Bellingham ComiCon

Well, I forgot to announce it here, but we went to Bellingham ComiCon yesterday and had a blast. The folks there are always so great!
One of the highlights for Angela was finding the Corgi Zine by Ainsley Yeager. Go check it out!
And we traded with Shane Shaughnessy for his comic Spuds Malone. Quite a good looking book.
Bellingham ComiCon is always sucha treat. I hope we get to do it again next year.
Also, here's some of the drawings I did this year.

Olympia comics festival

As always, we had a great time at Olympia Comics Festival. Looking around from our booth, there was obviously some great stuff. But I have no control with comics, so I did not leave the booth. Abe got a T-shirt of Super Hamster, which was a mini comic I got at Danger Room a few months prior.

We went back down the next weekend so now you can get our new comics there:
- Delicate Souffle
- Great Beard
- Spaz Hands, Vol. 1

And I accidentally bought a bunch of comics. Gabrielle Bell's "San Diego Diary" was great. I also got "Fanny & Romeo" because the art is by Pascal Girard and I will basically buy anything he does.

Bellingham ComiCon 2012 wrap up

We survived Bellingham ComiCon. It was quite a turn out. Way busier than last year and I believe busier than Jet City Comic Show. It was exhausting and fun. I love meeting all those people. Abe went even though he had a sinus infection. What a stud.

If you are from Whatcom County, and I hope we have some new readers from there, you might have seen some images on the Bellingham Herald’s Take 5 that are pretty familiar in these parts. Yes, Angela’s art was featured on the cover. Pretty thrilling.

Angela, of course, made tons of little drawings again. People seem to enjoy them and they are fun to make. So they will likely be at all future cons for $2. You can always tell who the Doctor Who fans are because they call them adipose, but I really did start drawing these before I saw that adorably creepy episode.

If you are in Whatcom County and just can’t get enough of us, we will be up again on Saturday, November 17 for an art show at Egress Studio from 1-7 at 5581 Noon Rd, just outside Bellingham. And if you stay in the area, on Sunday, Abe and Angela will be teaching a workshop on comics collaboration for $35. We’ll show how we collaborate. Then attendees will get to practice collaboration together and hopefully walk out with a minicomic. Email Abe at abe@flyingdodopublications.com or Angela at angela@flyingdodopublications.com or Anita of Egress Studio at akboyle@egressstudio.com. Hope to see you there!

Jet City 2012 recap

Well, we survived Jet City Comic Show. And had a good time. Bonus, I didn’t get sick, though it does mean I have had one year of unknown hives. At least the zyrtek squashes it.

Anyways, this was our best show yet. We sold a lot of my $1 mini originals. I was pretty pleased with that. I have noticed, without surprise, that the emotion + action ones are more popular at indie shows and fan art ones, like Doctor Who, Star Trek, and superheroes, sell better at the pop culture cons.

I was pleased to see a higher portion of alternative comics this year, less cheesecake stuff. We did significantly better than last year due to the change in booths. Another factor is that we have a full year of conventions under our belt, so we weren’t sweaty and nervous this time. People are also starting to recognize our comics from shows and shops. A huge thanks goes out to Sean Kent at Comic Stop in the U District for pushing our comics. We had no less than three people tell us that’s how they came across our comics.

 Also exciting, we sold some 2011 collections. People really liked getting a custom-drawn wrapper. The only one I remember is “crying and flying.” No picture. I forgot.

Another fun thing were costumes. I like that part of pop culture cons. There was a cute little blond boy dressed as Batman who kept throwing his plastic Batarang down the aisle and sliding after it. And a lady in a superhero man costume with actual tightly whities on the outside of her costume. We would have given her a free copy of “Tightly whities and their men,” but we didn’t see her again.

So for all you new folks to the site, look around! Under ‘by comics,’ you can find a page for each describing each of our comics. Most of them have a link to an online version of the comic. Now hopefully we see more folks at Bellingham ComiCon next month!

We're alive

Sorry for the lack of posts. Things have just been crazy at the FDP headquarters, which is our apartment. We have been trying to move for a couple weeks and it failed! Who knew that could happen. Anyways, I will try to post more here later. We just don’t have much to announce right now.

Have you been keeping up on Angela’s autobio comic at spazhandscomic.blogspot.com? People seem to be enjoying it.

Brief notes on Geek Girl Con. I loved it. I had a lot of fun talking with everyone and there were some great costumes. I look forward to going back next year. I didn’t go to any panels or anything, but I did wander down to the Connections room just in time to see the end of the comic editors group! Which even the last 5 minutes of was encouraging. I thought I had a picture of my booth (our first time with a half table since I split it with my mom, Anita Boyle of Egress Studio), but I couldn’t find it. Instead, here are some things I drew.

Shh, says Batman

The Doctor is shocked

Don’t Blink

The Doctor is happy

The Doctor and Tardis in love

I got a magnet made of one of my images!! I love Cardassians.

The Joker thinks it’s funny.

