It's Andy Fish!

Normally setting up as a comic artist at one of these bigger shows it’s pretty simple– you wheel in a suitcase full of art and art supplies, you set up your banner and in about 10 minutes you’re ready for the show to open. You usually do this on the day of the show– although here at HEROES I saw a LOT of artists setting up the day before.

For the comic dealers it’s a lot more involved; you get a spot at the loading dock, you load up cart after cart of racks, tables, chairs, product and signage and you wheel them into the booth and THEN the work really begins.

You have to build several walls worth of racks. The PICTO team has had several versions of wall racks– folks like SUPERWORLD COMICS use PVC Tubes and I think the wall looks terrible. I swung by their booth several times and the PVC, although easy to carry, just doesn’t have the level of support to hold books making everything sag and just look tired.

For this show PICTO had decided to try using GRIDWALL– which are black metal racks that can be assembled together and combined with various other display shelves can create a professional look while still maintaining a relatively simple assembly and is light enough for easy transportation.

The downside was that this gridwall arrived LITERALLY while we were loading the van at PICTO HQ– so there was no time to test any combination of assembly.

I should also mention that we were greeted by a wall of insanely hot and humid weather, making the unloading process just that much more difficult.

So after an hour or so of unloading we started to assemble the wall, and after several different configurations we arrived at one we thought would work best– and then it all collapsed (with no damage to any books) in a heap–twice.

Starting over we decided to walk the show and see how similar booths were assembled– and thanks to advice from some fellow dealers we soon hit upon a pattern that was uniquely our own, professional looking and most importantly extremely sturdy.

While Adam and I were reworking the walls, Joe went out on a buying search and found some real treasures like JUMBO COMICS #3

The book is from 1938 and features work from some of the industry legends including Will Eisner, Jack Kirby and Bob Kane. The book is also unique in that it is truly JUMBO.

Here’s the book sitting next to a current sized comic book. Golden Age Comics were larger than today’s comic books, but this is bigger than a tabloid.

The book is rare enough that in 40+ years of collecting this is the first time I’ve ever seen it.

The show started Friday and we were ready to do some business and the crowd didn’t let us down.

More soon.