At home for the first time.

This weekend is a double-convention weekend for us.  Garth and I will be exhibiting at two separate conventions.  He will be returning to Otakon, while I will be appearing at Boston Comic Con for the first time.  Despite living in the Boston area for many years, I’ve never applied to this show because I foolishly assumed I would do poorly there.  That assumption had nothing to do with Boston Comic Con itself, but my experience at other comic conventions over the years.

But times have changed.

Back when I was still working on Dominic Deegan: Oracle for Hire, I did exponentially better at anime conventions than I did at comic conventions.  In my past experiences, attendees at anime conventions were eager to try new things and discover stories they’d never read before, while attendees at comic conventions were more interested in established creators of print comics than the do-it-yourself webcomic of a manga-influenced fantasy writer.  Going on my past experiences (as well as the money I lost thanks to poor sales) I turned away from comic conventions in general.

Now, years later and a change in projects, I’m noticing a flip in the trend.  I feel that now it’s anime convention attendees who are less willing to try new things and discover new stories, and attendees of comic conventions have become hungry for just that.  Anime convention artist alleys are increasingly filled with nameless fan art booths selling attendees pictures of characters they already know and love, and our not-manga-influenced original comic doesn’t do as well as it used to.  Conversely, comic convention attendees are showing increased interest when we tell them that we are a self-published, original sci-fi superhero space adventure.  Granted, we’re still no competition for the industry giants that make appearances at comic conventions, but we still make a fair number of sales from people who say, “You know what?  I’ve never heard of you guys before, but I’ll give this a try.”  It’s a really nice feeling.

Come see me this weekend at BOSTON COMIC CON!  I’ll be exhibiting at BOOTH AA607 in the Artist Alley.