That's the Way ta Do It

So, I'm not huge on getting signatures and autographs, though I have a few (and a few more than I used to, thanks to Agent Smith). Mostly because I don't know what to do with them. I mean, they're kind of odd things. "Here, look, I was at this place where this other person was, and they wrote their name on something. And look, they wrote my name too."

Still, sometimes, they are pretty cool, and sometimes, the people who actually do the signings are cool. Case in point being Neil Gaiman. I've been at two things where he was signing stuff, and the second wasn't even a signing, just a public appearance where he talked about... stuff. But in both cases, he stuck around longer than he was supposed to, or needed to, to accommodate as many people as he could.

One was at a signing outside of Pittsburgh, in ol' Monroeville town, many years ago. The guy stays a couple hours past the end of the scheduled signing, and then, after I ask what I'm sure must have been an annoying question about the status of Miracleman (still in legal limbo at the time thanks to a certain person), he sees I have the hardcover of his brilliant Mr. Punch:


He tells me the hardcover's rare, since DC printed fewer books than they'd had orders for (something like 11,000 were printed, after orders of 16,000, something like that.) "And so," he concludes, "you get a sketch."



The guy didn't have to do that, and I'm sure his hand was pretty cramped by that point. But he did.

So, I try not to geek out over stuff like that, but Gaiman's cool, and sometimes, signatures are kinda cool too.