 Hey I'm Bob Shaw. I am the owner of Comic Art House. I work for Altered Reality Entertainment and left field media as well as Comic Con Palm Springs. I am artist alley manager for six to ten shows. I don't know, I lose track at this point. I've been doing it for a while and I'm pretty blessed because it's a good gig. I can't draw but I know a bit about art. I've been around this business since 1993 when I first commissioned my first piece of art from Paul Ryan, a longtime artist on the Fantastic Four who unfortunately passed away. One of the best guys in the industry and because he was such a good guy he really steered me towards this and you know was through a good friend of mine, Crystal Feb, that dragged me on and said hey come on let's go to a comic book show. I'm like I like comics. I'll go to a comic show and then it just ended up Paul was there and his wife Linda and we ended up talking to him and he was just an amazing dude and I've been collecting art since. So what was once a collection is now kind of what I do. So you know between him and Paul Gould and you know people that just had faith in me which is sometimes all it takes is just one person to have faith that doesn't have to be you know a group of people. You just need one person that thinks you're good at something to kind of flip that switch. A comic book convention is organized chaos. It's a little bit of everything. Back in the old days you know back 10-15 years ago it meant a bunch of comic books and you know a couple artists and you did your hobby that way. Now it's more of a pop culture event where you have celebrities and you have cosplayers and you have voice actors and you have people selling toys and statues and clothing and it's become more of a geek flea market for lack of better vernacular. It's become so broad and it's become so much a part of you know Americana at this point where you know the big bank theories one of the most popular shows on TV and a lot of geeks don't like it but it's the first one that's centered exclusively on fandom and people that dig comics and you know and what we like. It's become more mainstream which bothers some of the old guard but but attendances are up and people are coming to it so. Comics are amazing. When I was a kid I lived in you know my mom was on welfare and we lived in kind of you know a poor neighborhood but she could afford comics so my first memories of when I was a kid was my mom when I was sick bringing me home some spider-man comics. Just to know the type of influence that these have just go to a comic book convention and see the joy in little kids' faces when they see comic book characters or an artist that draws their favorite comic book character and it's huge. It's a connection you can't buy well maybe you can but but it's a connection where they recognize the character they know the character people know who Peter Parker is he's almost a person to us he's a fictional character that's become so much a part of our lives being in comics that there's a connection you care about what happens to him you care about what happens to Steve Rogers you care about what happens to Bruce Wayne Selina Kyle and to some extent now you have the Indies kind of coming in their heart with Rick Grimes and you know the walking dead and you have amazing books like saga and you have all these people that because they love comics so much we have more comics being produced now than ever before a wide diversity of titles and the one thing that we've lost over the years is instead of the kids falling in love with a comic they're falling in love with the movie we need to get piggits back to reading and writing and caring about being able to sit there with a book instead of a tablet playing an app so I mean I hand out free comics all the time to kids I believe I've given you like 10 long boxes or five long boxes at one time it was a lot of comics that's all I know and you gave it out to the inner city kids because someone did it for me back when I was in Lawrence band I didn't grow up rich I didn't grow up you just work you work and you work harder and you keep working hard