  San Diego Comic-Con - Day THREE FRIDAY After the conclusions I'd come to by the end of day TWO of the convention. I sort of felt "done" with the show. I was ready to just go home and get back to work. Start saving money and planning the task of moving my life 1500 miles away. It's been years since I went to a convention for any reason other than business. I don't buy stuff, I rarely buy anything other than supplies, how-to books or other artists sketchbooks.
I'm not there for autographs or rare items. I'm there to network, learn and become a better artist. But after realizing that I hadn't necessarily been doing anything wrong these past few years, that I was perhaps in the wrong place - wrong environment - wrong people. I started to look back on the last 7 years of my career. Placing it all on the west coast... how different it would have been. Instead of ONE comic book store in town there would be 30.
Instead of traveling 8 hours for the nearest convention I would have dozens within 2 hours of me. Instead of having to travel semi-annually to get critiques on my work from other artists, I would be completely surrounded by a community of artists better than me, pushing me, challenging me, making me grow. But "What-If? ing" only drives you MAD after time. It's just that it hit me like a scene in some horror movie, when you suddenly realize that everything you ever knew to be true was a lie. It's hard to recover from that quickly.
Luckily beaches have wonderful recuperative properties. Waves lapping at your feet, sunsets, and that soothing sound of the tides crashing around you. Especially Torrey Pines. It's probably one of the most beautiful beaches I'd ever seen... granted the number of beaches I've been to can be counted on one hand. But still. I did manage to spend some time at the convention.
But out of the 20 or so panels I was planning to check out, I only managed 2 of them. The first was Jeff Smith's Panel discussing the completion of his 55 issue independently published series urlLink BONE . I suppose it's appropriate this was one of the only panels I caught. Bone was a big reason for me starting down the self-publishing path. He was also the first student of urlLink Dave Sim's (Cerebus) self-publishing wisdom, to really implement all the tools that Dave developed. He was and still is one of the most successful examples of the entire self-publishing process.
Jay and I both started into comics when Bone was first beginning. I remember the first issue hitting shelves. I remember the first graphic novel collection. I also remember how ground-breaking it was that someone collected all their books into a thick book to resale. Its common practice now. But at the time it was revolutionary.
I mean, Dave had done it for years, but no one considered it outside of Cerebus. That is till Bone came along. Anyways, seeing him with his $100, single volume, Leather bound, HardCover collection of the entire 55 issue series made a lot of things clear to me. He set out 10 years ago to do a series. He spent ten years doing it, and now it is finished. It's as simple and clear cut as that.
The man can now retire if he wanted to. He's not... but he could. It's an impressive idea to say the least. And to make things even more spectacular, he is the spear head of a new movement. urlLink Scholastic books have picked up bone to start a new line of graphic novels to sell to schools. It is a monumental breakthrough for our industry.
It means Jeff is going from selling 30,000 copies a month of his book... to Millions. Imagine that change. And it was totally unexpected. He was done. He had no more plans for the book and now this. Fantastic.
--Will 
