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…was pretty excellent.

I’m still recovering actually. The last couple days before the con were a madhouse of Kinkos trips, silkscreening, assembling minis, packing, and dealing with a host of last-minute annoyances. Did I mention that I was running on about five hours of sleep over the last three and a half days? I only finished the art for my new mini at around three in the morning the day we left. By 8am it was scanned, assembled, and the layouts printed out. At 10am I was at Kinkos copying up the book’s interior on their fancy new double-sided copier. Thankfully, Eleanor did all of the silkscreening for the covers for me. At 2pm Lance was in town and we grabbed some lunch in the downtown Roly Poly. Dean finally dragged his ass into town a little after 3. As soon as all of our stuff was loaded into the car (no mean feat,) we hit the road. Weirdly enough, I didn’t feel at all sleepy the entire drive.

Even though we were putting the hammer down the entire way, the drive still had that nice “road trip” flavor. Dean and Lance are almost polar opposites in their tastes in comics, but we all had our SCAD backgrounds in common. Around 8pm we tuned in to NPR for the presidential debate, and that provided more conversational fodder – although even Dean (the resident right-leaner) admitted that Kerry came out ahead.

By the time we got into Bethesda, it was way past midnight. We met up with Erik in the lobby, and trucked our luggage up to our room on the 14th floor. Lance scurried off to meet up with

David Youngblood and his crowd. Eleanor came up with her own crew (David Yoder, Joey Weiser, and Adam Alard,) so I dropped in on their room for a bit. Then I headed back to our room, assembled a few minicomics and then crashed out in the armchair for a couple hours of sleep.

Next morning Rose showed up and I convinced her and Antar to set out and find some of the things we had forgotten in our half-assed flurry of preparation – things like a tablecloth, a disposable camera, a cash box, and some sort of table display. While they were gone, I used the few hours remaining before the Expo floor opened to make up some big “Failure” signs out of brown paper, ink, and whiteout. Did I mention we kind of half-assed it? But everything seemed to come together in time.

More to come…

The Journal Comic complete collection

128 pages, black and white interior, full-color cover

Yeah, after something like a year, I’ve finally gotten all of the Journal Comic strips together in one big book. Hopefully it should be out in time to debut at the Small Press Expo (October 1st,) but you can preorder a copy right now! “But wait a second,” you ask. “Why should I buy this book when I’ve already read all the strips online and/or bought all of the minicomics?” Why, I’m glad you asked! Let me tell you about some of the…

BONUS FEATURES

30 New Strips – Not only does this book contain every strip that appeared online, there are over 30 “new” strips! These comics were painstakingly reconstructed from unfinished strips and rough sketches, and fill in some of the gaps between the original strips. And they’re exclusive to this book! Okay, I’ll show you one. But that’s it.

Bonus Comics – Two full-page supplemental comics by myself, a comic “rebuttal” by my roommate Antar, and a 2-page bonus comic by my girlfriend Eleanor! These are good comics, not just nepotism, I swear.

Journal Comic Fully-Illustrated Tour Guide – Find your way around the exotic locales of the Journal Comic!

Supplemental Material – A gallery of the Journal Comic-related art, including the covers of the original minicomics.

$13 gets you the book, shipped anywhere in the continental U.S. If you live somewhere in the rest of the world, email me and we’ll work it out.