Waiting For Godmother

And now a post that I shoulda, coulda and meanta make a couple months ago but didn't 'cause I kept getting sidetracked... Yeah!!! Castle Waiting is back!!!

That's a scan of the cover of the first issue which I swiped (the scan not the actual comic!) from the Mile High Comics site. That's Lady Jain and her little green son, Pindar in the foreground and Simon of 'Simple' fame way in the back feeding chickens. Lady Jain is looking a little Kyra Sedgwick-like in this picture. Kyra Sedgwick is a fine actress even if her mouth is the producer of the single worst Southern accent in bad accent history. Watching 'The Closer' makes my teeth hurt! Seriously, Kyra Sedgwick's southern accent makes Dick Van Dyke's cockney accent sit up and say "'Ere wot!? Now that's one bloomin' 'orrible accent, that is!" However, Kyra Sedgwick and her accent are not the subject of this post...

Yeah!!! Castle Waiting is back!!!

In case you didn't know it already, Linda Medley's Castle Waiting is one of the coolest comics around and is just now returning to regular publication after a much too long absence. The story revolves around Lady Jain and the other fairy tale-ish characters who live in the once upon a time brier-bound title castle that used to be the home of the Sleeping Beauty. Castle Waiting is the rare bird amongst modern day comic books in that it's legitimately all-ages friendly (as opposed to just being dumbed down) is girl-friendly (but not in an overly cutesy, Sanrio, 'please let me club it 'til it bleeds' way) and is non-comic book reader friendly, which means that you don't have to have a scholarly knowledge of the last 40 years worth of comic book minutia to understand what's going on and also don't need to read 18 different titles every month to get 'the whole story.' And it's not published by Marvel so right away you know that it at least has a chance of being readable. Ha, Ha! I kid Marvel, but only 'cause they really, really suck!

Anyway, the second issue of the newest series is already out and you should totally be buying it. Demand that your local comic book retailer order you a copy of each issue and go to Linda Medley's official site to find out more about the comic and the artist and to order the back issue collections that you may have missed!

And now, in honor of Castle Waiting's return, I give you my own fairy tale story about the day I met Linda Medley!

Once upon a time, I met Linda Medley. But before that some other stuff happened. Once upon a time before the time that I met Linda Medley I bought some great old-fashioned and never used scrap books at a flea market or thrift store or something. I don't really know how to describe the kind of scrap book I'm talking about, but you've probably all seen them before. They have kind of soft vinyl-y covers and are filled with big square loose leaf pages of cheap pulpy paper that was probably already turning yellowish brown before they ever made it off the assembly lines and are all held together by a piece of yarn threaded through pages and covers and tied into a nice bow in the front. I bought four or five of them real cheap with the intention of doing something cool and arty with them, but lacking abilities to accomplish said intentions the scrap books just continued to lie around empty for many months.

And then I heard that the Trilogy Tour was coming to the annual Hero Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. The Trilogy Tour was basically the artists Jeff Smith (of 'Bone' fame), Jill Thompson (creator of 'Scary Godmother' and all around well-known comic artist type) and Linda Medley. I hadn't planned on attending the convention, but Charlotte's only a hop, skip and a four hour drive from where I live and the thought of meeting some of my favorite artists face to face was too good to pass up so attend I did. And I had the totally awesome idea of taking along a few scrap book pages and seeing if the artists would be willing to do a few sketches on them for me. I had this huge idea about travelling the countryside, attending shows and conventions, meeting all my favorite comic book creators and getting them to fill my scrap books full of neat little sketches! How cool would that be! That would be very cool is how cool that would be! Unfortunately, there were a few problems...

First problem hit me right quickly. Time and money. If I could afford to travel the countryside on a whim, doing nothing but hitting comic cons and eating at Sonics (that was the second part of the awesome idea. I really love cherry lime-ades!) then in all honesty I would've been doing that since birth. Second problem- talented and creative people who's work I admire and on whom I may or may not be crushing make me all tongue-tied and nervous and a little bit crazy stalker like. To skip ahead to the happy ending, both Linda Medley and Jill Thompson (Jeff Smith was AWOL while I was there) were kind enough to draw something for me, but it took me about four hours to work up the nerve to approach either of them and I almost passed out while doing it. The only reason it happened at all was because the people I was with were starting to get very hungry and one of them finally just picked me up by my belt hoops and tossed me directly at Jill Thompson. I more or less had to say something to the woman after this.

This all happened back in 1998. Since that time I have gotten sketches from... let me see... zero more artists! I get a big burst of courage about once every ten years so I'm sure I'll be adding some new drawings to the scrap books any year now! Maybe it would be easier if I only asked artists who's work I hate... that would be very punk of me!

So here's a blast from the past for you today- an original comic story I doodled back in the day detailing my time at the 1998 Charlotte Heroes Con which was to be the first in a series describing all of my sketch-collecting misadventures. Would that I weren't such a wuss! My scanner was way too small to scan these pages (when will scanner manufacturers finally wise up and start making their products large enough to accommodate the pages of a 1950's scrap book?) so you're stuck with blurry photographs, sorry! It's the camera that makes all my drawings look like stick figures. Please make note that this entire story is absolutely 100% true (I have a photo of me and the guy in the rubber Cap suit to prove it) with the exception of the cape that I'm wearing. I don't wear capes. Too flash! Also note that the only resemblance that the real Ms's Thompson and Medley bear to my renditions of them are the fact that one of them had long red hair and one had short black hair. I can only do two different women's faces, one with eyes and one without. I tossed a coin to see who got which-

And as a bonus, here's the actual picture that Linda Medley drew for me. It's Rackham from Castle Waiting-

And as a bonus bonus, here's the (badly cropped 'cause of scanner dimensions) pic that Jill Thompson did for me. It's the Boozle from her Scary Godmother cast-

A big, big thank you to both of these ladies for their drawings! I've treasured them ever since. And don't worry, in spite of all that maniacal giggling I was doing at the time, I've hardly ever really stabbed anyone at all!

Now, when is a new Scary Godmother title gonna come out?