October 5, 2006
Well, it had been over a year of sending emails and not getting any response. And I didn’t have any other contact info. And even if I did, he lives in England, which isn’t easy to pop over to. So I was beginning to worry a bit, especially since he didn’t even show up at San Diego this year, and that’s basically my only chance ever to see him. But finally, a year and a third later, I made contact with Simon Bisley, regarding the pin-up I paid him for, in advance, at San Diego Con 2005.
Over that year plus period, numerous emails I’d sent him remained unreplied. I finally sent an email telling him we were going to have a baby, but no answer. Then I wrote him to say it would be a boy, and we were naming him Oscar, but no answer. I thought to myself, Well, those are the best I could do, to try and inspire him to write back. If he doesn’t respond after that, maybe he isn’t going to write. After we had Oscar, and after we had gone to San Diego and he wasn’t there, I finally sent another email, telling Simon about the birth of our boy, and how vividly and touchingly I remembered him talking about the love he had for his own kids, when we last saw him over dinner at San Diego 2005. I gave a little description of what Elizabeth and I were up to, and what a handful Oscar was. I mentioned it had been so long since I’d heard from him, and we’d love if he would contact us, and that we have a new address for him to send the pin-up when he’s finished. Notice how subtly I slipped that in.
A few days later, I got a short email reply from him, saying to give him our phone number, and he’d call, because it’s easier than doing emails. I immediately sent him our phone number, and when he didn’t call that weekend, I sent another email saying I was surprised, because I was so sure he would have called.
That same week, my pin-up came in the mail from Luis Dominguez, so I was thinking of other comics artists. That Thursday our phone rang, and I couldn’t understand who the person said it was, but I heard him say something about a pin-up.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch who you said this is?”
“It’s Simon,” he said.
OH, SIMON! Great to hear from you! We visited for some time. He said, as usual, how great he thinks we are, and that he was sorry he hadn’t gotten to the pin-up, but that he thought he’d have it done by the end of October (which gives him a few weeks yet). He said he wanted to do a creature coming out of the sea, and attacking the docks or the city on the coast.
I told him I was sad to have missed him at San Diego, and he said he would have liked to have come. But he didn’t say why he didn’t make it, even after I told him he’d been listed in the catalogue to appear at the Heavy Metal booth. He asked if we would be coming to Bristol, and I said we thought it might be a little rough bringing our baby, but said if he’d like to put us up at his place, we would definitely come out. He paused for a moment, and I thought it was an awkward silence, but then I realized he just didn’t understand what I said. Simon and I have this consistent difficulty understanding each other, with our different accents. He teases me about mine, and I tease him about his. We’re always asking each other to repeat ourselves, or explain just what the hell we mean to each other. Later in the conversation I had to tell him I couldn’t understand his accent, because we were both just talking and not understanding each other. I suspect we’re always MOSTLY communicating with each other, but who knows what subtleties, or even essential little tidbits, we’re always missing.
He asked how my self-publishing was going, and I made my usual reply that I’m losing money every issue I put out, and I’m basically struggling just to try and get my work seen out there. He sympathized, and said that all the artists he talks to are having trouble getting work right now. That surprised me, because it seems like there’s so much interest in comics right now. I assumed, even though I’m doing my usual struggling, that a lot of other comics artists are doing pretty well.
He joked that he made some good money a couple years ago, from some sap who paid him to do a pin-up. Then he immediately said he was just kidding, and he’d do my pin-up. But the real joke was that the amount of money he said he’d made from the sap was actually only half of what that sap had paid him, so I began to wonder just what quality of pin-up that sap will be getting.
It was a real nice visit, and he gave me his address and phone numbers, and he said he wasn’t real good with emails, but he’s got it figured out now.
He gave me a the phone number about three times, and each time it was different. He’d say, This is my number. No wait, what’s my number? And then I would repeat what he told me, and he’d say, no, no, it’s this. So I wrote down everything he said separately, just in the hopes that maybe one of them would be right, if I needed to ever try and reach him. Each number even had different amounts of digits. It was amazing.
And then the same happened when he gave me his address. He couldn’t remember the street, and then his address would have either four or five numbers in it. What the hell…
So hopefully I’ll get a pin-up from him soon, and be able to publish it in my next humongous Doris Danger treasury, and everything will be okay. My next Doris Danger book will most likely come out in time for San Diego 2007, which gives eight or so months. Simon said he hopes it will be finished by the end of the month, but somehow I think it’s a better idea to just hope it appears within the next eight months. And even that may be optimistic. I think I’ll be the least upset if I just don’t plan to expect it until it’s in my hands.