It’s hard to believe that 10 years have passed since the first time I set up as an artist at C2E2. It felt like a big gamble to even see if I could get in, but I did. The timing was so incredibly tight, but it all worked out in the end. The Solution Squad print comics had just come in two weeks earlier, and I felt like I was juggling a lot. I had applied for Solution Squad to be a part of the first open-invitation round of ComiXology’s Submit program, and again, to my astonishment, it was accepted! The online comic went live on April 24, just two days before the convention. It felt like everything was falling into place.
Using our contact at Rink Printing in South Bend, who had printed our comics, we had prints made up of Jordan’s final character designs, as well as professional business cards. I borrowed a display rack from our local comic shop, bought a navy blue tablecloth with criss-cross square patterns on it, like graph paper, and off we went. How many comics should I bring with me? I had no idea, so I just brought them all. They were still in the back of the minivan.
I have to admit, we were nervous when the morning started. The table was expensive, $425, which was not a small investment. Not a lot of interest or people stopping by. Jordan and I were just kind of soaking in the atmosphere of the place. C2E2, even in 2013 was a huge convention, with easily 50,000 people in the convention hall over the three days. Jordan got a few commissions, but I was getting more and more nervous by the minute. I was scheduled to speak at a panel at 12:45, moderated by Josh Elder, of the non-profit Reading With Pictures. I had met Josh the previous summer as he spoke at the Kids Read Comics event in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and he seemed very happy to meet an actual teacher interested in making educational comics. So, he invited me to be on the panel with him and Dr. Carol Tilley, the leading expert on Fredric Wertham, author of Seduction of the Innocent, and just a general expert in comics reading history, period. Just before 12:45, I grabbed my dress shirt and my favorite Batman tie, loaded up my laptop, and headed to the nearest restroom to change.
To my utter amazement, when I got there, the room was packed. There were easily more than 200 people in the room, maybe closer to 300. I had never spoken in front of that many people before, let alone teachers and professionals. I have to say, I was nervous about how a comic book teaching math would be perceived by actual teachers.
Josh opened the program, talking about how comics had helped him to learn to read as a child. He always cites Transformers #4 as the specific issue. And his tagline of “Hooked on comics worked for me” always gets a chuckle. That gave me a natural segue going into my part of the presentation because my hook into reading was Superboy #165, from…a few years before Josh’s comic. I started my presentation with a very bland, but effective opening slide:
As a teacher who had had far too many Power Points read to me in my career, I knew this would get a laugh, and it did. There was even a smattering of applause. I immediately went from near-shaking to relaxed. As I went through each slide, I introduced the audience to the characters I created and explained how I used them in class to introduce and teach math concepts. There were lots of murmurs from the crowd, and laughs exactly where I hoped they would land. And when I closed with the final slide, explaining that the Squad flew around in the Coordinate Plane, I thought the place was going to fall apart. There was raucous laughter; thunderous applause. And I got goosebumps. What just happened?
I listened to Carol’s presentation, and I never fail to learn something from her. But I was feeling just a rush of energy that made it hard to concentrate. After the whole panel ended, I was absolutely mobbed. People rushed up to shake my hand and tell me what a great thing Solution Squad was. One teacher said, “This is the most creative thing I’ve ever seen a teacher do!” and that nearly brought me to tears. Jordan, who was at the panel, escaped to get down to the convention table. They could read the writing on the wall. And when they got to the table, there was aleady a crowd. Talk about effective marketing! We had been sitting virtually alone for two hours on the first day of the convention and now we were swamped. After 20 minutes, I finally got back to the table myself, where there was a line of people waiting to talk to me.
One of the people waiting to talk to me was young fourth-year Chicago teacher Amy Hopkins, who bought an entire class set of 30 comics from me. Amy used Solution Squad in her class and even had her students write letters to me about how much they enjoyed the comic. Amy and I have been good friends ever since.
I made another friend that day in Bob Cassinelli, who worked at Gail Borden Public Library in Elgin Illinois. Bob invited Jordan and me to appear at his comic book show, Comic Book Mania, which we were pleased to do. I set up at that show for years afterward.
And I can never forget Bruce Nelson. Bruce was a teacher in Indianapolis who specialized in STEM education. Bruce told me about the Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellowship, a $10,000 fellowship for Indiana teachers that would allow me to fund my creative pursuits for a summer project. He told me all about how to apply. I did, and I won one of the 100 Fellowships. Less than a year later, I had a check for $10,000 in my hand. I guess the $425 convention table paid off!
After this convention and specifically my panel appearance, Josh Elder invited me to work with him and Reading With Pictures more closely as they tried to complete their work on The Graphic Textbook. I was brought in as a math consultant first, to work with de facto editor Tracy Edmunds, who became yet another good friend, then as a letterer for some of the anthology’s stories, and even an uncredited assistant editor of sorts, making corrections to some of the art in the book. I ended up designing the Teachers Guide using my very limited skills in InDesign, and co-editing that book along with Tracy Edmunds. Thanks to a shift in the Common Core State Standards, which moved prime numbers from a sixth grade standard down to a fourth grade standard, I was asked if my Solution Squad story could be included in the book, which I immediately agreed to. Later, this book would be bought by Andrews McMeel and published as Reading With Pictures: Comics That Make Kids Smarter, which got me my own author entry in the Library of Congress.
This one fateful event changed my life in myriad ways, leading to many more panel and convention appearances, inspiring me to travel all over the country talking about comics and education, making friends and earning accolades as I went. My life in comics was a cascade of new experiences, friendships, and uncountable rewards.
All told, we sold 83 copies of Solution Squad #1 that weekend, and even though those were respectable numbers for an unknown comic book about math heroes, I still remember posting on social media, “I feel like I’ve caught lightning in a bottle.” It was one of the best feelings of my entire life.
