The Bullpen

Last night I had an interesting experience. Buy Me Toys, our LCS, has a biweekly night of drawing. Local artists bring in projects that they are working on, sit around the outside perimeter of a set of tables arranged in a rectangle, and draw. I sat in for the first time yesterday.

Topics of conversation flew around the room, ranging from movies to comics to music to books to artists and back to comics again. Casual insults bounced to and fro, and at one point the artist sitting next to me said, "Can't you tell we love each other?" What's funny is that I could. In my experience, comic book fans and gamers have to develop a thick skin from all the abuse we take from the general public and I think that it's part of the process of being a geek that we practice taking it by dishing it out on one another. It's a form of affection as long as it doesn't go too far, and last night it didn't. It was just gentle ribbing. I didn't join in because I had just met everyone, but it felt good to sit in a room with other people who share the same interests and to focus on something that I've been struggling with artistically. I imagined that this was what the old Marvel bullpen must have been like in the 60s when many artists shared the same studio space.

It may not be tabletop gaming, but I'll take it.