Naughty Bicycle

To start things off in 2013 I thought I’d talk about what went well in 2012. We had a lot of fun, meet a bunch of new people, broke a few sales records, and accomplished a lot with conventions.

By far our most successful convention last year was DragonCon in Atlanta. Not only did we have 4 days of fun, but we broke our overall sales record and made a lot of friends doing it! However, one of the main things I learned from DragonCon is how expensive some of those bigger cons can get. We’re not even talking about San Diego here. The table cost itself was average for a con that size, but the hotel cost was crazy! That’s where most of our expenses went. While we did break our record for most sales in a weekend, I think we ended up breaking even overall. Not bad, I’m just happy we had the chance to travel outside of Florida to promote our comics. We gained so many new fans, it really made it all worth it. All in all, it was a very successful trip.

I would say our second most successful con was PalmCon in West Palm Beach, FL, which is run by our friend Martin Pierro of Cosmic Times. It was only a one-day con, but man what a great time we had! It was very well run, and we broke our record for most sales in one day. If you want a good con to attend or table at in South Florida, I’d say this is a must do.

However, not every con can be successful. We learned a big lesson in 2012, and that was to stop doing anime conventions. Well, I wouldn’t say cut them out completely, but we definitely need to choose them more wisely. There are two cons that come to mind last year that really hit the nail in the coffin. FreeCon in Tallahassee and PariahCon in Lakeland. These two cons were so terribly run, it just left a bad taste in our mouth. For one, FreeCon was held at FSU, so there were all of these rules the organizers had to abide by. Also, pretty much every attendee spent all their money on accessories for cosplaying. I’m not even sure why people who sell accessories are put in artist alley, but whatever. The other one, PariahCon, was run by some friends who asked Kate to be the guest artist. They said they would pay her to design their badges, and pay for our hotel and all that jazz. They ended up paying her far less than what was promised, and they didn’t pay for the hotel at all. The response from con goers wasn’t great either. I finally realized at this con that the typical anime fan (usually about 10-18 years old at this con) has very little money. They are literally dropped off by their parents and given $20, which they spend on lunch, admission to the con, and some Pocky. Come to think of it, do anime fans read comic books that aren’t printed backwards? And not Scott Pilgrim?  I dunno. I’m not saying everyone should swear off anime conventions, but it’s quite obvious they’re not for us.

Now I’d like to talk about comics. As far as comic books, we didn’t really get a lot done. Our big debut for Agatha Frisky was at MegaCon, and it has done really well since then, but we hadn’t made any other books all year long. I’ve mostly been writing Facebeast #2, and the artwork for it just kept getting pushed back more and more. The one thing we did do was successfully launch a webcomic. Back in April I decided to try my hand at making a comic, and The Hall Monitors is what came out of it. It started off pretty rough (I hadn’t drawn since high school!), but I seemed to get the hang of it within a few months. I’m actually really surpried at how quickly the artwork has been coming along. I think it’s looking great, and I can’t wait to see what I can do with it from here!

That’s about it for my 2012 recap. Last year had it’s ups and sowns, but overall I’d say it was a good step into the future. 2013 is shaping up to be a great year. More conventions, more comics, more everything! I’ll post another update soon about what we currently have going on. So stay tuned for that!

Thanks for reading!

- Josh