But that didn't stop the Hairy Tarantula from being a very busy comic shop.

I arrived at the signing about a half hour later than I'd wanted to, even catching a worried call on the way out the door from Leon asking, "Where the heck are you?"

Actually, I'd received a call earlier from Tara who told me she wasn't going to be able to come down after work because she was afraid that her basement apartment might flood as it had done earlier that week. I told her to quit making excuses and to show up and that I'd swing by her place and unclog any leaves from the drain at the bottom of the steps leading into her apartment. I wanted everybody out, ex-girl friends and all. No excuses. So I scraped gunk from a drain in the rain and rolled in to the shop around 3:30 to bright hellos. Big crowd for a rainy day. Upon entering the back room, I was greeted to a booming "It's Mark Oakley, Everyone!", from Stephen Geigen-Miller, (the Xeno's Arrow co-creator whose name I'd swiped on my way through airport security when I visited Texas last November. See the comment section from issue 34 for that story). Anyway, as I settled into my seat at the artist's table, I could tell this was going to be good.

And it was! Aside from the superb complimentary food table with smoked salmon and everything put out by Leon for customers and guests alike, the signing itself was fantastic. Warm and smart and surprisingly cool. Everybody and everything felt good there, and you could see this reflected in all the faces. I was surrounded by artists and friends, some of whom I'd not seen in many months, and the readers who showed up were wonderful. At this point in time, honestly, the only people still reading comics are those who do so without needing to be on a bandwagon, or have any school of lemmings kind of energy tainting their decision making process. As such, nearly all of the readers I meet now tend to have a great deal of personal focus. --There are not many Gap customers at my appearances. I'm not just saying this to win points with readers; I genuinely find that the people I meet on the other side of the table these days are strong in both spirit and mind; people who have their own paths, know it, and walk them with the kind of purpose which other people recognize and pause to make way for while they meander through their confused Gap purchasing lives. Interesting people.

(My favorites: The cute young girl with the pet rat crawling in and out of her handbag, and the fellow with improv comedy experience and a deck of hillarious Hello Kitty Tarot cards based on the well known and intensely awful Rider-Waite deck.)

I got about a third of a page drawn. (Heath looking contemplative over a piece of scenery; the opening to a sweet little three pager where she and Varkias will end up hollering at each other in comedic vehemence about the finer points of what love is supposed to mean. I'll post that here when it's done.)

While Tara Tallan, (Galaxion), didn't show, Tara Wells did, and she showered me with birthday gifts, including a great Dead Can Dance live CD and an amazing chocolate bar made with top-notch super-pure organic ingredients, and as Stephen observed in reading the package more carefully, was apparently also hand crafted by pretty virgins. While I'm not convinced of this last, it still made for a cool gift and it inspired sounds of awe and wonder from the crowd of people I shared it with. (Thanks, Tara!)

Jeff 'the Machine' Wasson showed up and was typically good to have around. Around 9:00, I left both he and Greg jamming out some brand new "Caped & the Cowled" material, which sounded great to me. I can't wait to see some of that stuff hammered out. (Maybe at our now regular Toronto comics meetings, which all & sundry seemed to agree were a Good Idea to have.)

We're thinking about meeting twice a month, (though I'm pushing for once a week), at this funky little coffee house next to the Beguiling & Honest Ed's. --Or, I was thinking, may even be more appropriate, in the Hairy 'T' itself. I'm sure Leon would be up for that, and keep the shop open later to accommodate that kind of thing. I'll have to ask him. I'll run it by him later.

Anyway, that's going to be happening on Fridays unless somebody has a pressing need otherwise. These things are flexible. I suspect there will be email warnings and such sent out. I'll talk more with Jeff and firm things up, and then I want this thing in action before the next ten days are up.

I was over at Tara's later that evening for a quick dinner, and she said, "Hm. I sort of feel left out. I'd like to go down too."

To which I responded, "Well, yeah. You should come. --You've been doing some excellent sculpture recently. You should bring down some of your work. That'd be great. Sculpture and comics have been running hand in hand for ages now."

Heck, I know if I could get another Tara piece sculpted for me, I'd be very pleased. Hmm.

Which reminds me. . .

I must ask Eric to ship me a copy of that amazing new Rubel piece he did last year. I think it's time to go into production on that thing. . .

