2012 C2E2 Schedule

My big local Chicago show is coming this weekend, C2E2! It's last minute, but my plans are starting to firm up. I still have to schedule an interview with Newsarama for some time Saturday, but everything else is firm. Hope to see you there at Artist Alley Table A5.

As usual, I'll be charging for 'nice' sketches, probably starting at $120 and going up in price with each additional reservation on the sketch list. Catch me early! I start a new list each day. I'll be doing some charity sketching for the HERO Initiative on Sunday for $60-$100. And as always, I'll be trying to fit in some free sketches for the kids.

I won't have anything else for sale, but I'll display some NFS (not for sale) artwork and I'll sign books for free.

You can buy one piece of original comic art from me If you win the Saturday charity auction. I've donated the cover to Action Comics #3 to help support St Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Friday 13 April 2012

10am       Show floor opens to Professionals

1pm       Show opens to the Public. My sketch list for Friday begins at my Artist Alley Table A5!

5-6pm       Mouse Guard: Legends of the Guard signing at Archaia Booth 529

6-7pm       DC Comics signing at Booth 115

7pm       C2E2 closes for the day

Saturday 14 April 2012

10am    DC Comics signing at Booth 115. Doors open to pros and public at the same time, so I'll be rushing to get to the DC booth at the same time you will....

11:30am   Hopefully back at Artist Alley Table A5. Sketch list starts whenever I do get back!

????       Newsarama interview, yet to be scheduled. Prob'ly Sat afternoon.

7pm    C2E2 closes for the day

7:15pm    After hours Charity Auction! South Building, 4 floor, room S401d. Bid on pieces by me and many others, art previews at the Link.

Sunday 15 April 2012

10am    C2E2 opens for Sunday. See all of your favorite comics creators, hung over... I should be at my Artist Alley Table A5, ready to start a new sketch list.

12:30pm   If you don't want to pay $150+ for a sketch, catch me now at the HERO Initiative, Booth 704. I'll be sketching to raise funds for retired comics creators until 2:30pm.

3pm    Hopefully back at Artist Alley Table A5. I might be a bit tired by now....

5pm    C2E2 closes for 2012. Time to go home and apologize for buying that $500 stainless steel handcrafted Captain America shield!

It's been a fun week leading up to the show. My friends Stéphane and Meng from France showed up a few days before the show started. I took them to the most American restaurant in Chicago, Kuma's Corner, the heavy metal burger bar, for massive mounds of all-American beef topped with bacon!

To my shame, Stéphane proved to be a better American than I am. I must mudbog in a monster truck to wash away the embarrassment....

March 2012: Upcoming events!

I'm just under a year into my 2 year exclusive with DC, and it's been a wild ride. After getting the Superman book in the Flashpoint crossover, I've been acting as a backup talent on some major DC books: switching off with Rags Morales on Grant Morrison's Action Comics run, and trading off with Jim (%#@%ing) Lee on Geoff Johns' Justice League. Heady stuff! As a comics geek, one of the biggest thrills is just getting to read the scripts early.

Hopefully, you've enjoyed my work, and you want to help the cause of comics. If that describes you, I'm hoping you can meet me at Graham Crackers Comics in Plainfield, IL (40 minutes SW of Chicago on I-55 South) for a HERO Initiative membership event.

It all goes down Saturday, March 24th from 5pm - 7:30pm. For $29 you get a HERO Initiative one-year membership plus the meet and greet with me. For $99, a Silver HERO one-year membership, a FREE New Avengers 100 Project book, discounts on HERO merchandise, and a sketch (of any one character of your choice) from me! I'll try to make them extra nice.

Here are some more upcoming events this year:


Fri Apr 13-15, 2012 
C2E2
Chicago Comics & Entertainment Expo
It's the big bash off the lake! I've donated my cover for Action Comics #3 to the C2E2 charity auction for the St Jude Children's Research Hospital. At my table I'll again be making sketches for charity, but I usually do a few paid commissions too to pay for the weekend.

