On Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 I was pleased to be a guest at the Iowa Comic Book Club's fall Minicon -- the "little brother" of their spring ICON convention. Here are some photos from the event.

The main dealer's room is pictured above. Since I was a late additon to the guest lineup, I had a table in the hall area -- which doesn't sound ideal, but actually worked out pretty well since every arriving attendee had to pass by my setup. I had the cover of my new comic enlarged into a laminated 2'x3' poster, which made a rather striking display if I do say so myself.
	Among the other guests were Phil Hester, left, and Brooke Turner, right. I've met Phil before at a couple of other regional shows. I bought a nice page of artwork from the Irredeemable Ant-Man book he did with Robert Kirkman from him.
The popular duo of Chris Rich-McKelvey (black shirt) and Chad Spilker (white t-shirt) were set up on the dais. Specialists in "good girl" art, they quickly attracted a line of fans eager to pick up one of their sketchbooks or acquire a specialty cheesecake drawing. Pictured below are the Red Sonja drawing Rich-McKelvey was working on in the photo at right, and the Alanna of Ranagar sketch I commissioned him to do for me. Sweet!
	A group of writers, artists and editors from Sellout Comics were also among the guests, and Lucasfilms official Star Wars caricaturist Darryl Woods can be glimpsed in the right foreground.
Speaking of Star Wars, comic club president Scott Wirth and his clan of mini-Jedi are posed for a picture with Darth Vader and his stormtrooper henchman.
	Sharing space in the entryway with me were the crew from the local 3XW wrestling promotion. Being a wrestling fan myself, we found a lot to talk about! The dedicated young lady in the center spent most of the day hard at work stitching up some flashy ring-gear for "Rockstar" Jimmy Rockwell. I suggested she might take on a second career as a tailor for the superhero set -- there's a lot of similarity in the costuming for both professions!
My other compatriot in the entry area was the very talented Loren Meyer. Loren is  a writer-artist for DC Comics online Zuda site, doing webcomics which will eventually be put into print by the major comics publisher. Loren grew up in Iowa, but he's currently living in Omaha while his wife studies law. I invited him to make a trip to Lincoln and check out our Comicbook Artists Guild chapter. I regret that I didn't get a photo of Loren, but the cover of his convention sketchbook is shown at right. Check out his Blood Hunter comic on Zuda or visit him at www.lorenmeyer.blogspot.com

All in all a really fun show, and a good time. A few gullible folks even persuaded me to do some sketching for them, something I'm really inhibited about doing in public. (I left my art materials at home to give myself an excuse to beg off, and had to borrow pencils from Loren when the time came).

My thanks go out to Scott Wirth and the ICBC folks -- they even fed us lunch, although that turned out to be in competition with a chili feed going on in the basement put on by a new group of women professional football players (one of whom turned out to be the sister-in-law of University of Nebraska womens' basketball coach Connie Yori!).

Assuming they'll have me, I'll look forward to attending their annual ICON show next year!