Amazing Adventures in Emeryville!

Me, Amber and Judd with our book cover (disclaimer: the actual book is not that large).

I had a terrific time talking about Marvel Super Stories: Amazing Adventures with Judd Winick and Amber Padilla at the Barnes & Noble in Emeryville, Calif. Tuesday night. We were three of the 15 cartoonists who contributed stories to the anthology, and just hanging with them was great! The fact that there was an audience there to watch us talk was even better.

We got a lot of good questions that sparked some fun discussions ("Which Marvel character would you want to be?" Judd: Spider-Man. Amber: Storm. Me: My first thought was Thor, then switched to Captain America). 

No doubt talking about something deep, cool and clever.

One questioner asked how we constructed our stories. We all agreed that character came first: if you can take a character from A through B to C, the rest is ornamentation. However, I also said that I'm often inspired by particular images that come to me; I don't always know what they mean, but I know they're going into the story somehow, and I pulled out a page of original art to show one such image.

I was also happy to meet my friend Christy Vaca for the first time, in the way that people can be friends online for years without actually meeting because this is the 21st century. So glad she came out for the evening! 

My friend Christy! We spent some time talking about how she knows someone who met Eleanor Roosevelt, which improves my standing in the "Six Degrees of Separation" game immensely! I'm now like four degrees from people like Churchill and Stalin!

I sketched the Marvel character Beast, who appears in my story. Christy took it home.

And we even sold a few copies of A Fire Story, including a couple to a woman who said she recommended it to high school students studying nonfiction comics, which I really appreciate.

Nice night. Good audience. Great company. Happy to be a part of this project!