Sun May 6, 2012
Glenside IL Library Dewey Con 741.5 
If you can get to west suburban Chicagoland, this is the mini-con to hit! From 1:30pm-4:30 pm, entry is free and so are my sketches for kids. I'll try to arrive early and leave late if you want to chat or get anything signed. See the Glenside events calendar here.

May 19-20, 2012
MN SpringCon
Minnesota's MCBA throws one of my favorite conventions. Great volunteers, great fans, exciting guests, and a local small press comic artist talent pool to rival CA and NY. Definitely worth the trip!

Sept 8-9, 2012
Baltimore Comic-Con
This will be my first trip to the BCC, a convention I've been told is one of the best for over a decade. Very excited!

Sat Nov 3, 2012
Vegas Valley Comic Book Festival
Clark County Library, Las Vegas NV
Have I ever mentioned how much I love library run mini-conventions? Well, I do.

Brian Justin Ha, 1967-1995

I'm going to recall my late older brother. So this post will be morbid. I feel like I should start posting something about him online. He raised me like a father when my real parents fell down on the job, and he pushed me to study and exercise and question authority and defend the weak. If I'm a man of any character at all, it's because that's how my brother raised me.  It seems wrong that you'll get 344,000 results for "gene ha" but only 3 for "brian justin ha." And none of those are about him.

I've just finished the 3 issue Project Superman miniseries for DC, and I'm taking time off to organize my life. That includes the papers of my late older brother, Brian Justin Ha. He killed himself in 1995, after repeated drunk driving arrests threatened his right to drive. Fearing he'd lose his job as an accountant if he couldn't drive to work he turned on his Honda's engine in a closed garage and sat back. He must have changed his mind because he stumbled out, leaving handprints on the hood, and almost made it free. He lay only two feet from the doorknob.

His ashes reside in the town we grew up in, South Bend/Mishawaka. He hated South Bend and was glad to leave. The cemetery is across the street from a shopping mall, and he hated that mall even more than he hated the town. So I'm hoping to move his ashes this year. I suppose it doesn't really matter to the dead, but that doesn't mean I can't show some respect.

Anyhow, while going through his papers I found this:

As I grow older I like to think that I grow wiser. That my vision and my judgments are less cluttered. by And as I look back on how I had thought before and laugh, I like to think it is because I have gained new insight and have climbed another step in my search for truth. Not that I have jumped to the other side of the fence.

Sometimes I pull out the two drawers I save my memories in.  I rummage through the papers and envelopes and find the material I need to prove to myself that I have indeed become wiser for the days that have passed. And when I am satisfied, I return the drawers to the cabinet bureau. Two drawers full of memories, used only a few times a year. Already a third is taking form, pushing aside the shirts and the pair of argyle socks that found their way to that drawer...

I keep those two drawers worth of material, and much more, in a leather bound chest. I also have some of my dog Georgia's stuff in there too. They never met, but I think they would have really liked each other. And a man can't find better company than a dog, even in death.

I'm always haunted that he could collapse under the weight of life while I go on. He was smarter than me and more talented as an artist. He didn't have the patience to sit at a single drawing for hours on end, but that's because he had better things to do. He played high school football and wrestling, and he was pretty smooth with the ladies. Charming and funny . He was also handsome: girls would scream at him from cars while he was jogging, and women would ask him about produce in the grocery store. None of these things are true of me, but he was used to it. I was a nerdy kid, but I had him to protect me. I never told him if I got beat up at school, but if he found out he'd make the bullies pay. I heard he once went after two at once, and they went running. If I've ever done any of you a good turn it's because he thought the good in me was worth protecting.

But he was cut down by addiction. Drinking and depression. So you can see why I take offense when people say that Amy Winehouse was a waste of oxygen.

Anyhow this one's for you, BJ. You pushed and inspired me hard growing up, and you're still there pushing me today to be a good man. I wish you could do it in person, that's all.

Original Art Fundraiser

 

The piece I did for a charity fundraiser is up on eBay. It's for a good cause, so if you love Captain America and our troops, I hope you'll bid. All proceeds will go to the college fund for a fallen soldier's daughters. In a war full of heroic sacrifice, Tom Rabjohn's story stands out.

