First Kill Shakespeare Cosplayers!
Andy, Conor and I returned from Halifax on Monday after taking part in the fantastic Hal-Con 2011. I'll have more to post on that later this week (photos!) but in the meantime, I wanted to share a very special moment for us...Our first Kill Shakespeare cosplayers!
Ken and Alicia Robichaud, huge fans of the series, went out of their way to put together elaborate costumes of Richard III and Lady Macbeth to wear to this year's Con. The costumes are amazing but more importantly than that, it was very touching. I couldn't help but reflect upon the fact that a mere two-plus years ago this entire concept was just an idea that Conor and I had, and now not only does our dream fill the pages of comic book issues, will come alive with the stage show at Young Centre for the Performing Arts (and Soulpepper) next week (Nov 26 - 27th) but now we have fans who love the series enough to dress up as their favourite characters.
It's what makes all of the work and long hours worth it.Thanks to Ken and Alicia for brightening our day and putting huge smiles on our faces!
Pics from Toronto's FanExpo
We had an absolute blast at FanExpo this past weekend. We enjoyed taking part in the WGC adaptation panel on Thursday evening, I enjoyed talking to the packed-crowd for our How to Create and Market Your Indy Comic on Friday, and, of course, we had a great time talking to fans, readers, geeks and everyone else that came by our poorly-placed booth.A few photographic highlights of the weekend...
CBC's The National Profile on YouTube
For those that missed our profile last month, the CBC has released our footage on YouTube and it's imbedded here...
Pics from Calgary Expo
We had a simply amazing time in Calgary last year. We've been to many Cons over the last two years and Calgary is definitely, if not the best, then right up there. We organizers were absolutely fantastic, the crowds amazing, and people were super-excited to see us there. So much so, in fact, that sold out of trade paperbacks by Saturday at 2pm and after that only had artwork and individual issues to sign (the latter of which sold out Sunday at 1pm).Thanks to everyone associated with the event for a great time. Thanks to the organizers, to the fellow artists and creators, to the organizers of the Joe Shuster Awards (which I missed as I was at our table but Conor attended), to the CBC for running our profile that very weekend, and for everyone who stopped by to chat with us. I've said it many time already but I'll say it again - one of the best parts of our time with Kill Shakespeare thus far has been being able to chat with fans and readers at conventions. We look forward to our next one - Baltimore in August!Here are various photos taken over the weekend.
Heroes of Heroes Con!
Heroes Con this past weekend in Charlotte was amazing! A great time where we met a lot of new friends, old ones, made new fans, and had a fun time (Andy is only now catching up on his sleep...). Thanks to everyone that stopped by our table during the weekend and we hope to keep in touch with all of you!Over the weekend we snapped a number of pictures and here are some of the highlights...
It's all worth it because of letters like this...
After a really long week of working on our script, prepping Issue #12 and other various Kill Shakespeare business, I'm really burned out and look forward to Canada's Victoria Day long weekend. However, no matter how hectic things are, it all becomes worth it when I receive an email like this, as I did yesterday from a young reader and fan:Dear Anthony,How can i get a hold of volume 2? Your comic changed my life! What made you want to write this? What was your inspiration? You have heightened my passion for shakespeare that much more, further emphasizing my passion to become an English teacher. Thank you! You guys do incredible, incredible work. SUPER FAN! Alec
Toronto Fan Appreciation Comic-Con
This past weekend we took part in the Toronto Fan Appreciation Comic-Con. It was a two-day affair at the Metro Convention Centre and, though not as big as some other cons in the city, was a great event for us. We had a number of fans and readers visit us, sold a number of books, and made some new friends and readers.Thanks to everyone who stopped by our tables to chat, to the organizers (Kevin and the gang), to Ben O'Brian, our marketing assistant who is now our #1 salesperson, and to those who picked up the book!Here are some photos from the weekend:
Images from Toronto Wizard Comic-Con
Andy, Conor and I had a great time this past weekend at the Toronto Wizard Comic-Con. Much smaller than the FanExpo that appears in August in the city, it nonetheless was a big success for us. We had a LOT of people stop by our booth and sold a lot of books and issues. What's even better is that a lot of people had already heard of us, which means that our marketing campaigns have been working!Thanks to Doug and Peter at Paradise Comics who were able to arrange for us to have a booth at the show. We were actually positioned right across from the Delorean from Back to the Future, so it was great to see that machine still chugging away. (I'm not sure where the plutonium was coming from this - I have a feeling it's probably tough to do business with Libyans these days...).Here are some images from the show...
Riffing on Kill Shakespeare in the Washington Post
One of the top mainstream comic journalists is Michael Cavna, who writes the Comic Riffs section at the esteemed Washington Post. Last month while in Washington for our talk at the Folger Shakespeare Library, Conor and I sat down with Michael for an interview. Michael is a fan of the series and we had a great time chatting with him about comics, Shakespeare, music, and acting talent (and non-talent).
