Free Comic Book Day = Good
Free Comic Book Day was yesterday, and it was glorious. And very, very long. I was at Happy Harbor Volume 2 from 10 AM – 6 PM, then arrived at Volume 1 at 6:30 for Happy Harbor’s 10th birthday party. In all I spent about 14 hours at Happy Harbor Volumes 1 and 2. Things were pretty rad all around.
Sketches – I did a lot of ’em. I’m guesstimating around fifteen. My first request was for a Simpsons character, but I didn’t really get any more instruction than that, so I drew Homer Simpson in a Green Lantern costume, since I had just spent a good five minutes bitching about never getting to draw the Green Lantern at these things. Other sketches included Batman, Juggernaut, Darkseid (who I’d never drawn before, but was really, really fun), a couple of portraits (I hate drawing portraits, although one of a dude as a Vancouver Canuck was fun), Hellboy, a knight, GIR, Bender, and some other ones that I can’t recall off the top of my head.
Dan Schneider – I spent most of the day hanging out with Dan Schneider and Melanie Harvey at HHv2. I’ve done FCBD with Dan a couple of times now, and it’s always some good clean fun (disclaimer: the fun was good but not really clean, as the number of horrible jokes we managed to cram into eight hours was… mind-hurting). The result of a weird Facebook conversation meant that Dan was determined that our store be deemed the one where the “cool kids” were at. So he created a contest. And a championship belt (which was an old toy WWF Tag Team Title belt with aviator sunglasses, cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and a Happy Harbor logo made out of Play-Doh). He attempted to use a gumball machine to sway the results of the contest (which he was determined to cheat to win, despite cheating being basically the entirety of the rules).
Ty Templeton – I got my Exterminators Volume 4 and 5 trade paperbacks signed by comics veteran Ty Templeton. In more awesome news, he remembered that I gave him a copy of Rent-A-Thug: First Offence last time he was in town and proceeded to go on a several minute long rant about how much he enjoyed reading it and showing it to his comic industry friends in Toronto. He then convinced the other special guest, Laurie B., that she HAD to buy a copy and read it, then told me that I should start getting my stuff in front of editors ASAP. Sweet!
Ed & Red – Ed the Sock and Liana K filmed an episode of their new show (not sure what it’s called) in front of the live audience at the HH birthday party. They interviewed Eisner award winner Steve Rolston, and superstars Gail Simone, Fiona Staples, and Ty Templeton, as well as the tangentially comic-related roller derby girls (who had been dressed like super heroines and villainesses). It was interesting seeing the show be filmed. I expected there to be a lot of pauses and stuff that would obviously be edited out, but it was actually pretty witty and flowed well for the most part. Ed was also smacked so hard with an Ugly Doll that his cigar broke off (for those who are unaware, Ed is a sock puppet. There’s a cigar stitched to the mouth of the puppet). The funnier part was Liana having to go find it because Ed’s puppeteer couldn’t reach it without coming out from behind the couch that was concealing him from the camera. I think the most impressive part was that instead of a stage the couch was supported by comic long boxes. Seriously. Not sure if there were books in ’em or not, but it managed to hold up Ed, Liana, and five derby girls simultaenously, which probably makes it the best-constructed stage made out of long-boxes in the history of mankind.
Nick Johnson – I talked to Nick Johnson, who came up from Calgary with a bunch of other artist types, for quite a while at the birthday party. Fun fact: I have his permission to harangue him mercilessly come May to finish the Rent-A-Thug guest strip he asked me to write for him in October. Discussion of an animated GIF of me shanking him also came up in a related discussion.
I think that’s it for FCBD stories… for now.
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