Continued from Part 02

Oh man, SPX Day 2 (my trip Day 3)! We were seasoned veterans by this time, we got up early and went down to the hotel restaurant to enjoy the sumptuous breakfast buffet. GOOD GRAVY! There were dudes chopping roast beef for you, two different dudes ready to make you omelets, all sorts of meat, cheeses, a waffle iron, shrimp and crab (for breakfast??) and a million other things. And they didn’t taste bad either, it was not bad more or less.

WAIT DID I FORGET to mention it came with your choice of a Mimosa or Bloody Mary? So we toasted each other again and packed our malnourished bellies with victuals. Then nearly fainted when we got to the register: $26 apiece! But listen, but listen: you can’t put a price on how good we felt going into the show. I don’t think I even got hungry again until like 4 or something.

Colleen AF Venable came by with one of the Lumberjack mini’s she’d made, which have a little illo by me in. Not only did this earn me a comp copy, but a comp felt beard! Check out how good I looked–I would have worn this thing all day, but it kept steaming up my glasses.

I think I made more actual bucks on the Saturday of the show, but it was a near thing. I got more custom from other cartoonists on Sunday, so I was actually pretty busy most of the day. I doodled in sketchbooks, especially Alvin Buenaventura’s incredible book (starts with R.Crumb!!), and Rickey Purdin’s Watchmen-themed book, which I did my best sketch in. I’ll link that piece up once Old Slowcoach posts the new pages. Supposedly the rest of SPX was super icy, but once again we lucked up–our little corner was perfectly comfy. But yeah–whenever I’d walk around, the temperature was like 15 degrees cooler. I was talking to Lamar Abrams and nearly fell asleep–Lamar had to slap me back awake, screaming “NEVER LEAVE A MAN BEHIND NEVER LEAV–” Anyway, you get the idea.

I did the only real buying of the weekend on Sunday, and only quickly — we were busy at our table, and I knew the longer I walked around the more money I’d spend. The most amazing thing I got was something I bought weeks ago from Ken Dahl/Gabby Schulz and which I picked up at SPX: his original page from Julia Wertz’s “I Missed Saw You” Craig’s List personals anthology. Dang! I can’t find a link to that either! It’s pretty amazing though. Also purchased was one of John Allison’s Scary Go Round books, the new Driven By Lemons by Josh Cotter, Masterpiece Comics by Bob Sikoryak, and Monsters by Gabby.

Did I say John Allison? This dude is a tie with Steve Wolfhard for “favorite new friend” at SPX; he was a scream. Just a sweet dude with a bottomless arsenal of quips and witticisms, all delivered in a voice better suited to a public country club reading of an Agatha Christie novel than a grubby indie comics convention. Ladies ladies ladies: if you want to become one of John’s “brides,” space is limited, apply now!

After the show closed and we had some dinner, we repaired back to our room for the final night of hotel partying. We thought we’d take it easy, but of course a bunch of awesome people showed up. For my part, it was great to see Joe and Becca Lambert, Alexis Frederick-Frost, and JP Coovert, even if it was only for like half-an-hour before they split again (there was nowhere to sit!). I love these guys, I want to go to CCS super-bad, but that money simply does not exist. Next convention I go to, my mission will be to love these guys better.

Anyway, once we GOT RID of the CCS guys and endured another noise complaint, our party receded to the small group above, and we pulled out the cards to play some “shush” -style cards. David Malki is a good guy to have in your hotel party, he’s aggressive without being aggressive, he can get things done. Phil McAndrew, while a peerlessly excellent fellow, has a voice like Great Neptune himself, and is such a fun guy he couldn’t help ratcheting up the volume all the time, bringing on our shushes. I’m just letting you know for whenever you’re planning your own hotel party for the future. Although listen: I got dibs on these guys. This is my team.

Monday morning there was delicious breakfast and then it was off to get my tire fixed. I wish I’d taken a picture of the woman behind the counter at “Just Tires”; she looked like she was pushing 60 but was all gooed up with makeup and had a sandy blonde wig that would have made Lady Godiva jealous. She clucked and told me that I needed four new tires or I would never get back to North Carolina, but I was too wily for her captive salesmanship. Plus I am the sort of person who will simply wish his tires to stay together for 7 hours of 70 mph highway driving in the rain.

But look, it worked! Optimism = its own reward, my friends.

