First photo shows some of the crowd on Saturday at the Phoenix Comic Con. Next is a photo with me and Captain America (God & Country). Next is Bryce Morgan and myself with his Rescue Me comic book. Next is a photo of Naomi's family (with me) in front of the CCAS booth.
Donald Ensign's Posts (59)
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This year’s Tucson Comic Con was held at the Bookman’s Event Center in south Tucson. Bookman’s is a Arizona-based bookstore chain with operations in Tucson, Phoenix and elsewhere. This was the largest venue so far and the convention lasted two days, November 6-7. As the last couple of years Brent Hofstra helped me set up and man the table. (Thanks Brent). This was the best year so far in terms of both ministry and sales. Ralph Miley who sends me the books included the a dozen copies of the Action Bible which were sold out by the end of the first day.
We had conversations with some of the convention goers including one dressed as King Midas. Two young girls in contemporary dress came up to the table and looked on one of the NASV New Testaments I bought. One of them pondered on whether to take it. She sit it down and after a moment came back and slipped it into her pocket. Both Brent and I were silently praying she would take it. I had a chance to speak with Steve Rude (Nexus artist) who claimed to be an atheist but we did have a good talk.
I met Rick Higginson (4), a local Christian writer — he even gave Brent and I a copy of his book, Cardan’s Pod which I recommend. Also re-connected with Wayne Gardiner (9) who I’d met at the Phoenix Comic Con (AO #158) who was debuting his Knightngail comic. Former AO member James Babcock had his own Madame X Inc table (6) assisteed by Richard Konkle and Mike Kelly. I took in one panel about Justice League Arizona a statewide costumer club patterned after DC comic heroes (5, 8, 11, 18-20) dedicated to doing charity and promotional events. Excellent Con.
Here is a short video of some action taking place at the 2011 Phoenix
Comic Con at the CCAS table.
Just got back last night from 3 1/2 days at the 2011 Phoenix Comic Con. Last year
I said Wow--this time it is double WOW. The crowds especially on Saturday were
massive. I helped man the Christian Comic Arts Society booth (with Ralph Miley and Kevin
Yong) there and we had many, many wonderful encounters with Christians
("Wow, I'm sure glad you guys are here!").
We had a panel on Sunday morning which was lightly attended but those there were
very interested and came up with some very good questions. This was a great time
and a great time of ministry and fun. Here are a few snapshots from the Con.
(I began writing this shortly after getting home from the Tucson Comic Con November 6, 2010)
Today is the day of the third annual Tucson Comic Con. Got last minute preparations done and packed up the books and table stuff for the Con. Then went over to Brent Hofstra's home and picked him up and we then drove to the Hotel Arizona in Tucson. We parked in the garage across from the hotel and packed our stuff into the exhibit hall. We found our table which was on the near the entrance we came in on. We unloaded our stuff and set up the table and were ready to go by the time the convention opened at 10 AM. I encouraged Brent to take his jacket (which he did) and needed it as we in an A.C. draft area (not as bad as Phoenix). The crowds were large and consistent through much of the day---ebbing and flowing as groups of people came and went. It is hard to gauge the crowd size--but it was as large or larger than last year.This is overall kid friendly convention as there were a lot of grade school children in attendance. Our table was next to Howard Salmon (the Siddur book) which I purchase at the Phoenix Comic Con in May. Brent subbed at his table on several occasions when he needed to be away. We did meet a number of Christians and gave away a good number of tracts (especially Jack Chick) and ran out of the Action Bible Sampler.
Our sales weren't as good as last year. My sense was that the convention attendees were not in a big buying mode. We didn't see a lot of people with totting purchased goods. We sold sold some stuff but not a lot. Which was too bad as we had a lot of very good new comics and graphic novels. We did our drawings for the Action Bible (12:30 PM and 3:30 PM) but the people didn't show up. So after 5 PM we still had the two copies to give away. I prayed about it and and felt impressed to give one of the Bibles to Howard Salmon and later the other to a young tween girl who was our last customer of the afternoon. We learned that the drawings need to be more frequent and within a fairly short time of the person who puts their name in the basket. Most people are not going to hang around several hours at a smaller convention like Tucson.
Tucson Comic Con is growing as this was was the first one with programming. I attended briefly several of the panel discussions. They were held in two small conference rooms. One of the rooms held about 30 chairs (with 15-20 attendees) and 4-5 on the panels. One of the panel organizers/moderators also does the same thing for the Phoenix Con so there is overlap and cooperation between the two. One panel featured comics writers and another comic book artists. The writers and artists had pro experiences (several from WildStorm) but I wasn't familiar with their work. These were very basic panels where the panelists shared why they do what they do and how they came to be located in Arizona. There was a need for microphones. Another was a demonstration on how to use Apple I-Pads for reading comics. I-Pads have amazing selective zoom and search capacities. This was lightly attended but it gave the audience the ability do do some hands on and ask questions.
