Daniel J. Hogan's Blog

Last weekend I was off to Chicago to attend one of the biggest comicons in the country, Wizard World. I went to promote The Magic of Eyri (give out cards, pins, etc) but not to sell copies. I enjoyed selling copies at Motor City Comic Con, but doing the same at Wizard World wasn't really in the cards (this time).

The Girlfriend and I took a bus and a train there...which was an experience. We had to stand on the bus for a bit (we actually had seats, but offered them up to a pair of young kids with their parents) and thankfully had seats from Lansing to the train station to Battle Creek. The same could not be said of a few other individuals. At least three other people had to stand the whole way. This happened the last time I took a bus, way back in college. I don't get it. With computers and such, you'd think they'd be able to keep better control of this. And even though we had seats, the Girlfriend and I didn't get to sit next to each other. The same went for the train -- thankfully no one had to stand, but we didn't get to sit next to each other until the guy next to me got off at a couple stops after Battle Creek.

The problem with the train is that you don't have assigned seats, so you just sit wherever -- and to make things more complicated, everyone wants to sit alone, so you have a bunch of single seats scattered around the car. That's a bit of a pain when you are traveling with someone else.

Seating issues aside (which struck us again on the way home) the train wasn't that bad. Oh wait. I forgot about the delays. Yeah, those sucked. We were two hours late getting in and coming home. Lovely. But we had been warned by friends about that so we were prepared. But the biggest pain about the trip? I caught a cold of some hellish nature Thursday morning and it lasted until we got back Monday night. Best way to ruin a trip? Get a cold.

Fever. Night sweats. Fatigue. Vomiting. These are all great additions to any getaway. And the worst part? It prevented me from meeting Stevie Wonder AND Obama. Yes, you read that correctly. I could have met a music legend and a Presidential candidate. Stupid cold.

Picture time!


We stayed with a friend of the Grrlfriend (who was a great host) and she works for the Obama campaign downtown. We got to meet her at her office and got a tour of Obama HQ. Sorry, I didn't take any other pictures, I didn't think it'd be cricket.


This li'l fella was at Wizard World by the Far East Monsters booth (I think).


They had Rock Band and Guitar Hero III set up for any one to play at Wizard World. One of the guys in my group even sang for a bit. If I wasn't feeling like death I might have as well.


This tee shirt amused me, so I snapped a pic of it to show to Grrlfriend's friend. I thought of buying her one as a thank you gift, but they were sold out on Sunday. Turns out she couldn't really wear it anyway, since it isn't 'official.'


This thing is the reason I couldn't really make phone calls in the lobby: the gadget keeping it inflated was LOUD. They had a booth there to promote the latest Futurama DVD and you could spin a wheel to win a copy or something else. I gave it a try and won a tee shirt! Neat.


I met Max Brooks, author of World War Z and The Zombie Survival Guide. Nice guy--he was a big fan of my shirt.


I also met one of my favorite comic book writers, Warren Ellis. He was the guest of honor at the con this year. I think he's trying to kill me by looking at me here.


I didn't have anything by Warren when I jumped in line (it was nearly empty, so I just went for it--and it was free) so I had him autograph a page from my moleskine book. Probably not the best choice and part of me wonders if he took offense to that (I doubt it though). We exchanged pleasentries and I moved on.


I attended the late night reading/Q&A with Warren Ellis Friday. Rather, I stayed until my cold forced me to leave. Ugh. I enjoyed what I was there for though. It ain't every day you get to listen to a guy while he smokes and drinks whiskey and Red Bull at a podium (the event was dubbed "performance art" so he could get away with it).




I walked by the DC booth and saw that some of the artists there had taken to doodling on the paper top. Don't know who did what, but liked it.

I tell ya, doing a con when you have a hellish cold that sneaks up on you ain't fun. This weekend certainly didn't go the way I'd hoped, but I made due and had fun. I quickly realized that trying to sight see in Chicago and do the con at the same time ain't the way the go. The real champ of the weekend was Chicago's public transit. I could just walk to the train and take that to the con or take it to down town. Easy. It'd be really nice if cities in OUR state would do something similar. Can you imagine how nice it'd be to take a train to and from all the Detroit suburbs?

I did buy some stuff at the con too (my other reason for going). Mostly trades. Got a couple Hellboy trades and a couple by Doug TenNapel (one of them however, Black Cherry, I wasn't that happy with). I also bought a few early Bone back issues and a Hellboy special issue that was an exculsive at another con. I could have got the Complete Bone trade for only $20 (normally $40) but I didn't feel like hauling it around all day (kind of regret not getting it though).

