Free Comic Book Day
Strange Adventures' Free Comic Book Day was, as usual, really damn cool. It took me about ten minutes to sweep through and pick up all the books I was interested in. Then I went and stood in line for two hours to get sketches. Bryan Lee O'Malley left before I got a sketch from him. I did get a sketch of The Spirit of the comic of the same name from Darwyn Cooke and Kim of Thieves and Kings from Mark Oakley.
I also got to chat with each of them for a bit while they were drawing. Darwyn Cooke seems to be having a lot of fun on The Spirit series, and was actually approached by Will Eisner's estate about doing it. He set the new Spirit series in the modern day because Will Eisner had used up all the classic stories and because it let him write the stories the same way Eisner did - by looking at the world around him and translating it into the Spirit's world. They plan to continue the mostly-isolated single-issue stories for the series entire run, which I think is wonderful. And Agent Silk Satin, the guest star of the awesomely quirky issue #4, is apparently returning in issue #8 thanks to popular demand from fans. Which is awesome, because she's inherently badass.
There was an amusing moment when I was talking with Mark Oakley, when he heard the next person after me in Darwyn's line also ask for a drawing of the Spirit, and turned to Darwyn (two chairs down) and asked "Wait, The Spirit? Like, Will Eisner's The Spirit? I was just reading some of those the other day." Turns out that he didn't know about the new Spirit series, and thought it was really awesome that he was sitting one chair away from the guy that masterminded it. He and Darwyn talked about it for a bit.
According to Mark, Thieves and Kings is on hiatus now while he makes some actual money doing contract illustration, but he definitely wants to finish it. The story's going to wrap up in Volume Six, which will be large (possibly as large as the gargantuan Volume Two). I talked with him a lot about story structure and art, and it turns out that a lot of my suspicions - such as about the identity of a certain sword in Volume One, or about Hayao Miyazaki's influence on his artwork - were correct. I was quite pleased. It was interesting to hear what he had to say about the comic/narrative switches, which I love but know a lot of people don't like. He also had some interesting things to say about Heath and Rubel and the overall structure of the story, which I'll probably discuss in detail with the people that actually care.
Now that I've dealt with some stuff on the Dream Pod 9 forum and watched some Odin Sphere trailers (verdict: sprite-based hotness, must pre-order), it's time to actually read my swag...
I think I'm going to have to find something I can use to store sketches like these...