\u00a0 Well, it had been over a year of sending emails and not getting any response.\u00a0 <\/span>And I didn\u2019t have any other contact info.\u00a0 <\/span>And even if I did, he lives in England, which isn\u2019t easy to pop over to.\u00a0 <\/span>So I was beginning to worry a bit, especially since he didn\u2019t even show up at San Diego this year, and that\u2019s basically my only chance ever to see him.\u00a0 <\/span>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.<\/p>\n \u00a0 Over that year plus period, numerous emails I\u2019d sent him remained unreplied.\u00a0 <\/span>I finally sent an email telling him we were going to have a baby, but no answer.\u00a0 <\/span>Then I wrote him to say it would be a boy, and we were naming him Oscar, but no answer.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought to myself, Well, those are the best I could do, to try and inspire him to write back.\u00a0 <\/span>If he doesn\u2019t respond after that, maybe he isn\u2019t going to write.\u00a0 <\/span>After we had Oscar, and after we had gone to San Diego and he wasn\u2019t 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.\u00a0 <\/span>I gave a little description of what Elizabeth and I were up to, and what a handful Oscar was.\u00a0 <\/span>I mentioned it had been so long since I\u2019d heard from him, and we\u2019d love if he would contact us, and that we have a new address for him to send the pin-up when he\u2019s finished.\u00a0 <\/span>Notice how subtly I slipped that in.<\/p>\n \u00a0 A few days later, I got a short email reply from him, saying to give him our phone number, and he\u2019d call, because it\u2019s easier than doing emails.\u00a0 <\/span>I immediately sent him our phone number, and when he didn\u2019t call that weekend, I sent another email saying I was surprised, because I was so sure he would have called.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0 That same week, my pin-up came in the mail from Luis Dominguez, so I was thinking of other comics artists.\u00a0 <\/span>That Thursday our phone rang, and I couldn\u2019t understand who the person said it was, but I heard him say something about a pin-up.<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I didn\u2019t catch who you said this is?\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s Simon,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u00a0 OH, SIMON!\u00a0 <\/span>Great to hear from you!\u00a0 <\/span>We visited for some time.\u00a0 <\/span>He said, as usual, how great he thinks we are, and that he was sorry he hadn\u2019t gotten to the pin-up, but that he thought he\u2019d have it done by the end of October (which gives him a few weeks yet).\u00a0 <\/span>He said he wanted to do a creature coming out of the sea, and attacking the docks or the city on the coast.<\/p>\n \u00a0 I told him I was sad to have missed him at San Diego, and he said he would have liked to have come.\u00a0 <\/span>But he didn\u2019t say why he didn\u2019t make it, even after I told him he\u2019d been listed in the catalogue to appear at the Heavy Metal booth.\u00a0 <\/span>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\u2019d like to put us up at his place, we would definitely come out.\u00a0 <\/span>He paused for a moment, and I thought it was an awkward silence, but then I realized he just didn\u2019t understand what I said.\u00a0 <\/span>Simon and I have this consistent difficulty understanding each other, with our different accents.\u00a0 <\/span>He teases me about mine, and I tease him about his.\u00a0 <\/span>We\u2019re always asking each other to repeat ourselves, or explain just what the hell we mean to each other.\u00a0 <\/span>Later in the conversation I had to tell him I couldn\u2019t understand his accent, because we were both just talking and not understanding each other.\u00a0 <\/span>I suspect we\u2019re always MOSTLY communicating with each other, but who knows what subtleties, or even essential little tidbits, we\u2019re always missing.<\/p>\n \u00a0 He asked how my self-publishing was going, and I made my usual reply that I\u2019m losing money every issue I put out, and I\u2019m basically struggling just to try and get my work seen out there.\u00a0 <\/span>He sympathized, and said that all the artists he talks to are having trouble getting work right now.\u00a0 <\/span>That surprised me, because it seems like there\u2019s so much interest in comics right now.\u00a0 <\/span>I assumed, even though I\u2019m doing my usual struggling, that a lot of other comics artists are doing pretty well.<\/p>\n \u00a0 He joked that he made some good money a couple years ago, from some sap who paid him to do a pin-up.\u00a0 <\/span>Then he immediately said he was just kidding, and he\u2019d do my pin-up.\u00a0 <\/span>But the real joke was that the amount of money he said he\u2019d 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.<\/p>\n \u00a0 It was a real nice visit, and he gave me his address and phone numbers, and he said he wasn\u2019t real good with emails, but he\u2019s got it figured out now.<\/p>\n \u00a0 He gave me a the phone number about three times, and each time it was different.\u00a0 <\/span>He\u2019d say, This is my number.\u00a0 <\/span>No wait, what\u2019s my number?\u00a0 <\/span>And then I would repeat what he told me, and he\u2019d say, no, no, it\u2019s this.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>Each number even had different amounts of digits.\u00a0 <\/span>It was amazing.<\/p>\n \u00a0 And then the same happened when he gave me his address.\u00a0 <\/span>He couldn\u2019t remember the street, and then his address would have either four or five numbers in it.\u00a0 <\/span>What the hell\u2026<\/p>\n \u00a0 So hopefully I\u2019ll 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.\u00a0 <\/span>My next Doris Danger book will most likely come out in time for San Diego 2007, which gives eight or so months.\u00a0 <\/span>Simon said he hopes it will be finished by the end of the month, but somehow I think it\u2019s a better idea to just hope it appears within the next eight months.\u00a0 <\/span>And even that may be optimistic.\u00a0 <\/span>I think I\u2019ll be the least upset if I just don\u2019t plan to expect it until it\u2019s in my hands. October 5, 2006 \u00a0 Well, it had been over a year of sending emails and not getting any response.\u00a0 And I didn\u2019t have any other contact info.\u00a0 And even if I did, he lives in England, which isn\u2019t easy to pop over to.\u00a0 So I was beginning to worry a bit, especially since he didn\u2019t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary-of-a-struggling-comics-artist"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t