing character commissions. The ability to nearly instantly call up reference images of obscure Flash villains with one's fingertips is essential. At one point I had to hijack Michael's iPhone because I needed a picture of Robin and Lisa was using mine; astoundingly Michael had only one picture of Robin on it. And then the four horsemen came and we were omg ded.

Reminder for the Manitoba con: get previous comics set up on ka-blam.com, since Lulu has decided to be prohibitively expensive for some reason. Also finish TDA #1 and whichever I decide my own comic should be. And make little magnets.

The best thing about the Comic Expo was the souvenir artbook.  In previous years, only the invited guests had been asked to submit art for it.  Attendees were then able to comb the dealers' room and collect signatures from the guests without having to buy things from them, which was fun for everyone!  Except possibly not the guests, come to think of it.

This year, exhibitors and attendees were also invited to submit art for the book.  Lisa, Kyle and I were all accepted, which was fantastic!  First it was harrowing, as Lisa's piece skipped ahead of the judging process, and Kyle and I were left to await results.  He was notified before I was, and I am not too proud to admit that I behaved like a big baby for a couple of days.

I bought three books ahead of the Expo date (one for us, one for Sonia, one for my parents).  They mail out vouchers for people who do that.

When we arrived at our tables on Saturday morning, we found weird little metal stands with "Return To Calgary Expo" tabs sitting on top of our table covers.  We had all our own comic stands, of course, and we had no idea why the Expo would want to lend us two of them, so we tossed them onto my hockey bag and ignored them.

I redeemed my vouchers.  They were still getting the books out of the boxes at the time, so I was given numbers 1, 2, and 3 out of 850.  Nice!

And then on the way back to the table, we saw that all the other contributing artists had been given the same weird little stands, with comp copies of the book in them.  Oh.  And, sure enough, our comp copies arrived at our table in short order.  That meant we ended up with five copies of the book, but it is for charity, after all.  And Michael took one, so as it worked out we only have one extra.

It was a whole lot of fun signing our pages for signature collectors.  The organizers had gone to the trouble of highlighting the contributors' locations on the floorplan, which made hunting easier and resulted in a lot of book-passing between us.  We got very good at finding our own pages.  Plus, several people who came to the table for signatures ended up buying things, and it certainly increased traffic around Artists' Alley.

I really hope the Expo opens the artbook up for submissions again next year.  I just can't blow enough sunshine up that idea's ass.  (Not that I don't blow enthusiastic sunshine up the Expo's ass generally.)

And the most astounding thing about this year's Expo was that my parents came to it to see us.