CECE 2010 and the library Workshop

This past weekend was a busy one, as I was attending CECE out in Carol Stream and also giving a workshop teaching kids how to write comics – but in the city! How did I pull this off, you may be asking yourself? Well, read on to find out.

CECE is a non-sports card collectible trade show and this was their 10 year anniversary. And Paul, the guy who runs the show, puts together a great convention. As an exhibitor of the show, I had a table to spread out my stuff and also had some great company with my good friend Russell Lissau (Batman Strikes, The 29). Russell was a great convention companion, as always, and it was a fun and interesting show. There were many opportunities to interact with the guests of the show at breakfasts and dinners, and even evening entertainment.

Many of the artists there were selling sketch cards – and a lot of Star Wars themed items at that. I found a fantastic deal on the entire run of 100 Bullets, and introduced Russell to Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing (which is the first Alan Moore work I read, and also one of his greatest).

On Saturday I had to rent a car and escape back into my neighborhood to conduct a workshop teaching kids how to write comics. The workshop was recommended for kids 7+, and the weather was not very cooperative. Thankfully the group of kids were, and their enthusiasm for comics was unquestionable. We did a reading of my Reading with Pictures story and one of the kids took the role of Gerty. After the reading we learned about dialogue and the kids performed their own scenes from the comic with dialogue they wrote themselves. The final exercise had the kids learning about three-act story structure and writing their very own comic pages.

The workshop lasted an hour and was followed by a Q&A and book signing. The kids seemed to love it, and after the workshop ended the weather turned fantastic and I drove back to the show.

This was my final show for a few weeks (NYCC and FallCon in October, and Mid-Ohio in November are my final shows), and it was a nice relaxing way to finish off a very ambitious convention season.

Looking forward to the next show…and trying to get more comic work done in between.