mystories | My own comic book artists!

I was at a convention once where Insight Studios had a panel with three of their artists, Marc Hempel, Mark Wheatley, and Frank Cho. Cho was delayed, so we had these comic artists sitting up there, asking if the audience had any questions. It slowly became apparent that most of the audience had just come to see Cho, and hadn't even heard of the other artists, and nobody had any questions (other than the inevitable "how can I break into comics" one). So I decided that I essentially had the entire panel to myself, and started firing off any bizarre questions that came to mind. So I started in on Hempel, asking him "Hey, you're an inker - what are you doing with clean fingernails?" He gave me a huge grin and explained that he'd been on the road for a couple of weeks with little time for drawing and it was a big surprise to him that fingernails could be clean. Still nothing from the rest of the audience, so I went again. And again. And again. Goofy, off-the-wall stuff, and we all had a good time with it. Eventually, Cho appeared, and the audience then had plenty of questions, so I just sat back and enjoyed myself. At the autograph session afterward, the artists actually thanked me for being so entertaining and not letting the panel just languish - they also all gave me really nice drawings with their autographs!