Oh and I bought Grrlfriend a Godzilla figure. She loves that Gojira.

Yes, the Stanley Cup visited the Michigan Capitol Building last week and thankfully I was able to get a picture of us together--without me having to wait hours in line. I first saw the cup during a trip to the Hockey Hall of Fame many years ago and then once again during the Stanley Cup parade in 2002.


Stanley's Wrangler--sadly it wasn't the dude you see in all the commercials and such.


Stanley on camera in the secret video room (aka "The Bat Cave") where I work.


Stanley on another monitor. You can really see how bent up the top part of the Cup is--it just doesn't look right.


Stanley on public display in the rotunda of the Capitol.


The end of the line to see The Cup. It snaked around a bunch of times inside too (which made getting around for my daily duties interesting), it was very lengthy--which made me happy. I didn't really expect too many people. Sadly, not everyone got to get their picture taken with it. Stanley is on a tight schedule and they packed him up promptly when the time came. I had a friend in line who was only about ten people away from seeing it and spent easily over an hour in line and didn't get a picture taken with the Cup--but I did hear that they lined everyone up on either side of the hallway and slowly walked the Cup down so everyone could at least see it.

In other news, I went to Wizard World over the weekend in Chicago--and well it didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Catching a cold on Day One of a five day trip ain't fun. Details later.

I (finally) had the chance to do some cooking tonight and I was fairly happy with the results:


Chicken tacos, with a side of refried beans, tomatoes and an nicely chilled Oberon. Yummy! Although the taco seasoning packet I picked up was a bit lacking. That's what I get for buying the Mild I s'pose. Thankfully I had hot sauce on hand to remedy that. I realized while taking this picture that my food pretty much matches my place mat. Neat.

I got this great DVD from Netflix today, GoLion: King of Beasts. It is the Japanese show that was re-edited into Voltron here in the States. I was skeptical at first because some of those shows don't hold up too well or aren't that interesting. Well, this wasn't the case here. They cut A LOT out and changed a bunch to make this show into Voltron.

Biggest changes (so far, only seen the first episode):
GoLion (aka Voltron) was a going around fighting anyone and anything in the galaxy and eventually had the nerve to take on the goddess of the universe, so she split him apart into five lion robots. In Voltron, the main villain's evil witch turned into this goddess and then separated Voltron.

The main heroes start out as slaves of the main villain, and when they returned to Earth (where they were captured) from a mission in space, the planet had been destroyed by World War III after the "east and west' used their nukes against each other. in Voltron, the Earth government sent them out on a mission and then they were captured.

Way more violence. Way more fighting. Lots of darker stuff. Swearing!

This is like finding out GoBots was edited from the Terminator movies or something. This is some crazy--but good--stuff. I really like watching the original series when it comes to these crossover series, it is neat to see just how much they are chopped up and changed. 

I had the extreme fortune of going to game one of the Stanley Cup Finals two weekends ago and here are my promised pictures.


a FanFoto of Jon and I (he's the one who gave me the ticket to go). I can't believe (well, yes I can) that they charge you to get these photos from them. I got my curtousy of my screen capture software. Ha! Anyway, we're posing in front of the Gordie Howe statue with Jon's homemade Stanley Cup. I'm wearing my  Vlad Konstantiov jersey from his team in Russia. Jon is wearing a Chris Chelios jersey I think.


Inside the Joe, pre-game. LOTS of Penguin fans. It was a sea of red, white and black. Sorry for the blurry picture, I only have a point and shoot camera.


In our seats, pre-game. We got there kind of early. When asking the usher where our seats were, she added "And be LOUD, there are a lot of Penguin fans up there." That was an understatement.


Lots of Crosbys.


Crosby. Lemieux. Crosby. Lemieux. Crosby.


During game play, 19:10 to go in the first period. It was good to see all the seats filled again. And was it LOUD. Yowza.


Bonus Picture: The girlfriend and I outside Comerica Park this past Saturday. We volunteered at the Detroit Race For the Cure (hence the matching t-shirts. We don't normally dress alike. Honest.).

I was scanning my website referral data today and found that there is a link to magicofeyri.com on the Wikipedia page about one of my favorite comics, SnarfQuest.  And I'm the first reference too!



For the record, I didn't cite myself--someone must have come across my page while looking for citations and saw how I compared it to Bone. I guess it pays to look how people are getting to your websites.

