The Cons of 2009

Miss, Cheese and Kevin at Tcaf 2007

With exception to the NYCC, (which isn't cool enough to be San Diego*, and too high-end to be about actually interesting comics) I love me some comic-con action.  I really get a thrill piling Team 12 into a van and driving out in the wilds of the great adventure that is North America. 

This year we have a metric ton of material coming out, so much so in fact that there should be a new book or debut at every one!  Lucky you, the Ho12 consumer! Here are the shows and crew members you can expect to see this season...

Tcaf

The Toronto Comic Art Festival

May 9-10, 2009

Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge St. 

Toronto, Canada

Every other year we treat ourselves to this wonderful show, crossing borders to sell dick and fart comics is the most honest thrill an artist can feel. I feel I am helping America by contributing to down-paying the national trade deficit.  

Attendees: 

Cheese, Miss Lasko-Gross, Kevin Colden, Brian Musikoff, Dave McKenna

New Stuff: 

• Miss is debuting her latest opus A Mess of Everything at Tcaf!  Come on out and get your filthy hands on one of the first copies off the presses!  AMoE is the sequel to her 2007 graphic novel Escape from Special, both are available from Fantagraphics, and from Miss herself at the con. 

• Brian Musikoff will have copies of the latest in his Mauled! series, Mauled! #4: Mauled by Machines, which I would explain, but it kinda explains itself. 

• Kevin will have copies of his Xeric Award winning Fishtown graphic novel that has been burning up the review charts.

• And I'll have copies of House of Twelve Goes to War! (#4), a collection of autobiographical stories of our intrepid cartoonists in the heat of battle!  All amazingly true, right down to the last detail!  Honest to god!  

MoCCA

The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival

June 6-7, 2009

The 69th Regiment Armory at Lexington and 25th street

New York, NY

This one's the no-brainer, it's our hometown show.  This year at a new location I talked up a few months back, the 69th Regiment Armory, the show needed a new venue and they found the perfect on here. 

Attendees: 

Cheese, Dave McKenna, Miss Lasko-Gross, Kevin Colden, Kate Allen, Jenny Gonzalez, and more.

New Stuff: 

• I'll be debuting my first solo art book, MATH, some of which I posted right here on this very blog not too long ago.  The final version has several new pieces and more fun notes from Dave's high school calculus notebook.  

• Miss' sequal to Escape from Special, A Mess of Everything will also be available in mass quantities.  

• Kevin's Fishtown will be right there, on the table for all to gaze upon.

SPX

The Small Press Expo

September 26-27, 2009

The Marriot Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Center

Bethesda, MD (Actually, I think it's Rockville)

My favorite show, we kill at this gig every year. This is where the big Ho12 guns come out and play.  This year you have three new releases as well as the always popular Strike Team Dodecca Sales Experience managing the table. 

Attendees:

Cheese, Miss Lasko-Gross, Kevin Colden, Dave McKenna, Kate Allen and a special guest, Pete Townsend (no relation).

New Stuff:

• House of Twelve #5: Touching Children Stories - Ho12 is proud to announce the latest in it's always popular, cutting edge anthology series with this awesome collection of all-ages stories meant to tickle the funny bone of both adult and child alike. 

• Dave McKenna's long awaited adult comic debut, Monstaland will finally see the light of day.  Dave has take his two favorite things in life, porn and giant monster movies and combined them into one of the most amazing adult comics you'll see this decade. 

• The second issue of Kate Allen's fabulous Milk-Teeth will make it's first showing at SPX 2009! The first issue of M-T was a grand-slam, out-of-the-ball-park smash, selling every copy we had with us. 

Add to this Miss's A Mess of Everything and Kevin's Fishtown and whatever other junk we can fit on the table and Ho12 is looking to murder each and every one of you with our amazing line up of great comics. 

So keep your peepers peeled for the 2009 line up coming from Ho12 Industries and it's affiliated partners. 

* On a side note, I was having a drink or nine with buddy Chris P. the other night and he mentioned that at the last San Diego comic con there was a huge booth, one of the mega booths, a booth usualy reserved for an entire big time movie company, for the TV show 'The Office.'  Y'know, I get it, but FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK YOOOOOOOOOOUUUU, Mr. or Mrs. The Office. Go have OfficeCon 2009 somewhere.  Y'assholes. 

The Beards of SPX

If you have gone to the Small Press Expo over the last few years you've more the likely noticed the abundance of BEARDOS. As a tribute to the men of SPX, young and impressed with their own puberty, Team 12 went on safari. A Weird Beard Safari. Each of us was tasked with hunting down and capturing the most impressive display of beardism at the show. Here are the results:

First up is Kate Allen's entry, "The Beau"

Note the stringy hair and the 'is that a beard or is it chocolate cake' soul patch, all wonderful, but it's the wispy, curly-cue mustache that really tops off this history honoring beard/mustache combo. 1870, here we come!


Kevin Colden's "Beard on a Wire"


A bold and truly American beard, with a french twist! Part Grizzly Adams, part North American Indie Rocker; this ensemble is as classic as it is beautiful. Since it's inception in the mid 1990's it's become one of several "standard uniforms" for nerds everywhere; this particular variant includes a nod to our E.U. brothers with it's distinctive French Flip on the mustache. Here, Kevin captures the beard at it's most pure, needing no wearer, the beard stands alone.



