North American Achewood Tour Dates and Times.

Last updated 11/12/2008 10:50AM PDT

Los Angeles just announced! See below.

Gentle Reader and Friend of the Library,

Here are the dates on which you and I will meet, chat, and conduct friendship, as I come through your approximate area. I hope that the events, once over, will carry on long into the night, at a place that is not too far and has room for all. Except for when I have to be dragged off to a plane, my pen trailing a line down the carpet aisle and out the door.

In cases where your city does not yet have a venue/time listed, Dark Horse (my publisher) and I are working out the details with the shop and will update this information as soon as things are official.

- - -

PORTLAND, OR
Portland events poster!

Thursday, Oct 9
Floating World Comics, 6-8PM. Signing. BYOB.
20 NW 5th Ave #101

Friday, Oct 10
Skeleton Key Tattoo, 9PM-close. Free tats (limited spaces), kind of a loose general hang-out thing. I will sign anything you bring, but not with a tattoo gun. 1729 SE Hawthorne Blvd.

SEATTLE, WA
Saturday, Oct 11
Comics Dungeon, Inc. 2PM-4PM
250 NE 45th Street

ANN ARBOR, MI
Monday, Nov 3
Ann Arbor District Library, 343 S 5th Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 7-8:30 (Q&A, brief signing), then afterparty/full-fledged signing at Vault of Midnight Comics, 219 S. Main St, Ann Arbor.

TORONTO, CANADA
Tuesday, Nov 4
The Beguiling. Signing. 7PM-close.
601 Markham Street

CHICAGO, IL
Wednesday, Nov 5
Comix Revolution, Evanston. Signing. 4-7PM.
606 Davis St.

Thursday, Nov 6
Quimby's. 5-7PM. Signing.
1854 W. North Ave

BROOKLYN, NY
Friday, Nov 7
Rocketship. Signing. 7PM-close.
208 Smith St.

BOSTON, MA
Saturday, Nov 8
Million Year Picnic, Harvard Square, 2-4PM.
Afterparty with Freezepop, location TBA.

AUSTIN, TX
Saturday, December 6
Austin Books, 7-10PM - 5002 North Lamar Boulevard.

LOS ANGELES, CA
Friday, December 12th
Meltdown, 7pm to 10pm.
7522 Sunset Blvd @ N. Sierra Bonita


Our events throughout the northwest, midwest, and northeast have been blowouts, so bring your good-time game and get ready to stump me with Achewood trivia. I look forward to seeing you.

Gush-Love Hemisphere, and other B-Sides

I "blogged," (I'm going to stop putting that word in quotes someday, but not today) and you responded. Here is the tentative roster of cities we're pretty sure to hit in October — I can't name specific shops yet, but these are pretty nearly locks:

Los Angeles, CA
Portland, OR
Seattle, WA
Austin, TX
Chicago, IL
Ann Arbor, MI
Boston, MA
Brooklyn, NY
Toronto, ON

These will generally be in bookstores or prominent comics shops with lots of space and a history of having beer and wine during signings, to make the lines bearable. Dark Horse will be hammering out the details from here, but I do appreciate all the white guys with glasses who have been writing in with suggestions. In some cases we're scheduling a secondary event, which will be a more low-key meet-and-greet type thing, and less of a signing, although I'll be happy to sign "whatever" (ladies?).

Stay tuned as we firm up locations and dates. Thanks to all the shops who are offering to sponsor travel and/or hotels -- that definitely helps make things happen.

Achewood World Tour, Pt. 1

The pens sit on the shop's counter in the low morning light, drained of ink. A partially consumed rotisserie chicken stinks in its plastic supermarket carry-out dome, having been forgotten under the bar the night before. Thirty miles away, the official Achewood car sits in the official Achewood driveway, holding much less merchandise than it did when it last departed, and the official Achewood cartoonist is wondering how to politely suggest that his warehouse guy unpack and inventory all of it. The body is idle, but the mind races.

Last night marked the first public signing of the first proper Achewood book, and it was an event which wicked free vodka into its attendees at a medically significant pace. The Isotope, San Francisco's premier comics shop, kept the stuff flowing for a crowd of hundreds of young white men with glasses, and your humble narrator stood planted in place from 8:30PM until 1:30AM, greeting and signing his little body off. Despite the long line, the "vibe" was energetic and upbeat, and we'll have to do it again real soon, because it was like a wedding: everybody gets a second, but nobody gets a minute.

What do I remember of the event?

* There is a crazy guy named Don who lives in San Francisco. He wears a fez and black-tinted 1920s driving goggles, the circular kind with little leather panels on the side (such as Trent Reznor might wear if he were flying a biplane past a leather storm cloud covered in zippers). He has long hair and a handlebar mustache, but he does not seem dangerous...unless you are, say, a comic book that does not want to be read, because comic book, he's gonna read you.

* I also met this guy at one point. (I'm the white guy with glasses; he's the white guy with glasses to my right.)

* The only chest I got to sign was that of a white guy with glasses. Bevy of beautiful women in attendance, where were you on this one? F-minus, beautiful women. Get out of here.

I wasn't sure what to expect at the First Ever Achewood Book Signing and Party-Off, as I've been relatively inaccessible for most of my writing career (piano lessons). It was a treat, and as soon as we returned home I contacted my publisher with urgent plans to set up signings in the following major metropolitan areas:

Portland, OR
Los Angeles, CA
New York, NY
Boston, MA
Austin, TX

If you're local to any of those and would like to suggest a comic shop as a venue, or would like to suggest another city which could hold a signing, by all means contact me (Canada—what's up, girl?). I greatly enjoyed a night with you all, and would like to punctuate autumn with several more of the same.

/C
aka MC chris@achewood.com