So I was thinking, we should make the scene open to anybody who has a comic related art form they've dedicated their free time/lives to. These ideas and this kind of energy all stem from the same source, so we ought to celebrate it all of it at once. This way, we might get Jonathan out periodically as well. (I know that I'd love to do art work for any game Jonathan is working on. Just give me the time. . .)

Ah, whatever. It's all good. I just want to see the creative juices flowing in everybody, cuz it spurs me on as well. I've spent nearly two years distracted by a variety of powerful events and interests. But all of them seem to have come to a natural close, leaving me with a head full of comics ideas and hands itching to type and draw in earnest once again!

I got Leon to take Greg up to the roof top of the comic shop overlooking Yonge and Dundas, (the dirty, grimy heart of the city). We stood there in the rain, next to a rusted out piece of giant metal signage from the forties which lies there abandoned and askew on the rooftop. You can almost make out the old type face lettering from where the metal rusted unevenly beneath the hand painted sign. And so the three of us stood there, talking and gazing down upon all those scurrying consumers and raindrop dodgers and Gap customers. And everybody. We stood there and watched until one of us laughed about how great it would be to have capes flowing behind us while we squinted across the city.

And that was Friday.
 

Take care, all!
 

-Mark

Sunday June 3rd, 2001 2:14 A.M.

Whelp, Saturday at the Hairy 'T' was actually pretty slow, but I blame myself.

Instead of sitting front & center and smiling at people as they walked in, I spent the first couple of hours of my time off to one side hunkered down in a head to head with Kagan McLeod of the new self-published book which has recently been popping up in local stores. "Infinite KungFu" is a very well drawn book by 22 year old Kagan, and you wouldn't think to look at it that he does press runs of only 300. --Man, print on demand technology has gotten REALLY good. Color cover, perfect blacks. Really, really great looking.

The books cost him $2.80 per unit and he sells them for $4.00. He sold out of the first run of #1 a week ago, and is low on #2's.

He asked me a bunch of questions about distribution, etc., and so we talked forever, ignoring the steady flow of weekend customers in grand style. Oh well. I did my real thing on Friday and I didn't want to swallow up any attention Kagan might have for himself during his time in the spot light, even though I seemed to take up most of his time anyway with our little 'How To' workshop.

After Kagan had to take off, Rob and his entourage dropped by to pay me a visit, briefly interrupting their quest for another big theater to line up in front of when the next Star Wars installment graces a screen near you. (Heaven help the new theater!) It was nice to chat with him again. (Gads, I realize just how infrequently I see people! If it weren't for email and phones and such, I might as well be living in an igloo.)

After rob took off, I hunkered down even more to finish sketching all the copies of T&K 35 I'd sold Leon a week earlier. Then I finished off the page I'd started the day before, (looks nice!). Even so, I found myself in constant conversation with a couple of readers who sat with me while I drew, letting me talk myself raw. Phew! Finally, I rolled back home with a couple of used video tapes Leon told me to buy from him.

Once home, I watched one of the videos; a retarded and yet thoroughly enjoyable Michelle Yeoh flick about evil water barons and kung/gun-fu in a nuclear burn-out future hell. Thus dazed, I fell asleep.

-Hey! I checked out "As If," the online comic. Good stuff! It does indeed, as somebody mentioned, remind me of Tara Tallon's work. And the twice weekly schedule puts me to shame. (And most of you, too! Argh! This is exactly the kind of energy I'm interested in getting flowing! -It'll be neat when some of us start putting up on-line work with regularity.) I'm going to be linking to 'Mimi & Jet Wolf's' site shortly from the T&K site when I update my own sorry ass in a day or so. (My Cell Phone rant was getting stale.)

So that's news from the front. I'm going to get up now. (Lap tops are great for when you're too snoozy to get out of bed.) Then I'm going to finish off that painting for TPB #4 which has been sitting neglected for three days now. . .

Yours, Very Hungry and Rather Full of Pee,

-Mark

A week has passed. . .

Saturday, June 9th 2001

Whelp, the first comics gathering, held at the quiet little restaurant next to Honest Ed's and the Beguiling, was a fine little success, I think. I know I came home afterwards and got to drawing inspired pages right away, and I remain eager to draw this morning. (In fact, I just loaded the upgraded Photoshop onto my system for the first time and scanned some of last night's sketches and generally got my arse in gear to do some real work. Sure beats hanging around with room mates and the barbecue this fine Saturday afternoon. (Sigh.)