Part 01
Part 02
Flickr photoset

CONTINUED FROM HERE 

So the next morning we dragged out of bed and down to the convention center, where we wisely decided not to eat breakfast until like 4pm or so. By “wisely” I mean “super-stupidly”, at least in my case. My little skinny body starts eating itself 20 minutes after my last meal, and having the residue of a previous night’s party in there doesn’t help. But anyway.

Guys let me tell you: Scott Campbell is a joy to sit next to at a convention. I don’t want to turn this into a Scott C. lovefest or anything, but hey would that be so bad? I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say a bad thing about anyone, he’s just uniformly sweet to every single person in the world, it’s incredible. Being around him, you just want to be sweet too, y’know? Like “how can I let this dumb stuff bother me when Scott is over there grinning like a lunatic and calling everyone ‘my bro’?”

And all sorts of people would come up to our table to meet him, from hot ladies to giggling schoolgirls to worshipping video game types to people with ideas for how Scott could make them money–he treated every one of them as if they were the only person at the convention, as if it were the first time someone had complimented his work. My favorite time was when this beauuuuuuuutiful girl named “Ariel” (when I signed a sketch to her she said “like the Disney Princess” and I was quick to point out that I was no authority on Disney Princesses), went up to Scott and said “Hi I’m Ariel I basically Internet-stalk you.” Without hesitation Scott says “Oh awesome, that’s great my bro!” I love him.

It didn’t hurt that so many people would come up to meet him and have to wait sometimes, allowing me to proselytize them to my own dark ends. I’m sure that about 1/3 of the money I made at SPX is directly related to Scott. Do I feel guilty? No way my bro, no way.

After a semi-delicious but fully fun dinner, we just barely missed the Ignatz Awards, but were just in time for all the merrymaking afterwards. Drink tickets are the best tickets, my friends, oh yes. Me and Scott and Kate hooked up with new bro David Huyck, forming the nucleus of another adventuresome evening. Our buddy Jah Furry told us about some legendary hotel suite party, which sounded pretty exciting, like it must be the big fancy brother of our own previous night’s hotel room party. But it was not–as soon as we showed up, we were immediately shushed, like “Hi, my name is Dusti*SSSHHHHHHHH!!*” Super lame, but as the rest of our group bailed, me and Matt Wiegle were just having delicious beverages poured by Jah/Jeff, and it would have been lame to bail with our new drinks. So we hung out for a little bit, enduring shushes every time the conversation hit half the decibel level of a ladyfart. Heidi MacDonald was there and I chatted with her for a little about con gossip, and then we beat feet as soon as we could. Guess what was going on back in our room, shushless?

Super good night, for sure. Chris Duffy introduced me to Bob Sikoryak, he of Masterpiece Comics fame, and in my late-night state I’m afraid I might have gushed a little bit (a lot) about his comics. He’s probably the best comics technician working today, and I’m super psyched to read his book. The Saturday night party did draw two noise complaints, which isn’t so bad considering that at one point there were probably between 20 and 25 people in the room, including Heidi, who snuck out of the shush party in disguise:

Around 2am, Kate announced she was going to take “a little nap”, and curled up on the bed where she lay unmoving for the next two hours of party. She is like Rip Van Beaton for sure, let me tell you, because that party got loud. But the cool thing about it was that–again–the group was so good that you could go to sleep there and not worry about anything. No one was macking on anyone, no one was stealing anything, it was just a bunch of good friends happy to see each other and meet more new good friends. Definitely the vibe of the show if you ask me; and if you’ve read to the bottom of this, then you basically have. Haw! Tricked you!

Okay, just one more installment to go for tomorrow, and then all doneski. I’ll be trying to whip up a related comic this weekend, but we’ll see how that goes. Past experience says I’ll be late. SO WHAT?!

Complete Flickr photoset
Report Part 01

Oh man, holy mackerel, SPX was amazing, my best experience ever at a convention as a cartoonist.  Also a great kickoff for my new “full-time” cartoonist status, a real confidence-builder.  Speaking of which, I’m super behind on that this week, not only from recovering from SPX, but last night I hosted Liz Baillie, MK Reed, and Gabby Schulz, who stayed in my house en route to Asheville as part of their Punchbuggy Tour. Super fun, those guys, we had a good time talking and making breakfast, and they were very kind about the fact that my dog kept sneaking into their bags and noshing on their noshables. 