Cheese with "Science Hair of the Face"



The chaos theory has never been so proven as with this amazing representation of the American Nerd. It's distinctive frizz and texture communicates, "I am comfortable with my face and hair resembling a pile of steel-wool and pipe cleaners." A bold statement, indeed. What truely brings the whole package together here is the addition of the safety goggles. Who hasn't been to a comic book convention and said to themselves, "Y'know, what I really need to bring next year is some safety goggles." BE PREPARED!

Dave McKenna, "Piltdown Man, Alive!"



Nowhere in a the annuls of fashion does it say that one's hair should be symmetrical, in fact some of modern style makers are renown for their off-center daring. Here is a perfect example. What Mom wouldn't be proud of her little angel sporting this inventive and heart-warming combination that screams both, "I am thirty cents from being homeless!," and "I am on discount, Canadian medication!" equally loud and with such conviction. A masterpiece!


Miss Lasko-Gross, "Big Rock Nerdy Mountain"



SPX has it's fare share of fatties, but to tell the truth, compared to other comic book events it's pretty sickly. It is here that a true man of girth can take a stand and shout out with pride, "You're all poseurs!" Such is the case with the above subject. Not only does he outdo the 16th President with his stylish "Lincoln++" chin defining neck-beard, but he subtly lets his preposterous size speak volumes about the state of the geek community. He says, where'd all you hipster bastards come from, take your motherfucking girls and go home. Leave comics to the fat and unwashed, as nature intended!" He is a statesman.


In the car on the way home, the entries were studied, examined for authenticity and voted upon. It was a close race, but in the end, Dave McKenna's "Piltdown Man, Alive!" won the day. Mr. McKenna was awarded a copy of a book I can't remember the title of, but he seemed to enjoy it. Congrats Dave!

We all look forward to next year when we can again go on another WEIRD BEARD SAFARI!

Some Milk-Teeth mentions

Tom Spurgeon and I haven't always seen eye to eye, but I respect his opinion and his obvious love of comics. Earlier this week he wrote up a nice little review of Kate Allen's Milk-Teeth, which I mentioned before was a big hit for the Ho12 table at SPX this year.

He likes it a lot.


Eric Reynolds from Fantagraphic's FLOG! also mentioned Kate in his SPX report, saying:

At the end of SPX, Kate walked up to me and gave me a very sweet - if slightly creepy (in a good way) - drawing of my baby daughter, which I was extremely touched by! So I was even more pleased when I got home and discovered that I liked her comic [Milk-Teeth].

Kate also has started a new blog of her own, she's got a little SPX report up there now, more to follow I am told.

Check it out to the big dog.


UPDATE: Monday, Nov. 3, 2008

Another well deserved rave for Milk-Teeth from our Canadian pals over at Inkstuds. Bravo!

You can buy Milk-Teeth here.

SPX 2008

We had a pretty decent year at the Small Press Expo this year, we got a decent amount of attention, some nice sales numbers and drank more booze then anyone else there, again. 

We got in early on Friday evening, met up with a few pals, had a few drinks and moseyed over the the most average diner on earth for a completely adequate dinner.  Then we went back to Rafer Roberts room and drank a case of beer before going down to the main bar and mingling with the rest of the early arrivals. It was a nice way to slip into the weekend, very relaxing.  

The big news of the show was the reaction to Kate Allen's Milk-Teeth, it was an off the rack seller.  We kept putting them out on the table and half an hour later they'd be gone, it was really fun to watch.  Kate was also inundated with drawing requests, my personal favorite being two guys that saw a doodle she did with a sexy girl and a corn dog and they HAD TO HAVE personalized drawings of some sort of corn dog persuasion in their sketch books.  Classy.  At least she made a few bucks outta them.   She ended up getting more then a few publishers sniffing around, I fully expect her to be snatched up by one of them fairly soon.  I am becoming the Kevin Smith of comics.  If Miss and Kevin are my Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, then maybe Kate is my Jason Lee, but without all that creepy Scientologist weirdness. So be it, as long as they continue to come back and do my shitty books, who am I to complain?  

Anyways, Saturday night was our annual victory dance at Athenian Plaka (the best greek food I've ever had) we rushed back to see the Ignatz Awards, a chocolate fountain and the return of the drag-cheerleader.  Not to mention more mingling, more drinking and more late nights smoking out the windows. 

Sunday was a bust.  A much as Saturday was great, Sunday sucked.  The attendance was half of what it was on Saturday.  The drop off was astounding.  It was like being at a convention the day after it closed. OK, maybe not that bad, but pretty awful nonetheless. We pulled up stakes and hit the highway as soon as we could and cruised home at 80 the whole way, dropping everyone off in town around 10 pm, safe and sound.  

So with another successful year behind us we look forward to the next show, most likely Tcaf in Toronto next Spring (May 9-10, 2009).   

I got a few nice things, and some real stinkers.  I did miss out on what looked like the most awful thing there, there were these guys in the corner who were greeting folks with, "Hello, welcome to the Action Comics Unlimited Outpost!" and were hocking some really choice superhero books — and by choice, I mean holyshitbad.  Team 12 Man-at-Arms Dave McKenna searched out the only two legitimately porn comics at the show, both were pretty nice, although one was a little too cutesy for me. Kate found a really nifty mini from the guys who do Strange Detective Tales (one of my secret faves from last year) about a alien invasion, with nudity!  I'll do a full rundown later, over the weekend most likely.  Shit, it's time to get ready for the Jam, see you there.

Cheese