No. Honestly. I actually WANT to be up here in my studio hammering out drawings. --And that's the whole point of jumping onto this strange new creative comics energy which has been welling up in this town of late. I plan to fan it into a fire before year's end!

--And boy! I sure don't drink coffee very often. After having honed my diet into a very healthy state, added to the kung fu work-outs, my body has hardened up and I feel awake and wonderful pretty much all the time now. And boy! Coffee, which I rarely drank before, now kicks me like a donkey when I drink it these days. Holy smokes! Three cups of Java from our absent-minded, though friendly waiter, (I hope we get him again at our next meeting), had me positively zippy. I'm surprised I could hold my pencil without generating those little volcanic seismo-graph type lines.

Thanks also to everybody who showed. You know who you are, (or maybe you don't. --To those of you who may have started drinking heavily after I took off and woke up this bright morning in an ally with no recollection of last night, Jeff has kindly posted a list of names on the group news site, so you can check back and possibly get a clue as to where you might have lost your pants last evening.)

Either way, this comics gathering was a good exercise which I hope to repeat. Relaxing too, on that excellent summer night in the middle of hip-and-layed-back-town around Honest Ed's. Almost felt like Paris, except with less attitude. And I felt like going dancing! Haven't done that in a million years, I can tell you!

Anyway, I've scanned a couple of the sketches I made from last night's meeting, and dropped some tone on one of them cuz it was bugging me that I couldn't get the effect I was after while sitting at a wobbling plastic table with no Letraset products in sight. . .

Somebody should also scan our stupid Dinner Comix. Or burn them. Either would suit me. Well, actually, burning them would be preferable, but I do know how my fellow Toronto artists love the things. Out of consideration for them, I'll try to complain a little less enthusiastically in the future. 

For those of you who don't know this about me, one of the few things in this world which I generally over-react to are 'Dinner Comix'. --That is, the reverse side of a paper place mat or other piece of paper which is passed around a group of artists during the dinner after a convention and upon which is played a 'fun' little game. Each artist draws one panel, and passes it to the next person. The resulting random comics narrative is sometimes quite interesting in a stream of consciousness kind of way, although usually they just end up confusing and pointless, and for some baffling reason which to this day remains for me entirely inexplicable, Dinner Comix nearly always feature a pair of talking dead fish. Go figure.

Anyway, when it comes to my turn, I never fail to come up with the most un-clever & poorly drawn nonsense, often with somebody leaning over my shoulder to watch, who only moments before might have thought highly of my illustration skills, only to have their illusions shattered by my clumsy penmanship. I hate that. Thus, in an effort to stem the flow of embarrassment as the sheet of paper makes its way around the table, I sign my panel with somebody else's name. --If you ever come across a drawing by some bloke named "Cecil E. MacMillan", you'll know I was probably groaning in a restaurant somewhere, glaring at the person who started the 'fun' game. (Usually that person is Tara Tallan, my past studio-mate, who could always manage with a fork in one hand to come up with the most brilliant and beautifully drawn panels which not only looked great, but actually managed made sense of talking fish-skeletons. I strongly suspect that she also took some quiet glee in seeing my dismay when the stupid thing would land in front of me. I find people are often entertained when I moan and complain about something. I don't understand this either).

And so I can't stand Dinner Comix. Of course, one day I may come to see Dinner Comix as a unique challenge upon which to hone a razor sharp attention, but the fact of the matter is that after a convention where I've already drawn a hundred or more sketches, I usually just want to relax and eat my dinner in peace.

Though, a comics gathering in a coffee shop next to Honest Ed's just off Bloor in the relaxed & hip district, when you're not exhausted from a day of conventioneering; comic artists are in fact quite jazzed and raring to go. I know I was! So next time, rather than be forced to draw a bunch of dead fish uttering moronic non-sequiturs, I think I'll try to arrive with a page or two of short scripted work we can draw while we spill our drinks and ruin the line work. (What was with that cruddy table? -Though, mind you, it did have the best natural drainage system of any outdoor furniture I've ever seen. Honestly! I rather hoped somebody would spill their drink just so that I might witness the black-hole-like spill-safety feature of the table in full drain-sucking action.)

Okay. Okay. That's enough for now. (Is it just me or have I been writing these things extra long recently?)

Till next time, do-gooders!

-Mark

Toronto, Early Spring, 2001

Oh yeah. I posted some more art by readers. A bunch of it came from a class of very young cartoonists. Cool stuff. Go check it out!

Read previous editorials and some responses to them.