Dover Con 2026 was incredibly rewarding and incredibly HOT. 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
We put Gnat in the hands of happy people and made new local connections to Delaware area artists and comic book creators. See the links below to see some talented people!
I got to meet Alitha Martinez, illustrator for Marvel and DC on titles like Iron Man, Black Panther, Batgirl and my favorite Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur. She had her original series Foreign available and she was generous enough to trade comics. I gave her Gnat 1, 2 & 3 for a copy of Hunters, a stand alone story in the Foreign series.
She flipped through Gnat and made a great point about something I never considered.
Alitha pointed out that the simple page layout and simple dialogue make it great for kids who are learning English. The bubbles don’t have more than 25 words. Sentence structure is simple. There are serif’s on letters like J and I. Of course having images with text helps any language learner. She was sure the anime aesthetic will get the kid’s attention too. She mentioned she would be traveling soon and would be taking Gnat with her to help teach kids English. We couldn’t be more flattered that she finds Gnat useful for teaching.
She also has an amazing story about how she got into comics, coming from a home that shunned the arts and pushed careers in medicine and law. Her family moved to the states and she only started drawing somewhere around her teens. She said she was hooked on the art form when she saw panels of Spiderman comics.
She teaches art at School of Visual Arts New York City and has some great insight into what she sees in her students. We had a great discussion about how important criticism is and how some artists, even at the University level, struggle with any form of judgement. It was great to connect teacher to teacher.
We also met Valerie Reilly, a graphic designer, who was super interested in the comic and had connections to White Dragon Comics in Tannersville, PA. We may have some for sale there soon too!
I met Joe Palumbo, a painter and illustrator. He told us at IX Convention in Reading, PA. It's a huge convention for Imaginative Realism, which is a combination of classical painting techniques and high fantasy imagery. It is exactly the type of art I LOVE. You can find information on it at Illuxcon.com. Pursuing the website is a treat in itself.
I spoke to two talented digital artists JalaJalapeno and Kendra Mayne who, it turns out, both also work in animation. I found their work really inspiring. JalaJalapeno had great landscapes and Kendra had great character designs.
The last vendor I want to shout out is Oddity Prodigy Productions. They are a group that publishes anthologies and accepts submissions for each of their prompts. Right now they are hosting open submissions for their next anthology Exquisite Engines. This would include things in the genre of steampunk, train whistles and industrial brass. Submissions close July 31st. I’ve already started my submission. Even if it doesn’t reach the 2000-5000 word count by the deadline, I’ll go in my back pocket for later.
Can’t wait for the next con. Can’t wait to return to Dover.
Recent and Recommended Reading:
These two books should be industry standard. If I was going to create a course on how to make comics, they would be part of the curriculum.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud (1994)
I read this book over the weekend of the convention at Rock’s recommendation. It's so dense, I learned something on every page. It's a comic book that teaches you about comic book history and creation, while proving every point it makes by doing it - in the comic itself. It's so meta, you need to experience it and reread it to fully understand it. It pulls examples from EVERYWHERE and approaches the entire art form analytically, but in a way that is easily understandable. This book teaches about comics better than some math teachers teach math.
The Essential Guide to Comic Book Lettering by Nate Piekos (2021)
I also read this over the weekend of the convention, also at Rock’s recommendation. Now, it is mainly for a comic letterer to read, but I see tremendous value in reading it as the script writer. Nate breaks down things like how the dialogue fits in the speech bubble, the impact font has on voice and emphasis and how to approach sound effects. It's mainly written as a guide on how to get into the comic business as a letterer by giving advice on things like how to use Adobe programs and how much to charge for your work. Despite that, it's a must read for anyone in the industry. Rock found it incredibly helpful.