MCBA Springcon – May 18-19, 2013

If you haven’t had a chance to see me this month, it hasn’t been for a lack of me trying!

I’ll be signing and sketching at Springcon on Saturday May 18 and Sunday May 19, helping the Minnesota Comic Book Association (MCBA) celebrate their 25th Anniversary! We’ll be filling the Minnesota State Fairgrounds Grandstand with all the comic book geekery you can shake a Pronto-Pup at (Pronto-Pup’s not provided).

I’ll be there selling prints , Young Justice and Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes trade paperbacks, and doing commission sketches from 10am to 5pm both days!

 

I’ll be selling my 11″×17″ prints (all the same ones I just had at the C2E2 convention) for $20 each , which is $10 less than from my Etsy store! So if you’ve had your eye on anything in particular, this is a great time to purchase it!Stop by my table and show me that you follow my Christopher Jones Comic Art page on Facebook or @ChrisJonesArt on Twitter and get one of two FREE exclusive items:

I hope to see you at Springcon! And remember, you can check out all my planned convention appearances for the coming year on my Appearances Page!

I’ll be a GUEST at GallifreyOne 2014

I had a great time at Gallifrey One this past February, so I couldn’t be more delighted to announce that I’ll be returning in 2014 as a Guest of the convention! 2013 may be the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, but 2014 is the 25th Anniversary of the world’s largest and longest-running annual Doctor Who convention.

Gallifrey One: 25 Glorious Years will be held February 14-16 2014 at the Los Angeles Airport Mariott Hotel. I’m excited to be joining the already-impressive slate of guests they’ve announced for 2014, including Colin Baker (The Sixth Doctor), Katy manning (Jo Grant), John Levine (Sgt. Benton), Richard Franklin (Sgt. Mike Yates), Frazer Hines (Jamie McCrimmon), Paul Cornell (Writer, “Human Nature”), Gary Russell (Novelist/Script Editor) and MORE!

I’ll be announcing what panels and signings I’ll be doing with the convention gets closer, but in the mean time I’ll have to see how many new Doctor Who prints I can get done by then!

You can always read up on all my planned convention appearances for the coming year on my Appearances Page!

Gallifrey One 2013 – Part 3 of 4 (The Young Justice Meetup)

Continuing my report on my trip to the Gallifrey One convention, and what an adventure it was…

SATURDAY (Part 2)

In case you’re just joining us, I had traveled to Los Angeles to attend the Gallifrey One Sci-Fi convention that was celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who, and catching up with various Los Angeles area friends. I’d had plans to have a rare in-person meet-up with my Young Justice collaborator Greg Weisman on Friday for lunch, but a longer-than-hoped-for set-up at the Gallifrey One art show meant I didn’t have time to get across town to Greg’s office and the meeting didn’t happen.

With the help of Hal (aka ChristopherJonesWebMinion on tumblr), I had been organizing a meet-up for Young Justice fans at Gallifrey One for Saturday evening in the lobby of the convention hotel. When I told Greg about it, Greg said he was in, but he wanted his presence to be a secret surprise. So now it looked like I was going to see Greg after all, but instead of a quiet lunch it would be along with an undetermined number of unsuspecting Young Justice fans. All during the convention I’d been plugging the meet-up at panels and when talking to anyone who expressed any interest in the show or my comics work. Now I was pushing it even harder, but I couldn’t mention it’s biggest selling point. A lot of language along the lines of “you don’t want to miss it” and “we’ll have surprises” was used.

During the afternoon, Hal had disappeared to retreat to the hotel room and change into her Novice Hame cat nurse costume from Doctor Who. Given the make-up involved, this takes a while, although not as long as you might think, given that it’s basically a process of attaching and blending a 1-piece mask. She and I met up in the lobby in time to start gathering the troops for the meet-up.

