Heroineburgh's Arctica promotes Pittsburgh comics creators at national conference - Feb 22

2024 Comicon season now kicks off with what is actually more of a private industry event:
ComicsPro, which is taking place in Pittsburgh PA for the 2nd straight year.

It's a gathering of almost 200 comic shop owners, and the publishers and distributors flock to the conference to present their releases for the upcoming year. Because it's in our hometown, we get to have a booth there. Last year, it was a big success for us, and I wound up adding more than a dozen new stores to our list of shops in North America which carry Heroineburgh Comics.

This year, we'll have a booth again in the room where in the morning and afternoon of Thu Feb 22 (separated by a sumptuous luncheon) we'll present our wares along with a couple dozen other publishers, and greet the retailers as they stroll by. All four Comicsburgh publishers (including Heroineburgh, The Edge, Beowulf and Theme of Thieves) will be in the building, along with our actress Bridget who plays Arctica. Her beauty and poise should be able to catch the eye of many in the assembled throng.

Last night, we taped some clips with Bridget for a promotional video which will be assembled by the Theme of Thieves creator and placed on the ComicsPro site for all of the attendees to check out. Hopefully it will encourage them to check out our table. This is a short excerpt of the conclusion of the promo which I uploaded to Youtube.

As an articulate and charismatic spokesmodel, Bridget entices the comic shop owners with her frosty kiss!

The ComicsPro conference is over and it was a big success for Heroineburgh and our affiliated Comicsburgh publishing members.

We got our books in 5 more stores: Redd Skull in Calgary, Blackbird in Orlando, Geekout in Burleson TX, The Adventure Begins in Conroe TX, and The Pop Shop in Sandusky OH - which puts our store total over 240. We also sold a renewal order to our friends at 901 Comics in Memphis TN. And we're following up on about 10 more leads.

Also I met (and I'm now on a "first name basis" with) Geoff Johns and gave him a package of our books and vids. He has worked several times with our cover artist, DC colorist Jason Wright. He could not have been a nicer guy, whether it was stopping to talk with us at the conference, or at the signing at our LCS on Friday afternoon, where there were over 200 people in line that he treated with respect and interest.

I met Ken Levin, legendary founder of First Comics in the 80s (who published Grimjack, Jon Sable, Nexus and Badger, and our personal favorite, Whisper). I told him about the letter I had printed in an issue of Whisper when I was in high school (for those unfamiliar, Whisper was a masked female ninja in a very tight costume which she took on and off, a lot). He has a new version of his old company, 1First Comics, and he and I may be collaborating on some ads in the near future.

As far our heroines, they had lots of involvement in the conference.
Arctica (Bridget) spent Thursday with us in the Exhibit Room and attracted the store owners which helped us sell 54 books to the 6 stores.
She signed a sexy color photo for anyone who bought our starter pack of books. Bridget is an amazing saleswoman!

 

Also on Thursday night, we held a live rock show with three of our supervillainesses fronting their rock bands, which is something I've wanted to do for a long time, and the conference was a good excuse to do it. We had an attendance of about 50 and some nice local press, and a few of the conference attendees made it down to check the ladies' bands out.

 

The punk/grunge band led by Dysphoria (Steph) did a set of originals and then capped it off with a cover of "Jem and the Holograms" theme which guest starred vocals by Poderosa (Christina).

 

The extremely talented indie band led by Dark Spectra (Erika) did a set of originals and ended it a cover of the "Transformers Theme" from the movie (the one by the band, Lion). She started the set with a superheroine transformation where she stripped off a dress and revealed the tight sexy spandex costume underneath. And then halfway through the set she donned a set of luminous gossamer wings and danced through the audience.

 

And finally, the rock band led by Serpenta (Jessica did a smoking set of Jessica's original songs concluded by a cover of the "Thundercats" theme song. That one was a big surprise to the crowd.

 

Overall, the ladies really rocked and the weekend was fantastic for drumming up more interested in the Heroineburgh comics!
Eventually, we will also get a video release out of the live concert footage, probably a minisode in length.