SWC at 30: Convention Memories: Great Eastern Convention 1991

As I explained last week, StarWarp Concepts officially launched as a comic-book publishing company in 1993—which makes this year our 30th Anniversary—but we actually started out in 1989 as a small-press comics publisher, turning out our titles on photocopiers and hand-stapling them as digest-size (5.5″ x 8.5″) booklets (which is the same size as the trade-paperback books and graphic novels we publish today).

It was in those small-press days that I made my first convention appearance as an exhibitor/publisher/artist, in the artists’ alley of the April 1991 Great Eastern Convention, held at the Penta Hotel (formerly the Hotel Pennsylvania), across from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. 

I had all of one digest-size comic to sell—Lorelei#1, with cover art by Vampirella veteran Tom Sutton (you’ll now find that striking image as the frontispiece of the graphic novel Lorelei: Sects and the City)—and the sketches I was offering were black-and-white cardstock photocopies of pinups I’d done, that I’d then hand-color with the markers I’d brought along. Not the most impressive setup, but like I always say, we all have to start out somewhere, right?

And how about that “banner” behind me? The rising star of the small press—run off on my home printer and taped together. Sure, it looked cheap but even then I was tapping into my Inner Stan Lee, hyping a company that was much much smaller than it really was. It got me some attention, though…

“Your name sounds really familiar,” said a comic fan who walked up to the table on day one. “Do you work for Marvel?”

At first, I said no, but the guy was really insistent that he knew my name from somewhere mainstream comic–related. So, I smiled and said, “Okay, I did a fill-in issue of The Punisher, but I don’t know if it’ll ever get published. And anyway, Klaus Janson inked it so heavily you’ll never know it’s me.”

He nodded, wished me luck, and went away happy.

Hey, I thought it was funny.

Yes, I was a bit of a jerk at the show, sometimes unintentionally. Just ask Jo Duffy, who’d been an editor for Marvel Comics and the writer of such series as Star Wars, Catwoman, and Power Man and Iron Fist—I kept accidentally knocking over the sign for her self-published Nestrobber comic just about every time I stood up, but no amount of apologizing was apparently good enough, because when I showed up for day two, I found that all my stuff had been moved to another table away from Duffy and her wobbly sign. (The manga-influenced Nestrobber, in case you were curious, ended two years later with its second issue.)

I didn’t really make much money—most of which came from the hand-colored pinups—but for my first convention experienced from the other, comic-creator side of the table I came away jazzed. Maybe there really was something to this comic-book thing! So naturally, I started making plans for my next con…

Stay turned for more Convention Memories!