I've been a Londoner more than half my life now and in that time I've gotten to know the city pretty well, but there are still....

THINGS ABOUT LONDON I LEARNED FROM COMICS

1) When flying in from the US, airliners routinely land on the River Thames:

Images copyright DC Comics and Marvel Comics. More geographical insights as I uncover them.

6 April 2007 * link

This is, I suppose, a blog. I had no intention of ever starting one, honest. It all began when someone asked see this illo by Neil (see item below), who gave permission to post it saying he'd quite like to see it again himself. I've had a website for years, though I rarely update it, so I had somewhere to post it. Only it didn't seem right to just post it bare without at least a little bit of explanatory text to provide context. Then, of course, it struck me that the combined illo'n'text really needed to be embedded in some sort of larger format rather than just standing alone. Fire up a text editor, type out some vanilla HTML, and in not much time at all there was the skeleton of this page. Having created it it seemed a shame not to add in a sidebar with a few links and, well, here we are.

This is somewhere to post the occasional thing I want to point others to. I don't see it as something I'll be adding posts to very often, but if I do I'll probably spruce up the design a bit.


WATCHDOGS

A few days ago, in a comment thread on the Nielsen Hayden's MAKING LIGHT, Neil Gaiman wrote that:

I'm pretty sure my first published illustration was a Watchmen gag in an Avedon Carol fanzine, unless my memory has gone...

Neil -- That very illo has been pinned to my office notice board - about a foot from where I'm sitting - for years. You dated it, too - 29/9/86. I used to keep a diary back then, but a quick look at the appropriate page has no mention of you at all. Seems I spent the day visiting various museums with Stu Shiffman, over from the US. We used to see you pretty often back then so I suppose we could've all met up at a pub afterwards. Strange that my diary doesn't mention it if we did, though. The thing is, I was there when you drew that picture, and it was either in a pub or at a con. The nearest entry I can find that mentions you is a week earlier at UKCAC '86, the only comics con Avedon and I ever attended. Perhaps you drew it there and misdated it? Curious.

Rob -- I remember meeting Stu with you, so my guess is that it was done in the pub that evening. I'm pretty sure I didn't do it at UKCAC. I interviewed Alan and Dave about Watchmen there, though. In a suit, as befitting the occasion.