Great Lakes Brewery Comic Book Heritage Night

If you're from Cleveland, you love Great Lakes Brewing Company. You know the name of every beer by heart, line up around the block for Christmas Ale (Ooo christmas aleeee), and drive by Ohio City with your windows down just to get a whiff of the malt-y air. Clevelanders take a huge amount pride in everything from our city and our beer is no exception. And, as the birthplace of Superman, we also love comics.

That's how we found ourselves in GLB's tasting room yesterday for night honoring a perfect Cleveland match: Beer and Comics. To celebrate the release of the new Superman-esq Pub Brew: Truth, Justice, and the American Ale, the brewery invited us and our good friends at Carol and John's Comics to bring in some nerdy goodness. Suffice to say, it was a pretty fantastic night.

Our job last night was to draw on comic book covers for the guests of the event. We were just a little bit excited about this, as superhero drawing is one of our most favorite activities. What made it especially cool was that the amazing party nerds gave us some very creative prompts. 

Here are a few of my favorite covers that I drew last night. Expect to see some more awesome from the other monsters every day this week.

 

Thanks again to Carol and John's and Great Lakes Brewery for having us out! It was a great night. Everyone there was super nice, having a wonderful time and we can't wait to do it again!

Week 17: Free Comic Book Day

 

Image by Jameson Campbell

This week we're teaming up with our pals at Carol And John's Comic Book Shop to celebrate one of our favorite holidays: Free Comic Book Day.  Each year, publishers and comic shops give out comic books absolutely free of charge!  That's better than a turkey dinner, and The Avengers could beat up Santa Claus any day of the week.

Who better to introduce this week than the owner of Carol And John's. Cleveland's comic book stalwart:  John Dudas. 

The Challenge is this, to create a comic book cover for one of Marvel Comics Blank Variants using any Marvel character you like! Marvel Blank Variants are special editions of popular titles that have a cardstock cover and only a logo on the front. The intention is to take the book to a comic convention and have an artist you like draw you a sketch on the cover. These can be as simple or elaborate as you want. It's sort of extra cool when the logo blends in with your drawing. These books will be used to enhance the spendor that is Free Comic Book Day at Carol and John's Comic Book Shop. All books will be on display for the entire event with your name and any website you'd like to link to your art under it. At the end of the event we will raffle the covers off after dicumenting them. We get about 1,000 people passing through our doors in under 24 hours. You also get a free pass to Dr. Sketchy, and we're also going to send out an email to our 2,000 plus mailing list thanking you guys for being true supporters of FCBD in Cleveland. It sounds like I'm trying to sell the perks, but the reality is I'm just very grateful that you've all choosen to help spread art and Keep Cleveland in Comic Books! Excelsior!