The lobby was crowded with Gallifrey One attendees chatting and milling about, so when I spotted a chair in the corner that was opening up I pounced on it, figuring I could plant myself there and hold court as a hopefully respectably-sized gathering of Young Justice fans gathered. I had fashioned a makeshift “Young Justice Meet-up” sign earlier in the hotel room, and as the first YJ fans gathered Hal took to holding it so it could be better seen – so we had Novice Hame from Doctor Who promoting our Young Justice gathering!

And gather they did. The fans seemed as happy to gather with other Young Justice fans as to talk me, I think, which was fine. I think a couple may have stopped by and left, but our group had grown to about a dozen when I spotted Greg standing at the back of the group. I introduced Greg to the assembled group and just stepped forward, made his way into the corner behind me and the two of us (mostly Greg) held court for the next hour. It was all very low-key and rather informal, which I think was part of its charm. I had a great time and I think the meet-up proved to be a weekend highlight for a lot of the Young Justice fans who managed to make it there. More fans attended than stuck around for the picture below, but 0negirlarmy was good enough to supply a some of the photos she took of the event, as her camera was doing better under the lighting conditions than mine. 0negirlarmy, by the way, wasn’t even attending Gallifrey One. She was local to the area and when she saw the event mentioned on Tumblr, drove across town to be there! Hopefully she found it worth the effort!

Greg and me in the corner Photo by 0negirlarmy

The Young Justice Meet-up – Gallifrey One 2013. That’s me holding the sign and Greg in the blue shirt taking a knee.

As things were breaking up, I had a little gift for Greg. As I knew we were approaching the end of the Young Justice comic series, I knew I wanted to give Greg a gift as a thank you for letting me be a part of this amazing phenomenon. I had decided to give him a page of original artwork from the book, but what page? As Greg was completing the script for the final issue (#25) he sent an email saying he’d just finished the most chilling scene he’d ever written, and when I read it I had no doubt which scene he was talking about. The scene with Queen Bee and Marie Logan was powerful stuff, and I tried to do it justice when I drew it. At one point I saw Greg mention that the page had proven to be his favorite page from the series, so I had my answer! I had the original art framed and gave it to Greg there in the lobby. From his reaction, I knew I had chosen well!

Afterwards, Greg, Hal and I were joined by my friends Mike and Alicia for dinner in one of the hotel restaurants. It was a great opportunity to for Greg and I to talk shop, reflect on the last year and a half on the Young Justice comic, and share stories. All this was while Hal was still in full Novice Hame garb, which posed a problem when she wanted to order a beer and got carded. When we were leaving the restaurant, some of the staff stopped Hal to get photos. Even with all the crazy costumes at the convention, it’s not every day a cat nurse dines in your establishment!

Eventually Greg had to run and the rest of us soon called it a night. The Young Justice meet-up had been a grand success, and soon it would be time for the final day of Gallifrey One 2013!

NEXT: SUNDAY

You can find all the installments of my Gallifrey One 2013 trip by clicking the link.

Gallifrey One 2013 – Part 1 of 4

I’m back from my whirlwind trip to Los Angeles and Gallifrey One, and what an adventure it was…

THURSDAY

Traveling with my partner-in-crime Hal we arrived in L.A. the morning of the Thursday before the convention and took a shuttle to the Airport Mariott, where the convention would be held that weekend. That wasn’t where we were *staying* that night, mind you, but it was the closest location to the car rental location we wanted to reach. While Hal babysat our luggage in front of the Mariott, I walked over to fetch us a car for the next two days. Once I had the rental car I zipped over to pick up Hal who was happily soaking up the California weather (February in L.A. is much nicer than February in Minneapolis), and took us both down the road to the Travelodge, which was significantly cheaper than the Mariott when the convention rate isn’t being offered! Our room wasn’t available yet at that early hour, so we left our luggage in the car and grabbed a surprisingly good brunch at the Denny’s that adjoins the hotel.

