I-Con 2009 Scanboree (Literally, a Jamboree of Scans)

Today is my first day back from an intense, novelty-filled weekend in Iowa. The excuse for heading south was the Iowa Comic Convention (I-Con) put on by the Iowa Comic Book Club. The organizers put on a fun little show, with lots of freebie tables and a big buffet at the end (or least that's what I'm told -- I had to duck out a little early, unfortunately).

The best part of the show was getting to hang out with fellow conspirators Ryan Dow, Danno Klonowski, and Dan Olson. Everyone should check out Danno's latest Manly Tales, which reveals the true origin of Army Shanks. Traffic was a bit slow, which was fine because it gave me an excuse to doodle, something I feel like I haven't done for months. So here are some scans of that madness:

First, Danno's Fleming Hazmat taking a jab at Atlantis Lad. Of course, this would never happen in real life:


Here's a quick sketch of Shanks Winning the Big Game, inspired by a soon-to-be-revealed project that I've been working on night and day for the last month:


And a Shanks cartoon, created in response to Danno's new Manly Tales epic:


And here's a Klonowski original, which is not supposed to be representative of anyone we met at I-Con:


Metromix Des Moines traveled to beautiful Adventureland to record the festivities and I wound up in a few shots. Check out the whole slideshow at desmoines.metromix.com.


Credit: Dani Ausen for Metromix

Oh, also we learned that there's another comic convention coming up in Minnesota, but I can't remember when or where. If you want to know you should bug Dan Olson, because he's got it written down somewhere.

The rest of the weekend I spent at the House on the Rock, which I'm not going to attempt to summarize because it would take all day, so please just go yourself. Here's a little taste:

Tintin Sketchbook

Leigh Walton of Top Shelf fame has produced a massive Tintin sketchbook, accumulating sketches from the likes of Bryan Lee O'Malley and Kate Beaton. I drew the pic above during MoCCA this past spring.

Laura Hudson has a write-up of the sketchbook on Comics Alliance, and you can see the entire book's Flickr Set!

Some of my favorites:


Tim Sievert



JP Coovert



Will Dinski



Niklas Asker



Brian Hurtt



Alec Longstreth


... and something like 500+ more HERE.

Fallcon Fotos 2009

Convention neighbor and collaborator Gene Ha

The convention floor

Verily, only the worthiest may lift yon mighty hammer!

The closest safe distance from Lord Vader and his entourage

The drawing I later bought from...

...Brittney Sabo.

Jin "Little Jin" Cannon meets Gene "Big Jin" Ha.

Peter Gross wearing his new adjustable reading glasses. And holding a Gene Ha drawing of Phantom Girl (for his Legion of Superheroes fangirl daughter).

Ryan Kelly

Paul Fricke

Kevin and Zander Cannon at FALLCON 2009!

Surely everyone in the Twin Cities knows about the MCBA's FallCon, the best local comic convention ever.

This year, both of us will be in attendance, though not on the same day. Zander will be there on Saturday (coming in at 11 due to a previous engagement) and Kevin will be manning the booth on Sunday. We will have comics, minicomics, ultra-secret previews of upcoming comics, and originals, and Zander will be doing sketches. We will be accepting credit cards on Saturday.

Come for the guy dressed as 1960s Batman, stay for the 25 cent bins! Oh, and don't forget to bring your copies of HATE and ATARI FORCE; Pete Bagge and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez are gonna be there!

Watch this space, there will be moblogging of the event, you can be sure.

Examples of Arctic Wildlife

Just finally getting around to digging through luggage from the trip to San Diego Comic-Con, and stumbled upon this. I usually have a lot of sketches from all the hours I spend sitting behind the booth trying to kill time, but this year was pretty much nonstop handshaking and left little room for sketching.