Anyway, I say all that just to point out that I’m going to break my SPX report up into three chunks–I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, plus stuff for Heroes, answering email, and more.  One of the side effects of an amazing SPX is a bajillion new readers and emails and Facebook requests and Twitter followers. And a lot of blushing! But I love it, don’t let me fool you.

Anyway! So I left about 3 hours later than planned on Friday, which means that I rolled into the DC area just as rush hour was beginning. Dummy. But I finally got to the hotel, got hotel room supplies (hotel food/drinks are wildly expensive, and I’m on a budget these days), and met up with my superbro Scott Campbell. I love that guy so much. THEN the two of us met up with Kate Beaton–I love her too! The weekend was already off to a good start, so much loving and laughing! We were all going to drive over to the Nerdlinger Awards, along with new friends Meredith Gran and Steve Wolfhard, but destiny was keeping us at the hotel!  Good thing too, cos as it turns out I had run over two nails en route to DC on my bald tires, so we would have surely ended up on the side of the freeway putting my half-flat spare on. But regardless, Steve showed up late and it turned out there was no way we could get there in time, as it was about an hour away.

Which sucked because our fivesome was composed of two past recipients/present awarders (Nerdlinger recipients choose the next year’s recipients), and three present recipients! Kate had picked Meredith for an award, although I’m not sure what it was, and I had picked Steve. Holy cow, if you haven’t read Cat Rackham, it is so amazing, super nuanced, just a well-made, well-conceived little comic. Anyway, so we didn’t go to the Nerdlingers. But:

We did have a brief modern dance party in the hotel bar, beginning with this little number, then progressing through a medley of favorites, including Kate’s own “The Shower”, and my “Washing My Hands In The Public Restroom But There Are No Paper Towels”, which dance was created by Matt Fraction way back in the day. We met up with a bunch of friendly people, including past buds Jeff Newelt and Brian Heater, and together we retired to our hotel room for the first of three nights of hotel room parties.

I haven’t been to a lot of hotel room parties; I’d always assumed that they’d be too crowded, too insular, too weird for me. And they probably would be, truthfully. But the quality of the cast throughout the weekend was SO INCREDIBLE there was never a chance for anything to get lame! It was just a bunch of new and old friends relaxing and ripping it up, to the chagrin of the rest of the hotel (judging by the noise complaints we received).

Here I am enjoying the party, while Kate looks on. You can’t imagine how hard it is to hold that face for an entire hotel-room party, but I am a trooper, oh yes, a veritable Spartan. Katie ended up missing Liz and MK (they were all supposed to share a room), because of the Nerdlinger thing, so Scott and I welcomed her to our bro-nest, gallantly giving her one bed and arranging ourselves in the other. Guess how many of us were snorers? NONE! I know, I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before, so pleasant, I slept all the way until it was time to stop sleeping, which was too early considering our 4am party breakup. Why do you think the party broke up, I wonder?

Anyway. You can click on any of those pics to go to the Flickr photoset, where I’ll be adding more pictures over the next couple of days (there’s like 8 or something now.

Part 02

Okay so where did I leave off yesterday? Oh that’s right. So I think I sold my first copy of DHARBIN! #2 around noon or so, which made me feel less emasculated. Everyone kept asking about Joe Lambert’s comics! I mean, sure, they’re brilliant and amazing and everything, but color is so EASY, right? Black and white is HARDER, right? Right??

Anyway, at noon-thirty I went off about twenty feet or so to be on my first ever non-HeroesCon panel. The subject was… well I’m not sure to tell you the truth. Originally it was sold to me as tracking the kind of “out” throughline from Jack Kirby to Bronze Age dudes up to today’s alternative cartoonists, but it kept changing. Regardless, and as I told anyone who would listen: I don’t know anything about that stuff and really had no place on the panel. The panel was moderated by Robin McConnell of the Inkstuds podcast, and my fellow panelists were (pictured above from left) Dash Shaw, Frank Santoro, and Robert Dayton.

I’m a big fan of Dash’s comics, and Frank Santoro is a straight-up smart dude in whatever he does (and I’m sure Robert’s great too, but I’d never met him). And Robin’s super nice. But this panel was a mess. Frank just started out talking about how wild Kirby comics were, and then some Steranko, and then everyone seemed to agree that Mazzucchelli ripped Toth off (maybe, who knows). I could never really tell what the point of anything was, and the one or two times I opened my mouth I said I thought most 70’s Kirby stories were terribly written and just lame stories, unless you were high. Whoa! That ended up being the controversy of the evening for me, although a pleasant one in the end. But I had a good time either way–I like all these guys, and who cares if the 70’s Jack Kirby comics have crappy stories? They still look great.