 

Tom Rabjohn was serving in the National Guard in Afghanistan. He had finished disarming one bomb, and then noticed a second. He cleared out the rest of the troops, but it went off before he could disarm it. 

 

Tom was a Phoenix police officer in his civilian life. The auction has been organized by his fellow officers. They're auctioning off both the B&W Bristol paper original, and an Epson photo print of my computer colors for the piece, the same size as the original artwork.

The picture recounts a story from The Avengers #4 (1964), after Captain America has fallen off the flying bomb that Bucky is disarming. Jack Kirby had served on the frontlines in Normandy, and I suspect this was a small tribute to the friends he lost there.

Here are some links about Staff Sergeant Rabjohn:

KTVK: Friends, family honor fallen soldier Thomas Rabjohn 

KTVK: Funeral held for police officer killed in Afghanistan

YouTube: Staff Sergeant Thomas Rabjohn Memorial Photos

YouTube: A Hero Returns Home: Remembering Phoenix Police Officer Thomas Rabjohn

C2E2 Photos

This morning I dreamt that I was at a diner, about to order a vegetarian pot roast. I woke up ravenous, but I can't eat because I'm getting a blood cholesterol test later today. That's a big change from C2E2, where me and my friends spent Saturday eating Bacon Candy and several pounds of meat at the Honkey Tonk BBQ. Just so you know, cabs will drop you off at the Honky Tonk in the Pilsen neighborhood, but they're really reluctant to pick you up from there. We spent 40 minutes and called cab companies 4 times before one picked us up. I don't know what they're afraid of: there was a constant stream of police vehicles cruising 18th Street.

, Zander Cannon, Jim Chadwick and Stuart Moore. 

With caramelized sugar shellacked Bacon Candy.

But let's begin at the beginning. My C2E2 started on Thursday, showing my Irish friend John McCrea around Chicago. On St. Patrick's Day. John had no interest in joining a green tiaraed mob at a fake Irish pub or seeing if the city had dyed the Chicago River green. He was damned excited to get some Mexican food, see Sue the T rex and flying monkeys at the Field Museum, and do some drinking at a Japanese bar. He was a bit disappointed the pretty bartender was watching a game of footy, but otherwise all went well.

NOT PHOTOSHOPPED. The winged monkey at the Field Museum.

On Friday night, I attended the DC Nation panel. Dan Didio really knows how to lead a crowd! It was an amazing event.

Staring straight at the camera is Scott Snyder, who writes non-sparkling bloodsuckers in Vertigo's American Vampire. But as you Twilight geeks can clearly see, he has bright red eyes....

Look how shiny and pale Mr. Snyder is! 

Also Bob Wayne (off camera), Paul Cornell,

Gail Simone, and Bill Willingham

Later Friday was the Fables Dinner at the Rosebud on Taylor Street. Thanks to Shelly Bond and her crew of creators. It was an amazing night. Bill Willingham and Adam Hughes traded barstool tales. I missed the beginning of the best one, but jumped in as Adam recalled tasting the brown smear on his arm and being surprised it was chocolate. I really regret missing the beginning of the story.

Onto the sketches! Most of the these are the quick and free "You As A Superhero" sketches I do at my table. The really rendered ones of famous characters are the paid sketches that covered my BBQ tab (thanks, sketch patrons!) and a few were done at the DC booth, with David Petersen at the Archaia booth or to raise money for the HERO Initiative.

First, the paid sketches:

Archaia booth sketches. Because I had less books to sign, I began doing more elaborate sketches to goad David into going all out. In the first photo, I've drawn a Harry Potter mouse, and added a Golden Snitch sliced by Saxon's sword stroke. David's counter is stunning, just stunning:

The happiest sketch patron of the day!

HERO Initiative sketches:

Free sketches!:

My favorite Where's Waldo cosplayer ever!

Christina, my Challengers Comics clerk! A natural born badass.

This patient fellow was the first in line Sunday morning, and waited 

the whole con for his sketch. He was getting it for his TN comic shop, which had 

burned down and was rebuilding. I had to do something nice.

Molly Jane Kremer of the Comics Slumber Party podcast

and Graham Crackers Comics. She got the last sketch of

the show, after the floor had closed.