My Big Fat Geek Weekend

As Emily already pointed out on her blog, we did the geek thing this past weekend. The problem with being a geek is that sometimes multiple strands of your geekery converge and this year both the National Book Festival and the Baltimore Comic Con happened on the same weekend. Neil Gaiman was at the bookfest, signing at 1:00 and Mike Mignola was at Baltimore. I'd met them both previously, but Emily wanted to meet Mignola so we decided to do something crazy and do both in the same day.

So...

I got to the National Mall around 11:00 and bought The Graveyard Book and then headed over to camp out in the Gaiman line. As I said, I've met him before and this would be my fifth signing, so camping out is the thing to do. You may be waiting for a while, but it ultimately saves time in the long run and you usually meet some nice people.

Neil started scribbling on things at about 1:00 and by 1:35ish we'd gotten to the front of the line. Neil was nice, as usual, and scribbled on the new book, my UK American Gods, and my advanced reader's copy of Good Omens, which he said was in surprising good shape for a twenty year old ARC.

And then we turned around.

I estimate that we were about fifty people from the front of the line. On Neil's blog he says that there were approximately 1400 people there for him. I have never seen such a crowd. And he signed something for all of them. With a broken finger.

That is why I love Neil Gaiman.

So Emily and I rushed up to Baltimore, getting there at 3:30, about two and a half hours before the Comic Con was due to close. We headed straight for Mike Mignola and were amazed that there was no line. Emily got her stuff scribbled on and I got a pile of stuff signed. So then we walked around the place and from here I'm just going to combine the rest of Saturday and Sunday into one big pile.

If I was forced to name my five favorite comics artists, I'd probably have to go with:

1. Mike Mignola
2. Bernie Wrightson
3. Darwyn Cooke
4. Tim Sale
5. A constantly changing roster of about ten different people

All of these guys were there. To my amazement, Bernie Wrightson had no line at all during the weekend and you could just walk right up and talk to him. He was extremely approachable and a pleasure to talk to. He was selling production art from The Mist that was way out of my price range, but if I had a spare $200 to drop I would own the spider sketch. But I didn't, so I don't. He did sign my Mist poster and a couple of Stephen King books that he illustrated and I bought a lovely print of one of the illustrations he did for Frankenstein. I've loved his work since I was in high school and it was nice to meet someone whose work I've admired for so long and have him be as great as I'd hoped.

I feel like I almost took advantage of Mike Mignola. He signed a ton of stuff for me and he said that if he didn't want to sign things, then he wouldn't have been there. So I don't feel too bad about it. It's not like I'm going to sell all of it.

Eric Powell, who writes and draws The Goon, which you should read, was there too and drew a quick sketch of my favorite character, Willy Nagel, which will go up in the zombie dining room at some point.


The only real wait we had was for Tim Sale, which is understandable since he was only signing from 4-5 when we were there on Saturday because he was doing commission sketches for most of the day. I did get a pile of stuff signed and he drew the Batman jack-o-lantern in my Absolute Long Halloween.


Between Tim Sale and Darwyn Cooke I've now got all six issues of the Kryptonite story they did for Superman Confidential signed. Cooke was unfortunately sick, so I wasn't able to get him to do a sketch of Catwoman for Tilda like I'd hoped, but chances are I'll get to see him again. He's doing a tour next year to raise money for the Hero Initiative, so hopefully I'll be able to get a Catwoman sketch then, or a Wonder Woman, or anyone. His work is beautiful. Especially The New Frontier, which is one of the best graphic novels ever. It's as good as Watchmen. Jamee likes it better. And though he wasn't really sketching, he did draw a quick Hal Jordan in the clouds when he signed my Absolute New Frontier.


After ditching the massive hardcovers in my car, I swung back to see Steve Dillon, who drew Hellblazer, Preacher, and The Punisher. He was very nice (I've met two of the three main people who worked on Preacher - Steve Dillon and Glenn Fabry - and though they should by rights be degenerates, they were both lovely. I have not yet met Garth Ennis). And Dillon cleared up, for me at least, how John Contstantine's name should be pronounced: It's "tine" as in part of a fork, not "teen," as in someone who's older than twelve and younger than twenty.

He also drew me a sketch of the man. Note that he looks nothing like Keanu Reeves.


But the highlight of everything was meeting J.G. Jones. I only have the first three issues of Final Crisis that he drew, and they were giving out promo posters of the first four Final Crisis covers. I really didn't know much of his stuff, but what I'd seen I liked. So I brought my stuff that he drew with me as a last minute decision. And he turned out to be one of the nicest people I've ever met. Very friendly and generous - he even offered me a raisin chocolate chip cookie, which turned out to be the only think I ate between 9:00 and 3:30 on Sunday, but that's pretty much my fault. Still, 'twas a damn good cookie.

So now I'm a huge fan of the guy's stuff, and I'm adding his 52: The Covers to my X-Mas list and pretty much telling everyone to go check out his stuff. He does good work and seems like a genuinely good guy. Here's the image for the Supergirl poster - I got one signed for Mathilda and
one signed for Aurora:


Hopefully he'll be attending next year. That was a damn good cookie.