Wednesday, October 07, 2009

I get by with a little help from my friends

I have myself the bestest pals. Mind you, I like bein' pals with everybody. (Except those senators on the take on Capital Hill with whom I have made myself powerful enemies). But if you really think you wanna be a really good pal with a little stuffed bull, well, I'm not bribeable, but I am impressed by free gifts of hot waffles, twinberry syrup, creamery butter, and original art.

That's only one of my favorite friends Boston's favorite son of fun, Kevin Church, Mister BeaucoupKevin, Lord of The Rack*, Ground Control for The Loneliest Astronauts**, and...um...the guy who writes She Died in Terrebonne***. (There! Did I get in all my up-to-date plugs in, Mister C.?) It's not even my birthday, and Kevin sent me a dandy present: a commissioned color sketch of Ben Grimm as Blackbeard drawn by my favoritest artist, Colleen Coover! It's an overload of delightful-osity!

Blackbeard Thing (from Fantastic Four #5), by Colleen Coover
Arrrr, click me to blow me up, ye scurvy dog!


Man oh man, that some kind of wonderful. Thank you Kevin, thank you Colleen! You guys, much like Ben Grimm, totally rock.

Looks like I've got quite a good start on my "Wall o' Colleen Coover" with this and some of my other Colleen art, like the wonderful portrait of yours little stuffed truly she sent me for my birthday:

Bully, by Colleen Coover
Click image to bubble-size


And there's the Colleen Coover Zatanna sketch I won on eBay from Comix4Sight, auctioning of lovely collectible things to raise funds to help John Ostrander in his fight against glaucoma.

Zatanna, by Colleen Coover


It's a wonderful piece of art and a fantastic cause, and you can help too: Comix4Sight has more great items up for bidding on eBay that'll contribute to the fundraising.

So, I have the bestest pals, and the niftiest original art. I've got just about everything I need in the world!

Almost everything. (Hint, hint:)



*Co-created with Benjamin Birdie.
**Co-created with Ming Doyle.
***Co-created with T. J. Kirsch.
****And don't forget (even tho' I momentarily did!) Lydia, co-created with Max Riffner.



3 comments:

Dean said...

You got the Zatanna? Lucky!

Unknown said...

Huh, I thought Zantanna spoke each individual word backwards, but left the syntax unreversed. It threw me for a loop the first time I read one of her invocations.

Brian Smith said...

Darn it, alan, I went looking for the "Bumpkin Buzz" strip from a few-months-ago issue of "Comics Buyer's Guide" to show you, but if CBG puts those online, they do a great job of hiding them. Anyway, Brian Douglas Ahern uses Buzz to make your point: Zatanna always used to get the Silver Age footnote "Read Zatanna's spell backwards!" when it should have said "Read each word of Zatanna's spell backwards!"

I've seen it done both ways, but I like the backward-syntax way better; it's a little easier to read, and there's something more magical in my mind about committing to the end of your sentence before you start saying it. And in spells like "Change fire into rose petals" or whatever, it feels right to have "change" be at the end as the activation keyword. YES I THINK ABOUT THIS TOO MUCH

(And I was also wondering who got the Zatanna.)