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Hello everyone!
Here we are once again. We've got to get another issue out super quick because it's been put off faaaaaaaaaaaaar too long. Therefore, as of yesterday, we have started our 20 days of HELL! We will be working from 11am to 2am or later every day in order to get Rainbow in the Dark #7 done for Heroes Con 2012 at the end of June! That means we've gotta get this sucker done by June 15 in order to go out to the printer on time. Fingers crossed!
So, here's where we are...28 of 28 pages roughed out2 of 28 pages drawn
0 of 28 have the flats finished
0 of 28 have the full foreground tone done
0 of 28 have the all artwork totally finished
2 of 28 have the layout lettering finished0 of 28 have full lettering finishedWe'll be honest, this does look daunting. But we've done it before - and by god - we can do it again!Here's some page action to let you know what we've got...and to give you a sense of what we've got ahead of us! Rainbow in the Dark #7 page 12 fully drawn! Favorite part of this page, as usual - Kenji! Rainbow in the Dark #7 page 13 fully drawn! Poor Luke :( Rainbow #7 sadly isn't all easy pages - there's a good number of them that look like this. Thankfully not nearly as many as were in Rainbow #6 - thank goodness! Rainbow in the Dark #7 page 5 rough. And yes, those are animals in panel 3!Okay, back to work. More updates and a Motor City Comic Con report to come - so we'll see you all next week!
Comfort & Adam
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This weekend we are off to Motor City Comic Con which is practically in our back yard. We'll be in Artist Alley selling books, prints, and sketching until we implode! So if your in the area, make sure to come and visit us!
Also, we are just a mere few strokes of a pencil away from finishing the roughs on Rainbow in the Dark #7. Which means, when we get back from Motor City, it's time to hunker down into our 30 days of HELL once more. So before we go into lock-down mode again, enjoy some more rough pages from Rainbow in the Dark #7! Page 1 Rough from Rainbow in the Dark #7 Page 2 Rough from Rainbow in the Dark #7 Page 19 Rough from Rainbow in the Dark #7 Page 20 Rough from Rainbow in the Dark #7All for now, here's hoping we see you at the show!
Comfort & Adam
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Hello again our fair people. It is once more time for yet another con report - a short one to be sure, but delightful none-the-less! This past weekend we were at Summit City in Fort Wayne Indiana. It was just a one day show and not too long a drive (little over 3 hours, not too shabby) which made it a particularly wonderful experience for us seeing as we generally have to give up the better part of our week to go to a show *blah*
Green Arrow and Black Canary by Adam We started out on Friday at about 1pm or so - early for us, yet late in the day for most people. Everything went really smoothly except for the fact that Adam had contracted the flu a few days prior. So what should have been very easy and very simple, was instead a constant struggle. The whole way to Summit City Adam slept in the car as he tried to fight off yet another round of chills and fervor. We got to the show around 6pm, set up, and headed off to the pre-con party. While there we talked with incredible Mike Norton, his two friends, as well as meeting the very interesting Ryan Davidson. Who is just now putting out a book on The Law and Superheroes. Very cool stuff indeed. We finished up the night by talking with the sweetest man in all of comicdom, Cameron Merkler (of DCBS fame), who is helping us understand what we’ll need to actually work with comic stores someday in the near-ish future. By the time we were done talking with Cameron though, Adam had totally tapped out for the night and we had to get him back to the hotel ASAP since he was already starting to run a high temperature with chills.
 Deadpool by Comfort It was a rather fitful night of sleep with Adam feeling the way he did, but we both woke up bright and early to get to the show. When we got there we decided it would be best for Adam to stay and sleep in the car while Comfort took on the table duties. As for the show though, it was really fantastic! The show runner Zack Kruse had outdone himself and ran a very fun one day show indeed. There were a lot more people, and there were a lot of smiles. This is a show that one day we can see really taking off if it keeps this up! Adam eventually made it into the show and we went to run our panel, Creating Your Comic from Concept to Publication - which went amazingly well even with Adam’s sickness. The panel was full of people and we were able to take every question (something we almost never get to do) because we were the last panel of the day. We left the panel feeling great…but it sadly wasn’t good enough for Adam who had to go back out to sleep again because he was dealing with yet another case of the chills after our preformance.
Being as it's a small show, Summit City isn't getting a lot of cos-play just yet. But, we did manage to get a photo of a tiny tiney 11th Doctor and Captain Kirk! Comfort ran the table for most of the rest of the day and we got Cameron a set of trades that are now up on In Stock Trades for an impressive discount! Check The Uniques HERE and Rainbow in the Dark HERE! All in all it was a wonderful one day show and we can’t wait to go back again next year! Our hope is that the show just continues to grow and gets even more awesomer cuz it really deserves it! Well, that’s all for today, see you back here tomorrow for some more previews of Rainbow in the Dark #7 and a map to find us at Motor City Comic Con 2012! Laters, Comfort & Adam
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Well fair readers - can you believe it - we’re off to yet another convention! This time we’re on our way to Summit City Comic Con in Fort Wayne Indiana! It’s a delightful one day show run by one of our favorite people in comics, Zack Kruse. He’s a tenacious guy who we’ve really come to respect. And let us tell you, he puts on a heck of a one day show!
