CURIOUS CITY HAS MOVED !
Curious City has relocated their blog and website. Please stop by and see us HERE.

(And thanks to Blogger for years of fabness).

Some sweet folks nominated Curious City for one of Portland's Most Influential People for "getting creators, readers, and fans of children's books on the same page." Well, thanks and gosh, Portland Phoenix and mysterious somebodies.

Bronx Community College (BCC) and Kids Comic Con band together for another brilliant blend of kids, comics, and education with their upcoming The Science of Superheroes Expo. Students will research superheroes' abilities and how science fact and science fiction play into their powers. Results from that study will be presented in a science expo at BCC in Spring 2010.

We are happy to offer the graphic novel, The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea as a fictional jumping off point for studying the science of cloning. One of the powers of Korea's legendary hero, Hong Kil Dong was the ability to clone himself so that he could lead his Robin Hood-like army against the corrupt nobles in every corner of Korea.

Korea has been one of the world’s leading cloning research nations and elsewhere in the region, China is making strides in stem cell and regenerative medicines. The growth in these areas of science are outlined in a recent article in The Economist.

Educators interested in the title and supporting materials should contact Curious City at 207-699-2755 or [email protected].

A Hamlet Look-Alike Contest? Could it be so?

We here in the Curious City lair are hard at work designing a photo contest for Erin Dionne's hilarious middle grade novel, The Total Tragedy of a Girl Named Hamlet.

Illustrator, Jamie Hogan just delivered a Yorick skull (complete with accessories) to be used in the design of the promotion.

Soon you too will be able to gaze on poor Yorick for prosperity and prizes. Stay tuned, my dear Bard-ites...

Photograph of Erin Dionne contemplating the Total Tragedy of the prototype...

Seems like we do not totally stink at creating games and activities because Candlewick Press has had us back for a new round of book activities--this time for the indomitable Stink Moody and his friends.

Proud to have had a hand in Sniff it Out: Hunt for Stink’s Treasure, The Walking Stink-O-Pedia: Test your Stink I.Q., Stink’s Solar System Superhero Scramble, and Stink’s Cross-the-Solar-System Crossword. The complete will soon to be posted at Stink' website...

A super stinky thank you to my brilliant 2nd-grade nephew who helped me brainstorm all things Stink and my creative 2nd-grade niece who helped decide what pictures would look best with which games. Below is my nephews mind-blowing Stink maze design which sadly did not make it into the official kit, but you can try it at home...

Phillip Hoose and Claudette Colvin, 2009 National Book Awards Dinner from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

Hope you heart does all the leaps mine did and does seeing Phil Hoose and Claudette Colvin side-by-side accepting the National Book Award for Young People's Literature.

Our dear friend, Phillip Hoose walked away with a National Book Award tonight for his stunning portrait of a brave woman, Claudette Colvin.

Claudette stood regal by Phil's side as he accepted the award and thanked her repeatedly for taking a chance on him, for letting him tell her story.

Could be the hour of 3AM, could be the champagne, could be all the darn delight and pride I am feeling, but I cannot come up with any more to say yet. Just all too grand.

With a round of "New York City Here We Come" set to the tune of Buck Owen's Kansas City Song, Phillip Hoose and his band Chipped Enamel closed the send-off party for the National Book Awards.

The lyric of "they've got a whole lot of awards and I'm gonna get me some" brought down the house of fellow writers, musicians, activists, librarians, friends, and other readers.

Phil was especially honored to have the Talbot family present at the event. Phil's book is dedicated to Jerry Talbot, Maine legislator, innovator, historian, and friend to so many.

Phillip Hoose's book Claudette Colvin: Twice Towards Justice is a finalist for the National Book Award. He and Claudette Colvin will be strolling into the ceremony on Wednesday night and Curious City will not be far behind camera and shimmery shoes at the ready.

Three days of 80 degree weather and 100's of thousands of readers for Anne Sibley O'Brien and Ed Briant at the Miami Book Fair.

We booked both for Alex Simmon's Kids Comic Con held within the larger festival.



Anne's work from The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea was accepted in the Color of Comics Exhibit at Miami Dade where she appeared with other artists that have included characters of color in starring roles in their comics.



Ed was there to support his fabulous picture books / comic books Don't Look Now and If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now from Roaring Brook Press.

(Photos from Miami Book Fair Flickr)

Standing in the darkened gallery space taking down Ed Briant's exhibit of illustrations from Don't Look Now, I had to stop and look.