Click to enlarge

San Diego 2009 Scrapbook

Zander and I just returned from a rousing trip to America's largest comic book convention. Zander's weekend was filled with panel lectures and book signings for DC and Wildstorm, while I was given the star treatment by the nation's finest publisher, Top Shelf Productions. Below are some photos from the trip. Many, I have to admit, are stolen from Shad Petosky's facebook page. So thanks in advance, Shad.


The Minnesota section of Artist Alley: Zander Cannon, Peter Gross, and Ryan Kelly.


Zander had several signings over the course of the weekend. This one is at the Wildstorm nook.


Not sure exactly what he's sketching here, but I'm going to guess it's a smoldering version of Mazikeen.


I spent most of the time behind the Top Shelf table, where I got to geek out and meet some of the most talented men in the industry like Jeffrey Brown, Matt Kindt, Nate Powell, Rob Venditti, Brett Weldele, Andy Runton, Jeff Lemire, Charlie LaGreca, and Phil Jackson. And the Top Shelf brass was there as well: Chris Staros, Brett Warnock, and Leigh Walton!


Nate Powell and I have a good old fashioned sign-off.


Just some guys chillin' by a fountain.


One thing I noticed this year is that fewer and fewer people had theme sketchbooks. Most sketchbooks were themeless and open season (the ones handed to me, anyway). Here's an exception: a Kill Bill sketchbook. I hated the movie but I like drawing Uma Thurman.


Matt Kindt (Super Spy) and Charlie LaGreca (Indie Spinner Rack) share a tender moment.


I wants that trophy.


Nate Eisner-Winner Powell discusses a salient issue with Brett Warnock. On Friday night Nate won best graphic novel for Swallow Me Whole.


Chris Staros surrounded by the floating heads of Bruce Willis. Or are those Bruce Willis' surrogates?


Beard patrol.


I had dinner on Friday with Shad, Tony Christopherson, and BTA alum Julia Vickerman.


Oni Press threw a great rooftop party at Petco Stadium on Friday night. Here, Shad and I take a break from celebrity stalking to chat with Paul Guinan and Anina Bennett.


Peter Gross, probably also working on a sketch of Mazikeen.


My first panel! Chris Staros and Leigh Walton talked about the history of Top Shelf, while Nate Powell, Rob Venditti, Brett Weldele, and I talked about our new books.


...and the belle of the ball, as she is every year, the Star of India.

Zander Cannon and Kevin Cannon will both be at Comic-Con International 2009!

Hi folks, I hope you're all as excited as we are to be going to Comic-Con in sunny San Diego this coming Thursday. Kevin and I will be there to chat you up, tell jokes, draw sketches, and, in a departure from our usual inwardly-focused convention personas, give panels!

First of all, where to find us:

Here are our two locations in the context of the whole place. Zander will be on the left, in Artists Alley, Kevin will (primarily) be on the right, at the Top Shelf booth.

Zander will be at CC-01, which you can remember by thinking "CC=Comic-Con, and 01=Zander is Numero Uno". Easy!

Kevin will be flogging his new hot book Far Arden at the Top Shelf booth, number 1721, which you can remember by thinking "R-rated movies, alcohol".

And for completeness' sake, here is the:

Comic-Con Floor Plan

We will also be doing panels. As mentioned in a previous post, Kevin will be contributing to a Top Shelf panel at the same time that I will be giving a talk on how to do comics in the small, medium and big press.

Thursday, July 23

4:00-5:00 How-To Session: Zander Cannon— Zander Cannon has been working in comics since 1993 and has done both writing and art duties on comics about knights, robots, spacemen, cops, superheroes, ghosts, and mythical creatures. His presentation will cover how to produce comics and other books as an independent publisher. With Kevin Cannon (no relation) he runs the studio Big Time Attic, which focuses on educational comics for book publishers. Room 18
Categories: Art and Illustration | Comic Books | Seminars & Workshops