 So, as with every show we’ll be there selling books, prints, and doing sketches until our adorable little hands fall off - all day Saturday in the land of Summit City Comic Con! Above is a map of our placement in Artist Alley.
 In other news, we recently were interviewed by the TGT podcast with Kurt Sasso, an awesome guy who runs a fantastic podcast. You can listen to us talk about life as a self-publisher, living with piracy, our books, and various other things here!
RAINBOW IN THE DARK NEWS: Rainbow in the Dark #7 is underway: the entire issue is laid out in rough form, now we're tightening the roughs up and prepping for final pages. Let us tell you, compared with all the insanity of issue #6, this one is a cake walk. Our plan is to finish Rainbow in the Dark #7 for Heroes Con this year. So in order to do that, we’ll have to hunker down for yet another 30 days of HELL! But, we’ve don it once - and we can do it again!
Rainbow in the Dark page 12 rough
Rainbow in the Dark #7 page 13 rough
Rainbow in the Dark #7 page 17 rough
Rainbow in the Dark #7 page 18 rough
Us with Chris right about to dig into our delightful sushi meal. Our favorite part of the picture - how much Chris finds our posing to be ridiculous! Lastly, we went to go see the totally AWESOME Avengers movie with our super kick-ass friends Chris and Jennifer last Saturday. After the movie we went out for sushi (Chris had cake) and talked all about the film we had just seen. Inevitably, the subject of The Dark Knight Rises (the other massive comic movie of the summer) arose. Specifically, character Bane became a topic. Thus, an entire discussion ensued, which included the full explanation of the origins of Bane, as well as the potential coolness vs. the inevitable lameness of of said character. A delightful time indeed, many back breaking jokes were made to be sure.
But, we had no idea exactly how delightful until we got our mail today and opened it up to see that Chris (we assume, although we can see Jennifer having her hands in this as well) had made us a card...
The card sent to us by Chris and Jennifer along with a scrumptious piece of toast.
And upon further inspection, we found that it may be the very best card we've ever gotten - EVER!
The front - EPIC! And great use of a pun. Nicely done you guys!
...and the inside.
We hope you can see why these guys are out best friends. And we only hope that all of you may someday get a card in the mail half as spectacular as this one.
Well, with that, we're calling it for today and heading off to Summit City! Catch all you crazy cats later! Comfort & Adam
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You hear that? It’s the sound of convention season being in full swing. We both are excited by and dread that sound. For it means delightful con fun goingness - as well as utter exhaustion as we begin going to one con every week to every other week - *phew*
Us with the blanket we did the artwork for at from ACen. Also, note that Comfort has finally gotten herself an animal hat - something she's always wanted!
So, without further ado, welcome to the convention report for Anime Central 2012! It’s our fourth year at ACen, which was the first anime con we ever attended back in 2009. Back then, it was such a killer show that we started adding a bunch of anime conventions to our yearly list. Could it hold up in year four? Read on to find out! (And to see the sketches we did…)
A Wolverine tattoo by Adam
This year was different than usual. Last year we did some artwork for ACen's program and did a design for a blanket they were selling as merchandise. This year, we did even more art – including a Giordano’s pizza ad and the big preview for next years’ show – and were added to the Art & Production Staff. Besides getting our table for free, we also got the opportunity to have a free room at the con hotel (provided we were willing to share with a couple other staffers). As we clearly have no problem sharing our room, we jumped at the opportunity.
So after swinging through Grand Rapids to see friends and family (as is our custom when traveling to Chicago), we landed in Rosemont ready to set up and find out who our roommates were. As it turned out… we didn’t HAVE any! Either they swapped rooms to be with friends or they just never showed up, but we wound up having a whole huge nice room all to ourselves. After the humongous shows we’d just got done with, having a room of our own to relax and unwind was kind of nice. We missed having friends to kick back with at night, but there’s something to just chilling with your best friend (a.k.a. each other) after a hard day’s work.
Buffy and Faith by Comfort
On a down note, we found out we’d picked up some ticks while walking with Comfort’s Aunt Rebecca through the Chicago Arboretum. D’oh. Thankfully there were no bites, just a couple ticks that had hitched a ride in our clothing. So much easier to deal with than bed bugs!!! Though it did have us scratching at ghost-tingles all weekend.
