Yeah, I know. The illustrious Mike Gold has already written at length as to why the Baltimore Comic-Con is an amazing experience. But Mike’s career in comics is older than I am. I had thought, for only a second, that maybe I should just move on and try another column to piss people off. But here I sit, and man, I still can’t stop smiling. So, screw it, you’re gonna hear (again) about the Baltimore Comic-Con. Maybe you’ll get a different perspective. This was my first trip to the Charm City, and I think Mike may have underplayed just how awesome this shindig is. Oh Baltimore Comic-Con, how do I love thee… Let me count the ways.

As many here have read my recent tirades about the Wizard Conventions may know… I have been seriously duped. I was raised on a convention where I honestly believed that in order to make it successful, one needed the publishers (especially the big ones) to anchor the show. How wrong I truly was! BCC was a show where the publishers were truly secondary to the main draw – the creators. In one of several walks I took away from our own table, I realized I was feet away from a litany of personal heroes. Brian Bolland, Cliff Chiang, J.G. Jones, and Gene Ha only to name a few. And while there were publishers there, they were in non-monstrosities that made them feel a “part” of the show, not the driving force behind it. The driving force truly was the community of creators. And given that I was amongst them? It was one of the few times in my five years as one I felt comfortable owning the term.

Far cooler though was the chance to truly “meet” Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and ComicMix’s Emily S. Whitten. Over an amazing dinner (joined by my amazing friends/Samurnauts Erik and Cherise Anderson, Unshaven Sales Machine Kyle, and the always tall Glenn Hauman) we swapped stories, histories, personal politics, jokes, and more. And sure the crab cake was some kind of life altering experience… but just the chance to be at that dinner table in the suburbs of Maryland was some kind of amazing that I’ll be chasing for years to come. I know this is not an experience one gets simply by being at this con… but this was one perk of writing for this site that certainly is continuing to pay off in spades – even if it’s in food and stories alone.

As Mike already mentioned, the show was the perfect length. No “preview night” to force an extra day’s parking money out of the creators… just a packed weekend of festivities. It was almost as if the show runners knew that the creators who got into town early might find one another prior, and take the responsibility themselves to find a good time in the city. Preposterous!

What Mike didn’t mention (mainly because he wasn’t there to sell…) was the positively unending crowd. For two days the traffic at the show was never sparse. Our booth was literally in the last aisle of the convention center, and there was rarely a time where there wasn’t a nice gaggle of comic fans walking past our table. Unshaven Comics walked into the con with a “it’d sure be nice” goal of 150 books over two days. On Saturday alone, we netted a personal record: 137 books sold. And Sunday helped us tip the total to over 200. That makes me beyond proud to announce with three more conventions still left on our schedule, we met our years’ goal of 1000 books sold. For three guys making books in their basement, selling only on the convention floor? I’d say Baltimore put the icing on a cake made of success.

And how about those Harvey Awards? Well, all points from earlier in the week stand true: We were in awe in attendance of living legends. Phil LaMarr was an amazingly hilarious host who proved that beneath all the funny was a legit fan. Ross Ritchie proved that beyond the Gutters’ continual assault on his character, he’s a humble and very passionate man. His call to action only cemented further Unshaven Comics’ love of the medium. And hey, the 30-pound gift bag they let us leave with was nothing short of super. It’s more than possible that it will take an entire career for me to get one, but mark my words: Unshaven Comics will take home a Harvey before we retire our pencils and Wacoms.

Suffice to say, the Baltimore Comic-Con showed me exactly what Wizard is missing in it’s conventions: comic book creators. We’re not a sideshow or a footnote to be hidden on the con floor. We’re the reason this industry exists – from the billion dollar movies we create to the never-ending stream of ideas. The BCC knows how to elevate and celebrate this fact.

As a creator and as a fan, I was (and am) awestruck at what I was witness to this past weekend. And sure it took a twelve-hour car trip to get there, but it was truly a small price to pay for a head full of memories I’ll be hard-pressed to replace…

Until next year.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

All Pulp sat down with Roy Thomas, writer of the upcoming Tarzan Sunday Strips about the project as well as his legendary comic book career.

