My NYCC anecdotes part I

Yes, I was in New York for the Comic Con this October and, like many creators, stuff happened there.
My first story involves Kabuki creator David Mack.

David and I go way back. In 2001, I was running Comic Box magazine at the time, and we thought it was a good idea to bring him to Angouleme for the International Comic festival. Dave was already a respected creator at the time, with Kabuki, and Daredevil that he was writing and/or pencilling.

Everything was perfect, until the last day of the show, where I had the stupid idea to park my car in the street, with all our luggage in it, while we were at the Angouleme festival. A bunch of kids broke into my car, stole some of our property including Dave’s luggage… With his Daredevil scripts, handwritten inside! We were all about to go berserk. Fortunately, a few days later, an honest citizen found Dave’s luggage with the scripts and returned it to the Comic Box offices in Paris where we could ship it back to America to David. Since then, everytime I see David, we joke about that. And I’ve seen him every year or so, at every comic book show I attended in the US. I think I’ve never had such a long lasting running gag. 😉

But this year, while I was at NYCC’s artist alley, something new occurred. We had an audience!

As I arrived at Dave’s table to shake his hand and pop out my usual luggage joke, he was with a bunch of people. And these people were… his family! His cousins. I have to say, David Mack has a very friendly and cool family. They asked how I knew him, so I had to tell the famous luggage joke and they were so happy that they wanted to include me in their family photos with him. I was pleased to accept. The infamous luggage thing from twelve years ago made me part of a Mack family group shot. I’m thrilled. 🙂

Before I left, they offered to take a simple picture of me and David, the one I’m running below. I like this one. And I’ll never thank David Mack enough for being this cool and creative guy who was always happy to see me every year even when he was super busy with 10 people at his booth. He’s one of the reasons why I like comics so much.

And I’m just happy to know I’ll be seeing him again next year.

F.