Hi everyone, Onezumi and I will be at Balticon this weekend and will have an Intervention information and pre-reg table set up. We’ll be bringing a huge stack of colorful flyers (with contributions by many of our guests), and will be able to take your registrations in person using our new iPad/iPhone credit card system by Square. We can also dish out some “secret” info about upcoming developments and news, so even if you’ve already bought your registration you should stop by and say hello.

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We’re happy to announce that we’ve added Krishna Sadasivam (The PC Weenies) and Chris Malone (Blue and Blond) to the Intervention guest list for this year. If you haven’t checked recently our Guest page is getting pretty packed and we have quite a few more on the way to announce soon!

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Have you ever been to a con but had no idea what was in the area surrounding the con location? Food, services, even other interesting sites or attractions? Well, we’ve added a resource to the Intervention site to help you out. We’ve just added our Area Guide for Intervention.

We’ll be updating the guide over time to add in new sections; the next part being a “parking” guide.

If you have any requests for information please post them on the forum or contact us using the contact form.

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We’ve updated our guest list to add T. Campbell (also known for Penny and Aggie and other comics) and Phil Khan to the guest list. They’ll be representing their comic Guilded Age.

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Have you ever been in a situation where you wanted to get into a fight? Now imagine that, but you look around and the only weapon you can find is a sharpie marker. Well guess what, the Super Art Fight guys already did that and started their own competition of pit fighting to make this a reality.

Born out of the idea for a web comic, the Super Art Fight competition is the all out brawl to determine the most fierce artist of them all (with a title belt to prove it). They’ve done one on ones, 4 ways, tag teams, you name it. If you’re getting the hint that this is very much angled like professional wrestling (but without all the sweaty stuff) you’re right–but the added bit is it’s all real!

In a nutshell the artists are in placed in front of a large wall length paper at the front of the audience. They then each get a topic to start their work and then start drawing. At intervals down the event they get brand new topics that they then have to integrate into their ongoing art.

It wouldn’t be a fight though if it didn’t involve some underhanded double dealing between the artists. They can also “attack” the others ongoing artwork to twist it or impede it. All of this is followed closely by their experienced team of color commentators who can outline the action to the audience.

Ultimately the idea is the crowd determines (through applause) who most fulfilled the topics and came out with the best overall artwork.

It’s a spectacle for the geek generation. They’ll be bringing this action to Intervention live–and if we have our way it’ll also be live to the internet as well! So expect brutality aplenty, with an art appreciation class appended.

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Today’s FAQ Spotlight focuses on the questions we’ve received about SPX (Small Press Expo), and the fact that Intervention and SPX are scheduled for the same weekend this year (Sept. 10-12) in the same area (Rockville, Maryland).

The short answer to the situation is that it appears that neither SPX or Intervention knew the other was looking at this weekend when we finalized both of our location bookings. SPX was scheduled in 2009 for the last weekend of September (26th and 27th) and the previous year SPX was scheduled the first weekend of October (4th and 5th). When we at Intervention researched the area and time we assumed that SPX would probably stay in that late September timeframe.

We originally were looking at a late October date (Halloween weekend in fact), but feedback from potential guests and attendees showed that to be a less than optimal time. So we were able to get our current weekend lined up and contracts signed. Right before that we did one last round of looking at the listed con dates for everyone in the country, and at that point SPX had not yet made an official announcement of their date. A few people, including our friend Gary from Fleen.com, actually asked us if 2 weeks difference between the cons would be ok, since he also assumed that SPX would be happening later in the month and wanted us to be aware of the timing. That didn’t seem like an issue to us.

So, 1 week later Onezumi happened to be looking around and caught the small notice that SPX had announced the same date as Intervention. At this point both of our cons had obviously signed contracts and committed resources to the date.

At first this gave us pause. SPX is a well established con that focuses on Comics–this should theoretically be a problem. The more we thought about it though the more we believe this isn’t a problem. SPX has always been focused on the idea of independent print comics. While some webcomics guests do attend SPX, the “idea” of SPX, as shown by the multitude of their programming, is still very much focused on the print realm. Intervention is about online distribution and promotion, and somewhat more open ended in the content type discussed (video, music, comics, blogging, etc.).

There is crossover, but in many ways Intervention and SPX appear to be the Yin and Yang of focus and programming. I can actually foresee people who might attend both for the elements that they want to get info about. Considering that the cons are also physically located only a few miles from each other, this is a very easy thing to actually do. In some cases very large cons have had areas spread out this far just for their own events–so it’s not impossible.

The method for the cons is also somewhat different. Intervention is a 24 hour con starting on Friday the 10th, with many night events (including dances and other soon-to-be-announced performances and shows), so the crossover between programming of both events might actually end up being pretty natural.

Our goal (and anyone who knows us knows this is how we work on everything) is to see this as a positive for both events and for attendees. We definitely encourage anyone who attends Intervention to consider checking out events at SPX if they are “on topic” for their needs (and we all know print distribution of online comics is very important and this information is not easy to find). There’s never a need to see things in “us versus them” format, just to see what benefits we all can gain from the circumstances. We have always been from the “let’s work communally” side of things–which shows in our Open Source work as well as our Webcomics Central service, so we hope (and will work toward making this true) that this situation works out for everyone.

As for next year–who knows? We didn’t intend for this to happen this year so we certainly aren’t thinking of purposely scheduling Intervention 2011 opposite SPX next year. If possible we’ll try to find out from SPX what they think they’ll be doing for their date next year, or at least let them know when we’re considering doing our event–and we’ll go from there.

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We’re very happy to announce that Rob Granito has been added to the Intervention guest list. Rob is a veteran or both DC and Marvel comics, as well as participating in work across almost every genre and area of toys, books, and art. He’s also contributed artwork to the webcomic Partially Clips (originally written by one of our other guests Rob Balder), and has a vast body of commission work. If you want almost anything drawn or painted, Rob’s the guy you contact.

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