On approach, I was met by an oversized poster of a little Japanese girl. I could tell she was Japanese by her huge wide eyes and her spiky black hair haphazardly tucked through a backwards baseball cap. (Ah, the benefits of a classic Manga education.) Standing there, looking up at her, three things struck me about this girl. First, she was irreverently chewing bubble gum (cheeky, but not necessarily off-putting); second, she had a prominent Band-aid on her right forearm; and finally, she was cocked, locked, and loaded with a classic science fiction BFG. (That's Big Fucking Gun for those of you who still retain luddite tendencies.) Even though we hadn't yet been properly introduced, I just knew this girl was going to be trouble.
I talked to Mr. Sizer for a bit, asking him the usual ignorant fanboy convention questions - "Who are you?", "What is this Mouse thing?", "What's so special about you that you rate this massive display screen when Carla Speed McNeil is over there making do with a lousy cork board?" He answered me politely, with an air of humility that I'd rarely seen in an artist who was obviously so talented. He gave me a brief outline of Little White Mouse and when I asked to see a copy, he wearily explained that his publisher had dropped the ball and hadn't yet brought the books in from the vans, so he really didn't have anything other than the promo art to show me. I was just about to move on when he did the weirdest thing. He stood up, shook my hand, and thanked me for stopping by his booth.
When I snapped out of the shock trauma of receiving genuine human contact within a feeding frenzy of corporate shilling and pushy consumers, it was the next day, and I was once again standing in front of the Blue Line Pro booth. I shelled out my 15 bucks for the graphic novel to one of the BLP guys, and was about to grab one off the table, when Mr. Sizer twisted himself free from a group of chatty fans and personally delivered my book. I thanked him and moved on, not wanting to suck up any more of his time than I already had. The day after the con, I opened up Little White Mouse for the first time. Not only had Paul Sizer handed me a head sketch of Loo with the words "thanks Dan" scrawled under his signature, but he'd also given me one of the best graphic stories I'd ever read.
Article comments
1 - Natalie Bennett
This article has been selected for syndication to Advance.net, which is affiliated with newspapers around the United States. Nice work!
2 - Kat Kan
I reviewed LWM for Voice of Youth Advocates, a professional journal for librarians and educators who work with teens. I've also reviewed Sizer's more recent book, Moped Army, for VOYA. Plus, Moped Army has been nominated for the brand spanking new Great Graphic Novels for Teens list sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association, a division of the American Library Association. I can tell you that lots of librarians love Paul Sizer and his books!
3 - -E
Congrats! This article has been selected as one of this week’s Editors’ Picks.