Had my plot worked? Had I managed to but a bit of whipped cream on the melting bowl of bookselling ice cream--a.k.a. the dread book signing.

Let's start at the beginning. Ed Briant came to me wanting to do a book signing for his candy-colored picture book / graphic novel, Don't Look Now (Roaring Brook Press). In the near wordless panels, two boys jealous over the perceived sizes of their respective bowls of ice cream begin a tug of war that splits their world and drops them into a land of monsters.

Choose a Location. As I like to play with story, we held the book signing at a local ice cream shop rather than a bookstore. The ice cream store, we postulated is a bit busier on a Friday night than to local bookseller. Good.

Add an Extra Component. We needed another attraction, so Ed agreed to print out 11 x 17 spreads from the book and pop them into simple gallery clip frames. We now had a books signing and gallery opening. Good.

Anticipate Low Turnout. But what if we still had a poor turnout? Well, we did. Despite our books signing cleverness about 25 people came the night of the signing and 12 books were sold.





Reward People for Marketing. But one other addition allowed this book signing to have a nice dollop of hot fudge. I invited libraries in the area to invite their patrons to the book signing with a bit of a carrot. We would ask people to sign a guest book noting not their name, but their favorite library. The top three libraries mentioned would win signed books and a print. I provided the school and public libraries with color posters to hang and B&W flyers to hand to patrons.

So standing there in the darkened gallery (and ice cream shop) this morning, I cracked open the guest book. Pages and pages were filled with library names. Young (and not so) patrons from 25 regional libraries had declared themselves.

So what? How does that sell books?

Exposure is King. Well, it may or it may not, but every school and public library in the state was exposed to Ed Briant's new book on their listserve three times and patrons across systems went home with flyers featuring Ed's creations.


Create a Takeaway. And every visitor to the ice cream shop over the month of the exhibit got to see Ed's work, read the book left there, and take away an activity sheet featuring the book.

A little more effort and the book signing evening of 25 people was expanded to include a broader community of readers. (I can come up with no ice cream analogy here. Anyone?)

VIEW pictures from book signing and visit by King Middle School librarian and readers.

Ancient Punk Farm Documents Revealed
(Source: New York Times 09/15/2579)

Portland, Maine---Archaeologists working at the offices of Curious City, a yet undocumented children's sentient book marketing firm on the submerged ancient city peninsula of Portland, Maine, revealed a layer of 2005 film rolls (a specimen of "film" long lost to antiquity) that contained the lost Punk Farm footage of "Lunch Box."

"Lunch Box" was a person-to-author-live-event utilized before virtual reality allowed author to speak directly into the brains of children thus allowing sentient books, bookstores, children's book promoters , and live author appearances to pass peacefully into non-existence. (see NYT Glossary for preceding terms).

Pictured in the photos is the media sensation of the 2000's, Jarrett Krosoczka whose 2009 LUNCH LADY graphic novel turned the entire children's book industry into "everyone's lunch." He is seen here communing with a small cadre of live, warm-blooded fans in 2005 before his international fandom allowed him to appear only by hologram to school children throughout these United Virtual States and the Formally Muslim Territories.

The "Punk Farm" series produced originally in book sentient form crossed boundaries into the founding days of You Tube and other Social Media. Later versions of the "book" would, of course, change both the state of education and "children's literature" from a "CD Gen" to a "Holo Gen" product-- redefining children's entertainment for a century.


Unidentified organizers of the person-to-author-live-event "Lunch Box" are pictured in these stationary photographs dresses as "punk rockers," but are left unnamed. Researchers feel that their costume was done in "jest" or "tribute" as the real punk rock movement had moved beyond the costuming of employed, adult citizens.


Also pictured, surprisingly, is the musical legend, Travis James Humphrey, who in is first years as a performer, thought it was a "lark," according to archisto'publiscito' Camen Memorando, "to perform outside his Aloha-Billy genre he founded." Pictured with TJH is his wife, Shonna Humphrey, also a success in the sentient book world before it's evolution. Researchers are still trying to unravel why Travis James Humphrey appears in the images costumed as a large adult sheep.

Will this discovery allow scholars to link Travis James Humphrey to the invention of the HoloBook by the equally influential Jarrett Krosoczka or was this one random stop of the rise of two holo-stars?