The show launched on Friday bright and early. Whereas most shows start a little later on Friday afternoon, ACen gets going right off from day one. We were pretty well-rested though and ready to face the day. Our table-neighbor was friend and colleague Alan Evans, creator of the BEST wrestling webcomic ever conceived by man, Rival Angels. It was a pretty laid-back day on Friday, sales-wise, but we had a number of people coming up to us representing the new fan phenomenon we’re getting this year: the “What’s the new stuff?” fan. These are the people who have been so impressed with your work so far that they’ll put down money to buy whatever your new book is. They just trust you as a creator enough to believe that if you’ve made it, they’ll probably enjoy it. Needless to say, this is quite the humbling and exciting experience. What do you say to something like that? Such raw, pure enthusiasm? Just thank you, we guess – so thank you, fans, for enjoying what we do and sharing your enthusiasm with us. You make our job worthwhile!
 Ryo and Anubis by Adam
Also on Friday we started our three-day Creating Comics seminar - rather then our general one day version we do at most cons. Having done it at MegaCon earlier this year created a lot of interested and excitement, and people have been asking us when we'd be doing the 3-day again. Lucky for us, ACen was kind enough to allow us to run the whole shabang - a large commitment for a show, but we do our damnedist to make it worth their time! Friday’s panel on Writing and Marketing and it went really well. It’s probably our favorite of the three days because, to us, the story is the most important part of what we do - and understanding selling yourself in this new world unfolding in publishing is just interesting to talk about. We got a lot of great feedback and had some good conversations after the seminar, which is a big part of why we do these panels in the first place.
Back at the alley, we wrapped up Friday with a couple sketches to wrap that night. The crowd was buzzing and energetic and we were having a good time. Our table was right at the front of the alley – literally one of the first things you’d see as you entered the convention - and generally, eaisily forgotten. But it didn't seem to hurt us at all that weekend.
 Deus EX by AdamFriday night we made our annual trip to the BEST Thai restaurant we’ve ever found; The Golden Elephant. It’s so good that we go out of our way to make sure we eat there every time we’re in Rosemont. This time, we got to bring our old college friends Aric and Laschita, inspirations for two of the villainous Gamers Three from The Uniques #7. We get to see them only occasionally, and get to spend actual time conversing with them even less, so it was a real treat. The whole weekend was uplifted by the chance to be with such good people for a night.
At the hotel, we considered heading up to the “Green Room” where staff and guests could gather, but it was quite dark and we had sketches that absolutely had to get done. We didn’t want to go into Saturday with a sketch-deficit. So instead, we chilled in our room together and enjoyed each other’s company. It was a nice night.
Scout, from our very own The Uniques, by Adam
...and Kid Quick of The Uniques by Comfort
Saturday was busy. Not just for business, but part of the fun of anime cons for us is the “fly on the wall” aspect; being situated right at the entrance, pretty much, let us watch all manner of adorable shenanigans as the excited attendees flooded through. Impromptu photo-shoots broke out, a girl saw someone she apparently hadn’t in a long time and leapt into their arms, and many, MANY squeals were had. This is the energy of anime conventions we’re always talking about – it makes us feel a lot younger and a lot older at the same time seeing as we are now 30 and 31. Goodness, how time flies...
That day we gave the second of our seminars on creating comics; Character Design and Sequential Storytelling. It’s the funist of the three dissections and focuses on what makes good-looking characters and how to put pages together that work both as art and as solid storytelling devices. Other people can teach you HOW to draw – we want to teach the WHY. It went so smoothly we had a lot of time for Q&A, which is rare because of how often we get so into delivering as much information as possible that we run the clock down too quickly.
One of the many original characters we drew this past weekend by ComfortAll in all, Saturday was a good day. Business was great without being overwhelming. And we did a LOT of talking and answering questions with people who had been coming to our panels. We can't tell you how encouraging it is to see the excitement in a new or potential creator's eyes. Having taught for 10 years before we struck out onto this crazy comic creating adventure, it does our hearts good to be able to teach and inspire people again. Even if only for a weekend.
That night we had to pass on a chance to go out with our friend Dirk Tiede (of Paradigm Shift fame, another excellent web series) who wanted to go into Chicago to an awesome Mexican restaurant. We had too many sketches sadly to do to take such a trip, and opted instead for Chicago pizza. Here’s a sweat deal: because we did their ad in the ACen program, Giordano’s gave us a free pizza that night. And if you don’t know Giordano's, it is excellent food. It may not be “pizza” to everybody, but whatever you call it, it’s delicious. We cannot recommend eating there enough when you're out in the land of Chicago!
