The rest of the weekend was a whirlwind. I did two signings on Saturday, the first at Cartoon Books and then at the Scholastic booth. In the morning, I went downstairs to the panel rooms and drew a page of Fone Bone & Thorn for the Comic Book  Legal defense Fund to auction off.

This is the winner of the auction…Alan Gill! Alan fearlessly joined in the bidding and not only ended up with a one-of-a-kind piece of art, but he helped the Defense Fund. The Fund is for defending the First Amendment rights of comic book creators, publishers, and store owners. Hard as it is to believe, there are still people who think comics are not art, should only be for very little children, and even want to ban them. For more information, check out the CBLDF website.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Saturday signings:

This is our autograph line filling up the aisle as far as the eye can see. 

Sunday,  I had to do a BONE reading.  I’ve read a few pages aloud before this, but not really “doing a reading” in front of kids and parents.  I chose the color pages that originally comprised the comic book BONE #3 (now chapter 3 of Out From Boneville), where Fone Bone and Thorn do some chores around the cabin in preparation for Gran’ma Ben’s return home.  It was a lot harder to sustain than I thought. I’m definitely no Neil Gaiman, but everyone laughed in all the right places.  You can see a report on the panel by Edward Liu at the Toon Zone. After the reading I went to the last – - and most chaotic signing of the show. Wow.

In just this one picture, there is the guy in red jacket – - known to me only as The Bard – - who has collected the signatures of all living artists who have ever worked on Captain Marvel on the red poster on the podium;  and in unrelated pandemonium, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson can be seen laughing and shouting something at me. The size of the crowd around the booth was hilarious.

There is a video podcast on the ifanboy website that will give you a good sense of what it was like being on the show floor, and the ifanboy guys talk to a lot of cartoonists. There is a short interview with me at the Cartoon Books booth at the end of the podcast. Click here to see it. 

I'm out! I escaped from the Javits Center with my cousins from Connecticut who came down to see the show.What better way to end a weekend of comic books than with hot dogs followed by a round of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream? Hope everyone had a good time. I did – - I even got the onions I like in the spicy tomato sauce!  My mission is complete. I'll be back, New York!