The New York Times has recreated a Flickr format to allow you to review the footage of media antiquity.

Photos also revealed an escalation in mood and hair height amongst children after being exposed to Punk Farm. Archaeologists are still trying to unravel this mystery. Some experts suspect mind altering drugs laced early editions of Punk Farm and are sending researchers through the archives of sentient picture books of the 21st century to lick pages for traces of
said substances.

Curious City was honored to be interviewed by Mr. Kim from MBC Global Media (Korea) for a documentary on the legendary Korean figure, Hong Kil Dong.

As the camera rolled and volumes of tea were consumed, I talked about the trends in graphic novels for children, why American superheroes are loners, and all the places that Anne Sibley O'Brien's The Legend of Hong Kil Dong: The Robin Hood of Korea has taken me and its readers.

I recalled being on stage with Anne at the Smithsonian, sipping green tea with the Korean Cultural Ambassador at the Korean embassy, and all the conversations I have had with kids and educators about the legend (and its ties to the creation of Han Gul, the Korean written language). I explained that a book like this allows educators and young readers to explore a history and culture in a way that is not allowed in day-to-day curriculum.

Mr. Kim and his translator and assistant, Jaxon are spending a week following Anne Sibley O'Brien as part of a documentary about the spread of the legend of Hong Kil Dong around the world. Why has it spread? Because it is a story about a boy rejecting the injustices done him by the class system and rising to expose and fight injustice in the four corners of 16th Century Korea. A superhero, indeed.

VIEW pictures of our day spent at Curious City and at fabulous Breakwater School where the Middle School opened its doors to Anne and MBC.

And VIEW Mr. Kim and Jaxon interviewing Jay Piscopo, the creator of The Undersea Adventures of Capt'n Eli about American superheroes as part of the documentary.

Took a sweet side trip up to Bowdoin College Museum of Art to see the final days of the Barbara Cooney Exhibit. Oooed and awed my way through the minute details of her work alongside the beatific illustrator, Jamie Hogan.

We stood dumbfounded by a group of tiny birds gathered in the gutter in an out-of-the-way corner of Cooney's picture book, Eleanor. Watch for the attentive, busy animals in almost every single spread she creates.

Was also enamored with the lupines painted on Chinese silk for Miss Rumphius. Proud to say, I have worked with Penguin USA and Raising Readers to include Miss Rumphius in an anthology of picture books by Maine authors and illustrators that will be distributed to Maine five-year-olds in 2010. Cooney's lupines grace the end papers of a collection that also includes Robert McCloskey, Amy MacDonald, Lynn Plourde, and Scott Nash.

It was one thing to see this exhibit and another to see it alongside the ever-curious-eye of Jamie Hogan. She finds wonder and inspiration in every detail of life. If you have not spied her Blog, JamiePeeps, you must. It is a perfect reflection of her creative life, mindset, and process.

Thanks to Jamie for this sketch of me made while I was sketching a wall carving from Iraq circa 859 BC. Under Jamie's pencil, I need not go on a diet.

Illustration by Grace Lin from Where the Mountain Meets the Moon

Do you as a creator with a new book have to appear places or go on tour?

I will answer that question with a question (if I may). Is the time and money spent planning appearances the best use of your time and money? Is there another way you can spend your valuable commodities that has a broader impact and reach?

Take the grand Grace Lin for instance. She is a super star when she appears anywhere, but with her new book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon she is hoping not to travel as much as she did for previous books. What to do instead?

How about an authorless author event? Can an author create a way for bookstores, libraries, or organizations to celebrate the release of her book without her being there? Yes. An author can create an event kit that let's readers play with the plot, experience a series of teasers, and WANT the book.

For an event kit for Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon we created Minli's Journey. The event allows reader to play the role of Minli. They mirror her quest to find the Old Man of the Moon to solicit his help in changing her family's fortune. Readers are given a bag of tools and as they journey through the room are given 10 puzzles to solve. They solve the puzzles by using items in their tool bag or things they pick up along the way. In the end they are rewarded with a mysterious gift, the meaning of which can only be determined by reading the book.

A test of the event kit with a group of young readers proved our wee thesis. As soon as the event ended, the readers had their faces buried in the book wanting to know what all the teasers in the event meant and why they were grasping a large pearled marble.

You can download the event kit HERE and see a slideshow of readers engaging in the event HERE.

SO MY ADVICE... take your readers on a journey in events (as well as in print). But don't make the journey yourself.

