Valiant at C2E2

[AnarchoMambo]

Friday 11:15am - 11:30am
Tini Howard
The Forgotten Queen
https://www.c2e2.com/Features/Panels-An ... n-and-Glow" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Friday 12:45pm - 1:00pm
Tim Seeley & Gregg Katzman
Bloodshot 101
https://www.c2e2.com/Features/Panels-An ... odshot-101" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Friday 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Cullen Bunn, Alex Paknadel, Tini Howard, Tim Seeley, & Gregg Katzman
A Valiant Uprising
https://www.c2e2.com/Features/Panels-An ... r-and-More" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Friday will be the day, certainly. I am looking very forward to these! Which of you bozos can I expect to see there?

[Jrosen]

I'll be a t the 3:00 panel, don't know about the two 15 minute meet and greets

[RDNacho]

I should be at the panel at 3 on Friday. I wish there was a panel Saturday, I'm going dressed as Woody and my daughter is going as Faith.

[AnarchoMambo]

Looking forward to seeing anyone willing to introduce themselves Friday after panel. I will be in the white v-neck t-shirt with [LARGE RED CIRCLE]

[unityshadowman]

Friday 11:15am - 11:30am
Tini Howard
The Forgotten Queen
https://www.c2e2.com/Features/Panels-An ... n-and-Glow" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Friday 12:45pm - 1:00pm
Tim Seeley & Gregg Katzman
Bloodshot 101
https://www.c2e2.com/Features/Panels-An ... odshot-101" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Friday 3:00pm - 4:00pm
Cullen Bunn, Alex Paknadel, Tini Howard, Tim Seeley, & Gregg Katzman
A Valiant Uprising
https://www.c2e2.com/Features/Panels-An ... r-and-More" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Friday will be the day, certainly. I am looking very forward to these! Which of you bozos can I expect to see there?

15 minute panels? I plan to be at all three...black Valiant Tshirt, looking forward to meeting everybody.

[AnarchoMambo]

Okay, so this is like.. so unofficial, but I think Cullen Bunn might not be done with Valiant after Punk Mambo. I talked to him and like...’ nuff said!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[AnarchoMambo]

So *SQUEE* cool. This is the best *SQUEE* news

[sonicdan]

Any photos or reports of what the Graham Cracker Comics / Valiant Entertainment combo booth looked like?

[greg]

Any photos or reports of what the Graham Cracker Comics / Valiant Entertainment combo booth looked like?

Are you asking for a "sneak peak"?

[Jrosen]

Any photos or reports of what the Graham Cracker Comics / Valiant Entertainment combo booth looked like?

It was garbage. Graham Crackers had a wall of bookshelves containing trades from all of the publishers, probably 20 or 30 feet long by 6 feet high. On one 3 foot by 6 foot section, they put a header that said Valiant and put all of the trades on it. It was completely lost in the row. To make it worse, the Valiant section was directly behind another display that listed the top 50 trades sold by Graham Crackers, which didn't contain a single Valiant book. I didn't see any individual books or variants on display.


I didn't notice if the Valiant workers were wearing Valiant attire. One of the guys had a tag that said "speaker," which is how I knew that he was different from other people browsing through the booth. Graham Cracker employees didn't really know there was anything going on at their booth.

[Jrosen]

The panel was nice. Tini is really gung-ho for The Forgotten Queen and said she pitched a Mary-Maria story to Valiant. As mentioned earlier, it seemed that Cullen was hinting at a run on Shadowman, and Tim was excited for Bloodshot. Alex Paknadel came in from England to talk about Incursion. I think this is his first "run" on a book, and I'm really liking it so far. I hope he stays with Valiant.


Rafer Roberts, Eliot Rahal, and Daniel Kibblesmith were in a row of three tables, and it was really nice to talk to them. I'm bummed that Daniel's Q&W run was short, but it seemed like he was only expected to be on it for the 5 issue arc. Eliot was teasing him that he had the fourth longest run on the title, out of four writers. Rafer signed my Renegade set, and he was disappointed that it was cut short. He also mentioned that Valiant took some Easter Eggs taken out of the Rai's History of the Valiant Universe. I guess Valiant didn't want him wrecking the continuity of the 4002 time-line.

[nycjadie]

I met Eliot at ECCC. Really like him. Talked for some time, and I picked up his creator-owner books. Looking forward to reading them. Rafer didn’t come to ECCC this year, first in some time.