 Lloyd Irving by Adam
After a nice meal and chatting about stories and stuff (as we often do when it’s just the two of us) we decided that dammit we were GOING to enjoy that green room! We went up, found the one corner that had decent light, and pulled up some chairs to draw. Which, of course, nobody ever understands here at anime shows. To most people, conventions are FUN! They’re PARTIES! To us, cons are work. We bust our humps; people pay us to draw them things and we have a responsibility to deliver! But we can have fun while we work, too, and that’s important. So yeah, we were drawing all night. But we also got to talk with Alan, joking around about this and that. And we got to have a talk with our friend Trevor Mueller about Mass Effect 3 and the whole ending controversy surrounding it. Even 'Con Mom' Debbie was kind enough to come over and get us away from our drawing boards for a spell and have some real fun! It was a really nice time being up there, we got all our drawings done, and we got some delightful chit-chating done ta' boot. Hooray responsibility!
Sunday wasn’t as busy as it's been in past years, but that didn't hurt us at all. When it was all said and done we had handily surpassed last years’ earnings and demolished what we could expect from comic cons of comparable size to ACen. It remains a great show with a great crowd and a great atmosphere.
We did our last panel near the end of the day: Coloring and Lettering. It was mostly a demonstration seminar where we actually walk through how we use Photoshop and Illustrator to color and letter our books. This part of the panel was tough at MegaCon – we vastly overestimated the time we had and underestimated how much material we had to cover. But this time we were ready and it went much better. But we had to rush back to our table because we knew that this was the busiest time of the day on Sunday and we were missing a lot of sales while the panel was running.
Original character duo by Comfort
Original characters Vs. by Adam
When we got back and Alan told us some of our pushier fans had been quite unsettled at our being missing, but everything worked out fine. It was a pretty packed last half-hour before show-close, and in the end we came out well ahead and didn’t even have to completely tire ourselves out to do so. Which is part of the reason we love ACen so much. Great business, great people, great atmosphere, all without the body destroying exhaustion that comes with a show like Emerald City or C2E2.
Another original character by Comfort
Deadpool and Dex-Starr by Comfort and Adam
And that was that. We headed home that night, stopping along the way for dinner with Comf’s brother Steve and his lovely young girlfriend Marcella. It was the perfect way to end the weekend, and we slept soundly and happily that night.
We’ll be hitting the road again soon for the Summit City Con, but in the mean-time we’re rolling on Rainbow in the Dark #7. Page layouts are coming along well and it’s looking good, gang. Can’t wait to share some stuff.
In the mean-time, we’ll be keeping updates coming along right here. Enjoy the photos of the costumes we saw at ACen!
Comfort & Adam  
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Well fair readers - it's time for yet another con! This time we're heading back to Chicago for Anime Central. And yet again - we shall be in Artist Alley at table 121. We'll be selling books, prints, and - you guessed it - doing sketches until our hands turn inside out! As well as being in ACen's Artist Alley, we also were tapped to do a lot of their artwork for this year's show. We did their print ad, bus ad (which was awesome to hear about seeing it in person), their ad for the pizzeria Giordanos, and their 2013 poster for next year's show. It was quite the marathon to get them all done with everything else we had - but we did it. Below is all the work - look and enjoy! This is the print ad we did for ACen. As you can see, we were trying to skew a little more on the anime side for this and the others. This was the Chicago Bus ad we did. One of the things that made C2E2 so awesome was hearing all the people tell us how cool it was to see our ad plastered all over the buses of the windy city! This may be our favorite thing we did for ACen - a Giordano's Pizza ad. It was both awesome and frustrating that every time we worked on this we thought of delicious deep dish pizza. And therefore found ourselves eating Adam's version of deep dish more then a few times. ...and lastly - the above is the 2013 poster we did for them. It's their sweet 16th, so we just couldn't help but go a little girly with this one.Well, we are all packed and ready to go. First stop, a visit with our bestest friends Christ and Jennifer, then Comfort's family, then her relatives on her Dad's side...and then the con! *phew* We've got a full plate here for the next few days - wish us luck!
Comfort & Adam
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A delightful photo of the two of us in our everyday ridiculous poses. Taken in the land if C2E2 by our amazing flatter Travis Perkins
Well, we’ve had enough time to recover and decompress from the madhouse of the Chicago Comics and Entertainment Expo, lovingly referred to by all as C2E2. It’s one of our biggest cons of the year, and did not disappoint this time around. But, man… that thing is almost verging on the difficult-to-pinpoint place where a con is too big to be fun. Almost. Or maybe we were just pooped out from Emerald City. Enough! Sketches and discourse to follow!