I came out of the panel and found TCAF packed with peeps, so I spent most of the afternoon doing so-so sales. Not TCAF’s fault–let’s face it, no one knows who I am. Especially in Canada. But I’m coming for you, new readers: one by one I will convince you all. Anyway, it was crowded and I sold some books and bought a bunch more. I never think of as cartooning as a money-making thing–until I do something “serious”, like a book that will stay in print and I can earn royalties from, I probably won’t–which makes it easy to relax and not worry too much about sales. As far as I’m concerned, everything at this point is practice. I made a lot of mistakes before and during TCAF, but I have been studiously jotting them down–by SPX I will be superhuman.

Where was I? Okay so after the show closed for the day we did one of my favorite things you can do in Toronto–just walked down the street and picked a place out and ate there. There are restaurants and brewhouses and teeny eateries all over the place, and they all seem to have fascinating food on the menu. I don’t think a single time during the weekend did anyone have a clear idea of where we were going, but we always found something delicious.

In the middle of dinner, who happened by but Chris Pitzer, leading Josh Cotter, Tom Scioli, Jim Rugg, and a person I’d never met who might be named Bill.  I hope so–Bill’s a good name.  [UPDATE: It's "Dave." Still not a bad name.] Anyway, we shamed them into sitting with us and tipped back more delicious beers–that’s when I made the mistake of bringing up my earlier Kirby comments.  Jim had been at the panel, and had made some points I liked, so I brought it up.  But whoa! I think I accidentally offended Tom, who is a cool dude and a big Kirby guy.  Does any of this make sense?  Hopefully we smoothed it over later, because I like Tom and he definitely knows what he’s talking about. 

And I LOVE Jim Rugg.  He’s got a big brain and an interesting take on things, and I always love to hear the direction he comes from.  He also made me blush all the way to my toes after dinner, when walking down the street he told me, “Whatever it is you think you’re practicing or getting ready for, you’re there and it’s time to start taking yourself seriously.”  That’s actually a pretty liberal paraphrase, probably halfway between what he said and what I wanted to hear, but I loved it.  I am hoping that later in life, when I am filthy rich, I will point back to this moment (in the very few interviews I’ll grant) as the turning point between being an aspiring cartoonist and just being a regular old cartoonist.  Thanks Jim Rugg you RIP!

I wasn’t sure what picture from my Flickr set to use next, but I have to give it up at this point to Naseem Hrab possibly my new favorite Torontonian. After dinner we ended up at Chip Zdarsky’s party at a bar called Pilot, where pretty much everyone was. I met people I’d loved for ages like Jay Stephens, but then we started talking to some girls and that was it for chatting with cartoonists. I think Jay would understand. The girls were led by the lovely Naseem, mightly lady-love of also-mighty Kean Soo, and they invited us to some Korean-style karaoke. Wow did this night just get perfect or what?! So off we went, and in a trice ended up in a giant room crammed with people singing karaoke. Man that was so much fun.

The discovery of the night was Derek Kirk Kim, who is a total karaoke stud. This is speaking as a karaoke stud, mind you–the dude has moves. In fact, pretty much everyone did–the song choices were uncommonly terrible, and the mikes moved freely around the room, with people collaborating when they weren’t sure. I did the “Ghostbusters” theme with someone, then “Lust For Life” with Kean, and later on me and Scott C. NAILED “Sister Christian,” which was probably the highlight of the night for me.

The great thing about hanging with Scott is that he’s like the most fun, positive dude in the world. The bad thing is that all the women in the world want to talk to him–he’s like delicious heroin to them or something. But he’s so loveable–how can you get mad at a guy like that? Also kudos to poor Joe Lambert, who was pretty tired but who we kept dragging along: “I think we can make last call at this place if we hurry–that’s okay, right Joe?”

Speaking of last call, I’m sleepy. Tomorrow the last installment, including my first ever original art sale, more night-time fun-times, trauma at the airport, and more! Excelsior!

See a ton of pictures in my Flickr set, with way less words!

