i mentioned my awesome table neighbors, jimmy aquino and joe gonzalez, in my con report yesterday. they did a little interview with me on day three which you can listen to HERE. jen snapped the above picture while we “chatted.”

HIGHLIGHTS:

• About 4:30 in j&j talk about first meeting us and prove how nice they are at the same time.
• Around 35:00 is my interview (i always have a hard time listening to me during these but this one came out pretty good).
• and toward the end, at about 1:35:30, they give their thoughts on c&b’s two books as well as my wacky food preferences.
• right afterwards they talk about how my friend joey’s mini was one of their faves from the con too. this is also cool!

listening to the whole show brought me back to how great a time we all had. jimmy and joe- you guys are WAAAY too nice!

so after only my first time attending, i’ve already decided that heroes con is my favorite comic show. make sure you check out jen’s awesome flickr set HERE and read my brief summary of the awesome weekend under the cut.

DAY ZERO: after the long nine hour drive up, jen and i checked in to the con, found and set up my table, ate some “better than florida” pizza, hung out at a cool park, chatted with our hotel’s bartender and went to bed.

DAY ONE: enjoyed our first day at heroes con! drew some sketches, sold some books and met a lot of cool people. we were totally blessed to have super awesome neighbors: the dynamic duo of jimmy and joe from comic news insider on our left and the hilarious gregg schigiel on our right. we were between entertaining podcasters and terrific all-ages talent right in the center of artist alley. it was great. that night we ate some “soul food” with jason levesque, his wife elizabeth, paul maybury, evan bryce, jason horn and dean trippe. the delicious cornbread was the highlight this evening. afterwards jen and i went back to the hotel early (11:00) to get a fresh start for tomorrow’s supposedly busy day.

DAY TWO: it was a busy day. we found out saturday was “kids get in free” day so there were kids all over the place! it was awesome! probably the most family friendly show i’ve ever been too- also in part to the fact that no adult material is allowed on site. more awesome! the people of charolotte are so polite and cheerful too and that contagion spread to the rest on the con floor. while gregg sketched drawings of spongebob all day long, i sketched various superheroes and heroines. i really wish i made jen snap more pictures of them. especially one of john locke from lost that i had a blast with. ah well. i was pretty much confined to my table this day drawing and selling lots of books. afterwards we had some mexican across the street with most of our group from the day before plus jimmy and joe and a bunch of other people. then it was off to the PARTY where we proceeded to PARTY. we hung out with our friday and saturday night meal groups, my table neighbors and met up with phil jackson, francesco francavilla, joey weiser, steve hamaker, lemar abrams, danielle corsetto and lots of other people. we had a whole lot of fun, listened to a lot of amazing stories (including the highlight of the evening with one from jason L!) and decided later that this was our favorite night of the weekend. eventually, around three am, we stumbled back to our hotel and fell asleep.

DAY THREE was a little slow going at first, mainly due to the night before. i started by finishing up a bunch of sketches from the day before and drawing a couple more. jimmy, joe and i did a quick interview (i’ll post it here when its up) then i FINALLY made my self walk around to buy/trade/chat and decided that next year i will do this first thing on DAY ONE. the show ended in a bustle with many last minute purchases and jen and i said some of our goodbyes while packing up our stuff. we stopped at a deli and had dinner with surprise guest danielle before heading over to the after party where we finally got to hang out with joey, drew weing, and stephen floyd which we had been trying to do all weekend. dean/jason/paul showed up a little later on and all of us, along with chris schweizer, roger langridge and guy davis, eventually made ourselves comfortable in the small press section at the back of the heroes store sharing cat stories and recommending comics to one another. thanks to chris, i snagged the last copy of the much sought after volume 1 of the mourning star which i can’t wait to read. this night was an excellent ending to an excellent weekend and while all our friends rushed out to make the last shuttle bus back to their hotel, jen and i said our sad goodbyes and drove back to our hotel for a good long sleep before the long drive home tomorrow.

DAY FOUR: we had a long drive home, but it went pretty quickly since jen and i had so many fun things to chat and reminiscence about. we also got some yummy milkshakes. we can’t wait to be back next year!