Our favorite sketch of the weekend. An incredible Jon Snow and Ghost from Game of Thrones by Adam
Our second favorite sketch - a Cloak and Dagger by Comfort
Chicago is a great town. One of our most frequent stops, there was a time where we were doing upward of four conventions there every year. We’ve got a lot of fans in the area, and there are a lot of people we look forward to seeing every time we’re in town. But the beauty of driving to Chicago is we can take a slight detour through our old stompin’ grounds of Grand Rapids, Michigan and see some of our favorite friends and family. So we started our trip two days before the show and got to spend time with Chris and Jennifer (two of our favorite people in the entire history of the planet – take that Millard Fillmore!) and do breakfast with Comfort’s mom, dad, and sister Joy. Then we popped in a new set of Adam’s mix CD’s and trekked onward to Comf’s aunt Rebecca who lives just outside Chicago. She’s kind enough to let us keep our car there and drive us downtown so we don’t have to pay for parking. Isn’t that sweet? We love Aunt Rebecca :D
Liandra From Fallen Angel by Comfort
Lady Blackhawk by Adam
Kyle Rayner Green Lantern by Comfort
So after two days of delightful people, we arrived at our hotel and set up at the con, then did dinner with yet another set of delightful people – our roomies for the weekend. This time around, we were staying with frequent mentions and friends of the show Bryan J.L. Glass and the inimitable Jeremy and Kelly Dale. Jeremy of one of the most fun art styles in comics and Kelly of one of THE most impressive Firestar sketchbook of all time. Needles to say, but we will anyway, it was a great time.
Samus from Metroid by Adam
Eleventh Doctor and the Astronaut by Comfort
An adorable young lady as Laura Croft by Adam
One of the best parts of C2E2 is that the Hyatt the con is attached to has a great lobby. Seriously, there are these big circles of couches and chairs and you can easily get a whole group in this nice, relaxed setting and enjoy each others’ company. It’s wonderful. Later in the evening, we were joined by Drew Gaska and the balletic, beautiful and perfectly unique Chandra Free. Even later, we were joined by fellow Michiganite (Michigander? Michiganian? Michimachimoomoo?) and dapper man-about-town, David Peterson. What followed, despite our desire to get to sleep at a decent hour, was a long conversation that began what would be a transformative weekend for us. There was little sleep to be had, but we regret nothing!!!
Arya Stark of Game of Thrones season 2 by Comfort
Ronin Warriors' Cye and Sekhmet by Adam
The convention began on Friday and was a madhouse. The thing was even bigger than last year, and last year it was humongous. We picked up a lot of sketches immediately, but were concerned on the comic front. See, it appeared as though our order of new books got split up in the mail, so only half our order arrived as intended. The missing half included all the new copies of Rainbow in the Dark vol. 2. We had sold out of our handful of remaining copies within an hour of the show opening that morning, and we were very worried about what would happen if the rest of the books didn’t arrive Saturday. Other than that concern, it was a wonderful day.
That night, we got to be part of the celebration of our dear friend Lora Innes’ birthday. We went out with her and a large group of fun people to an awesome sushi place and had a great night. Mutual friend and half of the inspiration for our character Kenji, comics journalist extraordinaire Steve Sunu had given her a tiny, adorable Captain America figure, and we spent the night saying patriotic things as him. Also: coming up with atrocious historical horror movie pitches to make her groan (Bunker Hell!!! Abraham Lincoln: Ghost Hunter!). Lora loves history and hates to see it messed with disrespectfully. Lora, therefore, found us to be jerkfaces. We loved it!
One of our favotie things of the whole weekend - Mustache Monicals bought for us by the amazing Steve Sunu!
A ballpoint pen sketch done on a massive of Kenji by the both of us, commissioned out by one of the inspirations for Kenji - you guessed it - Steve Sunu
A jam sketch in which Adam did the Superboy
Batman by Comfort
Saturday morning, our books arrived (thank heavens) and none too soon; the demand for Rainbow in the Dark books was almost overwhelming. Like we said, we’ve got a solid fanbase in Chicago, and they’re awesome. Some of these fans have been following our work since before we even had comics to sell, just enjoying the art we made. We’ll tell you – it does NOT get old, feeling like people like the things you create. It’s why we do what we do.
We weren’t doing our panel at this show, so we could just sit back and focus on running our table and drawing our sketches. And boy… there were a lot of sketches to do. But one thing we’ve been enjoying this year is how unusual the requests have been. By that we mean it’s been more than just “Batman!” “Wolverine!” “(insert obscure 70’s character with an atrocious and ultra-detailed costume here)!” We’ve been getting to do Game of Thrones art (AWESOME!) and lots of different Anime and Manga characters, cover recreation jam-pieces, Doctor Who stuff, video game stuff—just lots of variety. And variety keeps us happy, which makes us more creative and energized, which produces higher quality work.