PZS follow up

So, everything went great at PZS! I had a blast and it was really fun doing the InDesign class. As promised, here are the notes I wrote that I based the presentation on. If you have any questions please feel free to email me abe at flyingdodopublications.com

Olympia Comic Fest Recap and a Contest

We had a blast at the Olympia Comics Festival and definitely intend to go back next year. But before I get into that, let me mention that we are having a contest over on The Jerks for its 2-year anniversary. Go to The Jerks Comic Facebook page to vote which colors you think we will use for Georgie when we switch to a color format next Tuesday and you could win a poster of Arthur.

Bender thinks you should vote in the contest! (We saw him at Oly Fest)

Back to Olympia Comics Festival. Some of the highlights include a lady who got a feeling/action commission for a friend, a little girl who loves squids, and the spectacular artist to our left (right from the point of view of the walkers), Mita Mahato. Mita started doing paper cut comics in January and people were really interested. Granted, she did have a really cool three-ring binder of her original paper-cut comics. Great stuff there.

Right side of our table

Bubbles and other tales debuted at the festival so it got the center

The Jerks were confined to the left side of the table by Abe

Our view across the aisle

The show was pretty packed and had lots of great exhibitors. I even got to go around and get some stuff and we did some trades. Here are the great books we got at the convention:

• Mita Mahato: At Least Stay Close, Life Lines (very sweet), Unidentified Feeling Object (gorgeous)
• Leda Zawacki: Nuddles of Cute (I adore the first comic in this collection, in particular), Nuddles of Cute, special editiion
• P. Calavara: Those Infernal Machines, 9 Ways to Sock a Fish, The Trenchant Puppy (I laughed out loud at both of these. He’s a clever guy.)
• Sera Stanton: A Miniature Bestiary
• Bandit Rabbit Ink: Milk and Carrots 2
• Fischer and Khmara: Une Petite Romance (loved it – beautiful colors)

Angela drawing away on commissions or something

We also got to go to Danger Room Comics, pretty much my favorite comic store I have ever been to. First we popped in before they were open so all you people in Olympia can get our comics through their store. All of them! Pretty cool. Then we popped in later to buy stuff. And that is another reason this store is great. They had almost no marvel/dc stuff. The whole store pretty much was devoted to indie/alternative. I almost got BPRD Vol2 hard back, but instead I got Kiki De Montparnasse by Catel and Bocquet. And Blue by Pat Grant. And I Kill Giants by Kelly and Niimura (which we just read from the library and had to buy because it is so awesome). And Evolution by Jay Hosler. And Adventure Time #1. Whoops. Great stuff. I am really excited to read them all.

-Angela

Jet City Comic Show and Bellingham ComiCon

So we went to both the Jet City Comic Show and Bellingham Comicon since we last posted (forever ago!). Abe started school the Monday after Jet City and we’ve been incredibly busy since then. So, here’s our post-con post with pics and everything. Hope you enjoy it.

Here’s our booth at Jet City. I know you can’t tell, but Angela really does have two pony tails.

Here is Angela with her tea, talking to her mom on the phone before the service cut out. Since it was in Seattle and they could drive there in 15 minutes in the morning, both Abe and Angela got to bring some tea to drink from home. Angela had Irish Breakfast and Abe had Golden Monkey-both their favorite teas. Her Starbucks tea mug keeps the tea too hot, so Angela brought a small tea cup to drink out of. How dainty.

No pictures of Abe because he was behind the camera. Good way to save a camera though – no broken lenses. Even though Jet City was slow, we had a really good time. Emi Town was across from us. Abe and Angela really enjoyed talking comics with all the great people who stopped by our booth to see what we are all about. Some people asked great questions. Abe particularly enjoyed seeing the demographics of the people who are interested in our comics and honing his sales pitch. Angela got annoyed by the sales pitch, but all she could muster up was to say hi.

Next up, Bellingham ComiCon, which was way busier and hence more fun. Our booth looks almost exactly the same, but switched so Abe could get a picture for his school project. This time you get to see Abe and Angela because Anita came over to take pictures. They were even kind enough to let her in for free when she dropped off our lunch and when she came back later to take their pictures because she forgot her camera the first time.Aren’t they adorable? Those are their normal faces.We were boothed next to Wayward Studios. Abe was kind enough to chat with them for a while after a bathroom break (more about the bathroom break later). They were friendly and nice and we all recognized each other from Jet City.

Anyways, they had their first barter experience. This fella, Jesse James McFarland, traded us his Aric the Redd 24-hr comic for Hardly Kind and then he was awesome enough to buyThe Saddest Sasquatch from us. Here he is chatting with us – great conversation, but we might have had our comic goggles on. 

Great fun.

After Bellingham ComiCon, we popped into Anita’s place for dinner and more photos for Abe’s school project. Here is Angela and her mom.They are supposed to be fencing not re-enacting their favorite wand duel from Harry Potter.

Just to let you know, this was Abe’s final experience at the Bellingham ComiCon bathrooms.

While we were watching the hordes of people walk past our booth, Abe and Angela got talking about things we could do to get those hordes to stop at our booth. We noticed that lots of people stopped at the booths with boobs and butts so we decided we should have some boobs and butts too. Out of this conversation was born Fannie, who is a fan repair service tech.

And that’s our belated Post-Con wrap up. Thanks for reading! Hope to see you at a con in the future.

–Flying Dodo