[TheeBaldMoose]

I met Eliot at ECCC. Really like him. Talked for some time, and I picked up his creator-owner books. Looking forward to reading them. Rafer didn’t come to ECCC this year, first in some time.

nycjadie, he will be at RCCC, his home town Con

[AnarchoMambo]

Valiant at C2E2 was kind of sweet, for several reasons:

Gregg Katzman is the new marketing coordinator, and he has an enthusiasm for Valiant that that belies his short time there.
I don’t think anyone cared that his Power Point failed. I think it was a convention hall fail, actually. I think everyone was rooting for him, and he did well. He also had good chemistry with Seeley during their Bloodshot 101 interview earlier.

All 4 panelist writers were quite professional and did well in their own way: Tini Howard was effusive, and markets her ideas well, and she certainly has many of them. Cullen Bunn doesn’t say much, but he doesn’t need to to inspire confidence. Both he and Tim Seeley read all the V1 books in real time, and are very knowledgeable/passionate about their characters. Tim had probably the best new hot indie book at the convention (Dark Red for Aftershock) and he sat next to Dave Mustaine at the Heavy Metal magazine signing (which puts him up another notch in my book!) I rather believe that he is the right person for this title as the movie happens. Alex Paknadel really presents himself and his ideas fluently, and probably spoke more in more detail than any other panelist. Good for Gilad!

I think that all of these creators are likely to be around for a long time probably with more minis/limited series in the case of Tini and Alex, and ongoings for Tim and Cullen (hope.)

Yes the Valiant visibility at C2E2 was low/nonexistent, but I think this is a tacit admission that most of the Valiant output for the last year was poor. We may not like it, but I think this was a sound strategic decision this year at C2E2, which perhaps might be repeated more often than not at this year’s conventions.

Something really cool (I think.) when I showed up for my golds on Sunday (me Shadowman icon T-shirt, my kids Q&W goat t’s,) they said they were out of golds. So they would mail them, with one stipulation: they would post them through the intermediate of my comic shop, with a couple more free golds and swag for them too.

Why this is good, is that my value at my LCS grows, and they will be having direct conversations with my LCS about Valiant. I kind of think this should be the common practice: show up for the golds, but mailing them through the LCS and growing those relationships.

So in summary, Friday’s panel and Valiant’s presence at C2E2 were not great, but the people now involved with Valiant were fantastic, and in my opinion, show great promise for the future.

[Dallow Spicer1]

Okay, so this is like.. so unofficial, but I think Cullen Bunn might not be done with Valiant after Punk Mambo. I talked to him and like...’ nuff said!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’ve never actually read anything by Cullen Bunn before but he seems high profile so getting him on multiple projects for Valiant bodes well

[nycjadie]

This is promising after Heather at ECCC mixed up Bloodshot and Rai in the new Fallen World book, and they made a poor Super Max joke.

[AnarchoMambo]

Not the best thread to report this story, but for me, this piece is a placeholder for some of the the best memories of C2E2 2019.

A couple weeks back I started looking around for Punk Mambo original art, and was amazed to see that the Dauterman cover to #0 was still available (unclaimed since 2014!). I jumped on it and started interacting with Russell.

He’s a big deal this year with Marvel’s War of the Realms, and he reported that he hadn’t attended any conventions for years. He doodled a Jane Foster Thor for my daughter, and was just about the nicest guy you could ever imagine.

Russell’s art is digital, but he produces a 1/1 unique print of every piece of artwork for sale to fans.



Now, which one of you owns his Shadowman 16 cover? Whoever it is, we’ve got some business with which to attend!!

[IMJ]

Any photos or reports of what the Graham Cracker Comics / Valiant Entertainment combo booth looked like?

It was garbage. Graham Crackers had a wall of bookshelves containing trades from all of the publishers, probably 20 or 30 feet long by 6 feet high. On one 3 foot by 6 foot section, they put a header that said Valiant and put all of the trades on it. It was completely lost in the row. To make it worse, the Valiant section was directly behind another display that listed the top 50 trades sold by Graham Crackers, which didn't contain a single Valiant book. I didn't see any individual books or variants on display.

I didn't notice if the Valiant workers were wearing Valiant attire. One of the guys had a tag that said "speaker," which is how I knew that he was different from other people browsing through the booth. Graham Cracker employees didn't really know there was anything going on at their booth.