Another thing I ran into this weekend was people who were blown away that there is such a thing as Christian Comics. It is almost as if the two words didn't go together. It seems as if Christian comics is a concept some people find it difficult to wrap their minds around. There are still a lot of people (I assume mostly Christians-though not entirely) who are ignorant of current Christian comics. We also had some folks that shared that they had a complete collection of Jack Chick comic books and remembered the Archie Christian comics from years ago (hey, folks there is a lot happening now in Christian comics!!!) This is different response than "I thought i was the only one" which was less than previous years.
This year was similar to previous years in terms of crowds and interest in being at the Con. I heard rumors that next year the Tucson Con would be moving to the Tucson Convention Center which would open up a lot more venue space.
I is good for CCAS to have a continuing presence at this growing regional Con. While it is still as dealer's convention (with a large artist section) it is expanding in other directions.
and Journal of Omniology #1 Sept.-Oct. 2010
Several years ago I have the privilege of working for Joe Taylor a West Texas Creationary field paleontologist and fossil restorer. During that time and before Joe spoke of producing a magazine devoted to his discoveries and views on paleontology and other issues that interest him. After many years of intellectual gestation the first issue of the magazine is now available. The issue begins with a lengthy article about the "Big Yellow Phytosaur" a huge narrow jawed fossil crocodile from the Triassic strata of West Texas. Taylor details his discovery, excavation and restoration (including techniques) of these amazing complex ancient creations. Taylor gives personal details on how he became interested in these animals as well some historical background of scientists who have worked on these creatures. The article is crammed with numerous helpful photos.
The next major article is one that deals with the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology's (SVP) war on creationists and creation science. Taylor and several others attended the 2007 SVP Annual meeting where notable fossil hunters like Paul Serrano and Kevin Padian launched into rants— "a full frontal attack on Creationists". Taylor's conclusion, "There are those in secular paleontology who are trying to redefine what science is. What we saw were radical evolutionists who will not tolerate being challenged in their belief in evolutionism."
Next up is a well written article called "A Bear in the Constellations?!" Andrew V. Ste Marie, 16 year old home school scholar makes a comparison between the long-tailed bear constellation Ursa Major and the extinct bear dog Amphicyon. While the similarities are intriguing Ste. Marie admits his "premise is definitely speculative." However this hypothesis is definitely worth placing in the public forum. The feature articles are rounded out by Taylor's evaluation and reminiscences about "The Jesus Movement" of the 1960s and 1970s.
The magazine has short columns like Hugh Miller's C-14 dating of Triceratops and hadrosaur bones that gave dates in the thousands and not the tens of millions of years old as conventional secular Paleontology ascribes them to. Also T.P. Beh's humorous look at many fossil stories which emanate from the evolutionary establishment, a review of Michael Oard's "Frozen in Time" book (Mammoths and the Ice Age should be explored in greater depth in future issues), "Important Politics" by Cathie Adams that centers on the misdeeds of the NEA and David Bump's "A Creationist Comments" dealing with Kenneth Miller's silly objections to Intelligent Design, Bigger Galaxies and flying lemurs.
Perhaps the most important feature is opening editorial "Letter from the Editor" which details Taylor's future direction for the magazine. Taylor lists numerous fascinating fossil and geology questions that he and the magazines contributors will address in upcoming issues. Questions like, "Why are the Oligocene mammals of the White River Badlands of South Dakota more petrified than the Cretaceous dinosaurs below them?" and "Why do the white bones buried in red sand of the mammal beds of rhino and saber-toothed cats in the Gobi desert of China look just like the velociraptors and T-rexes of the Gobi desert if they were separated by millions of years?" If Taylor is successful in bringing these issues out and providing reasonable solutions he will be providing a great service to the creation science cause.
(for subscription information call 800-763-7454 or e-mail mtblancofossilnews@aol.com)
The 2010 Phoenix Comic Con was simply amazing.
The crowds were like San Diego. Wall-to-wall people. An early estimate was
10,000 to 12,000. I believe it easily exceeded those numbers. The Phoenix Con has graduated from a dealers convention to a full fledged Con with many panels and other events. It reminded me of San Diego maybe 20 years ago when it was a the old S.D. Convention Center. The Convention administration was very gracious, coming around every day to find out how we were doing and offering us cold water and so on.
