Broken Frontier

How’s it going guys?  I’ve got bad news for all of you Guiding Lines loyalists – I’ve got to take this week off. So instead of my usual genius insights, industry analysis and solid recommendations, you’ll have to suffer though my list of excuses as to why I need a break.  I’m normally a message board kind-of guy, but am considering taking up a blog to further exercise my wimpy writing muscles.  If you don’t mind, you fine folks can play guinea pig for this first ever Scott Hinze blog/column-dump. (ew!)

• Halloween came and went and with it crappy trick-or-treaters that demanded candy without costumes.  Ridiculous.  I, on the other hand, was dressed as Bruno and Britta (my wife) was Amy Angel, both from the infamous comic jam project, THE BULLET ANGELICA (http://www.bulletangelica.com) that I’m lucky enough to partake in.  Close friends and family joined us to celebrate our home’s favorite holiday with good food, brew, conversation and video games.  So that night was our first event we planned and executed this past week.

• The next day I worked on my Wednesday broadcast of Fanboy Radio, #269 with Jordan Raskin (Industry of War) & Frank Beddor (Something About Mary, The Looking Glass Wars, Hatter M.).  I think it went okay, but you can hear it yourself now that it’s up on the podcast site – http://www.fbrpc.com

• Wednesday meant tweaking the pre-recorded show, nabbing new comics at my shop, Y2Komics, getting some writing in and spending time with family before more insanity commenced later in the week. 

• My good friends Dave Crosland (http://www.hiredmeat.com) and Jim MahFood (http://www.40ozcomics.com) came into Dallas/Fort Worth on Thursday.  I picked them up, we showed them around the area and all ran errands for our event Saturday night.  Crosland crashed at our place and Jim used his exotic charms to get a nice upgrade at his hotel – nice.

• Wizard World Texas (http://www.wizarduniverse.com) invaded DFW Friday through Sunday.  While the crowds weren’t that big, the floor was a ton of fun and I sat right in-between MahFood & Crosland as a backup exhibitor for them and covered the panels for Comicon.com’s The Pulse (http://www.comicon.com/pulse/).  I was surprised to see a void of some of North Texas’s comic book super-stars at our biggest local convention.  I can understand that it may not be the most profitable venue year after year for some creators, but networking, public relations and seeing what’s out there is more than enough reason to come out and support your peers and love on your fans.

• Friday night bore the annual Hopkins House Party & Cookout over at David & Melissa Hopkins’ warm home.  Not only are the Hopkins’ incredibly nice, smart and cool but they are wonderful family friends.  David is also an amazing writer and should be on everyone’s must-watch list of rising Indie Comic stars (http://www.antiherocomics.com).  Afterwards, Jim, Dave (Crosland), Britta and I headed over to Chris Powell’s party at his home.  Tending the bar was the hilarious Greg Thompson (http://www.herocamp.com) both he and always-suave Chris work at the very impressive local comic shop chain, Lone Star Comics (http://www.mycomicshop.com).

• Saturday was the climax of the massive week of worry and stress, but still bore much fruit.  Not only did I have the normal WWTx shenanigans keeping me occupied and worn out, but Britta and I stepped up the promotion of Fanboy Radio’s first-ever live event, A Live Art Show with The Silky Bureaucrats at J. Gilligan’s Draft House (http://www.jgilligans.com).  If you were at the con on Saturday and returned to your car or truck with an annoying flyer about the show stuck on your windshield, that was my fault.  Believe me, it was much easier to grab and toss the promo than it was to shlep the box of flyers across the entire Arlington Convention Center parking lot.  That night, after only a few small technical difficulties, the live art show was going strong and the crowd was blown away.  Keep your eyes open for an official press release about the show very soon.  I’ve got to give the proper respect to the artists involved, mainly Jim MahFood, Dave Crosland, Andy Lee (http://www.findandy.com), David Mack (http://www.davidmack.net), and Jeff Amano (http://www.beckettcomics.com).  We stayed and cleaned up but the adrenalin was so high that Crosland and I stayed up almost all night swapping old convention stories and chatting about comics.  One for the record books.

• Sunday brought with it a rather massive headache on the way to the convention floor.  I worked the guys’ booths and attended a couple of panels but mainly tried to recover from the night before.  My buddy Sean took me over to Fort Worth earlier so I could get the studio ready for the live show that evening.  Even with the head start, we barely made it on-air in time.  All stress washed away as I realized how cool it was to have MahFood and Crosland in the studio in person.  Thanks to the con, other creators were able to stop by in the flesh for the first time like Christian Beranek (http://www.silentdevil.com/), Pat Loika (http://www.livejournal.com/users/patloika/) & Craig Maloof (http://www.craigmaloof.com/).  Check out episode #270 to hear the hour for yourself.  That night, our guests, Britta and I went to eat alligator for dinner and eventually found ourselves at the Casa Amano – what a treat!

• Monday finally came with both relief and sadness.  I’m going to miss all my friends that are now spread out across the country until the next big con.  Britta and I hauled everyone off to the airport at various times, returned my mom’s SUV and I returned just in time to provide you with this wrap-up of my wonky life. 

If you dug this blog-like column replacement or are passionately against the use of this space in such an irresponsible manner, have your voice be heard at the Guiding Lines message board.  Either way, we’ll return next week with an actual Guiding Lines column.  Thanks for baring with me as I catch up on emails and sleep.