The Big Con: Comically Speaking

Just whopping big ole thanks to everyone who came out and saw me, Sophie Brookover, and the resident husband at ComicCon on Sunday.  Special thanks to Matt Holm for joining me for lunch, to Tim Travaglini for chatting, to Charise Mericle Harper for the new issues of Fashion Kitty, to Shawn Farrell for knowing that I even had a talk, and to Laurie Halse Anderson for sending her entirely delightful, charming, intelligent, and witty daughter.

Sophie and I will post the handouts to our talks online momentarily.  I will also make our talk into a lovely podcast for everyone’s use and entertainment.

I didn’t get to see as much of this year’s Con as I would have liked (doggone Saturday hours) but I did manage to randomly wander into a massive Jeff Kinney talk about Wimpy Kid.  It was lots of fun to hear him talk about selling the books before he hit it big.  And from the questions he received from kids I gathered two interesting facts:

Fact #1:  When asked what kind of kid the movie studios were looking for in terms of the upcoming Wimpy Kid film, Kinney replied, "We’re looking for a young Larry David.  Ask your parents."

Fact #2:  A girl asked if there was a part for a girl in the film.  The surprising answer was that a "Daria-like character" had been added for the movie.  Those of you familiar with the MTV series will know what that means.

On the floor I gathered a couple materials on my person that I thought look particularly interesting.  For example, what do you think of when you see this cover?:

That book was taken from the Hyperion booth.  And it was there that I got to read a little of the new Jellaby book Jellaby: Monster in the City.  They gave me the Smith picture book because they were closing up for the day.  I kind of wish I’d had the guts to ask for the new Jellaby too, but that seemed pushy.  Ah well.  It’ll be in bookstores in April anyway.

I’ve been enjoying talk of Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, the upcoming Harper Collins evil unicorn tale, coming out soon.  So I was a little surprised to find that this was being offered by Random House:

Spoiler Alert:  This unicorn is not evil.  Could you tell?  I think it was the eyelashes that gave it away for me.