AP: Tell us a little about yourself and your pulp and comic book interests.

RT: Loved the comics medium since I discovered them at around age 4 1/2, starting with things like Superman and Batman, but nowadays don’t follow the field at all… I just collect comics from the Golden and Silver Ages, plus a few other things. At age 10 or so I read a few pulps like PLANET STORIES (have already read PLANET COMICS); only pulp I have now are a complete-but-for-one collection of the magazine appearances of Conan, plus the complete Adam Link stories of Eando Binder and a couple of others.

AP: How did you get your start as a comic book writer?

RT: Wrote to letters to comics editors, esp. Julius Schwartz–and one day in early 1965 Mort Weisinger, with whom I’d never exchanged more than one or two letters, offered me a job as editorial assistant on the Superman books. I threw over a foreign relations fellowship and went to work for DC… two weeks later, for Marvel.

AP: With Tarzan’s 100th anniversary in full swing, you’ve landed the writing duties on a new Tarzan Sunday web strip along with artist Tom Grindberg. What can we expect from this new strip?

RT: Beautiful artwork from Tom and our attempt to tell stories which will be true to the classic spirit of Tarzan.

AP: Will the Tarzan strip be an on-going project?

RT: We hope so. We have to be able to make a minimum of money from it after a little while, but mostly we’re doing it for the love of it.

AP: Anything you can tease about the new Tarzan strips?

RT: The story involves the disappearance of Jane, and Tarzan’s involvement with La, who’d like to take her place. Tom had drawn several of the La sequence strips before I came aboard, so I figured we’d find a way to make everything fit as a story. At this writing, we’ve done nine “weeks,” I guess… the equivalent of nine Sunday strips, if they were appearing in newspapers… which they ought to be.

AP: Do you, as a writer, approach doing a web comic such as Tarzan any differently than if you were doing it for a newspaper or comic book?

RT: Yes, you have to write in little bursts… a climax of sorts every few panels. But you quickly get into the rhythm, and I know that whatever I come up with, Tom will draw beautifully. He, as much as Tarzan, is the reason I’m doing this, even though we really hardly know each other. But I’ve always loved his work… and the fact that he isn’t too busy right now with comic book work to even consider such a project is as damning of the present-day field as anything I could think to say about it.

AP: There seem to be many different opinions about what can be defined as pulp. How do you define pulp and what do you look for in a pulp story as a writer and a reader? Do you consider Tarzan a pulp hero?

RT: Sure. Tarzan started in a pulp, albeit a higher-class one than some… and he and ERB almost definite pulp, at least at the high end.

AP: Tarzan is not your first time stepping into the world of pulp. How does working on Tarzan compare and contrast to working on Conan?

RT: We’ll have to see. They’re quite different characters… both men of action, but Tarzan is probably more introspective than Conan. When I did the TARZAN comics for Marvel, I tried too hard to keep ERB’s prose when I was adapting the novel TARZAN, LORD OF THE JUNGLE. You can’t do that as easily or as well as you can with REH and Conan, because ERB doesn’t write purple and/or poetic prose the way Howard does. ERB just tells the story… so I should’ve thrown away most of those captions I wrote for TARZAN, or severely shortened then. I don’t feel the same way about CONAN.

AP: Where do you see the comic book industry in the future?

RT: Online, probably. That’s another reason I’m less interested in it. I can get interested in writing an online strip… because it’s basically the same as writing a strip for newspapers, and I already do that by working with Stan, for over a dozen years now, on the SPIDER-MAN strip… and of course I wrote two years of a CONAN strip 30 years ago. But I’m personally less interested in READING an online strip, because I want to hold the paper in my hands, etc. I hope and trust many other readers nowadays do not feel the same, and we’ll do the best we can to deliver the kind of strip they’d like if they read it once a week in the Sunday papers, surrounded by “Dilbert” and “Classic Peanuts.”

AP: And how can we get the millions of fans that enjoy movies based on comic books to pick up the source material?

RT: If I knew that, I’d be rich. I’m not rich…but I’m comfortable.