You listening, people out there considering commissioning a sketch from us? ;)
Veronica Mars by Adam
Black Star by Comfort
Tenth Doctor by Adam
Saturday night we stayed in, squatting in the lobby couches and ordering food from a neat restaurant that had pretty solid veggie-burgers and nice, hearty salads. We sat with a group of friends and fans (a big shout out to Kevin Watkins, Chris Anon, Daron Kappauff, Jeff Ritter, Jeff Castaneda, and Serena Guerra) while we busted humps on sketches, we all played the ever-entertaining Top 5 game. You just pick a topic and people talk about their Top 5’s – Top 5 tv shows, Top 5 movies, whatever. It’s not a game you win or lose, it’s a way of getting to know each other and sparking conversations. Lots of people slipped in and out of the conversation, and were particularly delighted to be joined by Sean E. Williams and Talent Caldwell with whom we had a great time sharing ideas and conversing as the night finally wound down for us and we called it an evening.
Also, we found out that Moulin Rouge is as divisive a movie as we thought it would be, and that it’s hard for us to come up with separate lists of loves because the two of us are so damned similar. Cursed symbiosis! Why must we be such a perfect match?!
Black Beard by Adam
Polaris by Comfort
An adorable young lady as Electra by Comfort
Sunday was a wind-down day. There wasn’t a lot of business to do, but that was really only in comparison to the two days that preceded it. We finished all our sketches with a bit of time to spare and ended the show with an even higher gross than Emerald City, which was a pretty big show for us. We out-earned last year’s C2E2 by a respectable amount, though selling to an audience where many people have already bought everything you have does have some drawbacks. In all, though, there are no complaints. It was a big show, a busy show, and the people were great.
There was something missing, however, that Emerald City had over C2E2. We can’t put our fingers on it, though – it’s kind of a nebulous “feeling” kind of thing. It might be that ECCC is a more personal kind of show and C2E2 is more “businesslike,” which makes one feel more homey and the other more professional. But that doesn’t quite explain it, either. We don’t want to give a bad impression, because we had a great time at C2E2, but there’s just something about what’s going on out in Seattle that gave it an edge for us. We wish we could be more specific; if we figure it out, we’ll be sure and share.
Hawkgirl by Adam and Songbird by Comfort
A tough young lady as Wonder Woman by Comfort
Tony Stark by Adam
Sunday night was dinner out in Chicago with Bryan, Drew, and Chan. We mildly harassed but mostly entertained our waitress (we hope) with that energy we get after a good weekend, where it just feels nice to be done and to have done well. You don’t have anywhere to run off to, no work waiting for you to finish, no major stuff waiting tomorrow but the trip home – it’s just nice, relaxing, and you feel good. We hope she didn’t mind us, but we suspect we were more fun than most of her patrons.
Back at the hotel, we happened to run into Bill Willingham, with whom we’d had many brief meetings and interactions in the last year or two. He was happy to see our faces and not just the tops of our heads as we bent over our art boards, and in just a small talk with him we completed the final of many conversations over the weekend that culminated in us feeling like something had changed for us.
A jam piece that Comfort did the Gypsy image for and Adam did the Mira behind Aquaman
Close-up on the Mira by Adam
Close-up on the Gypsy by Comfort
We are at a point of transition. Rainbow is wrapping up in a few issues, as will be our fourth year as self-publishers before long. We can now call ourselves “Award Nominated” creators and not feel like it’s bologna. We’re making better money than we ever did when we were teaching or Adam moving furniture while Comf worked as a computer tech. We’re in a different place, and on our way to an even more differenter place than this. It’s time we stopped simply accepting that cautiously and embraced it openly. Over the next year, we’re going to be moving toward a new paradigm for ourselves that will change the way we do and think about a lot of things.
What that means for you, dear readers, faithful fans, beloved supporters of our humble doodlings, won’t be immediately clear. As the changes in us turn into changes for you, we’ll let you know. Nothing yet, but stuff is coming. GOOD stuff. EXCITING stuff. HAPPY stuff. This is a change we were anticipating far down the road, but being able to start heading that direction this soon is energizing us - galvanizing us – and it will only end in awesome.
Yoda by Adam
Eleventh Doctor and Amy Pond by Comfort
Tenth Doctor and Rose by Adam
You’ll know more as we know more, but it’s all ethereal and conceptual right now. And with that thought in mind, we’re moving on down the road BACK to Chicago for Anime Central this weekend. More fun awaits, and more pictures for you when we return.
Until then-
Comfort & Adam
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Aaaand just like that, we’re hitting the road again. This time were driving off to windy Chicago for the Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo, affectionately known as C2E2. We’ve loved this show the past two years since its founding, and have no reason not to expect a bangarang time will be had by all.
If you’re going to be in the area and want to see an amazing convention, pop by the Macormack Place Convention Center and check it out. We’ll be in Artist Alley at table B17! We've got more comics in stock, so you'll be able to get your Rainbow and/or Uniques fix, and as always we'll be doing sketches and selling prints all weekend long.
We hope to see you there, and you'll hear all about how it went next week, right here at the ol' Bloggy-blog.