Well Good Gravy, after all my excitement and lack of sleep getting ready for it, TCAF is not only been and gone, but two days gone–heckfire, it’s already Wednesday! As you can see in the photo above (which I swiped from my man Chris Pitzer’s Flickr stream), I came to Toronto ready to conquer it. But in the end, it was I who was slain by sweet Toronto. All my villages were razed; even unto the foundations thereof.

But I will get to the coolness of Toronto in due course, make no mistake. Let us begin at the start of the beginning:

Barely in time for TCAF (the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, for those of you who don’t know [hi Mom!]), I finished stapling and folding 120 copies of DHARBIN! #2, the second iteration of my heavily self-referential minicomic. Unlike the first one, this one is good, so you can imagine my excitement in traveling to Canada armed with a book I was actually proud of. Just with the time I saved apologizing to each and every person who bought one, I could be halfway through drawing #3, but instead I spent all that time just relaxing and having fun. OOP–It’s time for the LOST finale. I’ll be back in a little bit.

WHOA! That was some season finale. WHOA! Okay so anyway.

I’ve been to Toronto a couple of times, and both times were AWESOME! But I think this time was the awesomest of them all. What is it about this city? I suspect that I spent all my time in fancy regions of town or something–the idea that all of Toronto is as cool as the parts I was in is mind-melting. I love my home city of Charlotte, but Toronto is like the clean friendly smallishness of Charlotte, except with a ton of culture and stuff to do like New York City. And even better, a ton of people from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. A TON. I kept preventing myself from commenting on it; I’m always accidentally backing into racially charged conversations, OR just outright making fun of something like a jackass and then bending over backwards to apologize. TO AN ENTIRE NATION.

So I was psyched. But on the plane out of Charlotte I went into such a paroxysm of fear upon takeoff that I was exhausted by the time we got to NYC. But then running into Adrian Tomine–who immediately distanced himself–in LaGuardia, followed by Paul Pope and Jimmy Aquino, all of whom were on my flight, made me straighten up and act manly.

Once into town I immediately forgot all about meeting Pitzer to catch the shuttle bus, and caught it all by myself. Fortunately we somehow bumped into each other on the streets of Toronto while both hunting the Toronto Reference Library–both of us like to get our bearings before we get too adventurey. We had lunch at some Italian place, where we struck up an incredible conversation with two older ladies, both Toronto residents, although one was a native Kiwi (”not New Zealander,” she told me) and the other British. We pretty much talked to them for two solid hours, and it was a great relaxed re-intro to the city for us. THEY WERE SO NICE! I wish I could meet them in every city I travel to.

Good God I’m going into too much detail here. It’s still Friday afternoon. I’ll try to speed it up.

After meeting up at The Beguiling, which is about a well-stocked store as you could hope for if you’re into comics, although their superhero section looked kinda anemic. I say “looked”–I didn’t really. Superhero comics are not my bag either, Beguiling! Oh crap I wrote that first sentence all wrong. Man that LOST finale was so good it’s addled my grammar. At any rate, after dinner we met Pope and Jimmy and Mike Dawson and Awesome Marcus Ninja writer and artist Joel Buxton and Shane Heron and had some brewskis down the street. I have to say that one of the only low points of the weekend was not getting to see Paul more–this was really the only time we got to hang out. Oh wait there was a party. But we never got to really get down like in the old days. Plenty of time on the next go-round, but I like that dude.

But who I DID get to spend a lot of time with was Scott Campbell, who me and Mike met up with and headed over to a party at Ryan North’s house with. L’party (that’s how they say party in Canada) was pretty chill, and Ryan’s house is perfect. I met a ton of people there, including Kate Beaton, who I struggled to not embarass myself in front of all weekend, and Chip Zdarsky, who I’m pretty sure I didn’t embarass myself in front of. Oh! And also Roberta Carraro, which was a real blast from the past–not only a blast, but she and Chip were married? ZAP! Color me mystified!  ***NOTE: while hunting the link for Ryan North, I read my first ever (maybe) Dinosaur Comic.  And I LOL-ed!

