APE was a pretty good time. The Count will have more to say about that.

I started actually using the twitter account I set up a few months ago. During APE, I was mostly using it to post descriptions of the sketch requests The Count received.

You should follow us on twitter here.

--Geoff

Usually Voltaire had to work a bit harder to get himself drummed out of a country than just Being a Lazy If Utterly Brilliant Debauched Chauvinist Pig. And he did. In France he mercilessly lampooned the court. In Prussia he tried to make himself rich by speculating against the state and ham-fistedly tried to act the role of double agent. So, a fair percentage of his life was spent On The Lam.

APE done! We had a tremendous time talking to everybody who came by and requested sketches and bought books. Some of my favorite bits:

* Doctor Mew. You don't realize how big of a need you have for a series of buttons featuring paintings of cats done up as The Doctors of Doctor Who until you see them arrayed before you, and then you don't know how you lived life before without them. I sported my David Tennant cat on my lapel throughout the second day and somehow, wearing a tophat, frilly cravat, and full 18th century lace cuffs, it was that button that I got asked the most about.

* I chatted with Kate Beaton for all of two minutes at her book signing, which is the first time we've actually ever communicated face to face in the five years that we've both been doing historical webcomics. We talked about literary hunks of the 18th vs. 19th centuries and, ironically enough, when I got back to our booth I saw a request for "Young David Bowie Dressed as Colonel Brandon" waiting for me.

* Getting my mitts on the first volume of Lust for Freelance and the second of Prophecy Failed. I've talked about my love of PF before, but Lust for Freelance was new to me. I got home with it on Saturday night, totally exhausted from the show, telling myself that I was going to read a couple of pages and then pack it in, and then proceeded to read the entire collection. Madeleine Graham has crafted this very tense dynamic between her two main characters that keeps pushing you forward, craning your neck to see when all the psychological cards will fall on the table.

* Skin Deep. Those of you who have been with us a loooooong time might remember me talking about this comic back in '07 as an entirely charming and compelling story of secret modern mythology. Somehow I had lost track of it in the interim until Geoff mentioned on the car ride over that "Yeah, Kory Bing is going to be there" and then all of the memories came flooding back. I picked up the first collection from her and devoured it, delighted to find that it was as wonderful, perhaps moreso, than I remembered. And so I tuned into the site as it stands now and it is GORGEOUS.

* Chatting with Elle Skinner. Generally, I read my webcomics in fits and starts, catching up with a couple of months as my tolerance for computer screens comes and goes, and then slinking back into my dark hole for a while. But The Littlest Elle I make a point to stop by every week, because it is so entirely bewitching, and Elle herself is perhaps the nicest person I have ever met in the webcomics world.

* The sketches. I'll be putting them up here in the chatter as usual in the coming weeks as I finish them. If you are waiting on one, rest assured I'm inking away - there are 16 requests that I didn't get finished by the end, and I'm hoping to polish off 3 a day and send them to the exotic frontier towns of DAAAAAALY CITY!!! and PLEAAAAAASANTON!

More to come!

- Count Dolby von Luckner