Kyle Shold ©2013

Okay, here it goes. I went to this convention with the intention of both meeting artists and creators as well as supporting their work (at least the work that grabbed me in some way) and so here is the documentation of my loot. I haven’t read any of it as of this writing but here are my intitial impressions of both the art and the artists:

1.) Strangeways: Murder Moon written by Matt Maxwell with art by Luis Guaragna. I have to apologize because I remember that it was Matt Maxwell that I met and who signed the book for me but I have absolutely no recollection of our discussion. He signed the inside title page, ” To Kyle: First ECCC Sale!” So I bought his first book of the day and I can’t even remember the dude. Real cool, Shold. Anyway the book is published by Highway 62 and is a very professional presentation. The interior art ranges from tight and detailed with lots of hatching to very loose with big brush strokes.

2.) Monsters & Dames. This is the official 2009 ECCC charity artbook. The cover is by Frank Cho and the interior is filled with dozens of full page illustrations by the very artists that were at the show. The good: the art is fantastic and presented with a hard cover and heavy coated interior pages. Very slick book. I got it signed by Frank Cho, David Mack, Brandon Peterson, Bruce Timm, Joe Jusko, Howard Chaykin, Wade Schin, Andrew Wilson, Amanda Conner, Stephen Silver, Doug Sneyd, Steve Lieber, Gene Ha, Georges Jeanty, Dexter Vines, John Christopher and Alberto Ruiz. This is only a handful of the artists that are in the book but I wasn’t on a fanboy mission to track everyone down. The bad: The book is very poorly organized with no page numbers and the artists are not alphabetized. It was hard as hell to find the artist’s piece in the book when you happened to find their table.

3.)  The Damned Volume One “Three Days Dead” with art by Brian Hurtt. This was my very first purchase at the show. I met Mr. Hurtt who was a class act and that is the reason I bought his book. I spoke to him for several minutes about my book and my reasons for doing it and he was nice as could be. He was seated next to Tim Sale who was always busy with fans but Mr. Hurtt rarely had a line at all and from looking at his book he deserved one. The artwork is clean, yet full of life with exquisite brush work and spotting of blacks. I highly recommend this book based just on the artwork alone. I really look forward to reading this one.

4.) Strongman written by Charles Soule and art by Allen Gladfelter at SLG Publishing. Again, this is not a book I probably would pick up but I really enjoyed Mr. Soule’s passion and enthusiasm for his book. I wanted to support that passion and after thumbing through it a bit I’m actually happy I did. The art is better than I initialy judged it to be and I think it will be a fun read.

5.) Monster Pile-Up from Image. A preview book featuring several titles including The Astounding Wolf-man, Firebreather, Perhapanauts and Proof. I spoke with Alex Grecian who is the creator of Proof. Unfortunately none of the work at the table stood out as something I was interested in but Mr. Grecian was a nice fellow to chat with and just gave me a signed copy of the preview book. I’m not sure why he did but I appreciate his generosity.

6.) Cora Part I by Ted Mathot. After speaking with Mr. Mathot I decided to pick this particular book primarily because he did the entire book digitally. So I wanted to bring it home and study it closer. I also liked the overall clean design of the book and western setting of the story. The interior artwork is very clean with a very limited and muted palette of warm hues. The line work has a sketchy quality to it and yet is still clean with a kind of animated look to it. It seems to be a self-published work with just his contact information on the inside. However, he was displayed with several other books like it was a publisher’s booth but I can’t remember which. Cora definitely stood out among the group.