I spent the weekend attending the first ever webcomics "con" in Easthampton, MA. It was more of a sort of gathering or what-have-you of webcomic creators and fans. I’ve been hearing that the turnout was around 500-600 people on Saturday alone, which is pretty amazing if you think about how short notice this thing was. It was really exciting to see how enthusiastic and professional the webcomics crowd is. I’m so used to fan boys at anime conventions. Haha. It was also interesting to see the age differences of the common anime convention-goer compared to the webcomics creators and even the fans. I usually feel like a dinosaur at an anime convention, even though I’m only 25. It seemed the webcomic crowd was more 21 and up, which was really cool. The whole weekend felt like I was back in college again, being with like-minded art people and most importantly, the comics people I haven’t been around in what seems like forever.

Speaking of these awesome webcomic artists and writers, I met up with Shawn Handyside so I could actually get into NEWW since I didn’t register until the last minute. They were trying to keep the numbers down since parking was pretty limited. Anyways, I met Brian Wilson (Geist Panik) who when I met at first was wearing only lobster print boxers. Who am I to judge? I also met Ross, the creator of The System webcomic, Chris from Blue and Blond and Mookie from Dominic Deegan. Also, playing Smash Bros Brawl with most of these guys at the hotel brought back some of those good ol’ college memories. The memories where I can only win at Smash Bros is by dropping people off the stage ala Kirby. T.T;

I’ve been out of this whole seemingly webcomics inner social circle for a long time, so I basically had no idea who anyone was this whole weekend. However, there were a few people I did recognize the artwork and I made some strategic purchases of a book from Exploding Dog, a hot Napoleon shirt (BTW- Napoleon is my dream man) from Kate Beaton and I was able to buy the original artwork from Gunshow "Cats Can’t Type" by KC Green which is my favorite strip from him EVER.

I had a great time this weekend and I hope that it happens again next year and it’s even bigger. I can really see this becoming a larger convention and being even more awesome that it was this year. I’d like to see more webcomic artists representing their work with their own table and of course, more panels. Some things involving scheduling seemed a little unorganized, but it was okay. Most of the panels I attended were informative and at least all were generally amusing. BTW – Chris Hastings of Dr. McNinja has the cutest dog (Pomeranian?), who’s cuteness was only maximized by the cone it was wearing on Saturday.

The main focus that I now have after this weekend is to get my butt in gear even more so and get Paul Reveres up to a two day a week update schedule. I’m thinking probably a Wednesday/Saturday schedule, unless I find that something else works out better. I’m also going to start promoting the comic more in the next month or so to get more readers once I get the story going a little bit more. I’ll be promoting the hell out of this webcomic at ConnectiCon in July this summer as well. I have some big plans for promotional freebies and I will have Issue #1 out in print for sale by then. I’m going to try to squeeze in a bunch of sketches and maybe a special goodie for people who purchase the first issue. So, if you plan to attend ConnectiCon this year, look for me in the Artists’ Colony area where I’ll be trying to make the best of the half table I stupidly purchased because I was too cheap for a full one.

I also want to thank you all whoever has been clicking on that tiny-ass "VOTE TWC" button on the right nav here on the site. I made that button so small you would think that I wouldn’t want anyone to click on it to vote for this comic, but that’s not really the case. I’m going to be putting up vote incentives like special illustrations, sketches or wallpapers for people who click the button to vote. To vote you have to click on the "VOTE TWC" button and type in the first three letters of the character they present to you. Thanks!