My Little Runaway... Run Run Run Run Runaway...

OK, today was a pretty good day for my teenage daughter.

Let me say in advance, that thanks to her dad's predisposition toward comic books, she had a greater comfort level with comics than the average teenage girl. She has read the odd comic or twenty.

However, no one could have predicted her reaction to "Runaways." Well, except maybe my cousin Steve. Since he started all this.

Around a year ago, Steve loaned me a few of his digest collections of this comic called "Runaways". He said that my older kids, and particularly my oldest child, might get a kick out of it. (It's a neat story about a bunch of teenagers thrown together by the discovery that their parents were a group of super-villains poised to take over the world. They strike out on their own, and the story goes from there. They dress and act like normal teenagers, rather than the regular musclebound spandex-clad comic book types.)

How right he was. She *loved* it. She read his digests over and over until we bought her copies of her own. Then we started buying the monthly comic once she was done with all the digest collections.

Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago. The folks at Strange Adventures (aka the world's greatest comic shop) told me about how there were several notable comic creators jetting into Halifax for the 'Word on the Street' book festival.

Including a young man named Adrian Alphona. Who draws... Runaways.

Let's just say that there was no fear that we were going to miss Word on the Street this year. Which was, by the way, today.

Not only did she get to meet the artist, she got to flip through his personal sketchbook, see his designs for past storylines, had one of her digests autographed, and... coolest of all... get a personal sketch that he drew for her featuring her favourite character in the book.

All of which was pretty awesome. My number one son and I were there too. (He signed a comic for me as well... duh). And he posed for this picture with the kids:



Nice young guy. And Canadian, to boot. All in all, a pretty awesome day.

(Note to my cousin Steve: You definitely called that one.)



p.s. This is the sketch. (I had to 'borrow' it from her bedroom as she slept.)