SFX lettered with the Cintiq using a custom brush and the Blob Brush tool.

Gan and I had an extremely successful trip to New York…

ComicCon NY is a three-day comics convention attended by around 100K people — the biggest pop culture event on the East Coast.

We arrived around 9PM Friday. Outside our hotel, I found a calling booth and quickly transformed into Unemployed Man. We then walked down to Times Square (it was my first time) and turned it into Good Times Square.

Words and photos struggle to capture how delighted people were by Unemployed Man. Countless people asked to take pictures with the jobless crusader (in all the attached photos, people asked me to take the photo with them). Gan captured some of these moments, too. And yes, people even asked me to hold their children.

It was amazing to see how people completely transformed. As soon as they heard “Unemployed Man!” they would drop whatever expression they had (anger, sadness, guardedness) and just completely open up — delighted. Beyond cheer, there were many soulful acknowledgements and sincere thanks. The reaction spanned all classes and colors of people.

We went back to the hotel at 2AM. I checked with the front desk and got the 5000 bookmarks we had shipped. They looked good. We awoke 5 hours later at 7AM. We got in costume (me as Unemployed Man again, and now Gan as Master of Degrees) and enjoyed a free continental breakfast in the hotel dining room (yeah, life is THAT good).

I should note that all employees everywhere — at the hotel, convention center, etc — really responded to us and opened up to us. We were very gratified by this. These workers had no inherent interest in comics, but they really responded and loved Unemployed Man. They told us their stories. We felt like we really made something for the working class.

So we arrived at the convention center at 8:00AM only to be foiled by a single letter — our presentation was scheduled at 8:45 PM, not AM.

We went to the show floor and set up some books on the table. No one was there yet, so we went out side. Everywhere we went, people wanted to take pictures with Unemployed Man.

When we went back to the booth, all our books and bookmarks had been shoved behind a wall. Our publisher was not at the event, and asked some of the kind folks in their corporate family imprints to help us out, but apparently they didn’t know. This left us in the situation, once again, of doing things on our own (without our superhuman efforts, the whole thing would have been one colossal missed opportunity — so we began our fight to make it less of one).

Our biggest and most ironic media coup was getting national Fox News to spotlight us on their intro to the coverage of the whole event.

After that, we went back inside and prepared for the roundtable discussion we would be speaking on. About 50 people showed up and were really enthralled with what we presented. People stayed maybe 20 minutes over and crowded us for pictures and earnest conversations. Unfortunately, no one was there to document it.

As we walked around at the beginning, people would ask us who the U guy was, but as the day went on, those same people would shout “Unemployed Man!” across the hall at us. Or we’d walk by crowds and I’d hear someone ask who I was, then hear someone else say “Unemployed Man” and that would ripple through the crowd with voices of surprise, recognition, and delight. “That is AWESOME.” “That is hilarious.” “This is the best thing I’ve seen here.” I saw people instantly get the whole concept of the book as soon as they saw it.

We left the convention center feeling really satisfied that we had succeeded on many levels. We got big media and small media. We connected with people on their terms.

There’s no doubt that the costume (and my stunning performance in it) was the best thing we could have possible done (without it, we would have been a non-event  – no Fox, no pictures, video, fans, nothing). It cost me $300 for the supplies. My wife hand-stitched much of it. The publisher refused to reimburse me for the supplies. Then again, how could they be sure they weren’t financing my crazy spandex fetish?

So tomorrow morning we’ll probably walk by the convention one last time, then hop on the flight back to California.

I forgot to mention that during the day, a photographer invited us and some other heroes to his studio to take photos for an art project — we left with a really high quality 8×10 photo of Unemployed Man. I’ll send that soon. Meanwhile..

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http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23942&id=108822542492717

The Adventures of Unemployed Man can now be ordered at Amazon.com.

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