Motor City Comic Con was a successful adventure for me. I got to see some old friends I haven't seen in long while, sold 3 books, traded 2 and made some great contacts. Oh and Erik Estrada winked at me.

I was upset because my order of 500 promo cards did not arrive from Lulu.com by the time I left for the con, and they still haven't come yet! Looks like I'm gonna have to do something about this...Anyway, picked up Lovely Assistant Thursday night and headed down to Novi Friday morning. We grabbed a quick lunch at Twelve Oaks Mall before heading over to the Con to set up. Checking in was a breeze, thankfully. However, locating my table was a bit of a challenge. Lovely Assistant and I spent ten minutes walking around trying to find it before another artist said "You look like me ten minutes ago!" he then quickly pointed out that our table numbers were written in chalk on the floor under our table. D'oh.

Lovely Assistant and I at my table.

We set up the table and got to work trying to sell books. Thankfully we were across from the guys and girls of Comics Obscura, an indie comic done right here in Lansing. I had requested to be by them in my table form/contract and thankfully they were able to make that happen. Woo hoo! And to my right was artist/writer William Messner-Loebs, who I didn't know much about until Jay from Comics Obscura told me he worked on The Maxx--which I didn't really read, but I watched the cartoon of it on MTV religiously. After learning that, I chatted with Bill about it and sure enough he worked on cartoon a bit. Neat!

The Comics Obscura booth.

Didn't sell any copies on Friday, but Saturday I sold two (joking over dinner that my sales increased by "200%") and I sold one on Sunday. But I traded a couple of copies--I gave one to Tom Sullivan, the special effects genius behind Evil Dead and Evil Dead 2--too of my favorite films. I went up to him and said that I was a fan of his work and wanted to give him a copy of my book. He gladly accepted it and the people in line behind me were amused to see Tom getting an autograph for a change as I signed the book. I wanted to buy one of his prints (see photo) but he wouldn't have it: "No,no--it is my gift to you!" He's a very nice guy and is very appreciative of fans. I just think it is really cool that someone who worked on the Evil Dead series has a copy of my book.

My autographed Tom Sullivan print--I gave him a copy of The Magic of Eyri, so he gave me this.

My other trade was to Star Wars artist/Michigan native, Katie Cook (aka smarbaby ) We've talked a bit online prior to the Con and I told (warned) her I would stop by her table on Saturday. During one of my other visits to her table I asked her if she'd trade a sketch for a copy of the Magic of Eyri, and she had no problem with that. She did a great sketch of Boba Fett for me (see photo) and an amazing little sketch card drawing of Godzilla for Lovely Assistant (and she let me take one of her pre-made sketch cards too!). I am in awe of her skill, especially when I watched her do the sketch card of Godzilla and how it only took her a few seconds. Amazing. She had a big weekend herself, when she stopped by my table she told me that the 501st made her an honorary member. Very cool (I told her how jealous I was).

The sketch I got from Katie Cook in exchange for a copy of The Magic of Eyri. Neato!


The sketch card Katie Cook whipped up for Lovely Assistant. Awesome!


Another sketch card that Katie Cook let me have because she's super-cool.

Getting my book in the hands of people like Katie and Tom is a good thing and that is why I don't mind trading with them (or even just giving it to them--the trade part was a bonus). I should have given one to Bill as well or even Guy Davis (another comic book artist/Michigan native). Next time. But the mini-pins were a success, I only have 3 (out of 40) left. Not bad. And if I had put the rest on the massive freebie table at the front of the con, they would be gone. I got a lot of people to come up to my table and to talk to me because I had a sign that said "Free Buttons and Candy" (I gave out Air Heads, which I had Lovely Assistant cross out Air and write Eyr on each of 'em).

And my other bit of guerrilla marketing was that I had a couple proof copies of t-shirts with the cover art (and the website on the back) that I don't really wear, so I threw those on the freebie table as well. They were gone moments later. Bingo bango. All in all, it was a fun weekend. I sold books, which was nice considering I wasn't on panels or anything like that. I don't know yet if I'd do this again, because I had more than a few people look at my book and say 'OH! It's a novel...?" and were surprised I was there promoting it. Oh well. It certainly didn't hurt any to be there.

Bonus Pictures!


Cloud from Final Fantasy VII


Joey Pants left early on Saturday and didn't stick around all weekend :(




This Jawa costume was pretty great.


Vader telling me to stay off his lawn.