Okay but let’s get to the convention already. But should I call it a convention? What’s the difference? I’m not sure, but let’s say “festival” instead, which is I think how organizer Christopher Butcher would prefer it. Regardless of what you call it:

What are you kidding me? Totally packed. The Toronto Reference Library is the coolest library of all time, five floors wrapped around a big courtyardy-atriumy thing. Plus I kept imagining Knives Chau and Ramona Flowers jumping around in a great big battle above the convention festival. I had the best seat in the place too–with Scott Campbell and Graham Annable on one side, and Joe Lambert, Chuck McBuck, and Alexis Frederick-Frost on the other; plus a little Alec Longstreth/Greg Means for dessert. AND a little scenic pool behind us, complete with babbling brook sound effects! I’m pretty sure that’s the difference between a convention and a festival. Vive La Difference!

One thing TCAF did NOT have going for it was people wanting to give me money, at least not on the first day. The show opened at ten, but I don’t think I sold my first book until after noon. Although I did give a lot away to buddies I knew or people whose work I just plain loved. I told myself I would be really tough and make everyone pay, but when they pulled their money out I just couldn’t take it. Ray Fenwick walked up and I practically threw one at him–I love that dude. He actually put me at ease in a weird way–I have a hard time meeting people whose stuff I like sometimes, but he started talking so much smack that I was like “okay I know how to do this” and relaxed and smacked back. I was so relieved too–I’m not very good at these quick con interactions, despite my work and kind of ridiculous exposure to bigtime comics types.

Oh man it’s almost midnight. Okay I’d better wrap up this first part. Tomorrow: panel with Frank Santoro, macking on pretty girls, and wild karaoke!  See all the pictures over in my Flickr set!

Slowly I am running out of things to say about SPX, which was a full week ago now, but which is still very much on my mind. Partly because I’m working on a little strip featuring some of the highlights of the weekend, so obviously that is keeping it fresh.

But before I ask you to look at MY pictorial recollections, I invite you to whet your whistles with some people who actually know what the heck they’re doing. While at SPX I only got four new entries for my themed sketchbook, which is ridiculous considering the wealth of great cartoonists that were in the room. However, they were four really good entries. I’d tell you more about them, but WORDS FAIL ME: why not see for yourself instead via the glory of my Flickr site. If this is the first time you’ve heard of this themed sketchbook, then you should just start at the beginning and read the whole thing.

You can skip all this yada-yada below if you like and skip right to the photos on my Flickr site (along with all the yada-yada anyway).

Me and J. Chris Campbell of Wide Awake Press drove up to Richmond, where we stayed with our very hospitalitatious chum Rob Ullman for the night. Then the three of us drove up to the wild metropolis of Bethesda, Maryland!

I had with me my first minicomic (DHARBIN #1) and a print of the much-viewd (thank you!) “26 Cartoonists” strip I did a few months ago.

Lessons I learned:

1) Don’t make a minicomic with a giant oval on the front which you MUST draw on for each copy. This slowed me down like crazy, as I had to stop and sketch on every single one. Not to mention that, sans sketch, it’s a pretty dull cover, which means that people aren’t really likely to pick the book up and discover the more interesting interior. Plus if you sell some to a store, you have to draw on ALL of them, which is also hard.

2) Price everything higher, so that you can wholesale it to dealers and still make a profit. I priced my mini at $2.25, forgetting (despite long experience as a retailer) the wholesale market. Future iterations will be an even $5.

3) Prepare better, as in making signs, being ready for stuff, pre-sketching on stuff, having little things to sell cheap for impulse buys.

4) Thank Chris Pitzer more profusely for being such an excellent host, tablemate, and not the least, publisher. You can thank him in my stead by going to the AdHouse Books site and buying SKYSCRAPERS OF THE MIDWEST before the first print sells out. I finished it last week, and it was AWESOME.

All in all it was a great show, and I’m excited about all the on-the-job training i got as a young cartoonist. I will be beginning tomorrow on new stuff for DHARBIN #2!

But don’t forget to view all those photos, yo!

As I type this, I’m super way behind, after a ridiculous conflation of all possible things that could have gone wrong in printing my first ever mini, entitled shockingly DHARBIN #1. But print it I did, and sell it I will, at this weekend’s SPX in Bethesda Maryland.

I will not only have my mini (DHARBIN #1) available for a paltry $2.25 a pop, BUT ALSO a print of the popular "26 Cartoonists" strip from a few months ago. The print is on fancy creamy paper, 11" x 14", and is as gorgeous as you remember. Price: $5. I know, that’s cheap. You should buy two!

