The Marble Champs

I had a great time Saturday hanging out with Bill Pappas, his family and staff, and meeting and chatting with his regular customers at his Canton store. Between the time Bill asked me to do the signing for FCBD and the day of the event, I realized that his is the store at that sponsored Aaron Archer’s Gumbo comic back in the day. I haven’t seen Aaron in a while, but keep up with him through our mutual friends and the internet.

I sold a handful of Deus ex Comica copies during the signing, which was cool, but what made the day was my parents, who were babysitting the kiddo, bringing him to the store so he could get his free comics and hang out with me for the last hour of my signing. And the timing couldn’t have been better. The store opened at noon and was busy for that first hour and a half or so. The steady stream of customers never completely dried up after that, but it wasn’t packed like in those first couple of hours after opening. There are worse ways to pass an afternoon than hanging out with my kiddo in a comic shop and selling my book.

I picked up the Avengers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles books, and the kiddo snagged the Wolverine and Sonic free comic book offerings. We each came away with undiscovered gems, too… I picked up the Nancy/Melvin Monster one-shot, which has gorgeous art on faux aged paper. The kiddo scored the Star Wars Clone Wars book that included Usagi Yojimbo, Emily the Strange, Beanworld, and — most importantly — Indiana Jones stories.

Bill had a local artist on-hand doing free sketches for customers on request. The kiddo asked for a Wolverine and walked away with a fantastic pencil sketch of the feral Canadian. Also, there were box lids full of free stuff — among which, most importantly, were Star Wars game cards, so the kiddo made out like a bandit.

Saturday night my wife, the kiddo and I headed downtown for dinner at The Lockview (tried the Number Three and a Brooklyn Pennant Ale on this outing — good stuff!), then over to Rubber City Clothing to hear my friend Dave’s band play. We caught the last hour of the Marble Champs‘ in-store set, with their eclectic roots rock overflowing out front and into the street. It was really a great move by both Sarah at RCC and Dave to coordinate the gig. The Marble Champs take their namesake inspiration from one of the RCC logoed t-shirts. From a certain twisted point of view, I guess Dave and his band could claim that they have something in common with Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders: They both have official merch available only through RCC.

RCC is also one of the locations around town where both promotional postcards and a display copy of my book are available. After the gig we were chatting and Dave apologized for not pimping my book during the show, and then he got back in front of the crowd, introduced me, and put me in front of the mic to say a few words about the book. Totally caught me off guard (if you were at the show, I can assure you I am usually much more articulate than I probably came off Saturday night!), but it was very nice of Dave to do it and I appreciate the exposure.

Speaking of accessibility, Deus ex Comica is now available via the publisher, Lulu, as well as through Amazon. Bill asked me to leave him a few copies of the book on consignment for him to have and sell in the shop and at the regional shows he goes to, so if you’re in Northeast Ohio, you can get a copy of my book from Bill’s Books and More in Canton at my “convention price” of $15.50 per copy. Thanks to Zack Kruse over at Discount Comic Book Service, if you’re outside of Northeast Ohio you can still take advantage of that pricing by ordering the book through DCBS where you can find the book in the May listings under order code MAY099007.

If you’ve bought a copy of Deus ex Comica and enjoyed it, please take a moment to rank and review it on Lulu, Amazon, and/or GoodReads. I appreciate everyone’s support!