Remember that author signing I didn't want to jinx? I didn't jinx it.
Berkeley Breathed, creator of Bloom County, Outland, and Opus, is promoting his new children's book Mars Needs Moms! by doing a midwest signing, Indianapolis being one of the stops. Unfortunately, he was scheduled for 2pm, and wasn't sure what kind of line I would run into, so sadly I left Kathy behind. I showed up over an hour early, before the store opened even, and there were only two people in front of me.
One of the ladies of Kids Ink (the store in question) came out and was nice enough to give numbered tickets so we didn't have to wait so long. In fact, one of the people wasn't waiting for Mr. Breathed, he wanted to get some Harry Potter cards. But most of us waited nonetheless. As promised, because I like to help the store doing the signing, I bought a copy of Mars Needs Moms! from them. I learned that Mr. Breathed had family in town that he was spending time with them. Also, I met local cartoonist Seth I Pederson and learned about his website for his comics that he was working on and wrote the address on a post-it that I had Kathy and my names on for the personalisations. I even had some lemonade from a small stand set up outside.
Finally, he arrived. He gave a talk before signing about how working in comics and seeing Jon Stewart, their jobs are to tear things down, and he wanted to be involved in building something up, which is why he's writing children's books. Also, he spoke of being a parent and it changed his writing style (he wants to back and cut half the dialogue out of his previous books) I've got the pictures I took on Flickr here and here, one of my favorites being where he got a plush of Bill the Cat and explained his origins to the young boy. Fortunately, he was also signing "Bloom County" books (he signed one of mine) and I got a picture with him! W00t!
After leaving, I remembered that I had Seth's address on the post-it left on Mr. Breathed's desk after the signing. After realizing I had no other way to know how to get to it, I headed back to the shop and wrote it down on another piece of paper, hastily explaining to Mr. Breathed what I was doing. So he's got your address too, Seth. Hope he checks your site out. And I got extra pictures with him and the 2 fans ahead of me in line, they (and heck, anybody) has permission to get the pictures and use them, unless they're going to change them for their own sick tastes. But I feel bad I didn't tell Mr. Breathed how much he meant to me. How his college strip Academia Waltz was one of the two inspirations for my strip Academia Nuts! I'm also sorry I didn't see Mark Dooley whose seminal strip "Whoom County" was inspired by Breathed. Dang it!