By the time we’d finished eating our room was ready, and once Hal and I were checked in we drove across town to Burbank to the studios of The Tonight Show, where we’d arranged to see the taping before meeting up with my friend Wally Wingert, who serves as the show’s announcer in addition to his other work as a voice actor. Having attended a taping of the Craig Ferguson show the year before, the contrast was striking. The Ferguson taping had a more severe approach to security, and a much more aggressive comedian doing warm-up in their frigid studio, practically brow-beating the audience into being responsive to the show and juicing everyone up with candy. At the Tonight Show taping we were simply asked to keep any cell phones off and in our pockets, and the warm up was entertaining with a minimum of coaching. Jay came out to do part of the warm up himself, and I found his spontaneous interaction with the audience to be more engaging than any of the scripted material in the show. You get a strong sense of how those skills got him to where he is. The show itself was filled with performers I wasn’t familiar with, although an animal segment included an ostrich that was pretty entertaining. I’m still a bigger fan of the Ferguson show when watching from home, but if given a chance to see a live taping again, I’d choose The Tonight Show in a heartbeat.

After the taping Wally emerged and found Hal and me in the audience. He led Hal and me across the tonight show stage and took us back to see the edit bay where his sound booth is located. It was rather surreal to walk through the very impressive facade of the Tonight Show stage and suddenly be in office space. We’d planned to grab dinner with Wally but first he had to make a pit-stop at home to feed his animals, so Hal and I walked to our rental and Wally was going to drive around and meet us. Rather than stop so we could confer on where we were going, Wally did something of a drive-by, leaving us to follow him through across the highways and byways of deepest, darkest Burbank following his vanity-plate branded convertible, Wally’s hair blowing in the wind, hoping desperately we wouldn’t miss a turn and lose him on the way there.

We managed to stay with him and soon were at Wally’s apartment (aka WallyWorld) and were treated to a tour of the latest additions to the museum of memorabilia that is Wally’s home. After being photographed with Wally in front of his Adam West Batman shrine last year, this year we opted for Wally’s Scarecrow of Romney Marsh costume as the backdrop for our annual photo-op. While there we got to meet Wally’s dog Roxy, who is a sibling of the current Lassie! We learned that even though there aren’t any currently planned Lassie productions for TV or film, in addition to the need of a Lassie for the occasional live appearance, the family that owns the Lassie franchise always keeps a fully-trained adult Lassie “on deck” so that one is available in case a project comes up, as it can take years to train new one. So yes, even Wally’s dog is part of a pop-culture collection!

Afterwards we met up at Jerry’s Famous Deli for dinner with Wally and some other of Wally’s friends including Brittney Powell, star of the long-running High Sierra Rescue television series with Robert Conrad. She was also on Safety Geeks: SVI and something called Xena: Warrior Princess. She was actually a lot of fun and planned to stop by the Gallifrey One convention on Saturday.

We’d had hopes of dropping by the Marriott to pick up our Gallifrey One badges and investigate when we could begin art-show set up the next day (the web site only said “morning”), but by the time we got back to the LAX area from Burbank it was after 10:00pm, so we just went to our room and crashed.

FRIDAY

Friday morning was going to be busy. I’d tried to arrange a time to get together with my Young Justice collaborator Greg Weisman while in Los Angeles, and the only time that seemed to be available was lunch on Friday. That means lunch had to happen in a narrow window of time between Art Show set up at Gallifrey One Friday morning, a 45-minute drive to Greg’s office where we were going to meet before walking to a nearby spot for lunch, and then leaving in time for the drive back to the Gallifrey One hotel and dealing with parking before a panel at 2:30pm that I was on!

 

Unfortunately we weren’t able to start setting up in the Art show until about 10:00am, and the process of fitting pegs to pegboard in a carefully-spaced pattern, fitting binder clips to all my prints, hanging them, and then entering all the prints into the computer system so we could print out the control sheets and post them took us until noon. Sadly, I had to call Greg to let him know that our plans had gone awry and we wouldn’t have time to get across town to meet him for lunch.

