I hope you have enough S.P.A.C.E.!

I'm just back from a vacation with my family to Newport News, VA and we had a great time. We got to check out how dumb the first people to land at Jamestown(e) were, Williamsburg (both historic and non), and the Yorktown battlefield where we kicked some British ass in 1781... no offense to our British readers. These three places make up what the Virginia Tourism Board likes to call "The Historic Triangle". We also got to see my Sister in Law, Sister's Husband in Law, and my Niece in law while we where there. My niece Sophie takes adorableness to new cheek squeezing heights.

John Smith had a fantastic Mustache.

For what it's worth we were there from Saturday night to Friday morning and their was still tons of stuff that we didn't get to see/eat. Thumbs up for Newport News.


On our way back we stopped in Columbus to see my In-Laws and more importantly so Sarah and I could hit S.P.A.C.E. (Small Press and Alternative Comics Expo)

I don't mean it as an excuse but when my Father died last year a lot of things fell to the wayside. Previous to that I had been advocating pretty heavily for Melee and then I just stopped. I now feel like it's time to start taking what Ben and I do seriously. We put out good comics and I don't think that the goal of getting people to look at our funny, free, entertaining comics is impossible.

At the Con we met a few really great people but I wanted to give a few a shoutout.

First I have to say that Chris Hallbeck of The Book of Biff was super cool. I had liked his stuff already but we ended up chatting for about 10 minutes and he gave me some good advice on advertising for Melee.


I don't know what it was about the single panel stuff that drew us in but we also had a nice little chat with Millard Draught of Dog-Eared who apparently also runs a sign company and gives good deals to comics guys who need signs for their tables. I think Ben and I will be in touch with Millard pretty soon.

I finally bought Birth and Novo and got to meet Michael S. Bracco who I had been keeping in touch with when Birth first came out before he won a bunch of awards and became popular. I read Birth and Novo as soon as I got home and ended kicking myself for not buying the second volume of Novo when I had the chance. Novo is the sequel to Birth and Michael says that he plans a storyline that will run about 5 or 6 books. I am looking forward to them.


Lastly, because of our Vacation Destination, it seemed appropriate for us to stop by Lora Innes's table. Lora writes and arts the Dreamer a comic about a high school girl who is transported back to the revolutionary war when she goes to sleep but still has to deal with all the normal dramas of being in High School when she wakes up. I've read through the first two issues so far and am looking forward to reading some more!



Anywho we met some other great people at the Con like Dave Arhar who created Franklinstein and the people over at Dimestore who do Small Press Idol. I look forward to hitting more cons in the area and hopefully have a table setup at some of them soon.


I will leave you with this... the road song that originally tortured my family on the road but that we were all singing together by the end of the trip.

Holiday Road...

I have no idea why the dogs bark at the end...

-- Nathan