Inspiring Young Citizens:
The Library as a Forum for Engagement

Sunday, 7/12/09
10:30 am - 12:00 pm
ALA Annual Conference
McCormick Place West, W-190B
Chicago, IL

How do we excite young readers with possibilities for remaking their world without burdening them with responsibility beyond their years? Authors Lita Judge, Anne Sibley O'Brien, and Phillip Hoose, librarian, Kelley McDaniel and children's book advocate, Kirsten Cappy will share books, strategies, and book-specific educational curriculum for engaging young people in age-appropriate social issues and actions. Applications will focus on historical figures and movements that inspire contemporary youth.

Giddy to have an activity kit out with the brilliant folks at Candlewick Press. Nothing like working with the best designers in the country to make you look quite suave.

To be exact it is a Non-Activity Kit for animation genius, Tony Fucile's hilarious picture book, Let's Do Nothing. Characters, Frankie and Sal have worn themselves out by doing everything so they decide to try doing nothing for a change.

Poor bespectacled Frankie's overactive imagination makes him anything but Zen. When told to "be the tree," he imagines being peed on by the dog. When told to "be the heavy, tall Empire State Building" he imagines King Kong mounting his heights.

Given the task of creating an event kit for kids to gather and do, well, nothing, I was stumped. I finally had to tell myself if Tony Fucile (of The Incredibles fame) was coming tomorrow and I was supplying a roomful of kids, what the heck would we do?

Then the ideas came in on cat feet--a balance challenge (thank you yoga), a staring challenge, a "don't make me laugh" challenge and a good-old-American-kids-bored-at-family-parties game of statues. And then my first ever board game--The Game of Nothing (will the Candlewick designer forgive me for this one...).

Please--if you are tempted to do nothing in response to this post, buy the book to get the instructions first.

Just put the final edits on an Activity Kit with my kickin' designer colleague, Jen Steele for the picture book, Adventure Annie Goes to Work.

Author, Toni Buzzeo declares it "spectacular." We will wait and see what illustrator Amy Wummer and the brilliant folks at Penguin think.

Adventure Annie's superheroine adventures are thwarted when Mom gets called into work on a Saturday to find a missing report. Adventure Annie finds adventure, though, in the hunt for the report and in the many other distractions of the office.

This book is a boon for working moms who have to explain that work sometimes has to come first and that with a little bit of compromise and imagination, the change in plans can be (gasp) fun.

The Activity Kit (will be posted here soon) extends that theme by creating ready-made office based activities that can be whipped out at any expected office stay.

Curious City is looking to promoting the book and activity kit to working mom bloggers.

Wee Thoughts for Creators:
-Think about how you make your picture book USEFUL to someone beyond just a good read-aloud
-If you publisher cannot provide an activity kit, use someone like me or a teacher to brainstorm activities. You can likely write the activities yourself (the wunderkind, Toni Buzzeo did in this case).
-Ask your publisher for high res images from the book to jazz-up the activities
-Hire a designer. It is NOT as expensive as you would think. Tips on that (perhaps) later.

Illustration by Amy Wummer.

Website in a hurry? Okay. Website in a hurry and no money tucked aside to make it quite yet? No Problem...?

Author, Peter Gould and I met on his sweet embankment above the Whetstone Brook in Vermont at the breaking of Spring and decided we had this wee problem.

Peter was soon on his way to talk in front of the HPAlliance, an incredible international online Harry Potter fan group that has stayed together to confront the types of real world tyranny that their Hogwarts counterparts battled in fiction.

How to speak in front of these brilliant readers with even more brilliant web connections without a website of your own? Blogger to the rescue. In two hours, we constructed connected Blogger pages that function pretty much like a website. Perfect? No. But all Peter's info is there in a completely editable format for a mere $150 (including the purchase of the swell title font).

Wee Thoughts for Creators:
-Explore the power of Blogger for quickie websites. The application is quite versatile and easy to use these days.
-Know that Blogger is now 'in like Flynn' with Google so any Blogger posts come up quick nicely in Google searches.
-Explore the "Customize" function of Blogger for all sorts of cool things to appear in the columns.
-Want more than the fonts in your own drop-down? Try My Fonts Category Page. You type in your name or phrase and they show it to you in 100's of fonts. A good time waster if nothing else.

Curious City threw out the Wizard of Oz references with tacky abandon at the Spring New England Society for Children's Book Writers and Illustrators.

