And Then Canada Exploded

I had an amazing time at Strange Adventures' annual Free Comic Book Day. Cal (the owner of the store) and his crew have been doing it for nigh-on eight years, and every year it seems to get a little bigger and a little better. There're even more plans for next year, involving diagrams and world domination and such. Shh, you didn't hear it from me. I was on hand with a bunch of other artist folk, to do drawings for kids and sign books and just be a part of trying to spread the word about the fantastic art form known as comics. However, the requests I got for sketches this year were a little different than last year:

YES. OH MY GOD, THEY WERE OUT TO GET ME THIS YEAR. For some reason, maybe because I was the only girl drawing last year, I got fairly "girly" requests. Mostly for drawings of superheroines or Death from Sandman. This year, I DREW PREDATOR. Yes, from the Ahnold movie.

But I had so much fun doing it! I got to draw things that I don't normally draw, and that's can either be really fun or really frustrating. Fortunately there must've been something in the water, because I was actually able to churn out some decent sketches. I took phone-photos of all of them, so they're behind the cut:


The first drawing of the day. A small child asked for a drawing of Superman, then went off to grab some free comics. After he came back, I handed him the drawing and he said he didn't want a drawing of Superman, he wanted a drawing of Batman. This is why I will never have children. Whatever. I still drew him Batman and his sister got the Superman drawing.

The Batman drawing, obviously.

OH LAWD SOME GUY ASKED FOR PREDATOR. Funnily enough, tho, this ended up being one of my favourite sketches of the day. I really enjoyed drawing it. Yay dreads!

While I was drawing Venom, my boyfriend was drawing an adorable mermaid. :P

Ahaha, a kid came up with the Comic Festival! anthology flipped open to Kate Beaton's entry, and asked for a drawing of her Bluebeard the Pirate. If I ever get the chance to talk to her, I will tell her this story and she will think I am stupid. :D



The three Spiderman drawings requested. I was told it's weird I draw him with ears. But there's a person under the mask! He should have ears!

Silver Fox lady... I mentioned how happy I was that she was fully covered, then was told this was the "Marvel Adventures" version of her, and the real version is much more ... exposed. Yaycomics!

A Naruto kid.

I drew this under protest! :D

Archie and Betty share a soda. A lot of the kids seemed to gravitate towards asking for characters from the Free Comics themselves.

Getting a request for one of your own characters is awesome.

Nick was kind enough to send me a proper scan of this Wonder Woman drawing.

Oh man, I'm so sad this blurry picture is the only picture I have of this drawing! It was the second-last drawing I did of the day, and I loved drawing it, for whatever reason. I would like to draw a Supergirl comic, I think. *_*

AHHHHH! Gally from Battlechasers! MY COMIC BOOK CHILDHOOD! :DDDD Oh man, flipping through that comic was such a nostalgic moment for me ... I was completely thrilled. My table-mate Mike Holmes drew Red Monika as a flat chested teenager, which was just awesome.

The day passed by so quickly, and just as I was preparing to take a lunch break, Cal's wife Sandy came by and told us that the free comics (20,000 comics!) were very nearly gone. It was insane, just mobs of people. I kept drawing for a bit, finally winding down around 3pm or so. The last group of people waiting for sketches were really sweet, which I appreciated. A girl whose name I've forgotten even came by and gave me a pack of light blue col-erase pencils, the very pencils I draw my comics with (and are sometimes very hard to find in Halifax). After wrapping everything up, Cal treated the volunteers and artists to a dinner at a local pub, and told us that we'd be having our own Free Comic Book Day there, which I thought was great, as I hadn't had much time to browse the free comics before sitting down to draw. OUR Free Comic Book Day turned out to be something very different than what I was expecting, and I got to take home a Local (Brian Wood/Ryan Kelly) hardback, a signed Darwyn Cooke artbook, the Dark Tower (Peter David/Jae Lee) hardback collection and a Claire Wendling sketchbook as a thank you. I was really just happy to take part in FCBD, and having a nice meal at the end of the day was payment enough, so I was really blown away by Strange Adventures' generosity. They are completely lovely.

Anyway, I had a blast, and I hope everyone else did too. I'll probably post my contribution to Comic Festival!'s FCBD anthology fairly soon, so those who didn't get a chance to get their paws on that awesome free comic will be able to see it.