I felt guilty for even showing up.

So this past weekend, I arranged to have a comic-buying weekend tour. I flew into Nashville to be met by my best friend and longtime comic cohort. We hit up several stores in Nashville, Kentucky, and even Indiana before making an appearance at Wizard World on Sunday. Why only one day? We had reviewed the website and saw how few comic creators would be there, and none of the panels looked all that interesting. Our only true objective was the CGC table. He would be submitting his first batch of books, an invoice with his Collector's Society membership coupon and a batch of 15 Moderns. I also had two invoices to drop off. We both prefer to physically hand over the books to CGC rather than ship to Florida; this way we save on shipping costs and don't have to worry about the USPS damaging the raw books. The CGC crew looked thoroughly bored. I did not see them with more than one person at the table after my friend and I had dropped of our orders with all paperwork already filled out. Once again the CGC staff were thrilled to see that we had filled out the online forms fully and even handed the books over in the same order as they were listed on the form. If you want to make a good impression with the folks behind the table, do whatever you can to make their jobs easier.

The only other major convention I've been to was this year's Baltimore Comic Con. The price of admission for one day to Wizard World was the same as the whole weekend in Baltimore. The facility seemed to be a bit larger and nicer, and the aisles were pleasingly wide and uncluttered. Unfortunately, there seemed to be a tiny fraction of the number of attendees. I got the hard-sell desperation vibe from so many people in Artist's Alley that I gave up on looking for prints. Even Neal Adams and Mike Grell had no lines! I might've brought something for Mike Grell to sign for Sig Series if I had ever suspected I would be able to walk right up to him. Artists of his caliber were swarmed late into Sunday afternoon in Baltimore. In all, we only really made purchases at one booth, where we found high grade Walking Dead in the 20s-30s for $6-8 each.

Hopefully, Friday and Saturday were huge days for everybody, and it was a raging success. Sunday was clearly not going well, and I can't shake the feeling that a lot of small businesses took a hit paying Wizard's exhorbitant prices for table space. You've got to sell a lot of Doctor Who buttons to cover a $1000 for a booth.

No pictures with this post, just think pensive thoughts.

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