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Awesome Con was, well, awesome!
People in Washington D.C. sure love their American History.
The Dreamer pretty much sold itself. By the second day we had completely sold out of Volume 1 and the wax-sealed box sets! By the end of the weekend I only had a handful of copies of Volume 3 left.
Friday night I got to the hotel at well after dark, and immediately ran into some of my best pals in comics: Thom Zahler & Amy Ratcliffe. They were taking a walk to see the monuments and asked if we wanted to join them.
(…is that a trick question?)
I was in D.C. last year to film my appearance on The American Revolution, but I had very little time for sight seeing. What time I did have, I spent at the National Archives (to see the Declaration of Independence) and the National Art Gallery (to see the Vermeers and the da Vinci).
I hadn’t been to the D.C. monuments since I was a teenager, and things had changed a lot.
Like the World War II memorial.
It is absolutely breathtaking.
When I was a teenager, it was WWII that first got me interested in history.
I couldn’t stand there without thinking about all of those stories which had shaped my life at an early age.
I think the Lincoln Memorial is still my favorite monument of them all.
On the wall to his left is the Gettysburg Address. On the right is his Second Inaugural Address.
You can’t read either of those speeches and not be moved.
Lincoln’s presidency was a time of awful war. He didn’t have the liberty to just pontificate about ideals that would only work in a perfect world. His words touch the ground of the actual, broken, messed up country we live in, and paint a picture of what could be if we each stepped up and took responsibility for one another.
I lost track of time there… It was 1 AM before we were back in our hotel room.
Thank goodness for understanding friends who know that if I’m tearing up at history, it’s best to just let me have my moment.
The next morning we hit the show hard.
My friend Kim came with me to help out at the table, and she loved meeting all of you!
When in D.C., a Captain America commission is inevitable.
I was surprised to find out that The Dreamer’s colorist, Julie Wright (right), was also at the show!
[Also pictured is my friend Jules Rivera, a fellow webcomicer and a long time listener of Paper Wings, and Steph Stober of Final Arcanum.]
Speaking of Julie, she just launched a Kickstarter to fund the printing of the first volume of her comic.
As a bonus, I’ll be illustrating a five-page story in the book!
Give Julie some support!
At the convention on Friday, I met a fellow history-enthusiast who lives in D.C. She informed me that there is a Nathan Hale statue outside of the Department of Justice!
It took a little bit of searching but…
…We found him!
Saturday I was on a panel called “Making History” with Jason Rodriguez, the editor of Colonial Comics (Fulcrum), and Sarah Vaughn, the writer of Ruined (Rosy Press).
(Jason is my editor on the two stories I’m contributing to Colonial Comics Volume 2: one on the Spunkers Club, and one on Nathan Hale’s Yale years.)
We had an blast answering questions from the audience, and talking about everything involved in making historical comics—from costuming details to language choices to primary sources to making mistakes… despite your best efforts. I think everyone enjoyed it.
Rocket Raccoon commission because people can’t get enough Baby Groot.
Saturday night we walked to see the Monuments again. I had never been to the Jefferson Memorial and couldn’t miss the chance.
On the way, we happened to turn down this street:
I did a double take because the night before we had walked down this very road on our quest to find Nathan Hale, and I hadn’t even noticed.
This is the Ford’s Theater, the site of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination.
Directly across the street is…
I didn’t have a chance to do the tour because of the convention, but I’m always up for a reason to return to cities that I love.
Most of the rest of the street has been turned into an unfortunate tourist trap, but through a window I could see a pillar that someone had described to me earlier that day. This stack of books is three stories tall and contains every book ever written about Lincoln.
I could only see this much of it, since the shop was closed that late at night.
After A LOT of walking around a deceptively large lake, we finally made it to the Jefferson memorial.
Inside is an (awkwardly?) large Thomas Jefferson statue.
On the walls are words that he wrote, including this passage from the Declaration of Independence.
Is that a giant Thomas Jefferson, or are you just happy to see me?
Kim and I decided to stay out a little later—we were hoping to make it to the Korean War memorial, where her grandfather had served, but the weekend caught up with us around 1 AM again.
Before we caught a cab back to our hotel, we stopped at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial.
This, too, was new since my visit as a teenager, and it evoked a lot of the same feelings the Lincoln Memorial did.
Written all around the walls were King’s quotes:
(^^^Everyone should remember this quote before posting opinions on Facebook…)
I don’t think any of the other monuments we would have seen could have topped this one. As our cab driver said, “Who wouldn’t want peace after that?” We went to bed with full hearts.
And so it was an AWESOME Con in every sense!
I met so many of you, and it warmed my heart to no end.
I love knowing that The Dreamer still has fans, despite the hiatuses which lasted longer than I’d planned. Thank you for sticking around, for still reading, and for still caring about Bea, her friends, and what happens to them.
And thank you for everyone who came out just to meet me—know that my smile was sincere when I met you.
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