4:00-5:00 Top Shelf in 2009— With League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. III) and the new edition of Lost Girls, plus The Surrogates movie starring Bruce Willis hitting theaters on September 25, and literary titles such as Essex County, Alec, and Far Arden being released, it's going to be an amazing year at Top Shelf. Come talk with publisher Chris Staros and creators Robert Venditti (The Surrogates), Jeff Lemire(Essex County), Kevin Cannon (Far Arden), and Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) to find out all the details. Room 10
Categories: Comic Books | Movies

On Friday, Zander will be part of Douglas Wolk's panel:

Friday, July 24

Sun, Jul 19, 09:49AM

1:30-2:30 After the First 1,000 Pages— It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. Art teachers say that you have to make 100,000 bad drawings before you can make a good one. Becky Cloonan (Demo), Zander Cannon (Top 10), Roger Langridge(The Muppet Show Comic Book), and Matt Kindt (Super Spy) will discuss how they've developed as artists since their early work and the creative breakthroughs that took them a while to reach. Moderated by Douglas Wolk(Reading Comics). Room 10
Categories: Art and Illustration | Comic Books | Comic-Con Special Guest Spotlights & Appearances

And on Saturday, I'll be here with Andy Schmidt talking about Art Portfolios:

Saturday, July 25

4:00-5:00 Building Your Art Portfolio— Moderated by Comics Experience founderAndy Schmidt (X-Men, Annihilation) and featuring the expert advice of comic creatorsChris Bachalo (X-Men, Generation X), Todd Nauck (Spider-Man, Young Justice), Robert Atkins (G.I. Joe), C. B. Cebulski (Marvel Talent Coordinator), and Zander Cannon (Top 10), this panel covers everything an aspiring comics artist needs to know about building a portfolio and getting his or her first gig. Join the discussion and ask your questions at the end! Room 30CDE
Categories: Art and Illustration | Cartooning and Comic Strips | Comic Books |Seminars & Workshops | Webcomics

I'll also be signing at the Wildstorm Booth (part of the DC pavilion, you can't miss it) at these times:

Friday 3-4 pm

Saturday 3-4 pm

Sunday 11:30 am-12:30 pm

Looking forward to seeing you all there, amigos!

Dueling Panels at Comic Con

My good friend Google Alerts just informed me that Zander and I are having dueling panels at Comic Con in San Diego this year. That's right, you've only got two weeks to decide whether you want to spend 4-5pm on Thursday July 23 watching Zander deliver a well-rounded & thorough explanation of comic book production methods, or watch Kevin nervously mumble into his microphone about how much he loathes drawing things in twenty-four hour spurts. Room 18 or Room 10. There's no middle ground. You must choose.

4:00-5:00 Top Shelf in 2009— With League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Vol. III) and the new edition of Lost Girls, plus The Surrogates movie starring Bruce Willis hitting theaters on September 25, and literary titles such as Essex County, Alec, and Far Arden being released, it's going to be an amazing year at Top Shelf. Come talk with publisher Chris Staros and creators Robert Venditti (The Surrogates), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), Kevin Cannon (Far Arden), and Nate Powell (Swallow Me Whole) to find out all the details. Room 10
Categories: Comic Books | Movies

4:00-5:00 How-To Session: Zander Cannon— Zander Cannon has been working in comics since 1993 and has done both writing and art duties on comics about knights, robots, spacemen, cops, superheroes, ghosts, and mythical creatures. His presentation will cover how to produce comics and other books as an independent publisher. With Kevin Cannon (no relation) he runs the studio Big Time Attic, which focuses on educational comics for book publishers. Room 18
Categories: Art and Illustration | Comic Books | Seminars & Workshops

Or . . . you could help us out and volunteer to watch our booth for an hour. That would actually be pretty awesome.

More details on CBR.