-Comfort & Adam
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Finally the Comfort & Adam train has returned to Seattle, Washington. Emerald City Con 2012 has come and gone, and now that the dust has settled we’re ready to yak about it. Short version: It was fantastic on every level that matters. Long version (and lots of sketches) to follow…
Magik by Comfort
We came in via plane early Thursday. As the flight left Detroit a little after 8 am and it takes us around an hour or so to get to the Detroit airport, we didn’t bother sleeping the night before. We’re usually in bed around 3ish anyway, so having to start our drive at 5 meant it wasn’t worth trying to sleep. A nice nap and we were out the door (after Adam beat Mass Effect 3 – and loved it with only a scarce few reservations). The plane touched down many hours later, but it was only 10:30ish in Seattle thanks to the time change.
 Liara and Tali by Adam
Two original characters by both Adam and Comfort from the webcomic Mystic Suburb
We got to the hotel to find that our room reservation had been messed up, but they upgraded us to a suite to make up for it. Of course, it was a conference suite meant more for meetings and small gatherings, not for sleeping. So it only had one pull-out couch for the five of us who would be staying. They wheeled up some cots and we made the most of it. The rest of our party wouldn’t arrive until later, so we went to the con center to set up, made small catch-up talk with Tony Moore and his awesome wife Kara Fairfield who is adorable and tough as nails! Good people, those two.
Garrus Vakarian by Adam
A special gift by Comfort for a girl who LOVES playing X-Men Legands, but hates that Wolverine can die
Batman with Joker by Adam
Caught up with some great folks – Jeff “Chamba” Cruz, Royce “Fooray” Southerland, and Kanoe Barlow. We’d been internet friends with them for a while, and had had passing conversations at some cons before, but at long last we were set to spend some quality time getting to know each other. It was a wise move; within hours we were thick as thieves. We had the same sense of humor, the same aspirations, many of the same life experiences and struggles, even with Jeff who was from Australia. Seriously, we cannot state how much we enjoyed their company. We respected them as creators – Jeff and Royce are both Uniques Tales contributors! – but the more we get to know them, the more we love ‘em.
Back at the hotel room, we at last connected with our weekend sleep-mates, the ever-endearing, ever-inspiring, and ever-entertaining Bryan J.L. Glass, Chandra Free, and Drew “No Chintzy Gifts” Gaska. Much as we meant to get to sleep at a decent hour, it just wasn’t gonna happen without much laughification and discussions of winter activities. It’d been months since we’d seen each other, and everyone had much to tell.
 Tyrion Lannister by Adam
 Arya Stark By Comfort
Friday began well and stayed steady and busy all day. We picked up a fair few commissions, sold a ton of comics, and held our Creating Comics seminar. The panel went exceptionally well considering we only had 45 minutes (instead of the usual hour) and the people before us went over by 10, while we weren’t given any extra to make up for it. So it was a bit more rapid-fire than usual, but we were still met with a standing-room-only crowd that ate up whatever we dished out. The rest of the weekend we were shaking hands with people who had attended the panel and wanted to thank us. Oh no, friends – thank YOU for coming and listening to us babble on about self-publishing! It’s our honor to share, and you humble us with your thanks.
Us doin' our panel on Creating Your Comic from Concept to Publication. People seem to dig it and we LOVE running it!
 Wiccan and Hulkling sharing a milkshake by Comfort
Harley Quinn drawn on a baseball by Adam
Friday night we had the longest wait of our LIVES for some sushi. We ate at the Blue C sushi diner, and after hours that felt like days, we finally got a booth big enough to fit 8. We were with Jeff, Royce, Kanoe, their friends Adam (great name) and Bridget, and Wyliman creator and webcomic powerhouse Mario “The Mexican Maestro” Gonzáles. The company was great, the food was great, and you got to grab whatever items you wanted off of a conveyor belt that ran by the table. Prett-tee sweet if you ask us. Or if you ask Drew and Chan, who found the place the next day and proceeded to eat there daily thereafter.We tried to hang at the hotel lobby as we usually do, but it had been taken over by a bunch of rowdy roughhousers from a ceramics convention so we all went back up to our hotel room (it was made for meetings anyway, so why not?) and spent the night drawing. Jeff and Royce both did some awesome Rainbow in the Dark sketches for us (which we'll show in a post all it's own), which made us really happy!
Kid Flash by Adam
Spider-Man by Comfort
Saturday was unbelievably busy. The last time we were at Emerald City was in 2010, and back then it was only a 2-day show. We knew that it needed 3 days because it was so crowded, but it seems like adding another day just made it packed to the gills for three days instead of two. Que sera sera, it just meant more business which we’re obviously just fine to see. The crowd was so enthusiastic and happy to be there; it was a great attitude and a great vibe that just filled up the whole con center. We never felt as tired or hungry as we should have, lifted as we were by the spirits of the conventioneers.
