TRUE BELIEVERS: Chapter 32 — Adventures In The Awe-Inspiring Alley of the Artists!

True Believers is a full-length novel by Thom Dunn, based on his play of the same name. It’s a satirical tale of star-crossed lovers, aspiring comic book creators, crazed fanboys, cybernetically enhanced humans, women in refrigerators, real-life superheroes, and girls who dress like Slave Leia as their lives intertwine over a whirlwind weekend at a comic book convention in the early 2010s.

The book will be serialized on Medium throughout the month of April 2020. Here is the first chapter. Check back every day for more chapters!

Artist’s Alley is abuzz with activity. Even though it’s still the morning — and even though the convention center had to relocate the hard-working independent vendors to an adjacent part of the building, separated from the main convention — the aisles are still packed shoulder-to-shoulder with cosplayers, families, artists, and fans perusing the prints for sale beneath branded graphic displays, queueing up for custom-commissioned artwork and enduring the over-rehearsed elevator pitches of eager self-publishers.

This is Kt Watts’ favorite part of every convention weekend. Regardless of whatever corporate advertising has consumed the main room, Artist’s Alley remains the lifeblood of the Comic-Con community. It’s the only place where…