Last Friday Mindy and I were going downtown for a belated birthday dinner, and lo and behold, no less than Scott McCloud was doing a book signing just two blocks from a little French place we we like. So I got to stop in and say hi, as pictured. (Thanks to another Scott, Scott Ryan, for taking pictures, since I hadn’t thought to bring a camera)

Scott McCloud is a cartoonist who has managed to transform himself into a sort of comics evangelist/theorist/academic type, merely by virtue of the fact that he thinks a lot–and well–about the medium, and writes and draws persuasively and entertainingly about it. I have a well-thumbed copy of his first nonfiction work, the seminal Understanding Comics, and really enjoyed the recent follow-up Making Comics.

Scott and his charming family are on a 50-state road trip (!) to promote Making Comics, which impressed the heck out of me, since a wimpy 15-city tour pretty well kicked my butt last fall. I had plenty of chances on the Brainiac tour to suffer the phenomenon of wanting to chat with someone I knew (or knew of) at a signing, but not wanting to hold up the line. Well, it’s equally frustrating from the other side of the table as well.

In real life, I was amazed to see, Scott actually has pupils! It turns out the McClouds are Jeopardy! fans, so they were probably surprised to see that I actually have a lower torso and legs. Anyway, check to see if the Amazing McCloud Road Show is still coming to your state (Washington was their 39th stop). Understanding Comics is as much a rumination on the nature and possibilities of art in general as it is a dissection of comics in particular, so you needn’t be a comics fan to enjoy it.