On The Road

Part 7: Galaxiom Day 2

First things first, before we get into the timeline of the day.

Vernon Smith, an amazing artist who drew Star Trek: Lower Decks for IDW and was our next-door neighbor, was only at the show for one day, so today he didn’t show up. The table on the other side of him was a no-show, so today Larry and I commandeered both tables to spread out. This is the type of setup I wish I could afford at shows. It’s hard sometimes to squeeze everything into the space allotted at some shows. It’s always nice when I can spread out.

So this morning we spread out. Larry has a table to draw on, we spread out some of the comics, and I managed to get the newspaper A KID AND THEIR COMIC on display. I love this type of display, so spread out.

Last night I got more than enough sleep. I was in bed by ten and probably asleep within ten minutes. I woke up once around one, but fell back asleep within minutes. My alarm was set for six, and I woke up two minutes before it went off. I should have been full of energy and raring to go, but I felt terrible. I didn’t feel sick, but just completely exhausted; my body felt like it didn’t want to move. It was a really weird feeling, and all I wanted to do was go back to bed. Instead, I got ready and headed out to pick up Larry.

Now I wasn’t in the best mood since I wasn’t feeling great when I set out. My first stop was McDonald’s for a biscuit and iced tea. I pulled into the drive-through and waited by the speaker. And waited. Finally, someone came on and said: “Give me a sec.” Exactly like that. So I waited. And again, I waited. Seconds passed. Minutes passed. Finally, I spoke to the speaker: “Hello.” And the voice came back: “Give me a sec.”

If you say give me a sec, I assume you’re handing food to a car, maybe finishing bagging an order up, filling a drink, something that doesn’t take very long, like maybe a few seconds. Four or five minutes is not a second. If you’re going to be that long, maybe say, “Hey, we’re really busy, I’ll be with you as soon as I can, but it might be a few minutes.” Instead, she said, “We’re busy.” Of course they’re busy. They’re a fast food place; it’s Sunday morning, probably a very busy time for them. But don’t tell me it’s only going to be a few secs.

Maybe I’m overreacting. But I spent fifty years in retail, in customer service, and I know not every day is going to be a great day, but try to be polite. So I drove off.

Yet I still needed, at the least, something to drink. It was too early without some type of nourishment. There was another McDonald’s on my route before I got to the Twin Spans and the lake. Again I pulled up to the drive-through. Whoever was on the other end of the speaker wasn’t familiar with the ordering system. I ordered a large unsweet tea with lemon and Equal. She kept saying coffee with lemon and Equal. Finally, we got it right. At the window, the employee just thrust the bag at me and handed my drink without a word. Small things, as I said, but after spending so much time working with the public, those little things really irk me.

Maybe if I hadn’t woken up feeling off it would have rolled off me more easily. But I hadn’t, and it didn’t. So my morning was off to a bad start, and it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet.

Thankfully, the rest of the trip went smoothly, and Larry was in my car, and we were on our way to the show without any more irritants.

I did learn one thing this morning after I got to the show. There’s another room with vendors, away from the room we’re set up in. The other room is like the floor of a gym, with bleachers surrounding it and a stage. It’s full and very packed with vendors. I was told yesterday this room was packed for most of the day. I’m always leary of shows that separate vendors like this. One room seems to be the main room, everyone knows about, and the other room gets missed and forgotten. Which seems to be what might have happened yesterday.

I’m not sure what the answer is when a show has limited space for the vendors that have signed up.

The show was slower than yesterday, but miraculously I did more sales today than yesterday. I had a t-shirt sale today, and those always help my numbers. T-shirt sales are a slippery slope that you can slide down into a money pit. I have quite a number of different styles, but only a few of each. Mostly large and X-large. A couple of my more popular shirts, like the Sea Monkey and Skull, I have more sizes. Shirts get expensive, and they’re a pain to cart around, and at a lot of shows there isn’t space to set them up. But as you can see, we had more than enough space at this show.

I need to start getting vendor booths instead of a table in artist alley, just for the space, but the difference in price is usually so much more. It’s something to think about for sure.

I did sell a Skull t-shirt to a woman who had come by yesterday and looked at things and left. I really wasn’t expecting her to come back; she didn’t give me any indications when she was here the previous day that she would. Then, as I was breaking the table down, she came by and thanked me for the shirt and told me how much she liked it. That always feels good, and I’ll never grow old hearing people liked something I created.

When I sell a comic, I usually don’t think to ask if they want it autographed. It’s weird; I find it strange that someone would want me to sign something with my name, lol. But today, all the comics I sold, they wanted autographed, which is a nice feeling.

I managed to write 16 pages of a new script that Larry and I are going to pitch to Ben Dunn at Antarctic Press when I’m in San Diego. I think it hits all of Ben’s sweet spots. I don’t want to talk too much about it yet, which is unusual for me; I’m usually shouting my new work from the rooftops too soon. It’s a new take on an old concept, and I think it’s going to be awesome. Larry already drew a cover for it, and it just blew me away. I want to finish the script up before San Diego, so I have the first issue script and some art to show Ben.

So all in all, not a terrible show. The show itself was great; the people that put it on kept good care of us and kept coming by with water and snacks. It was fun. And since my table was comped, my only real expense was gas. And I made some money. I’ll admit the first day when I hadn’t had a sale by the afternoon, I was getting worried. I can’t remember the last time I had a zero show.

I was a little worried when it came time to tear down the new setup. I had did it at home and it went smooth, but this was the real test. The setup was great, so hopefully the breakdown would be just as easy.

It was! It took us about ten minutes to break the cubes down and store them. The only drawback is the cubes give me a bigger container and take up more space in the car. When I come back from San Diego, I’m going to try to see what I can do to tighten things up. The container I use for the cubes has extra space, so I think I can kill some other containers by adding them to the bigger one. Problems for the future.

The show ended at four. We started tearing down around 3:30. By that time, half the hall had already torn down and left, so I didn’t feel bad about breaking down a little earlier. We were on the road by four, and I was home a little after six.

I found a Hot Pocket in my freezer I didn’t know I had, and a bag of chips with it was my supper. Surprisingly, I wasn’t tired tonight. I spent it finishing FORGET THE ALAMO, a book about, well, I guess you can figure that one out. It was a good read and interesting, and I learned a few things I didn’t know. Like what was the real root cause of the Texans war with Mexico.

Well, two days now before I fly out to SDCC. We’ll see how I do keeping up with this while I’m there. I’m kind of surprised I managed to keep up with this so far, lol.