Went to the Sin City NYC premiere on Wednesday night. My buddy Jay used his vast network of connections to get the two of us onto the guest list for the screening and the swanky afterparty. A lot of people were ticked that I got tapped over them, but hey, I did give Jay a sword cane for being in my wedding:

We arrived at the theater early, as good fanboys are wont to do, but there was no one there yet. We were about to go and get a drink to kill ½ an hour, when a huge crowd headed in, led by none other than Joe Quesada. Joe is the current head of Marvel Comics. Whether he’s doing a good job at it is a matter of some debate. The Marvel Universe is and always has been where my heart is, but it has also jilted me on many occasions, standing me up for dates, sleeping with my friends, and belittling me in public. Marvel and I have been doing this make-up, break-up thing forever.

Anyway, whatever you say about Quesada’s business acumen, the man is a whoop-ass artist. Check out Batman: Sword of Azrael.

Anyway, we followed the Marvel crew back inside, keeping our rightful place at the head of the line. Axel Alonso was with the group, along with Erik Larson, Bob Wiacek, and some other guys I’m sure I would have known by name.

That’s the thing about comic book people. You can show me any drawing by one of a few hundred artists, and I could tell you whose work it is, but that same guy could pass me on the street and I’d never know. More on that later.

So we get in and have first pick of seats. We get dead center with good elevation without being too far from the screen, and wait as the stars arrive.

Now by stars, I mean comic book stars, not Hollywood stars. This wasn’t an LA premiere. No Jessica Alba here, I’m afraid.

But frankly, comic book stars are better in a lot of ways. There are plenty of actresses I would like to fuck, and plenty of actors I would like to be, but I can’t think of any that I idolize. Frank Miller, the creator of Sin City, on the other hand, is someone I’ve looked up to as a writer and artist for decades. One of the first comics I ever bought, and which changed my life and influenced my creative side irrevocably, was Daredevil #189:

In addition, comic book stars are MUCH more down to Earth people. They’re just nerds, like me, who managed to create something that speaks to people. These are guys who didn’t have a lot of friends in high school. Who couldn’t get a date, and were too afraid to even try. If you go up to, say, Jessica Alba, you have to get through security and even then she’s as likely to look at you like you’re a bug as she is to sign an autograph for you, and the odds of her actually wanting to chat are slim to none.

Comic book people, though, they’re just happy to find someone else who speaks their language.

Frank Miller touched on this in his introduction to the film. This is a man who has been burned by Hollywood multiple times. Robocop II, Daredevil, Elektra, you name it. So many things that Frank poured his heart and soul into got turned to shit by Hollywood executives. That’s why he refused to option Sin City to ANYone for YEARS. As he put it, “Who do you trust with your baby?”

No one, it seems. Frank insisted on creative control of this one, and co-director Robert Rodriguez gave it to him, even though it meant quitting the Hollywood Director’s Union (Guild?) to do it. Finally, someone gave Frank the respect he’s earned in spades.

Frank talked about how this movie took his work and used it to springboard into something totally new, and he didn’t want to thank Hollywood, he wanted to thank the people in the room, for making it happen. The only people invited to the premiere were comic creators, buyers, retailers, and a few hardcore fans with connections. Frank called us his Tribe, and it made us all feel proud.

The movie was FANTASTIC. I’ll talk about that another time.

Afterwards, we all went to a nearby ballroom for the afterparty. It was in a basement bar with red lights and Sin City art projected in slideshows on the wall. The open bar was serving top shelf liquor. Jay and I started drinking heavily.

When our nerves were calmed, we started to wander. As I mentioned, since you never actually see them, most comic book people can pass unnoticed in a crowd. Thus, we probably missed a bunch. Jay knows a lot of them by sight, though, as it is his business to know them, even if they don’t know him. He assigned me to shake Frank’s hand by the end of the night, but Frank had disappeared, so that seemed unlikely.

However, there was plenty of royalty to be found. We saw comic book legend Neal Adams try to give money to a homeless woman on the way to the party, only to be rebuffed as the insane woman chose to shout at him instead. I didn’t hear what she said, but Neal laughed and took it in stride. Even many of the other comic book pros were in awe of him.

