SAN DIEGO COMIC CON, 2022
love these guys!
rawhide kid #20, page 11
the more and more you do these shows as an exhibitor, the less fun they become in a certain manner. don’t get me wrong, i love finding a dealer with a surplus of golden age books & i love digging through the boxes in hopes of finding a new title i’ve never seen before. there’s nothing like finding a goldmine of atlas or quality comics and being able to score a deal on the stack— that is the absolute highlight of these shows for me.
preview night on Wednesday seemed to last forever— 9 pm is pretty late for the shows end. you end up getting back to your hotel room around 10, only to wake up at 730 the next morning to be back at the hall for 9 am— but all in all, the sales made it fly by so it was worth it.
the next day, i put together a stack of atlas books at the bunky brothers— brian is a cool dude who always has some fun odds and ends. i found an issue of everyday astrology with AMAZING color & a great schomburg cover. he also. had a run of bible tales for young folks, an atlas book which i’ve never seen before— and so i picked up the first issue of that. i pretty much hit my spending budget at their booth, which i was fine with, i seriously did not want to walk around that damn show— but what i thought would have felt like a slow day went by quick.
friday may have been the busiest day for us, as it felt like there were a non-stop flow of customers. it’s cool to see friends and folks you know from back home, visiting you in a totally different part of the country— it feels like there’s a pre-existing bond there. maybe it’s because we know how long the trek home is, and we can share in that misery.
saturday slowed down, and i was able to take a lap around the convention hall. i stopped at the few booths i wanted to check out— specifically, super7 and my friend bechara, over at nostalgic investments. super7 released an over-sized vinyl figure of the OG snoopy and red-shirt charlie brown— i’ve been eyeing it for a while, but at $295 a figure, i can’t bring myself to justify it. the company still makes some real cool stuff, but they’ve really begun to toe that SJW line— empty virtue signaling and all. if you can get past the NONSENSE, they are a very cool company. nostalgic investments has had an original rawhide kid page, drawn by kirby and inked by dick ayers that i’ve been eyeing for a while. it’s from issue #20, and it really has fantastic dialogue along with classic kirby pencils. i think i may pull the trigger on that piece soon.
as sunday approached, it felt bittersweet— although i don’t like being so far away from home for such a long while, i do love the city of san diego, homelessness and all. it’s tough to leave the mid-70s and palm trees, but i was still eager to get back to the east coast.
load out was a shit show, and i got into it with a few security guards over when we could start dragging out inventory out the door. a few more small hiccups later, and we were able to hit the road right around 730— our intended first stop was yuma, where i continually made 3:10 to yuma references which didn’t seem to amuse joe all too much. i suppose after the third hour, however, i might also not be amused by them. the show was over and the trip out was a success— four days later, our ship landed in Connecticut, and as the kids say, the rest was history.
a small fraction of the bunky brothers haul
