The Herald-Standard Comic-Con interview

A little while ago, I did an interview with the local paper, the Herald-Standard, regarding this July's Comic-Con.  Larry set it up and it went from there.  Apparently it went over well enough, because this past Sunday it showed up as a feature article and on the first page of its section.  The article is a nice piece about Comic-Con, from a local perspective, and you can read it here, if you'd like: http://www.heraldstandard.com/entertainment/features/action-and-adventure-local-residents-visit-comic-con-international/article_5b6ab096-4e6b-5f4d-82b2-f0386d96f291.html

There was talk about bringing a photographer to the interview, but that was scuttled in favor of placing some pictures we ourselves took at the convention.  I probably sent over more than 20 for the staff to choose from, picking out interesting and what I thought were pictures indicative of the atmosphere at the show.  And then I said, "ah, screw it, I'm sending over a picture of the Thing."  And then I sifted through some more pictures, thought about it for a few seconds and said, "heck, I'm going to send over that Beast Wars picture as well."

AND THEY PRINTED IT.  They printed our "scream 'Beast Wars' while taking a picture with Cheetor" picture from Comic-Con.  THIS IS FANTASTIC!  I wonder if the guy who dressed up in the costume knows that he's in the paper.  I wonder that about the guy dressed up as the Thing, Hawkman, and the Green Lantern couple, too (I never noticed this before, but there's a pretty good photobomb going on behind the Green Lanterns), but mostly Cheetor.  Perhaps it's time to do a Google search to see what I can find.

The article covers the entire front page, above and below the fold, and continues on the last page of the section as seen above.  On this page, it shares space with an article about Lady Gaga's meat dress.  High society, here we come!

Many thanks to the Herald Standard and the writer of the article.  Now let's see if the guy dressed as Cheetor from Beast Wars is on Google Images.

The signing at Evil Genius

"But Jeff," you ask, "why such a despondent look?"  In return, I reply, "Don't use such big words!  And we're not really on a first name basis, now are we?"

Ah, the magic of fantasy.  Where you look up and see a picture of me looking like I'm reconsidering all of my life's goals, I am, in fact, having a great time down at Evil Genius Comics.  As I had mentioned a few times, I took a trip down on Wednesday of this week and, with the help of a newspaper article promoting Teddy and the Yeti, I was able to meet a lot of people and sell a whole lot of copies of the first issue.

I want to thank the guys at Evil Genius for setting this signing up - it was a great success in a number of ways.  From a purely selfish standpoint, I sold more books on Wednesday than I had in any other given day other than when Midtown Comics put in their giant order.  From a personal standpoint (and perhaps also a selfish one), I got to interact with a lot of great people, both those that I knew (get in the paper and you see high school friends you haven't seen in years, I guess) and those I didn't before Wednesday.  Lots of great conversation and interesting people.  Heck, even my barber showed up.  My barber!  This is the first time I've seen him outside of his shop, and I've been going to the place since I was 13.  Unreal.

Maybe we'll do it again when issue #2 comes out (next month, kids).  College will be back in session and hey, Evil Genius is situated right off campus from Cal U.  We'll see what happens.

above the fold

If you happen to browse the front page to today's Uniontown Herald-Standard newspaper, you will find the following topics highlighted: death, terrorism, death again, disease, natural disasters, more death, and Teddy and the Yeti.  Oh, and weather.

I mentioned a little while ago that I had been interviewed for a newspaper article - it made its way into the December 29th edition on the first page of the entertainment section.  What really stands out, though, is the almost three-dimensional picture of me in a Steelers sweatshirt popping up to obscure part of the paper's masthead, as if someone slapped a sticker of me on each and every edition as part of some concentrated joke.

Regardless of how unnerving it is to see yourself staring back at you from the newsstand, this is a great bit of publicity for the book, especially since it mentions tomorrow's book signing event at Evil Genius Comics in nearby California, PA (it's almost as if they planned it that way!!).  The quote selection ranges from spot on to curious (there's no way I ever said that Duane pencils 20 pages a month), but overall I'm very happy with how things turned out.  You can read the article here, while it's available - I think they take their articles down after a while, so get it while the getting's good!

The things I do for free publicity.

I recently conducted an interview with a reporter from the Uniontown, PA Herald-Standard, a paper from back home, about Teddy and the Yeti and comics in general.  I will say that the interviewer was knowledgeable and didn't ask questions like "they still make comics?" or "is Superman in your book?", which right away means that things went well.  I will post a link when the article sees print, and then we can all marvel at my thrilling answers.

Articles like the one that will be based around my interview are always one part information to two parts promotion, and as such I tried to make all my answers sound important; overall, I tried to sound like I knew what I was talking about.  The danger is that I came off sounding like I was full of myself, and I worry about that - I don't want the heading to be "pompous windbag makes a comic".  We'll see.

At the end of the interview, I asked the reporter if I could e-mail a scan of the book's cover - what better way to showcase the book than with a picture of it! - to which she agreed, and then said "and send a picture with you holding the book, too!"

I was afraid of this.  It's not that I don't want my picture in the paper or that I don't like to have my picture taken.  Let's face it, I'm extremely good looking.  I just imagine people I went to high school with picking up the newspaper and seeing me plastered on page one of the arts and entertainment section.  I imagine they'd look at it for a moment, read the caption, and think "Jeff always was pretty weird."  It's just awkward, is all.  Oh well.  I suppose that a newspaper could put a picture of me on every page if it means they're promoting the book in a roundabout fashion.

The above picture is what I sent to the paper, sans mustache.  I drew the mustache for our purposes here, because as we all know, mustaches are funny.  And look!  Rusty's in the background, too.  Hey, fella!