Silver Comics at Long Beach Comic Con, 2009

Johnny (center) and Vince are here to help you with all your "Silver Comics" needs.


Convention attendee eagerly browses through all the Silver Coimics mechandise, while a stoic The End on the far end looks on.


That's me, Bryan, with a fresh selection of sketchbooks and women's tee-shirts on the side of Silver's space.


The inaugural Long Beach Comic Convention (LBCC), Oct. 2 - 4, was quite an enjoyable little convening of comic book enthusiasts. Now, San Diego's Comic Con International (SDCC) has long become it's own incomparable mass media event, so SDCC aside, Long Beach made an respectable first effort compared to other such cons I've attended.

The space was maybe six-times the area of a basketball auditorium, nearly evenly divided into four major areas: exhibitors (mostly publishers), dealers (mostly folk selling or trading things not as creators or publishers), autographs and artist alley. Comparable in my memory to the space of first New York Comic Con of threes ago, about half that of Wonder Con in San Francisco two year's ago, or about equal the two dealers' rooms at Atlanta's Dragon*Con. You could easily see everything in one afternoon if you didn't stand in line for an autograph or to meet one of the many guest artist.

It was here the Silver Comics made it's first convention showing since it's first about three years back at SDCC. This time, they had an impressive, much coveted back wall of promotional posters or cover art, nine action-packed issues including an "annual" and lots of tantalizing branded promotional items; the wooden yo-yo's and pin-back buttons dispensed from a 25-cent gumball machine were popular.

Even with out the big two super-hero publishers, Marvel and DC, occupying floor space, they still loomed over the crowd by way of their affinities - the things they spent time exploring. To be sure, the toughest thing about being a small, unheard-of publisher is getting folks to stop and look at your stuff. With a terrific looking booth, branded bags and free-for-kids coloring packs, Silver Comics probably was the discovery of the con.

And I sold a couple of sketchbooks.

I am grateful to Johnny Ortiz for sharing his booth space. He provided a nice spinning rack for the books and body form to display a tee-shirt sample. But he's also provided good examples brand building and overall stick-to-it-iveness.