Gee Mister, I really liked your book

This is, I'm pretty sure, my first comic ever. Death: The High Cost of Living #1, a spin-off of the immensely popular Sandman series. I can't remember if Kam bought it for me or if he suggested it and I bought it myself. It was about ten years ago, maybe a little bit more. (It's dated 1993 but I bought it as a back issue). It is now (drumroll please)... signed by the author. Wahooo!

The Neil Gaiman signing was great. Neil said at the time, and later on his blog that the small(ish) number of people and relaxed feeling made it 'like signings used to be'. Time to chat with those who wanted to chat. Guh. Perhaps I should have rehearsed beforehand. I dunno, maybe pointing out that he was signing my very first comic would have been a good point to mention. Oh well.

This one's got my name on it!



If you can't read that, it's The Books of Magic. This is what the current printing of the cover looks like - remind you of anything?

Mal and Kam have some photos from the Gaslight books signing on the Impact Comics website. After that was over I picked Kam up from work and we headed to ANU for Part 2. The talk was held in a large Manning Clark lecture theatre, not packed but quite a crowd, a couple of hundred maybe. Kam estimated he would know around 70% of the people there by name (customers past and present). We were shown a preview and some other promo material for the movie Mirrormask, which looks very interesting. Neil read an excerpt from the soon to be released Anansi Boys. Then there was some Q&A time. The questions from the audience were pretty geeky but they made for good, interesting, and entertaining answers. This was largely because Neil has clearly done this kind of thing a lot and knows the kind of stuff his fans are interested in hearing. The session took about an hour all up. As we left, a huge line formed in the foyer for more book signing. It must be exhausting to face a line like that.

I'm so glad I went, I got a real buzz out of the meeting of the Man and the signing of the comics and the general giggling like a fool. I kind of feel a bit silly about it but I have to admit that I love being a fangirl. I also enjoyed the rush to finish reading a few books in the past two weeks. I finished Neverwhere the other day (awesome) and I've moved within the fantasty genre, on to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (yes Jo, finally!). I've only read the first few of very many chapters, and I'm suprised - not unpleasantly - by, of all things, a bit of a Jane Austen vibe. In a book about the last two true magicians in England. Really.