Last night's WHAM! BANG! POW! show HIT the mark!

I had a great time at last night's inaugural WHAM! BANG! POW! event in Echo Park. Held at ECHOES UNDER SUNSET, the event drew folks who, despite the rain, came to hear music, see artwork, and buy stuff!

  

In addition to having a vendor table, I also had some artwork on display in the exhibit.

There was a really nice collection of superhero and fantasy artwork in the show:

This pair of paintings just totally gets me everytime I see it. Weird on several levels... They're awesome!

  
I actually traded another artist for one of this piece:

Anarchy Boy  is created by artist Hannibal Garcia, who along with his girlfriend Jacqueline Ortiz produce their art under their brand, NINOSKA ARTE. I love this piece... Anarchy Boy is dead, but he's not out! There's a positivity to this piece that really speaks to me. I hooked Hannibal up with some comics and the EL MUERTO DVD and spent time talking to him about 1980s cartoons and World Wrestling Federation wrestlers!

This piece was hanging over the sink by the bathroom. It's baffling and surreal and features one of my favorite science fiction characters ever, along with Mr. Spock!

The show started at 7pm, but really started to pick up about 9 or so. I was happily surprised by the amount of people, and particularly by the amount of business I had all evening.

   
For me, having been publishing for about 15 years now, and considering this is Los Angeles, I had the usual mixture of new buyers as well as folks who had either seen me before or bought my books at other events. It was a real good crowd, with interesting conversations about my work, and people willing to try something new. Even though this was a comic book themed event, a lot of the people who attended weren't diehard comic fans, but had a general interest in the pop cultural aspect of superheroes and comics. And because of the particular part of Los Angeles I was in, I attracted a good portion of people interested in the cultural aspects of some of my comics. Not unlike our recent Presidential Election, the Latino 'vote' often put me in the 'win' column as far as sales went. I'm always appreciative of that fact, especially in venues/locations like this event.

I told the organizers of the event that I would definitely like to return to WHAM! BANG! POW!, and in fact they've already announced the next event for Spring of 2013.

I am so there!