Calgary Expo Tales: Comic book creators talk life on the convention circuit

Sometimes, you forget how long you’ve been doing a thing, Canadian comic book artist Ken Lashley says.

You forget just how much stuff you’ve created in that time, he says.

And then, he says, one day at a comic book convention, someone will roll up with “sort of a little trolley full of comics,” every last one of them yours.

“At first, you go, ‘Man, that’s a lot of comics,’” Lashley recently told CTV News.

“Then you realize, if it’s the first time he’s met you, he has 35 years of collecting in there.”

Lashley says he has to respect someone “who took the time.”

The time to select and sort it.

To pack it into some kind of luggage.

And to drag it from the house to the car, maybe the plane, to wherever else and through a crowded show to his table.

“That’s a lot of commitment.”

Lashley’s pencilled comic books since the ’90s.

He’s done comic book conventions about as long.

Most recently, he’s done covers for DC and Marvel, including Absolute Batman and X-Men.

And this weekend, he’s been at the Calgary Comics and Entertainment Expo.

A lot of the time, the people coming up to his table are people who follow him online, too, and he says it’s great to put faces to names.

“I love that you get a chance to meet these people,” he said.

“It’s something like 17 years I’ve had this (online) group. It’s a crazy amount of time.

“You know them. They’re almost like family members.”

‘A phenomenal adventure’

Canadian comic book writer Jim Zub did the math and found he’d been to 208 conventions since 2002.

Two hundred and nine, now—he spoke with CTV News before his appearance at the latest Calgary Expo.

And he’s been to every edition of the local show “except one.”

“Your life sort of starts to orient itself around these events,” he said.

“It’s March—we’re getting ready for Emerald City. April is Calgary. August is FanExpo Canada. It’s October—it’s time for New York Comicon. July is San Diego.

It’s “a lot,” Zub says, but he wouldn’t trade the resulting “memories and relationships.”

“There’s a moment where you can feel like, ‘Oh, man, this is a grind,’ or ‘this is so much work’ or ‘jetlag’s kicking my butt,’” he said.

“But, on the other hand, what a phenomenal adventure, you know?

“I’ve been able to travel the world because of comic books. ... (And) do things I probably never would’ve had the chance to otherwise.”

Zub’s recent work includes Conan the Barbarian for Titan.

Whether people are approaching his table for that or for something he wrote years ago, the two-, three-, five-minute interactions that follow are “everything.”

“It makes a huge difference,” he said.

“Between someone having that connection and buying your books for the rest of your career (or not).”

‘Gratifying and humbling and just really kind of cool’

Comic book conventions are work, but they’re worth it, Canadian artist Tom Grummett says.

The veteran creative says it’s “long days at a table with bad light and crappy chairs, but I do love the conventions.”

Meeting others who work in comics is what he says he likes best about the convention circuit.

Because there aren’t as many opportunities to do so as one might think.

“It is a very solitary kind of life,” Grummett told CTV News ahead of this year’s Calgary Expo.

“Actually networking with some of these people I’ve worked with for a very long time—I really enjoy that aspect of it.

“I think it was 2017 or so; I finally met up with an inker I’d worked with for over 30 years but had never met.

Grummett has pencilled most of your favourite comic book properties over the years.

In the ’90s, he launched a new series for Superboy and another for Robin, targeting the DC heroes toward a new generation.

Fairly frequently, he says, he gets told by younger professionals those books had a hand in their eventual career choices.

And he gets teens of today coming up to his table to get those very same comics signed.

The issues might’ve been passed down by a parent.

Or maybe they caught an eye at a store somewhere.

“All those years I was working in the basement and putting pages into FedEx boxes and sending them out there into the void, they reached somebody and maybe inspired somebody,” he said.

“It’s gratifying and humbling and just really kind of cool.”