We were able to pay (and then some) for the cost of the small press table
through sales of comics and graphic novels.
We met many, many Christian Convention goers who were very pleased to
see us there. This was a very unexpected, but pleasant and blessed surprise. We met a number of young Christian creatives who expressed interest in networking. There was one couple that are leaders in their church who volunteered to host a local Phoenix CCAS meeting. We did get their contact information. This opens up the possibility of having a local CCAS group do the convention. Lots of opportunities for ministry.
We handed out a lot of the comic tracts as well a good sales for the comics. We had dinner Friday night with Brent a professional level Christian artist who was very eager for fellowship. There were at least three of other Christian comics vendors there. One was Bryan Kilgore who had done Logos which is some comic adaptations of parts of the life of Christ and educational comics. Also was Pepe Melon who is the artist on Tales of Watchman. We also met Joey Lee Cabral the writer/artist of Kause of Death. Tom Hall and Daniel Bradford of Blacklist Studios also had a booth selling their R13 and The King comics. Tom Hall really wants us to do a Spiritual Themes panel at the New York Comic Con.
The Spiritual Themes panel when well. We had Joe King, Tom Hall and Daniel Bradford on the panel that was moderated by Ralph and myself. We had an audience of around 20-25 who were very interested in what we were talking about. After intros and general discussion we had audience questions which went up to the end of the hour and we had to cut the discussion off. I spoke with an LDS man who attended. I offered to have an Mormon rep be on the panel next year. He said he would contact some of his artists friends. Also the next day I started chatting with a Star Wars devotee who was very knowledgeable about the Buddhist roots of Star Wars. She is a book reviewer. I gave her my e-mail address for having her on the panel next year.
Overall the Phoenix Comic Con was a very positive experience. Lots of prayers answered. Also lots of sharing opportunities with the people who came to the table.
God willing we will do this next year. I'd like to see some Southern Calif. folks come over. I think you would enjoy doing this Con.
There are two short video Con reports (Ralph and Brent Hofstra) on the ning site. Don's Page.
God bless,
Don
next week at the Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, AZ. May 27-30, 2010.
Drop by and meet Ralph Miley and Don Ensign.
We will also have a panel discussion on Spiritual Themes in comics
on Saturday morning.Panelists include Joe King, Daniel Bradford
and Tom Hall with Miley and Ensign moderating.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Don
How many comics have you read that have dinosaurs in them? Now you can attend an
actual dinosaur fossil dig in Montana this summer.
The dig is led by a good friend of mine named Aaron Judkins, an experienced excavator.
Aaron is a solid Christian and brings a strong Biblical perspective into the dig
experience. I'd highly recommend this. Please see the information below.
Dinosaur Excavation
We sponsor this trip once a year and offer you the opportunity to find, excavate, plaster, remove and prepare real dinosaur bones! You will be trained by professionals and learn incredible truths about our Creator. Come experience 4 days and 5 nights of meaningful fellowship, delicious meals, and exciting hands-on education.
Guests can choose to reserve either a campsite or near-by hotel room for overnight accommodations.
The Journey of a lifetime ...
* Explore the past as it unfolds before your eyes. * Professionally excavate fossil sites. * Identify, collect, and interpret fossils. * Grid, record, and document findings. * Analyze paleontologic evidence. * Compare evolutionary and creationist worldviews. * Participate in evening workshops. * Study ancient life through geology and biology. * Observe many sedimentary layers caused by catastrophic erosion.
T-Rex, Triceratops, Ankylosaurus, Edmontosaurus, pachycephalosaurus and Maiasaurus
We have also found fossils of plants, as well as other reptiles and aquatic animals. More than just bones, each evening, God-honoring workshops will connect the day's experiences to the life-giving word of God. The teaching, stories, and photos will be a source of vivid memories for years to come.
July 12-16th, 2010 Glendive, Montana
The dig fee covers:
* Lunch and dinner, plus snacks and drinks on site. * Daily transportation to and from dig site. * Entrance fee * Creation Studies workshop led by Dr. Aaron Judkins at the Comfort Inn meeting room. * Necessary tools and supplies at the dig site: tables, shade, and toilet facilities. * One dig supervisor / instructor for each 7 guest.
REGISTRATION FEES (per person)
Cost per person: $750.00
Register after May 1st $950
For details, call 254-396-7499
or email
aaronjudkins@yahoo.com
Don Ensign manning the CCAS table.
James Babcock with Madame X poster overhead.
Shot of the Tucson Con from James Babcock table.
