CONVENTION REPORT OAX 2025 - PART ONE
Mark Torres BATMAN VAMPIRE - 11×17 ink on bristol- purchased at OAX 2025
We love COMIC ART FANS and everything Bill Cox and his amazing team has done with it. They run 3-4x a week shows on YouTube spotlighting Comic Book Creators, Fans and Collectors— they have a great website that posts item for sale from Members, classifieds and just places to share if you, like me, seldom sell any of your art collection.
Last year they launched OAX Live! the first IN-PERSON Show after TEN virtual shows. We did extremely well at these virtual shows, which were especially a blessing during the Pandemic when publishers gave the “pencils down” order which meant no one was working (or getting paid). I don’t know how it was for people with regular salary jobs- I imagine you continued to get paid to work from home— we Freelancers did not. Such is the life.
So when it was that Bill invited us down for the show last year we had to contemplate this very seriously for about 4 seconds— get out of New England for a few days during the Winter? It also helps that my Tax Attorney is based in Florida so I can drop off a lot of the starting paperwork for Tax Season and see how badly Uncle Sam is going to rip my pockets out.
We had such a great time at the show last year we said yes to this year’s before he even asked us.
We flew out of Woo’s very own airport which is serviced by a couple of airlines including JetBlue. Now I like JetBlue. Like it. LIKE. They don’t have First Class. But they do have row #1 and they do a few little things for folks sitting in this area, but no actual glass mugs for the coffee, no hot towel, the Flight Attendant, reading my mind said “We’re adding actual First Class to our flights.” I’ll have to keep my JetBlue Card for the foreseeable future.
Flying out of Worcester is extremely easy— they only have one line for TSA so if you have TSA PreCheck (and why wouldn’t you?) you only get a card that you hold up to show you don’t have to do all the stuff people who aren’t PreCheck’d have to do.
The flights out of Worcester are packed— they need to add more.
We landed in Orlando, one of the biggest airports I’ve seen made a plan to grab dinner at the airport and made our way to baggage check. Plan Kurfuffle #1- there are no restaurants at Orlando outside of Security— so it was either grab our bags or eat. Now I know they would have very properly gotten our bags and put them aside but at one of our shows last year the airline (not JetBlue) lost our luggage. It’s not just not having clothes, a toothbrush etc— we pack our art for the show, our primary reason for being at the show. We also noticed in Worcester that one of our fellow passengers had our EXACT bag— and we didn’t want to risk him grabbing ours by mistake and we have a suitcase full of Hawaiian shirts instead of art. We got our bags then headed out the door into our waiting UBER XL which zipped us over to our hotel with plenty of time to spare.
We got checked in and I looked around the area for some food— there was a McDonald’s about a block away but it was also cold and wet— only about 45 degrees which is crazy for Florida- so I opted to get a Turkey Club from the hotel bar. If you’re ever in doubt— ask the Bartender what they would order— it’s never failed me except for the time I got a middle aged woman with multi colored hair and I opted not for the recommended Impossible Burger (a burger not made with meat— impossible!).
It’s a two day show but we got in on Thursday so we could get some meetings out of the way and get situated. On Friday they had a cocktail party for VIPs and artists so we wanted to pop in for that.
More Monday— I have to fill content!