OH NO! LUNCH PLANS WITH GREG WEISMAN DASHED!
Could we re-schedule?

Would I miss this rare opportunity to see Greg in person?

SPOILER REQUEST! NO COMMENT!

Now with a little extra time to spare, Hal and I began exploring Gallifrey One 2013, and tried to meet up with our friends Mike and Alicia who we were sharing a room with at the convention. Soon it was time for the first of my two panels at Gallifrey One: Design and Illustration, which featured Paul Hanley, Blair Shedd, Maureen Starkey, myself, Richard Starkings and Charlie Kirchoff. None of us knew exactly what the panel was supposed to be about beyond the title, but given the backgrounds of who was on the panel, we tended to focus on the process behind creating comic book art – which certainly meant that I was right at home!

By the time the panel got out we were finally able to get into our room at the Mariott, so I fetched the luggage from the car and we moved in. After that there was just a little more time for wandering and exploring the convention before it was time for Opening Ceremonies. The lineup of guests was especially impressive at Gallifrey One this year year, and usually despite the best of intentions to the contrary, the weekend flies by without my having made it to panels or through autograph lines to see more than a fraction of them, so I didn’t want to miss seeing them all file out onto the stage at Opening Ceremonies. There were plenty of guests I’d have loved to meet, but at the top of my list was Sylvester McCoy. Not only was I a big fan of The Seventh Doctor, but I hoped to give Sylvester a framed copy of the new print featuring his Doctor and Ace battling Daleks that I had completed just in time for the convention.

After Opening Ceremonies, everyone in our group was ravenous. Having missed out on lunch with Greg, I hadn’t eaten all through a busy day. Since in anticipation of that lunch I’d held onto the rental car for a second day and didn’t need to return it until Saturday morning, so I offered to drive our party somewhere for dinner, as it would be our last chance for the weekend to go somewhere that wasn’t in the hotel or within walking distance. Alicia found a listing for a Mexican restaurant about 15 minutes away by car, so we headed there and stuffed ourselves with fine south-of-the-border style cuisine. Margaritas were had by all – except for me, as I was driving! I dropped the rest of the crew off at the hotel, then swung by a gas station, topped off the tank in the rental car, and returned it to the rental place since I wouldn’t have need of it again before it was due back the next morning. I then hoofed it back to the Mariott.

By the time I got back, I had the energy for a quick tour around the lobby, but for all the people there chatting (fans at Gallifrey One call it “LobbyCon”), I wasn’t seeing any familiar faces to engage in conversation with and didn’t have enough energy left to try to insert myself into a conversation with strangers so I decided to call it a night and be better rested for the next day.

NEXT: SATURDAY

You can find all the installments of my Gallifrey One 2013 trip by clicking the link.

My Gallifrey One Schedule

I’ll be attending the Gallifrey One convention February 15-17 at the Los Angeles Airport Mariott Hotel. I’ll be spending most of the weekend attending as a fan and catching up with some Los Angeles area friends, but I will be on two panels:

Design and Illustration
Friday 2:30pm – With Paul Hanley, Blair Shedd, Marueen Starkey, and Charlie Kirchoff.

Superheroes as Pop Culture
Saturday 1:00pm – With J. Fialkov, S. Gates, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman.

I’ll also have many of my Doctor Who art prints in the Art Show, including these new ones:

Edit: All of these prints are now available for purchase in my Etsy Store.

Plus these past favorites:

One part of the Gallifrey One convention culture I experienced last year was the badge ribbons! Folks share and trade these ribbons, hanging them from their badges in multi-colored chains that can look like Tom Baker’s scarf at a quick glance! So this year I’m coming armed with my own!

If you’re already pre-registered for Gallifrey One 2013, I hope I’ll see you there! If not, sadly they are sold out! I hope you can join us in 2014! You can watch for social media traffic from the convention by watching the facebook page or follow the #gally1 hashtag on twitter!

P.S. If you have Young Justice stuff you need signed and you’re going to Gally, feel free to ask!