The final article appeared yesterday, and it's one of the best we've had published thus far! You can read the article by clicking on Michael's self-portrait above.As a fan of journalism, and aware of the prestige of the Washington Post, this is one of the media hits that I'm most excited about thus far!
Photos from Our Folger Talk
As mentioned in earlier posts, Conor and I gave a talk at the Folger Shakespeare Library this past Tuesday, February 15th. We were invited by the Library to talk about our interpretation of the Bard's characters and stories on our comic book series.The Folger contains the world's largest collection of Shakespeare's printed works and contains an immense amount of resources and artifacts from Shakespeare's time. It was a treat to visit the location - I myself found it really inspiring that so much effort was put together to catalogue his works.Our talk went very well - you can access a review of the evening by writer comicsgirl.com's Eden Miller at this link. It was great to talk to a crowd of comic and Shakespeare fans, evenly split. We then signed a number of books and sold out everything that evening.Thanks to Joe Ross for serving as our moderator, to Garland Scott and Teri Cross Davis for helping to coordinate the event, and everyone at the Folger for making it a great event. In addition, thanks to Vanessa King, Lesley Pike and Pietro Filipponi for taking the photos below. We hope to have some video footage up sometime soon.
The Best Fan Mail Yet!
Yesterday I received a card in the mail from Holly Fleming of St. John's, Newfoundland. The card had been forwarded by her aunt and uncle, Sharon and Ted Fleming, good friends of ours and key members of the Kill Shakespeare team. They had bought a copy of our graphic novel for Holly for Christmas, and this is what she wrote to me (I had met Holly at Sharon and Ted's wedding just over two years ago when I had served as the MC):(Read the right side of the card first, then the left)
This made my day as this is EXACTLY one of the reasons we wanted to do this project! The fact that someone is now excited about Shakespeare and will want to read more and take part in class is fantastic. We've heard this from teachers all over but to get a card from Holly makes our day.I'm glad that you liked the first graphic novel, Holly, and we look forward to continue to making Shakespeare exciting for you!
CBR: What Are You Reading?
ComicBookResources.com has a segment in their popular Robot 6 column regularly where they ask current comic creators what books and series they are currently reading and/or collecting. On Sunday they posed the question to Johnny Zito and Tony Trov of South Fellini Studios, creators of Zuda Comics' Black Cherry Bombshells and the recent series Carnivale De Robotique.
Johnny Zito says that the series he likes to read is Kill Shakespeare, saying the following:"I read Kill Shakespeare month to month. However, it’s new so it didn’t immediately spring to mind. It fills the void that Fables and X-Men used to, full of drama and romance and fighting. Comics are at their best when they aspire to be Shakespearean. Men and women running around the night, wearing masks, fighting for love or revenge or whatever. Kill Shakespeare has all of that for obvious reasons and capitalizes with clever twists on old standards. The art lends a real gravity to the source material, it feels real. Or better yet it feels like a play, a world built out of set pieces and cardboard trees. It’s a surreal brain treat that I can’t recommend enough."It's always great when other comics creators read your stuff and give you a shout-out and we really appreciate it! We urge everyone to check out Carnivale - it's a fantastic series!
Scenes from a FanExpo
We had our first full day at FanExpo Canada today. It was a really, really busy day with lots of people stopping by our table - some brought copies for us to sign, some came to buy copies they couldn't find at stores, some found out about us today. We love attending conventions like these that allow us to chat with readers, Shakespeare fans, and everyone else.Conor and I also moderated an interesting panel regarding the current state of comics and where they are going. We had Scott Chandler, Willow Dawson, Ramon Perez, Cameron Stewart and Andy Belanger on the panel, which also saw some interaction with the audience. Thanks to everyone that came out.We look forward to one final day here - hopefully we'll have a chance to get away from the table and check out everything else at the convention. In the meantime, enjoy these photos that we were able to take today...
Wizard Con Winners!
We attended the Toronto Wizard Comic-Con this past weekend and we were very fortunate to have 20 copies of Kill Shakespeare #1 with us. IDW Publishing had give us a limited number of preview copies to hand out to lucky contest winners over the span of the three days. Every hour or so an announcement would be made and contestants would answer a trivia question revolving around Shakespeare or comics (IDW-centric). Samples questions were:1. Name three Shakespeare characters that start with the letter "H".2. What G.I. Joe character does not speak?3. How many witches are in the play Macbeth? (This seems like an obvious answer but it's not...)4. What Shakespeare character has the most lines in a play that is NOT named after him/her?Photos of some of the winners are below. Thanks to all of the contestants, Wizard, and AnnaMaria from IDW!