The same went for Joe and his son Andy Kubert, founders of an art school, and both with impressive resumes of their own. Joe Kubert and Neal Adams are the guys who got the guys who got me into comics into comics. Know what I mean?

Similar bigwigs included former Marvel Comics Editor-in-Chief Big Jim Shooter. Jim was the man in charge during my comics heyday, and like many others, I have a love/hate relationship with him. Love or hate him, though, the man is a legend. Writing JLA at age 14 was just the start for him, and while his original Secret Wars companywide crossover spawned generations of evil marketing that ruined comics for over a decade, I can’t deny that I loved every issue of that year-long limited series when it came out, and it got me buying a LOT of other comics I hadn’t been interested in up to that point.

Also on hand and carrying major presence was Walt Simonson. If you haven’t read his work on Thor, get to it. Walt has a big bushy beard and wears a flannel shirt everywhere. He’s got more talent than half the people in that room put together.

Jay accidentally smacked Jim Lee, one of the primary founders of Image comics at one point in the night. You don’t know how weird it is for a comic geek to have to say, “Oh, excuse me, Jim Lee!”

On the food line, I was chatting about the movie with a guy who looked REALLY familiar. Turns out he was Bob Wiacek, the inker (it’s NOT tracing) whose career I would have KILLED for when I was 16. Bob has worked on every major book you can think of, but I remember him best for his work on Power Pack, because I met him at a tiny little convention in White Plains when I was like 12, and he drew me a free picture of Jack Power. Joe Sinnott was at the next table, charging $20 a sketch. What a dick. What 12 year old has $20 to spend on a sketch?

Later on in the evening, Frank made the rounds, and I cornered him by the buffet while he was chatting with Erik Larson. I told him my mission was to shake his hand that night, and he graciously obliged. Then I said how I felt Hollywood had really done him wrong over the years, and how happy I was to finally see a project that was worthy of the source material he created. He told me it was only because he had retained creative control that this was something he was willing to directly attach his name to. I showed him my brass zippo from his book 300 and told him I had been carrying it around for years.

Frank was a really unassuming and quiet guy. Not rude or dismissive, but apparently uncomfortable with all the attention he was getting and unsure of how to react to it. It’s especially weird, because his work has always been bold, decisive, and groundbreaking. He I a true artist in every sense of the word.

When Frank was swept away by the next well-wisher, I talked to Erik Larson about his book The Savage Dragon, asking whatever happened to the cartoon series that was supposed to come of it.

“It ran for two seasons,” Erik told me, making me feel pretty dumb. “Two shitty, shitty, seasons,” he added, which mollified me somewhat. “It was awful. Really. 26 crappy episodes.” We laughed, and talked a bit more before I moved on.

At the end of the night, I went up to Jeff Smith, creator of Bone. I had read the collections of his book back in ’95 when I managed the now out-of-business comic specialty shop Comic Attitudes in the Westchester Mall. I had since fallen off until he finished the series recently and put the whole collection into one GIGANTIC phone book.

“I just boiled the work of the last fifteen years of your life down into 7 hours of reading,” I said, giving him the necessary ice-breaking laugh. “It was a great 7 hours,” I amended. Jeff was a really nice guy, but I didn’t have a lot to say beyond that.

“It was my wife’s idea to put it all in one volume,” he said, introducing me to the lovely Mrs. Smith and giving her her due. “It was great to read it all in one volume,” I said. “It’s difficult to keep the thread of the overall story over more than a decade, but this format worked great. The only problem was that the weight of the book cracked the spine.”

Suddenly, I had Jeff’s complete attention. “Did you lose any pages?” he asked.

Now I was in my element. I’m in printing by trade if not desire, and I knew what I was talking about. We spent then next few minutes animatedly talking shop about print bindings. His publisher swore that he could never get a perfect bound book to hold more than 800 pages, and Bone topped out at 1325. Still, as I can attest the spin may have cracked, but it didn’t tear, and no pages fell out.

Just goes to show what publishers know.

All in all it was an amazing night. Well worth the hangover the next day.

It’s good to be in the Tribe.