Nomad Comic Book Show Photo Dump (Patreon)

I had a great time at the Nomad event in Arizona last July 25th, the last Nerd Inferno signing for the spring/summer.

It was hot when I got off the plane (117 degrees) and I was not prepared by how...alien it felt to be outside as a semi-homebodied New Yorker. I'd never been to Arizona before and I made a lot of jokes about how the heat meant I'd never go back, but it wasn't a big deal on the whole. I spent most of my time there in cars and the hotel room which both had excellent air conditioning.

After my plane landed Nomad co-promoter Evan Reed picked me up and we then waited for a short while to pick up Steve Niles as his flight was coming in soon after mine. It was great seeing Steve for the first time in 20 years. As some of you might recall from old posts or interviewers, Steve and Kurt Sayenga were responisble for my drawing the first Milk & Cheese comic after we met at the San Diego Con in 1988. I had been drawing them on backing boards for (mostly) kids asking for free sketches, since I didn't have any association with any Marvel or DC characters and (almost) no one wanted a Pirate Corp$! sketch. Steve was in the band Gray Matter and Kurt was doing art direction for Fugazi and Dischord (which Gray Matter was on). We mostly talked music and comics and after some time of me drawing freebie M&C drawings with rude comments on them they said if I ever wanted to do a comic with the characters they'd run it in Greed, their music and comics magazine (which had cover-featured Love and Rockets/The Hernandez Brothers and Charles Burns). To make a long story shorter, I made a comic and they ran it and that kicked off M&C as an ongoing project in my life. When I told this to Steve in the car he had no recollection about it.

That night Evan Reed was busy setting up for the next day so he threw some money at Steve and I and dropped us off at a restaurant where we drank beer, ate food and talked about where we've been and where we were hopefully going. A good, long talk about life by two 61 year-old comics guys feeling way out of touch with the modern comics scene, among other things. It was a really nice evening.

The show was going to open early at 9 am (the show was free but they had a paid early hour entry fee) so we went back to the hotel to crash. I was full of fish and chips and very tired, so I actually got some sleep. I almost always have trouble sleeping in hotels, especially during cons or signings, where the anxiety kicks in. I'm getting better at it but I still had to take my meds during the tour. The same goes for the night before leaving. And any flights.

(Actually, I should note that my flight was really good, since I've discussed my fears of flying here and in my comics. I had a seatmate who was chatty and I barely noticed takeoff while we were talking. Talking also helped the hours go by more quickly. And the flight back was fine, even though I didn't have any social seatmates. I was always anxious on both flights but never panicky. So, that was welcome. Hopefully things go smoothly on my flight to Atlanta in November for the Comicopia show)

I woke up and felt fairly decently and had enough time to eat breakfast in the hotel. I haven't done that on the tour before, I never am ready in time because I'm a night person and hate getting up early. But it worked out, which was good, because we had a long day at the show.

The show itself went great. There were only two issues during the day, one being that it was very warm inside the VA hall that the show was held in. The temperature reached 90 degrees at one point -- there was a thermometer close to my table and people waiting on line would call out the temperature when it got higher. Even so, it didn't hit the same as the two MOCCA shows that are partially remembered for their heat factor. NYC and AZ heat hits different for sure because of humidity. I was still comfortable with the temperature in AZ even with the bad AC. But when MOCCA was held at the 69th Regiment Armory in 2009, the space had no AC, causing a lot of people to bail. It was brutal, especially on kids and older folks. And when MOCCA was still at the Puck buidling there was the day it was 102 degrees and the fire department had the sweaty cartoonists and attendees evacuated out of the building for a while.

The other was that a person on my line at one point got upset with how long they had to wait to get something signed. As some of you know, I spend time with everyone who wants that time at the table. Especially folks who flew in from other states to be there, folks I know from online for years and have never met, and folks who are Patreon backers. And I'm a talker, I know it and most folks also know it. And I was signing a lot, and everyone who had a book got a sketch in it. Some people got quick freebies. I'm there one day, people came out, I want them to leave happy. And I'm not used to the long lines I've had during the tour, so maybe I wasn't doing my best in some people's eyes. But this person got off the line and came up to me to complain, saying something about the line blocking tabls and that I needed to move things along. I thought she was a vendor upset about the line blocking her table, so I told her she had to talk to Evan Reed, I didn't have any say about how the line was set up. Evan came over and talked to her and it turned out she wasn't a vendor, she was just tired of waiting and was complaining. When I got home there was a slight internet kerfuffle which got me pilloried on 4Chan by the usual 4Chan types (I didn't go looking for it, it accidentally found me, if I knew something someone sent me linked to the site I would have never clicked on it to read about how hated I am by some anonymous creeps). Apparently I yelled at the person who complained, and was rude, etc. That's bullshit, it never happened, and Evan Reed said the same when it came up on Instagram. I know when I've been rude and stupid in public, I've admitted to it and apologized for it more times than I'd have liked (the rudeness, not the apology), but that was some time ago. I didn't have any situations like this at any other stop on the tour. Somewhere in the churn I read that the person was there to get something signed for their boyfriend. If so (IDK), I get you don't want to be there in the heat standing on a line for some cartoonist you don't know or care about. They could have come over and said they had to run, could they just get a quick signature? Other people did that. I'm always fine with that. And I was really bummed out that a few people posted about how they had to leave without a signature because the line took so long and they had to be somewhere. I felt badly that some folks left diappointed. So, I have to figure out a way to deal with that if the situation comes up again.

