Intersection of two of my favorit-est things: Jhonen Vasquez and Penny Arcade.
Tycho and Gabe went to the Emerald City Comic Con last weekend, and Tycho (with whom I have exchanged email (about The Long Winters)) writes about the portent-filled meeting thusly:
The convention was pretty entertaining overall, though we had less visitors the next day. It seems like the set of people who attend comic conventions and the set of people who crave the Super Bowl (which I guess is basically the best bowl out there) would be fairly small, but I haven’t actually done a study. At any rate, I will tell you that the set of people who crave the Super Bowl (see above) and the people who crave Jhonen Vasquez is practically nonexistent. The man projects a line where no line existed – he sits down, and immediately the line goes woawrown. It was pretty interesting to hear stories from readers about monstrous things he’s done and his beastly acts toward them, and then a half an hour later to have him come over and ask us if we want shirts and hang out for like twenty minutes talking about videogames and Strawberry Shortcake. Of course, if he’s rooted in one spot for very long, there’s the woawrown again, and he has magically grafted his line to the front of our booth which gave us a real prestige. And there was this this sort of angelic autumn princess that would follow him, which made me follow them, just so I could hold the hem of her gossamer cape and think about decay.
He was really nice to us, by the way. Oh! And His name is pronounced Jonen, not Zhonen or Yonen or however the fuck I kept saying it when I was there. Eventually I realized that I had fucked it up (“That’s now how my name is pronounced”) but then I had to stick to it just to prove I was dedicated. It’s like, look Frenchy. I don’t know what the fuck kind of sound a J and an H make, okay? You’re rocking some Russian consonant activity.
He gave me an armful of Fillerbunny merchandise, and I was happy to give him everything his tubercular frame could support. I was particularly happy to hand over the Obsidian Spur, as even when I was writing it I thought the notion of a gothic line dancing troupe might appeal to him. Indeed, he might be the only person alive for whom such a concept has appeal.
Ah, thank you, Tycho; I’ve always wondered how to spell the sound a lightsaber makes. I need waaaaaaaay more practice making onomatopoeic words.
Not only does Tycho’s writing make me laugh, he reminds me that I still need to pick up the third Invader Zim DVD…
In related news, Jhonen Vasquez’s official site is both unfinished and very funny. But you probably knew that already.