We liken the pursuit of publication to the trip down the yellow brick road meeting cowards, heroes, witches (good and bad), and a few flying monkeys or two. We likened NYC publishing to the Emerald one--for both its glitter and glam and for our ability to place more hope into our success there then the wizards of publishing could ever deliver on.

We collectively cringed at the figures--the numbers of books published and the percentages of marketing money spent on the "big" books verses the not so. Did we place blame? Oh, no. Although, this business feels taxed and beset on all fronts--writers, illustrators, and publishers are after the same thing--children reading and growing.

We rallied our spirits with the knowledge that we possess the darn ruby slippers--the thing that we have brought with us through this whole strange journey--our stories and our creativity.

What Curious City does COULD be called marketing and COULD be called publicity, but what we do is closer to discovery. Helping creators discover a thread of their story and then helping them discover an audience who will be intrigued by that story and who will share it with their peers. Working hand-in-hand with those grand Wizards of Oz in publishing, we hope to help creators get discovered and read.

Pictured is the patient (and brilliant) audience of creators declaring that sometimes you have to take off the tinted green glasses to see the realities (and possibilities) of Oz.

Phil Hoose and I are just back from a grand trundle down to Salisbury University for the Green Earth Book Awards and the Children's & Young Adult Literature Festival wrapping up a year's celebration of Hey, Little Ant's (Tricycle Press) decade in print.

So much frolic and logic to report, but first up was the surprise appearance at one of the events by one Ian Whisner, a second grader sporting a copy of Phil's book, Hey, Little Ant.

Ian had received an Honorable Mention for his essay in the Hey, Little Ant Essay Challenge last year. He stopped by to tell Phil that he thought Hey, Little Ant was great and to tell Phil he liked to bring bugs to school and, well, yes, a snake now and again.

I happened to have Ian's essay in my bag to show Children's Lit profs and superheros, Patty Dean and Ernie Bond of Salisbury University. Patty and Ernie brought Salisbury on as a sponsor of Essay Challenge and because of their connections with area teachers brought in 1/4 of the 2,000 national essays submitted in the challenge.

I whipped out Ian's essay and said, "You are THIS Ian??" He beamed and agreed to sign his essay for Phil while Phil signed Ian's copy of Hey, Little Ant. Two writers sharing mutal admiration.

Thank you Patty Dean and Ernie Bond for all the fab work you do introducing teachers to children's literature so that they in turn can introduce them to fab young minds like Ian's.

Later that evening, Phil presented the original cover illustration by Debbie Tilley to Salisbury University for their long support of the book and read Ian's essay to the crowd. In his essay, Ian is answering the book's final question--whether or not the boy should squish the ant. Watch Phil read Ian's essay below (and wait through the lost page or you will miss the final great line)!



Wee Thoughts for Creators:
-The hardest thing about self promotion is that you often do not see the results, just as you often never see your readers. Remember that you are touching readers grand little brains and sometimes you migth just be surprised and reminded as Phil and I were here.

-Google your book until your eyes cross. Who likes your book and what are they dong with it? Phil's picture book has been in print for ten years. Until last year, Phil has not idea that an incredible group of educators in Salisbury, MD were using his book to teach teachers. A quite fabulous friendship and partnership has followed opening up the opportunity for a whole series of promotional events.

Anne Sibley O'Brien and I were awarded the fine news that we had received a grant from the Maine Arts Commission (glory me their name) to produce 15 profile postcards to support her outreach for After Gandhi: One Hundred Years of NonViolent Resistance.

Charlesbridge Publishing has already done heroic work for the book producing a stand-alone website, downloadable posters, an ed guide, a book trailer, and a widget. They also did extensive outreach to peace, justice, and social action groups and publications.

Anne Sibley O'Brien, the writer, illustrator, activist that never rests asked, "what can I do and how do I pay for it?"

We decided since the pub had social networking covered, we would reach out to the groups associated with each of the 15 figures and movements profiled in the book. Using Anne's water soluble pastel B&W portraits and the bold, beautiful design choices of the Charlesbridge Publishing art director, Susan Sherman, we are madly at work producing a series of oversized postcards to gift to the social action world.

Bring your address book to the Portland, ME Launch Party on May 1. We will be leading a major postcard writing campaign to activists, educators, and readers. Free prints to anyone that writes a postcard and a free book to the busiest postcard writer.