Over the years, as Jaime has transitioned more to a retired life in Florida, it seems as if Graham Crackers has become more of a yuppie comic chain - more employees with counter culture hair in a shiny store reading the latest Indy book that would be about a teenage girl dressed in black clothes, doing something mundane and drawn in stick figures.

A buddy and I were discussing this recently, and we determined that if you compared their current zeitgeist to the movie Dodgeball it would more greatly resemble Ben Stiller's team rather than Vince Vaughn's team, or if it was Scott Pilgrim the chain would be more represented by people trying to be in Brandon Routh's band rather than Michael Cera's band. The comparison of attitudes here is dead on, however across both examples none of the real life employees are well built, in great shape nor generally are as good looking as the people in Brandon Routh's band or on Ben Stiller's team. It's like everything I just described except that everyone tends to look like dark Toby Maguire in Spider-Man 3. Or versions thereof, maybe while wearing an awkward looking, colorful tie.

Two of the girls that work in the Naperville store are authentically nice though. So there's that.

[Jrosen]

Any photos or reports of what the Graham Cracker Comics / Valiant Entertainment combo booth looked like?

It was garbage. Graham Crackers had a wall of bookshelves containing trades from all of the publishers, probably 20 or 30 feet long by 6 feet high. On one 3 foot by 6 foot section, they put a header that said Valiant and put all of the trades on it. It was completely lost in the row. To make it worse, the Valiant section was directly behind another display that listed the top 50 trades sold by Graham Crackers, which didn't contain a single Valiant book. I didn't see any individual books or variants on display.

I didn't notice if the Valiant workers were wearing Valiant attire. One of the guys had a tag that said "speaker," which is how I knew that he was different from other people browsing through the booth. Graham Cracker employees didn't really know there was anything going on at their booth.

Over the years, as Jaime has transitioned more to a retired life in Florida, it seems as if Graham Crackers has become more of a yuppie comic chain - more employees with counter culture hair in a shiny store reading the latest Indy book that would be about a teenage girl dressed in black clothes, doing something mundane and drawn in stick figures.

A buddy and I were discussing this recently, and we determined that if you compared their current zeitgeist to the movie Dodgeball it would more greatly resemble Ben Stiller's team rather than Vince Vaughn's team, or if it was Scott Pilgrim the chain would be more represented by people trying to be in Brandon Routh's band rather than Michael Cera's band. The comparison of attitudes here is dead on, however across both examples none of the real life employees are well built, in great shape nor generally are as good looking as the people in Brandon Routh's band or on Ben Stiller's team. It's like everything I just described except that everyone tends to look like dark Toby Maguire in Spider-Man 3. Or versions thereof, maybe while wearing an awkward looking, colorful tie.

Two of the girls that work in the Naperville store are authentically nice though. So there's that.

My comments weren't directed at Graham Crackers. I've been going to them exclusively for years, and I've found them to be fantastic. In terms of indie books, they probably have the best selection anywhere in the city, and I've got some great recommendations of things that I wouldn't have ever read. In fact, they are the ones who pushed me to try Valiant in the first place.

I don't know what your expectations are, but I'm looking for a LCS that recommends things that I normally wouldn't pick up or knew existed. Whats the point of a shop that only pushes what's easy to sell.

[IMJ]

I don't know what your expectations are, but I'm looking for a LCS that recommends things that I normally wouldn't pick up or knew existed. Whats the point of a shop that only pushes what's easy to sell.

If that's your draw to an LCS, try checking out Amazing Fantasy Books and Comics in Lockport just off of where 355 terminates, or go in and hang out with Tom from Thom's Comics in Elgin. They are staples in doing exactly what you just said you are looking for.

I've been going into Graham Crackers since their St. Charles store was just off the river and the Naperville store was downtown - almost 30 years now. Given that length of time going there I'd say I have seen a definite change in the relatively recent employment culture at a few of the locations. I don't recall the old guard being as "aggro" as they are today. I miss quite a few of those guys.

As for my expectations? I go to the LCS for their inventory nowadays and not much more - I definitely agree with your assessment of GC's Independent selection. Other than that? Maybe some light sales chat, maybe to catch up now and again with some of the long term guys at various shops around the Chicago area. Generally not looking for reading recs and typically only engage in opinion transfers from guys that I know are knowledgeable and respect nowadays.