Savage She-Hulk by Comfort
Fem-Shep by Adam
That night, we went to eat at an out-of-the-way diner (to avoid the long wait of the night before) where we got to hang out with a pair of ladies we really enjoy; Emily Ivie of The Locked Maze and Rotsterarsil, her man Jeff, and Cari Corene, creator of the mind-bending and awesome Toilet Genie. Such high caliber of creators we got to rub elbows with, right? It was a great time. There was much entertainment and conversation ranging from biological evolution to water-spiders and why people desire partners that aren’t good for them. Fun!
But it couldn’t last. There were just far, far too many sketches to finish and not nearly enough time. So we returned to the hotel and got to work, cracking through what we could despite getting stir-crazy near the end. Drew introduced us to the joys of the new Merry Melodies, where we learned that Daffy Duck is back to being hilarious again. Thank god.Sunday was the end. We finished all our commissions and took stock, realizing that we’d nearly sold out of all our comics. When we came to the show, we had two boxes of comics, one backpack full, and all our bags had books stuffed in them. By the end, we could fit everything we had left in one backpack with room to spare. It was astonishing and we were elated to see it. While we sold far fewer prints than we had in 2010, we sold so many more comics, TPB’s, and sketches that we increased our profit by 150%. So, yeah… we’ll be back next year for sure.
 Arisia by Adam
Another original chracter by Adam from the comic Mystic Suburb
Robin by Adam
During out adventure at the con we met a little girl who loved comics (which we loved :) ...and also looked amazingly similar to what we can only imagine our good friend Chan looked like as a miniture her.
We wrapped at five and said goodbye to the Harrises and our booth neighbors. We collected the tired but happy remnants of our weekend crew and merged forces to bring Drew, Chan, and Bryan together with Jeff, Royce, and Kanoe to get dinner at a place where Chan could get her steak, Bryan his burger, and us our veggie tacos and pasta. Talk ranged across lots of topics, and in the end we realized how ridiculous it sounds when you try and explain 90’s comic plots in normal language and listen as if you aren’t a comic reader. Oh, and Doomsday was apparently just grey Hulk with scabs. And Superman was replaced by a kid with a fade haircut, a guy with Bret Hart glasses, Shaquille O’Neil and a robot Christopher Reeve. Or something. Thank you Royce - you were brilliant sir!
 Mephisto and Phoenix by Adam and Comfort
 Larfleeze by Adam
We talked with Mario about a story idea he’s working on that got us incredibly excited and inspired to write. Then the next morning, we caught the light rail to the airport with Bryan and he told us about a story he’s working up, and we got excited all over again. It was a weekend that gave us great business with fun con-goers, great times with friends we respect and love, and inspiration galore to keep pushing forward and ever upward with the work we’re building. You can’t ask for more.
Emma Frost by Comfort
White Queen sketch-card by Adam
And with that, we’ll end the report. Next week we’re heading to Chicago for C2E2, which is another huge show. A couple weeks later and we’ll be back in Chicago for Anime Central, so this is a pretty busy stretch for us. Not nearly as bad as it got last year, but we’re keeping ourselves occupied. Enjoy some photos and we’ll be back soon for more.
-Comfort & Adam
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Hello everyone!
Well, this is the last blog to go up before we're off to the land of Seattle for the amazing Emerald City Comic Con! One of the very best shows of the year hands down!
As always we'll be there selling books, prints, and doing sketches until our hands fall off! If you'll be in the neighborhood, make sure to stop on by. We'll be at table A-10 in Artist Alley. For your convenience, we have a map (as always) of how to find us below... Also, for this joyous conning occasion, we're debuting a few new prints! First up, Adam's incredible Teen Titans masterpiece. Something he's been wanting to do for years, but it was not until the magic of the new Young Justice show that he finally made himself do this one! (Left to Right): Kid Flash (Bart Allen), Cyborg, Starfire, Beast Boy, Miss Martian, Kid Flash, Aqualad, Superboy, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl, Kid Flash, Robin (Tim Drake), Raven.Second up is Comfort's Dr. Who extravaganza! Eleven Doctors, all regenerating into one fabulous print! Dr. Who is one of our top 5 shows ever and it was such a treat to have finally been able to do this! From first Doctor to current: William Hartnell (First Doctor) Patrick Troughton (Second Doctor) Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor) Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) Peter Davison (Fifth Doctor) Colin Baker (Sixth Doctor) Sylvester McCoy (Seventh Doctor) Paul McGann (Eighth Doctor) Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor) David Tennant (Tenth Doctor) Matt Smith (Eleventh Doctor)Lastly, we have Comfort's Storm print from our At Home Con of last year!  Well, that's all for today our people! Hope you like the prints and hope to see you at the show!
Comfort & Adam
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