carbonhouse blog

Let’s make fists!

Jeffrey Brown, Writer and artist

As a creative design firm, we find inspiration from other creatives. The weekend of June 20-22, the Heroes convention took place in Uptown Charlotte. The Convention was started in 1982 by the gang at Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find —one of the premier comics specialty shops in the country.

Most of carbonhouse attended the show at some point–as well as many other creatives from around town (Shoutouts to Studiobanks and Marty Kelso).

There were many great guests this year, but what always stands out for me is the Top Shelf Productions‘ booth. They publish outstanding, contemporary graphic novels by some dedicated artists.Two favs generally make the trek to Charlotte—Jeffrey Brown and Alex Robinson. These two excel in the little episodes, slices of life stories and I highly recommended you check out their work.

One of the great things about the Heroes Con is the chance to talk with your favorite artists/writers; they can even provide original sketches for you for a minimal charge. Jeffrey had a great idea this year to create convention trading cards. Three of us had our portraits done by Jeff with a running theme. A little back story: last year Mr. Brown created a self portrait for me with him saying “Let’s make fists.” Jeffrey took that theme and ran with it. Below are Jeff’s sketches of us, which assemble a nice strip. Thank you, Jeffrey Brown!

View more photos from the convention here.

Contemporary Graphic Novels that satisfy:

Blankets by Craig Thompson
Box Office Poison by Alex Robinson
Mother, Come Home by Paul Hornschemeier
Epileptic by David B.
Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood by Marjane Satrapi
Sleepwalk: and Other Stories by Adrian Tomine

Tags: alex robinson, art, carbonhouse, comics, graphic novels, heroes convention, jeffrey brown, studiobanks