I’m a bit apprehensive but I’m going to be tabling at my first convention this weekend in St Paul at SpringCon. It’s been a long time coming to table at a comic book convention and now that I have two complete issues under my belt and a bunch of prints ready to sell, I think it’s time to try my hand at this thing. I don’t know table specifics or anything like that but the convention is at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St Paul. If you’re in the Twins Cities area, come on by and check it out. It’s a pretty great small-ish convention that attracts a fair number of famous comic artists from the area.

While I’ve been preparing for this convention, I’m sure you noticed that Variables reverted to a once a week schedule. That will change one week after the con and the comic will revert to a three-every-two schedule, skipping an update every other Thursday.

Looking back at the first half of this issue, it’s a little amazing just how much my art has improved since I stopped work on the 1992 arc last October. I’ve completely changed my inking style, going with heavy blacks in lieu of coloring in the shadowed parts of the page. It’s much more dynamic and my coloring style is far more refined. It gets me excited to think about what my art will look like by the end of the third issue, which should be complete some time late this year.

To prepare for the convention, I’ve been drawing a fair amount of Marvel/DC stuff, getting used to the characters and their more superhero style of rendering, which is more of a departure from my Variables work than you’d expect. Variables has a little crossover with superhero books but given its slightly more realistic take on the genre, I rarely draw overly muscled characters dynamically swinging fists at one another in favor of drawing people in regular clothes or, in the case of the Karter Floros character, a patchwork costume put together from various SWAT, police, and paintball gear. It’s more functional than cool. It takes a bit of time for me to get used to drawing the tights and cape crowd but every time I take a stab at it, my work is better than it was before.

That’s about it for today so if you’re in the area this weekend, come by and visit! And as always, check out the Variables issue in progress here.

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