Advice for Creators:
-After asking yourself who is MOST likely to buy the book, then ask yourself the best means to reach them. Who? Our answer was activists and promoters of the persons profiled. How? We researched addresses and sent the out strongest tool --Anne's striking portraits.

-If you are an illustrator, look at art grants. They often look at grass roots efforts to promote fine art. Promoting your picture book MAY fall into their parameters.

-Do what Anne does, continue to ask "what's next and how do we pay for it?" It is never too late to be promote your titles.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." --Albert Einstein

Author, Charlotte Agell led her televised appearance at The Portland Public Library's First Friday Author Talk (to be broadcast on CTN) with the above quote and the advice that quoting a genius on TV can only make you look good.

Curious City invited 80 King Middle School students who are studying Science Fiction to attend the filming of Charlotte's talk about her YA dystopia novel, Shift. We solicited Charlotte's permission to copy the first 4 chapters for students to read before the event.

Charlotte captivated the students with apologies for the swearing in the book (she never does, but her frustrated character just had to), advice on writing (throw a penguin in for comic relief), the revelation of symbolism (the compass is also a cross), the revelation of hidden meanings (the city of AtroCity is a ...), and encouragement to ask WHAT IF? as a writer.

Charlotte spoke to the gathered students as fellow writers taking down the walls of the author/reader relationship or teacher/student relationship. She further demystified herself and writing in general by talking about her weaknesses as a writer and the odd paths both political and personal that led to the novel.

She really drew the students in when she confessed that she agreed with a middle school student critic that the climax of the novel passed too quickly. She invited students to write that missing chapter for her to post on her website. The offer flew through the room like an electric charge.

The Q&A was equally as compelling as the students had read a portion of the book and the fabulous faculty at King Middle School had worked with them on questions. Questions flew like, "Was Adrian's fascination with birds symbolic of something?"

Read more about how this picture book author/illustrator was pushed to write a cautionary endgame of a novel about a wounded America taken over by a (rather non-Christian) Christian totalitarian government in this fabulous interview.

More Pictures from the event.

Advice for Creators:
-Build your audience for appearances. Don't expect the venue to do all the work. Think about who should be there and what is in for them. In this case, we pitched a "free field trip."
-Give something away. No book sales will be harmed by giving away chapters. (Ask publisher permission, of course.)

kAs a foreigner in the house of Comic Con from the much more tepid world of book trade shows, I wondered often and heartily over the weekend at "fandom." As someone who as a living tries to increase the readership of books for children, I marvel that Graphia (the new haute word for manga, comic books, and graphics novels) has FANS, not readers.

How different a writer's life would be if, say, (our dear departed) John Updike had readers pressing towards him at conventions dressed like Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. I mean, the costume would not be so hard.

I saw many wonders of fandom. Comic Con began in the early morning hours of Friday as I hiked to the Javitz to set up the Nemo Publishing booth. Beside me was a large African American teen sporting a Celtics fleece and a enormous Japanese broadsword over his shoulder. He was given only an eye roll from security as we passed side by side into the show.

At the end of the show after the last of our booth had been shrink wrapped onto its pallet headed for Maine, we hit the local diner to sit beside Wonder Woman on a date with someone she picked up at the show. Her date declared in the imperative explanations of first dates, "...I am Portuguese actually, although most people think I am Samoan." When did she and Steve Trevor break up?

In between I saw a paper mache Hulk, a Jedi dragging a LL Bean suitcase, a Wookie signing autographs, a rather amazing African American Leia, zombies drinking smoothies, an 8-year-old dressed as Doctor Who (complete with the David Tennant hair gel), many, many Jokers in pilfered nurse uniforms, and anime characters that I will never, ever have the reference for.

As all the eye candy passed by the booth of Nemo Publishing where I was so proudly stationed, I tried to catch their eye and ear with story. The more contemplative ones stopped to listen and we have many fine sales and contacts for Maine's own Undersea Adventures of Capt'n Eli, but even so I resented the sea of people hell bent on the pursuit of fandom and deaf to my charms.

Eventually the sea pulled me in and I who scoffed at it all found the minutia of my own fandom. Could I really have a David Tennant Doctor Who action figure to toy with in my dark hours for only $29.95? I looked in my wallet and decided the Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom action figure will have to wait.

Capt'n Eli Videos & Pics from Comic Con

Curious City Adventures at Comic Con