And We Shall March

The Beanworld Dress Showed Itself Off For Cory & Larry Marder!

Because it was healthier to go out into the world and get on with things rather than call in sick and sit on the couch crying while making my way through a bottle of Whaler's and a dvd pile of our favorite movies, after leaving work yesterday I attended the CBLDF event at Golden Apple. It was great fun! And the moolah raised necessary.

I took no pictures because I didn't bring the camera due to the level of paranoia I have with the dress, which I've only worn once before. The camera is big & old-school, it's heavy, it has a strap, I didn't want the strap rubbing on the dress. My level of paranoia over the dress is so vast that while geeking out over ! Bill Morrison ! at the event, I was still cognizant enough to let him know that if any of that red wine sloshing in that little plastic cup of his spilled upon the dress? He dies. He understood, as did anybody else with liquid near me who got the Fish Eye. I also wore the big coat to protect the dress during the terrifying walk between the parking space and the front door (total distance - 9 feet), because of one single drop of rain landed on that dress I would have had to hunt down and murder mother nature. Nobody wants that.

So these pictures were not taken by me. They come courtesy of (and belong to) Pinguino, who was very nice about it when Moi, a stranger, lept upon her and asked if she would please o please take a picture of Me & the Marders & the Beanworld Dress.

You can't see it all, but my accessories include the Chris Ware purse, the Carolyln Forsman banned books bracelet and the Souther Salazar necklace, all of which I showed to the Marders as part of my unrelenting campaign to get more quality female-centered comics merchandise into marketplace.

Anywho, click on the link to Pinguino's site. She's an artist & pro photog with great shots in her gallery of Gaiman & Rodriguez at the Scream Awards. I *love* the Rodriguez shot. Trust me, it's not easy to get a good head shot, let alone a drama shot, at a red carpet event. Nice stuff.

Meanwhile, I am in the final stretch. No really, I mean it this time. I'm leaving on a jet plane and this *must* be done and programmed in to roll via autoposts before I go. Plus, if I don't end this soon a whole bunch of people are going to come to my house and do a beat down. As one said in passing recently - It's not the New Yorker, it's just a blog. What the fuck is WRONG with you? I was all, !you wound me! and made with the pouty, trembling bottom lip. But that admonition was true words spoken. Not that I'll ever admit that. In fact, I'll even deny writing this confession.

 

I should have had Unclassified take a picture the day she showed up unannounced when I was standing in the middle of the living room surrounded by various marked-up drafts laid out on the floor in a complicated pattern only I grok. She goes "I'll call you," turned around and left. (She's seen this before, and it wigs her out.) Jonathan Strange would understand, that's all I gotta say.

Am I The Only One Who Didn't Know There's A Golliwogg In The Black Dossier?

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.