A Comedy of Errors

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Booyah! I went to “An Evening With Mark Waid”. Saw Mr Comic Shop Owner guy (Bernard of G&B Comics) and I’m more than sure he thinks I’m a freakish fangirl by now or something since I keep appearing at the comic panels and talks. I just do especially for this month since it’s Singapore Writers Festival and I’m there anyway… ANYWHO, The Pod is a super special restricted area of the library where you have to be registered to enter since it’s only accessible by one lift and only when it’s “beep”ed in by the staff.

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Registered and went up! Oh yes, I got free comics written by Waid, the older comics sponsored by G&B. Rather surprised they could find that many copies since it is that old but in really good condition, it’s one of those 90s aged comics! So thus, it was a somewhat informal affair where you could ask questions and he would answer. There were plenty of questions asked and some of them I heard during last weekend’s Saturday panel (people would always ask questions about continuity and inspiration, you see).

And then… I heard it.

A super long question about something I can’t remember but it was a generic question to me that you can use in any writer’s talk/panel.

It’s not the question that made me go “OH GOOD GRIEF!” for as I turned around, I looked like this O_O. It was that odd person. He always turns up at talks like these and from another writer who had gone to events/etc before… Yes, it was him. I bet the library staff knows about him somewhat but you can’t “ban” a person from a public event anyway and he had signed up for the talk.

For he usually comes for the free food.

There wasn’t a buffet line for this talk since it wasn’t a book launch… Just a talk… but… more on this later.

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It was actually a pretty cozy session and the people there were quite a varied bunch. One old guy sat next to me and I have no idea what he was doing there because he wasn’t listening to the talk at all and was sitting on the free comics he got that made me go “I’m not seeing this, I’m concentrating on the talk, I AM NOT SEEING YOU BEND AND CRINKLE THE PAGES LIKE OH EM GEE… GASP, GAAAAASSP!”.

In my mind of course because that would have been even more distracting if I screamed than his improper treatment of comic books.

Questions were asked (and the odd guy kept trying to ask questions but was told tactfully by the lovely library staff that others wanted to ask too) and answered. Most of them were similar to the ones on Saturday regarding continuity and inspiration to write it. However, there was one question that was pretty amusing since the guy asked [IRREDEEMABLE COMIC SPOILER] why did he destroy Singapore? The answer was that Singapore was a densely populated island that wasn’t part of the US and yet it contributed to the global economy. So besides the dramatic bit of millions of people being killed, with Singapore gone, it would affect the world. DUH DUH DUH.

He did do a lot of research when writing, it seems.

And then it was nearly the end of his session and the last few questions were asked, for some reason the library got a message from a shy fan to ask him a question and it went like this, “What was your inspiration for Death, the character?” and we knew that it was actually a question for Neil Gaiman who was coming uh at the time of this post, pretty much today. OH WELL, that was a brief bit of mistaken identities (or perhaps the fan who sent in the message didn’t know the dates) and then off we went to get our comics signed!

Row by row, we queued up. The old man next to me kept asking me what he was supposed to do with his comic and I told him to get it signed and he kept saying where since the art was all on it and there’s no space.

I don’t know what to say, really.

Anyway, he cut the queue somehow and got it signed and went away.

In the meantime, the odd guy went to the back and wanted to eat the box of food (it was some pastries or puffs from what I see the type of box) reserved for Mark Waid and entourage. Luckily the librarian managed to stop him rather tactfully that it wasn’t for him and then he went away from it although he begged for one piece. Like, the heck?

Right, well it was then my row so I queued up too but I had a question that I didn’t ask when they were fielding questions and answers since I could be such a nervous ball of randomness when faced with writers (unless I’ve met them more than a few times).

So my turn and I got my comics signed and asked him something… Okay, fine maybe I’ll state it here, paraphrasing it since I’m sure other people might be interested in the answer too.

Sarah: So um, like I don’t know if I should ask the question now or after when you finished signing other people’s stuff.

Mark: Go ahead! (says gesturing and says something that he might be able to answer while he signed)

Sarah: Um, uh I wanna be a comic writer and this is a continuation from what you said on Saturday where a person can go to conventions and stuff and I’m kinda like… How do international writers do to get attention then?

Mark: Webcomics

Sarah: Webcomics???

Mark: Webcomics.

Okay, so that was written but you had to totally know how it was said because when he said webcomics, it was like those moments where things go “HAWWWWW”, the chorus of angels bits you hear in movies and all with light and junk.

SO YES, it’s possible! And webcomics, THEY ACTUALLY DO READ WEBCOMICS. Yaaaay. And thus, I didn’t keel over in a ball of randomness from asking that question and I’ll totally take that tip.

After all, Gail Simone came two years ago in the last Singapore Writers Fest and I totally took her tip… And heh, yes, what she said is totally working out for me now (no, I didn’t post up what her tip was).

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sarah

Well, this is seriously Sarah and that's all you need to know for now.

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