DoDeca-Con is a new local comic created by comic creator Randy Taylor. This year was the first ever, and it was very well executed.

When I got to Columbia’s Kemper Arena (not the Kansas City one!) I was surprised at the small size of the building. After all, the only other Con I’ve been to was the San Diego Comic-Con, the biggest! In contrast, DoDeca-Con took place in a single room fit for a wedding reception. Still, as I walked around I noticed a great use of space. There were the same features of a larger Con, just shrunken! There were vendors set up near the entrance and artists were lined along the long wall, wrapping around the far side. To the left of the entrance was a good concession stand. In the back there was even a curtained off area for panels!

Over the course of the day I wandered through each section. It was fun hanging out with my friends who had tables set up showing off their art. I browsed comics and action figures at several of the vendor booths, most notably those run by Category 5 Comics and Games of St. Louis and The Antiquarium in Jefferson City. I left with a lot of affordable stuff and the vendors were also great to talk to.

Later in the afternoon on Saturday I went to a panel held by some of my friends. I took video with my iPhone but I kept running out of space. I got around half of the hour-long discussion and I’ve put them on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JB1IO8CFB0

I had a chance to chat with Randy when things were winding down on Sunday. He seemed pretty happy with how the Con turned out and is already planning for next year. Maybe I can get my own table with a new comic to show off by then!

Note: The Midmococo site also has an account of events.

On 24 Hour Comics Day, I worked off of the four pages and jotted down an outline for the remaining eight as I went along. To do something new, I used some gray markers for shading, which I’ve never done for a comic (I usually shade comics digitally). I used Josh‘s markers before, found that I liked them, and he was kind enough to buy me a set for graduation.

At the end of twelve hours that day, I had put in a valiant effort but had just seven pages. A few months later I found the time while I was in San Diego visiting family to do the remaining pages and the cover. I touched up the already-finished pages but you may see a distinct upgrade in quality in the last half because I spent way more than an hour on each of those pages.

I like this comic because I’ve always wanted to do a more personal story set in a medieval fantasy world. It can’t be all end-of-the-world and rampaging monsters, right? I also enjoyed drawing the two main characters since it’s been a few years and in the previous story it was all done very roughly. Also, like Stuck in an Elevator, this comic has a bit of romance, which is nice.

I could go on and on about Sparring Partner. Give Epic of Karie a read to see how it (doesn’t quite) work out for these characters. Also, put the two stories together and find the hidden subtext that is never stated but it’s right there. No new comics day post next week since I’m all out, but hopefully I can get another five pages of Keeley issue 4 done sooner or later.

Also included is the introduction that was left out of the final book. Enjoy!

I did this in 2010 as part of the official 24 Hour Comics Day, the last one we had at what is now the Root Cellar in Columbia. The idea was for each hourly page to reflect an hour in a day of Keeley’s life. Starting at the start time of the event, I was supposed to keep pace and draw in that hour the same hour as in the comic. I actually went ahead of schedule and got around six hours ahead so I could take a nap at around 5:00AM in my car. Still, I got a full day’s worth of comics drawn and I think it is a neat story revolving around Keeley’s dual lives. Enjoy!

If you want more, you can poke around the comics section and look for the other new(ish) stuff that is now there.

Update: I’m guardedly optimistic that the comics section is working properly. Give the link a click in the header!

While on the way to drop of medical supplies, the Enterprise investigates an odd planetary phenomenon. Spock and his away team crash land on the planet (of course) and are attacked by what appear to be giants offscreen. Examining a left-behind spear, Spock makes this observation:

Folsom is a real place in New Mexico, and Folsom points are a real thing. This type of stone spearhead is very important to archaeology because the discovery of one of these points embedded within an extinct bison’s skeleton was the first definitive proof that humans were in North America during the Pleistocene Period, over ten thousand years ago. It was nice for the writer of the comic to include this piece of real archaeology in the comic. The problem is that Folsom points actually look like this:

Also, they are this big (or, more apt, this small):

From the Royal Alberta Museum. Scale is in centimeters!

Since it’s unlikely that the Spock, the Enterprise’s science officer, would not be so wrong in his assertion, my only conclusion is that Folsom points really are giant (even for giants) and shaped like trowels in the rebooted Star Trek universe.

Deal?