I spent this past weekend at my first ever holiday gift/craft show. It wasn’t as packed with people as I was hoping it would be, but it was still fun time. It was a very different crowd than i am used to, so every new customer was a customer I wouldn’t have had otherwise. I was the only one there representin’ for team comics, which made me feel quite special. The coolest part of the show had to be the venue. It was held at Arlington Park Racecourse, which felt kinda fancy to me (in a down home kind of way). It was probably the most interesting venue I’ve ever done a show at.

There’re still plenty of Neil Jam Icons to go around, and I’ve been adding more to my Etsy shop, with more to come in the coming days. So please, give the gift you know they want– an oddball Neil Jam rendition of their favorite pop culture character. Or maybe a Neil Jam book or something…

For those of you who can’t make it out to the show, there’s still plenty of opportunity to pick up some quality Neil Jam items for the Holidays. There’s a store full of books on neiljam.com as well as a selection of artwork available over in my Etsy Shop. I’ll be bringing a selection of the artwork with me to the show this weekend, so the Etsy shop may look light during that time, but I’ll stock it back up at weekend’s end, and will be adding new items in the coming days as well.

Happy Holiday’s y’all.

For a good ol’ fashioned comics fan, there can’t be any show better than SPX. The sheer amount of consistently high quality stuff on display from table to table boggles the mind. And unless I am crazy, it looked better this year than ever before.

And of course, there was a nook of Neil Jam stuff nestled in there among it all. I had all the usual stuff with me. In many respects this was a typical SPX– Great comics, great creators, great fans, and just a fun vibe all around. There are too many people to thank individually, so I’ll just have to send a shout out to the Neil Jam Nation as a whole. Thanks for the good time!

SPX 2009 fun fact: Did you know that on Sunday, the second day of the show, the temperature in the room was at frigid levels for the entire day? In a highly unprecedented move, the organizers cranked the AC so that this SPX would in fact be remembered forever as “Cold Con 2009.” Actually, I don’t know why it was so darn cold in there… But it was very strange!

Bonus SPX stuff: I took a bunch more photos, so head over to my Flickr gallery to check ‘em out.

Now that I have recovered from the long weekend that was Chicago Comic-Con I’m ready to tell you all about it. In short, It went pretty well! The show itself has been in a downward spiral of sorts for the last few years, with fewer and fewer crowd pleasing comics centric displays and happenings each year. While that surely disappointed attendees, I’m thinking it probably helped give a boost to artist alley, as there was plenty of comics stuff going on in there. I was actually able to make this my most successful show of all time– imagine that!

I had one of the most elaborate displays that I’ve ever had at a convention on my table. The new Neil Jam book made its official debut at the show, but it was the stepchild on a table jam packed full of glorious mini framed Neil Jam Icons! The artwork was by far the hit of the show. I lovingly refer to those things as “nerd crack,” and I am an unabashed dealer. Big shout out to anyone who picked up some books or artwork. Y’all definitely made the whole weekend worthwhile.

I took a bunch of photos which can be seen here in my flickr gallery. Now that the con is over I’ll have a chance to do some maintenance around the website. Look for the new book to be made available later in the week. And while I was able to unload a lot of artwork at the con, I still have plenty left (I brought an obscene amount with me), so I may be making some of that available as well sometime in the near future. Thanks again everyone!

Anime Central was a wild weekend immersed in the wild world of anime. Unlike a comics convention, an anime convention like this has a much broader scope. There were only a handful of us peddling comics within the artist alley. The rest of the tables had a variety of items: tshirts, jewelry, bookmarks, prints, toys, crafty goods, and a whole lot more.

This sign was my secret weapon of the weekend. It was inspired by a similar technique my table neighbor Brion Foulke was using. I crafted it on the spot with an old legal pad I had with me and held it over my table for nearly the entire three days. Believe it or not, it actually worked! A good number of people told me they stopped specifically because they saw or liked the sign. I’m not sure this exact technique would work at a comics convention, but it managed to do the job here. Who knew??

I want to thank everyone who stopped by to say hi or chat. It was a pretty fun weekend, and now that my feet have stopped hurting I feel ready to do it again. There are several more photos on my flickr page if you’d like to get a better feel of what the show was like. For now I think I’ll just leave you with a shot of my favorite costumed crazy of the weekend– a Jedi Bunny.