Well, this years Staple! has come to an end once more and what a weekend it was.  It was a pleasure meeting everyone of you that stopped by our table.  Although by the end of day two I was pleasantly drunk on the PBR the bar was offering and probably slurred our ‘talk’ or forgot it altogether more than once, I think the overall weekend was a massive success.   I’ve always looked forward events such as this.  There are multiple reasons of course, but that is not really the point of this post so I’ll skim over them. The Staple! Expo brings an entire community of people together to celebrate art, comics, and other various things (such as our podcast) from all over the place.  You never really know who you will meet or what you will see but it is always an adventure.  I love meeting these people.  I love hearing the passion in their voice and the excitement in their eyes as they talk about their latest piece or project.  And the people who don’t have booths set up?  The Expo goers?  They all come together to this one place for the same reason I do.  To find the next best thing.  To get that one print to hang on your wall.  To meet your hero (as Allynn did). To get that custom sketch that no one else has.  I absolutely love it.  I view these type of things as a celebration of art.  And it’s wonderful.   This year, I made my rounds as I always do.  My first quick round to take in the venue, the people, and to make quick mental notes as to who catches my eye and who I will revisit in more depth and then the second round in which I spent my time talking to the vendors in more depth about their products.   I spent most of my time in the Annex at our booth, but the few times I did get away to see what else was out there, I was not dissappointed.   Alongside the new faces we met, there were a few old friends we got to catch up with :: The lovely Miss Halo, Drew Edwards from The Halloween Man, Jon David Guerra from Nightmare Pro-Wrestling, and Nicole Guerra from The Minted Mouse, Cody Schibi and our table buddy Scott Free from Apples For Eyes.   The Old Man and I chose our loot wisely.. Tim settled on a ton of new books and me, well I bought more prints. On my rounds through the halls, I met TONS of indie artists, publishers, and more.  There are a few that stood out though.

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Silver Sparrow Comics — www.silversparrowcomics.com Silver Sparrow Comics is written and illustrated by Brian Delaney.  He has two web-comics that he updates.  One, entitled “The Silver Sparrow”, a comic that focuses on a young girl spending the summers with her Grandpa who is a scientist.  The comic revolves around the young girls summers with her grandad and his experiments.  The other entitled “Blood Machines” that focuses on a teenage boy who wakes up in a strange place with some type of amnesia.  The comic revolves around him trying to remember who and what he is and what happened to him. Brian’s comics in themselves are rather interesting, especially since his pitch to me was that he was trying to write comics geared more towards the female gender in a way that doesn’t involve crude, scantily clad woman. (I immediately brought up Tank Girl, to which his response was, well, yes, the opposite of that).  He mentioned his young daughter stating that he wants to show her that it is possible to be a respected female without being that way. All of this was intriguing to me.  Granted, how he can write comics with that in mind and get inside a woman’s head is beyond me.  I don’t understand men.. and I sure as hell don’t understand my own gender.   But I took a look at the episodes of the comics that are currently posted on his website, and well, he didn’t disappoint.  Granted, I am a huge fan of sci-fi and both delve very deeply into that world.  The writing and the art for the comics is top knotch and am looking forward to seeing where the story line goes in both of the comics he is working on.  And in particular, am looking forward to meet the lovely girl he sketched out for me at Staple! which he said will be introduced very soon.

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After Twilight — www.aftertwilightcomics.com I had the pleasure of meeting Gary Watson early on at Staple! as he was sitting across from our own booth.  So I stared at his booth for a few hours wondering what everything he was doing was about.  I saw videos, a nazi cap, some comics, and other various odds and ends on his table so I was a bit curious.  When I finally got the chance to go and speak to him at length, I was very intrigued. In short, After Twilight started out as a short screenplay and has grown into a monster of its own.  Currently, they are releasing a six part comic to coincide with a full feature length film which is still currently in the works. The story itself is very intriguing. Excerpt from www.aftertwilightcomics.com ::

A senseless act of terrorism has galvanized the population of Texas, leading to the rise of a fanatical religious government. The powerful new regime establishes a one-faith theocracy and begins a reign of terror against everyone and everything deemed unholy by the state. Texas seals its borders and wages a bloody war against the United States to become a separate, extremist Christian nation. Democracy is replaced with oppressive biblical laws and unspeakable punishments. Reason is outlawed — blind faith rules. Jen Frazier, a young librarian, tries to stay out of trouble, hoping to remain invisible to the theocracy. All that ends after the arrest of her sister by Sgt. Streetman, the sinister head of the brutal religious police. Despite her fears, Jen joins The Underground; but her first mission is a disaster and she becomes a hunted fugitive with nowhere to turn, no one to trust. Sgt. Streetman has her in his sights and within his grasp. But The Underground’s mysterious leader has other plans for Jen to expose the atrocities committed by the theocracy in God’s name. It’s a dangerous and pivotal task that takes Jen deep inside Camp Purity, a hellhole of Old Testament punishments where sinners are taken for redemption…if they survive. In a fierce, face-to-face battle, Jen finds out just how dangerous it is to fight a state with God on its side.

We have the first issues of what is looking to be an amazing run of comics and will hopefully be discussing it on the podcast itself in the near future. There were of course other artists that I fell in love with :: Jenner Carnelian, Errol Rivera, Feeping Creatures, Jose Esquivel, Michael Mauro, and Monica Gallagher!