World Enough and Time

I love good comic book art, and from time to time, when opportunity and finances come together (even in the thinnest stretch of the concept), I have indulged in buying original comic book art - either an original page from a favourite comic, or sketches by a favourite artist.

I was taking about this recently with my friend Mark, in Toronto, who has the best comic book art collection I know. We were comparing and showing each other our treasures. He has some of the best art ever - including a Moebius piece I would give my left arm for all over again - but I have something he doesn't have: an original Frank Miller page, from his early Spider-Man work at Marvel. With one of the earliest appearances of Ben Urich.

Because I was discussing this with March at Fan Expo, I decided to look though my art collection again - it's been sitting in a box in my locker downstairs, ignored and (hopefully not) mouldering. I looked at the art, and thought how I've been wanting it on my walls for many years, but couldn't afford to get it framed. So I picked my two favourite pieces - the Frank Miller Spider-Man page, and a page by Charles Vess from issue #19 of The Sandman, and I took them to my local framing shop near the library in Ottawa South, and I paid the big bucks to get them properly mounted and framed. And I am thrilled by this.

Dan, the young man who took my order and helped me choose frames, probably wasn't even born when Frank Miller drew that Spider-Manpage in 1981, but he was suitably impressed - said he'd never seen original comic book pages before. I felt happy and privileged, that I own this wonderful thing.

I have other original comic book pages. Maybe some day I'll frame them, too. I'd like to frame some comic books themselves, like you see sometimes on television. (Like Peter's Red Lantern on the wall in Fringe.) Maybe IKEA would have frames more or less the right size? Comics are a little oddly shaped for framing.

More humbly, I took a beautiful sketch of ( Batman... ) that Tim Sale did for me, and framed it in a cheap Zeller's frame, and put it on my bedroom wall.

Where I think it looks like a million dollars, even though it's a very simple sketch - what a difference real talent makes: a few strokes of a pen, and Batman is alive on the paper.

Spent half the day, rather pleasantly, on the train with explodedteabag, maaseru and gamergrrl, going to Toronto for FanExpo 2010.

FanExpo: Toronto's annual comic book/gaming/anime/sf extravaganza.

I just got back from the X-Men panel, held by various X-Men writers, editors and artists. I feel like such a fangirl: all my enhthusiasms aroused. They said Magneto is and will be important in at least two major plotlines coming up: yay! And there will be Gambit material. My two favourite Marvel characters: I done died and gone to heaven. I didn't have the nerve to ask about Pete Wisdom. Two out of three isn't bad.

Coming back to my hotel room in the Royal York, there were several fans in the elevator, one in a "Blackest Night" T-shirt, and a man and a women who were obviously tourists. I'm sure they thought I was a mundane too. When the other fans go off, the women said, "I never knew there were so many people into comic books. Did you see all the people in costumes?"

"I thought maybe Canadians celebrated Halloween early," said the man.

Highlights at the con so far:

• We saw the Impala from Supernatural. explodedteabag and I fangirled over it like two demented fools. We also saw the Batmobile from the 1960s TV show, but I didn't care about that.
  
• Many great costumes. Waiting in line to get into the building, we were standing with Hawkeye and Wiccan from The Young Avengers. Wiccan said that Hulkling would be at the con with them tomorrow.
  
• I bought graphic novels at a great price.