MoCCA '09 + NYC

Zander and I flew out to New York City for the MoCCA show on Saturday and Sunday. This was my first time at MoCCA and the show definitely lived up to the "must-go" reputation that it has. The show was held in the 69th Regiment Armory, which is a huge room with a high rounded ceiling and faded banners -- it felt like a 19th century military high school gymnasium or something, lots of dark wood, dark army-green paint, and that classic junior-high-in-summer smell. I'm told that the wrestling scene in Spiderman was filmed there, but more important, the 69th is where the famous 1913 Armory show was held. By all accounts, that show was America's first big leap into the era of modern art, and DuChamp's famous "Nude Descending a Staircase" premiered there. You can bet I was thinking about ol' Marcel while I descended the stairs to use the restroom.

The show was hot, but in a fevered, excited kind of way. And the two days flew by in a flurry of handshakes and story-swapping. It was a real honor to spend most of Saturday standing behind the Top Shelf booth, watching Chris, Brett, and Leigh work their magic, and sitting next to Niklas Asker and chatting about the Swedish comics scene. Actually, the most unexpected part of the show (for me, anyway) was the huge Scandinavian presence. I asked one of the Norwegian publishers if he had any books on Amundsen or Nansen, but alas, nei terningen.

MoCCA was a great show for meeting people who I knew only over the phone or in an online, emaily way, like New Yorker cartoonist Jashar Awan, T-Minus agent Bob Mecoy, and Stuff of Life & Evolution: A Progress Report editor and packager Howard Zimmerman.


Both Far Arden and T-Minus: The Race to the Moon premiered at MoCCA, and both titles sold out pretty early on in the show, which is great for us, but left a few people disappointed. Well, there's always the LAUNCH PARTY this Saturday.

It was great to flip through Charles Burns' portfolio book, Kramers Ergot 7, and David Mazzucchell's new Asterios Polyp, but the hands-down best book of the show was Brett von Schlosser's and Tim Sievert's Intrepideers double bill. Hilarious stuff.

Hung out with Jim Ottaviani as much as possible -- he was on a table waiting list for a long time, but fortunately he got a table at the last minute and was able to be there for the premiere of T-Minus. He and Zander and I went out to dinner on Saturday night with Jim's Michigan friends John and Colleen and cartoonist Michelangelo Cicerone.

MoCCA aside, the best part of the trip was running around Manhattan on Monday. My old friend Sam and I jumped from the Brooklyn Library to Central Park to the Natural History Museum, but the capstone was going to the world-famous Explorer's Club and hearing explorer Bo Parfet talk about his experiences tackling the Seven Summits (the highest peaks on the seven continents). If you're ever in Manhattan on a Monday, I HIGHLY recommend checking out a public lecture at the Explorer's Club. It's worth it just to wander around the normally locked-up rooms; there's everything you'd expect to find, from huge oil paintings to a photograph signed by Buzz Aldrin, and even a stuffed polar bear. I would seriously move back to Manhattan just for this lecture series.

Click on the flag to read about the Explorers Club and space flight

Zander says:
I have to concur with Kevin that the show was a success-- we sold a lot of books, talked with a lot of folks, and the post con hoopla in the evening, while mellower and small-group-ier than at the big shows, was top-notch. The new venue was a mixed bag in my eyes; the larger space meant that everyone was in the same room (and no one was on the 7th floor like at the Puck Building), but the lack of air conditioning, fans, or moving air of any kind was a hindrance to fun.
My own personal favorite part of the show was seeing a quantum leap in Kevin and the comic-buying public's appreciation for each other. Looking over to my left at Kevin happily (rather than dutifully) fielding questions about his own work behind a rapidly disappearing stack of his hot new book was glorious, and it made me proud to be able to unreservedly plug Far Arden to passers-by. Modestly dictates that I can only be so enthusiastic about the stuff on the table, but I was known to declare "Far Arden is the best graphic novel of the year. Take it from me; I had nothing to do with it!"
I also loved meeting Randall Munroe and Kate Beaton for two seconds each. Their comics are awesome.