Conventional Wisdom

If anything kept my own crankiness from getting out of control (aside from being to tired to actually DO anything cranky-like) it was seeing the REAL crotchety old people. There were quite a few parents trying in vain to hide how badly they didn’t want to be there. It’s at those times I most appreciate how geeky my own parents are (you don’t think I ended up this way without some HELP, do you?)

(Historical Notes: Okay, here’s where the other shoe of that previous page drops.  The grumpy mom in the last panel is inspired by an ACTUAL mom who struggled to comprehend how I was selling, just, random pictures.  Like, not even stickers or iron-ons or something SORT OF useful, just a random drawing her kid was interested in for… some reason.  And the thing is, I kind of agreed with her.  Like, I was annoyed on general principle, and felt sorry for the kid having a parent so obvious not interested, but at the same time I knew deep down that I knew where she was coming from.  I couldn’t afford to make decals or print shirts or any of that fancy stuff, and even if I did nobody ELSE could’ve afforded them, so I just did what I saw all these other Artist Alley denizens doing and sold basic prints.  But the thing is, I barely ever BOUGHT any of those other people’s prints, for pretty much the same reasons grumpy mom here didn’t want to buy any of mine.  What are you supposed to DO with some random piece of card stock with some fanart printed on it?  Obviously, I’d stick with selling at cons for a while after this, but already the doubts were forming.)