AP: Is there a particular character out there you haven’t had the chance to work on that you would love to take a crack at writing?

RT: No characters I haven’t written that I can think of that I’m wild about writing… though I’d like to write AGAIN some of those I wrote before: Conan… the Invaders… All-Star Squadron… Infinity, Inc… Arak, Son of Thunder… Captain Carrot… Jonni Thunder… hey, even Starr the Slayer. Couldn’t do worse than THAT Marvel mini-series of a couple of years ago. It made my skin crawl. Or would have, if I’d bought it and taken it home with me instead of just skimming it at the store and putting it firmly back on the shelf. Still, somebody there was trying to be creative… I just wish they’d done it with (and TO) their own character, and not one I co-created.

AP: Where can readers find information on you and your work?

RT: In general, I can be Googled, like everybody else… but I eschew Facebook and the like, though Tom Grindberg will keep me apprised of what readers say to him on Facebook. They can reach me at roydann@ntinet.com or write me a letter at the address that’s in every issue of ALTER EGO, my heroic-comics-history magazine.

AP: What upcoming projects do you have coming up that you can tell us about at this time?

RT: No comics besides TARZAN and the ongoing SPIDER-MAN strip I work on with Stan Lee. I have a couple of comics projects, esp. One, that’s near to making a deal on…but it’s hard to find time for it, because I’ve signed a contract to write a biiiggg book about Stan’s life for Taschen, the German company that published that big DC book by Paul Levitz last year. Similar format and size… so it’ll be big and expensive, and is about to start taking up a huge percentage of my time. I’ll be lucky to keep everything else minimally afloat till I finish it, months from now!

AP: Do you have any shows, signings, or conventions coming up where your fans can meet you?

RT: Not till Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, next June. Well, actually, there’s another big con coming up late this winter… but they’ve asked me not to mention it till they announce it, so… like I said, I’m gonna be busy with this book and my previous commitments.

AP: And finally, what does Roy Thomas do when he’s not writing?

RT: I read (though hard to find time these days)… watch a lot of TV (Netflix and Canadian, mostly) with Dann… and spend time exercising (not rigorously) and playing with our eight dogs, feeding the capybaras, etc., etc. Always something to do when you’ve got a 40-acre spread and a couple of houses… I even have to help clean up the swimming pool, though that season is about over right now.

AP: Thanks, Roy. We’re looking forward to following the new adventures of Tarzan.

You can learn more about Tarzan and the Sunday Strips at www.edgarriceburroughs.com

Also, check out All Pulp’s interview with Tarzan Sunday Strip artist Tom Grindberg at http://allpulp.blogspot.com/2012/08/artist-tom-grindberg-takes-all-pulp-on.html

Pulpwork Press announces New Pulp Author Derrick Ferguson’s Dillon And The Pirates of Xonira is now available for Kindle from Amazon.

About Dillon And The Pirates of Xonira:
Once upon a time in the far away island nation of Xonira, Dillon was instrumental in halting a bloody revolution and handing the reins of power over to Lord Chancellor C’jai. Now, a mysterious group of international businessmen contact Dillon with evidence that Dillon’s old friend, the Lord Chancellor C’jai, is engaging in high seas piracy in the oceans surrounding Xonira. In order to discover the truth behind the matter, Dillon decides to fight fire with fire and assembles a motley crew of rogues and cutthroats aboard the diesel-powered submarine, Morgan Adams, and sails for Xonira. In Xonira, it seems, beautiful women, traitors, and tyrants are in no short supply, and Dillon’s less than triumphant return is marked by a cascade of bullets, bombs, and blood!

So, what has the good sergeant been up to lately, you may ask?

Plotting his triumphant return, of course!

New Pulp Author Jim Beard has recently turned his thoughts to the sequel to SGT. JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER, which is tentatively entitled SGT. JANUS RETURNS.

You can learn all about Jim’s plans at http://sgtjanus.blogspot.com/2012/09/sgt-janus-returns.html

You can find SGT. JANUS, SPIRIT-BREAKER on Amazon.com.

For more information on Airship 27 Productions, visit them on-line at www.airship27.com.