ECCC

A good 13 hours after we left Utah, we arrived in Seattle. It really wasn't a bad drive. Yeah, it was f***ing long, but the company was good. I can honestly say that no one got on my nerves at all during the drive. (I can't really speak for either of my travel mates though) It was me, Ryan, and "Joey" ( http://www.joeysjams.blogspot.com/) in the car. Somewhere in Oregon, Joey & I found an NWA hat at Pilot for $6. I bought it for him and he wore it during the whole trip. That is until we bought do-rags to wear for the drive home...

As soon as we checked into our hotel, I began hunting down Dave & Colin who were to join us from Manchester for the con. No luck. I found their hotel and confirmed that they had checked in, but I couldn't get them to answer the damn phone. Ryan and I scrambled for hours to get them to respond to email, smoke-signals, flares...all for not. We finally resigned ourselves to the fact that they didn't make it to the states, or only Colin made it to the states and was afraid to answer the phone, OR that they were both severly addicted to heroine and passed out in some seedy back alley somewhere around Broadway. We were all very sad.

That last part was all bullshit. Turns out Colin had just unplugged the phone in the hotel room because the red flashing light was keeping him up. You know, the red flashing light that means someone left a message for you?  Hmph. They finally met up with us on Saturday morning as we were setting up our table. We were all very, very excited to meet them. There wasn't an awkward moment with them. They are possibly the nicest and most professional people that I've ever met. Meeting them face-to-face and hanging out with them was the highlight of the trip for me.

The con went very well over all. We brought 50 copies of 8AM and sold a little under half of them. The rest we gave away to companies, creators, and sent plenty home with the Accent UK fellows to give to contributors. Ed Brubaker got a copy as well as ONI Press and a bunch of others. Nei Ruffino actually bought one just to support us even though we would have happlily given her one. What a sweet girl.

We interviewed plenty of folks there too. Aaron Williams, Rick Remender, Joelle Jones...and a bunch of others. We got to see our pal Brian Churilla quite a bit during the show. He was a pretty busy guy both days. Still, he was very nice and willing to chat whenever we came by. His table was right next to Phil Hester, who was also incredibly nice. Actually, I can't think of anyone there who wasn't willing to spend some time to chat with us about whatever.

I'll quit rambling and let you see some pictures. Make sure you check out episode 54 over at http://www.talesfromtheparentsbasement.com/ . It'll be up shortly, and all of our stories and interviews will be in it!

Ryan & Aaron Williams (North 40, PS238)

Churilla signing 8AM (The Anchor, The Engineer)

Ed Brubaker (Criminal, Captain America, Sleeper)

Ryan & Colorist Dave Stewart (Hellboy)

Spence sketching away.

Phillip Tan (GL, EVERYTHING...)

Me, Ryan, Dave West, & Colin Mathieson

Ryan in his do-rag during the drive home...

...me in mine.