I’m way behind, so I can’t say more, but I’ll have this stuff available for sale when I get back from the show. J. Chris Campbell is on his way here now, and he’ll beat me silly if I make us late. If you’re at SPX, I would be VERY flattered if you would come by the AdHouse Books booth, where I’ll be set up with my men Chris Pitzer, Josh Cotter, and Jim Rugg. I look forward to being flattered by you!

True story! Every word of it. I found out about the ersatz event just a couple of days earlier, through someone I know who’s involved with the Mint Museum in some way. “How in the world does no one know about this?” I asked naively, but I did indeed check the website; although unfortunately didn’t read very far past “Educator and performing artist Nick Cave has gained an international reputation for his innovative and provocative work…” That’s my guy, I thought.

It was not my guy. But before we found that out, I wish someone had been filming us. Dylan’s not a very smug person, but I certainly can be, and I was brimming with it when we showed up at 10 in the morning, to find a little room filled with maybe 40 art patrons, the youngest of which were maybe in their upper 30’s. Lots of moms, women in floral prints, people who needed help with stairs, etc. Not a single person that we knew–not that that’s so uncommon, but Charlotte is a small town culturally, and we’ve both been Nick Cave fans since high school.

The best moment was when one of the events directors at the Mint inexplicably singled Dylan and I–who until then had been standing alone peering around trying to figure out what the heck was going on–out and introduced herself. She seemed surprised to see us: “How did you hear about the event?” I wanted to tell her to fire her public relations firm, but held my tongue, flattered that she seemed so excited to welcome us. Turns out it was just a rarity to see strangers (especially males in their 30’s) at one of these events.

But the BEST part was when Dylan and I decided to go “grab some primo seats”, as almost no one had sat down in the small theatre where the lecture was going to occur. Fools! We grabbed two front row seats, almost within an arm’s reach of the lectern. Amazing!! Dylan unpacked his sweet medium-format camera and fretted a little about how close we were, in case the shutter and winder were too loud. He even took a couple of test pictures from different parts of the room, although it was such a small room that you could hear the “click” from everywhere.

But even BESTER was when the woman politely asked us to move back a row, because we were in Nick Cave’s seats! In our new position, I could have, without even bending forward, given Mr. Cave a neck massage, or brush his long hair for him, or whatever. But it was at this point when I started noticing a lot of attention being paid to a bemused looking black man, who hovered suspiciously around this “Nick Cave”-designated seat, and was addressed numerous times as “Nick.” But THIS is what MY Nick Cave looks like:

And THIS is what this OTHER Cave looked like.

He seemed like a nice enough guy; don’t get me wrong. But I did catch him numerous times looking at us as if wondering what the hell we were doing there. At this point I was wondering too; then I realized that I was holding a copy of Nick Cave’s 1989 novel “And The Ass Saw The Angel,” which I had brought in case I got a chance to meet Mr. Cave (although if we’d stayed I almost certainly would have had this newer, less-Australian Cave sign it just for fun).

When I explained all this to Dylan, he pointed out that either we left BEFORE things got started, or we’d have to sit through the whole thing out of politeness’ sake. He made it clear that he had no interest in anything called a “Sound Suit” (this Cave’s claim to fame) if it wasn’t by OUR Nick Cave. So off we went. But now that we were all showered and breakfasted and ready for Saturday morning, it seemed a shape to waste the drizzly misty morning, so we repaired to the Common Market’s back porch, where I enjoyed a delicious Schneider Weisse. Just look at that label!

Tune in next week, when Dylan and I pay $65 apiece for Paul Simon tickets, only to find it was a fundraiser for the bow-tied conservative politician! Hijinks galore!

You can see the cartoon bigger on my Flickr page, where there is also lots of other stuff.

I say Witness! Tomorrrow morning (September 22) at 9am, I’ll be on WFAE as part of their monthly “Average Joe” segment. The short version is that, rather than talking to people who are experts in their field ABOUT their fields, they talk to some schmoes (in this case, “joes”) about whatever. In this case, I believe it will mostly be about politics, considering the impending election; although surely there will be some discussion of the recent economic disasters, which none of us average joes will know the first thing about.

If you’re not from around here and would like to listen, I do believe they have a streaming broadcast at their website. I hope that someone out in the wide world will witness this first-ever foray for me into the world of the average. I will try to bring back a souvenir of some kind.

ALSO, I have posted some brand-darn new drawings to my ever-swelling Flickr site, which will either delight or depress you, depending on which you look at. Tip: stick to delight whenever possible.