I didn't know until paging through the book while standing in line at the Kevin O'Neill signing hosted by Golden Apple Comics on Saturday. He shows up toward the end, I don't know what he's doing, I have no idea what he's saying (but at least it didn't look like throwback jigaboo dialog), his participation in the story looked fairly hefty. By that I mean he wasn't in the background, he was interacting significantly with the prime players in the story; for one he clearly rescued the fleeing white people...
I did ask O'Neill about it in a general sense. His answers were clearly informed by some of the history of this character (he had that down...he *knew* what he was talking about, very impressive). Because there was a line and no time, I didn't have an opportunity to dig and see if he has awareness of or thoughts on The Rest Of It. It is "the rest of it" that interests moi.
Going to do something probably stupid. Because of research things going on elsewhere I won't have time to read TBD before late December at the earliest. But I want to ramble a little bit about the golli element in general. It is probably stupid to do this before having read the book, but I'm gonna anyway.
As this will take effort - and those who have been following along remember my saying anything that takes effort is not going to happen in this space very often during the month of November - this post is split into two parts. You're reading the easy one now. The one that takes effort I will try to get to during the holiday break.
Will share these bits now... O'Neill said the golli is going to show up again in future League works set in different eras. (The first thing that popped into moi mind was Huey & Co.) He also said he and Moore are keenly interested to see how people react to their golli, particularly in America.
Heh.
Meanwhile, the store had a raffle going on, a buck a ticket, all proceeds going to the CBLDF. I never win anything ever in contests, but I bought a few tickets with the money that was supposed to be used for laundry quarters. It's for a good cause. But lo! I won a Watchman poster and an absolute edition of League vol. 2!! Woo! So the poster goes to the nephews, mainly to horrify my sister, and the absolute that's already in the house becomes the loaner copy. The newly-won autographed by O'Neill version becomes the one that never leaves the house.
Still regret that I didn't have time to dive through the longboxes and bring a couple of the Marshal Law along, but I went to the event straight from the day job.
Pictures!
Here's Ryan announcing me winning the absolute, and since I'm trying to take a decent picture and not listening, I don't immediately realize he's saying I won.
Because that pic sucks, here's a better one.
Let me backtrack a bit. The Golden Apple worker bees at the register were doing their due diligence as people purchased copies of the book. The blue cover, they explained, was a limited edition that would never be reprinted. The black cover, which is the one I picked (not noticing there was another version), would be reprinted at some point down the line, probably for the absolute edition. Since the blue cover was ugly to me, I picked the black one. After bitching that they're doing variants for hardcovers now, the register guy repeated that the blue one was the rare, not to be repeated collectible one. I was beginning to wonder if I should offer to swear out an affidavit that no, really, I like the black one better. Then he rang up the purchase. It was pretty funny...until you wonder if this means that variant covers are back? And now they're pulling that crap with $30 hardcovers? Good lord.
Here's a sucky pic of O'Neill signing.
Here's a better pic of him drawing Mina in my book.
I told him to draw whatever he wanted. Now that I think about it, I don't know why I didn't ask him to draw Nemo, who is my fave character in the League. I'll put that down to my mind being hijacked by the discovery of a Golli in 3-D. Did I mention that the Golli appears in the 3-D section of the new book, and his airship appears to be a cue ball?
Here is how Golden Apple decorated the backdrop for the event. Nice.
They needed more books! Open more books!
Here's one of the promo items made for staff at the event. They do stuff like that at Golden Apple. For the McCloud gathering they made Zot t-shirts, and for WeHo they made 30 Days of Night shirts.
Here's an arty shot of the huge silver surfer in the store.
That's a damn good shot.
Here's one of the signs hanging beneath the surfer.
More, later.