All that aside, I had a terrific time, and I hope most folks enjoyed coming out and meeting me and getting something signed and a little drawing. I sold a page, some of the remaining card drawings that I still had after the Heroes Con/Four Color Fantasies stops and the books I managed to bring (in my suitcase), except for a copy of the Catacomb of Torment trade. Evan Reed sold the eight copies of Nerd Inferno he managed to get from his local shop.

One of the folks who came to the table -- named Ty Murphy -- asked me to sign a Milk & Cheese drawing he had commissioned from Jim Mahfood. I took some pictures of it because I rarely see my characters drawn by other pro ccartoonists/artists. It has all the energy you'd expect from a Mahfood piece. Somewhere in the house I should have his early self-published Grrl Scouts comics, he sent us fan mail/comics back in the day when people sent us comics. That would be the 90s. Thanks to Ty Murphy for showing me the drawing.

As usual, I was there after the show closed, signing some books and doing a couple of sketches for people associated with the event. After things shut down Evan took me over to In-N-Out Burger and bought me a meal which I took to my hotel room. I'd never had In-N-Out before and was really into it, although Evan told me that it can get hyped up too much. It didn't matter, I loved it. I could eat their every day if someone was paying for it and my innards could withstand the damage. It was also way cheaper than NYC fast food. The prices I saw there and in Texas made me crazy. Unfortunately I don't want to live in Arizona or Texas.

Oh, I also had a Cheerwine that someone got me, maybe it was Evan. So I gorged myself on two double burgers and a shake and a Cheerwine. I was pretty damned hungry. I watched a crappy Fred Olen Ray horror movie (are there any other kind of Fred Olen Ray movies?) with Erik Estrada while I ate, an unholy piece of junk called Spirits whre he plays a priest. It didn't pair well with the food but I was happy anyway. Then I packed up and conked out and flew home and Sarah picked me up at the airport and Winky the Pirate Cat was happy to see me. And I was happy to see her.

I'm probably forgetting a few things, because I always do.

Thanks to Evan Reed and his partner whose name I have forgotten (sorry), thanks to everyone who came out to the Nomad show. I appreciated it and it was great meeting you. Thank you for your support, and thank you for your patience with waiting to get stuff signed.

My next scheduled Nerd Inferno stop is Tucker, GA for Comicopia in November. But there's a very good chance I'll be doing a signing for Dark Horse at NYCC in October. I'll update on that as soon as anything is locked down. I'm looking forward to seeing some folks later this year.

In the meantime I'm working on some extremely late commissions and a late EC script. The tour really knocked me for a loop and I lost a lot of time between the events and recovering from them. I'm going to need a doctor's visit for my back/hip/thigh, I might have some sciatica or something going on. If anyone saw me get out of my chair at an event recently you may have noticed I had difficulty rising. It's probably from years of bad posture in this chair that I'm sitting in right now. I've had some very bad days with it and some slow/sleepy days becaus of the meds I'm taking (Cyclobenzaprine) for it. The good thing? I barely notice my shoulder and hand pain. So, there's that, I guess. I need to wake up early enough to call the doctor. Yes, my sleep schedule is that screwy.

Overall, though, I'm starting to feel like I'm getting on top of things. I don't have any signings for a few months. There's two projects that have been dangled in front of me recently that I hope become real -- one comic-related, another comic-adjacent. They'd both pay something and both would be fun to do. Fingers crossed. I've been working on the horrendously late commissions and once I can get those done I can open a new list for the first time in years. I just have to hunker down on any new ones and not take years to deliver them. I also have copies of Beasts of Burden and Nerd Inferno that I hope to sell (signed/sketched) when time allows. And I want to get back to writing Beasts of Burden as soon as possible. It's been too long and I miss it and I want to make comics and I feel old and am afraid of never finishing the main storyline before I pop off.

I'm off to finish packing up some art sales, then color/letter some sections of a commission. And I have to do a laundry. And answer some e-mail and a few DMs. And I should eat. I wish In-N-Out was in NYC.

More soon/later.