Reading Comics #83 "Angry Faerie Con!"

I should note that although I am an acknowledged comics aficionado, I had not until this past Saturday been to a comics con.  (For those even more pathetic than me, "con" in this context is short for "convention," although "concave" and "convection" and "conquistador" are also acceptable if wholly inappropriate extrapolations.)

In fact, I had only been to one other con in my life, and that was back in 1996 (possibly 1995) when Star Trek rolled into Portland, ME on the heels of Voyager's launch (there was to be a screening of "Heroes and Demons" as well as an appearance by Robert Picardo, but I didn't get a chance to see either one, though I did snag a Bajoran earring).

Anyway, so I went to my first comics (and toys) con on Saturday, the same day Colorado Springs hosted its annual Veterans Day parade, held at the Clarion Hotel.  It was not exactly San Diego Comic Con or any of the other major circuits.  There were some fan girls who gushed over a creator, but I had no idea who he was.  Otherwise slim pickings by way of celebrity.  Actually, no celebrities.

There were, however, a lot of Star Wars toys, and vendors with white boxes of comics (if I'd thought of it, I might have tried to get some pictures, but I don't think of these things and I don't do lots of pictures anyway, either in my blogs or real life, unless you're my sister's cat and sometimes her dog, which coincidentally on the same weekend turned out to be a really good opportunity to snap more of both).

And a few local creators.  One of them was an artist I used to work with (not creatively, but rather in a bookstore), but it looks like he's still sketching.  I had attempted to collaborate with him artistically, but it didn't work out.

No, there were pretty much two tables with creators sitting behind them, sketching away.  I had a look at both.  I settled on memorializing the experience with Angry Faerie from Scott Springer.  Neither Angry Faerie the website nor its Facebook page acknowledged Springer's appearance at the con, which was kind of disappointing (I guess even for him this was pretty low-key), but there he was, and I walked away with a Ka-Blam graphic novel collection of this web comic covering developments from its Merlin arc.

I checked around, by the way, and I'm pretty sure it's only available when Springer himself has it on display, or perhaps in local shops as well, so I'm plugging something my audience will only be able to enjoy digitally.  Some of you love that sort of thing.

The web comic, then, is about the Anger Faerie, who lives in Bullfinch, where various genre entities exist and have conflict.  Obviously in the story I read the problem was the historical Merlin.  Springer's style art-wise is anime-based, while his storytelling is very contemporary, on par with what I've seen in other web comics.  It's pretty enjoyable, doesn't take itself too seriously, with some fun, clearly defined characters.  It updates three times weekly.

And just to make sure that you don't think I made a mistake, in the strip the main character is known as the Anger Faerie, but the title mostly definitely identifies her as the Angry Faerie.  Just go with it.

The copy of the con edition I picked up was marked #1 of 25 (as in editions, not number of collections), and I picked up the exclusive variant cover, just because I could.

All in all, not a bad way to commemorate the event, and perhaps now that I'm no longer a con virgin, I may even attend more of them, perhaps even invade some of the major ones (in case you don't follow any of my other thousand blogs, I'm something of a big deal these days, penning a Bluewater bio of Russian superstar Mikhail Prokhorov).

As Springer signed in my copy of Angry Faerie, stay angry!