2010 Professor Arnold Hugo Mediocre Convention Sketch by David Malki!

Having lined up my Van Sciver and collected my Ramos at Comicpalooza 2010, I was kind of pooped out by Artist Alley. I wanted more pieces, but couldn't decided from whom or for how much. Instead, I figured I needed to sweep the dealer's room for any cool oddities. The pickings were rather slim, but there were more artists inside hocking their wares to be considered. As time and funds diminished though, I passed most of them up. I would have loved a Zook sketch from Phil Foglio, but I'd left all my reference with Van Sciver, and could see no signs Foglio was offering sketches anyway. He just seemed to be pimping his Girl Genius collections.

I was scoping out a table next to David Malki's, which was filled with amusing books and merchandise related to his Wondermark online comic strip. He was also offering "Mediocre Sketches for $1." I tried to ask him for something slightly better than that for only slightly more money, but didn't articulate the request well. With my poor planning of this outing, I'd neglected to buy a new sketchbook for the artists to work out of as needed. Just in case, I brought a twelve year old, poorly preserved, barely used spiral sketchbook of my own sorry work. Since Malki's comic strip is meant to evoke late 19th century newspaper art, down to the yellowed paper, I figured this was the perfect instance to make use of my crappy sketchbook. Malki began quickly scribbling out this amusing Prof. Hugo piece (I guess that's a cigarette? Tsk-tsk, Hugo. In this day and age? No wait-- is that a finger?) I gathered the first collection of his strips, Wondermark: Beards of our Forefathers (Hardcover) and a bumper sticker to bribe him into doing a second piece, Marco Xavier. Both turned out better than advertised, and I picked up everything for $20, so I couldn't fault my $2 art investment toward a totally adequate yield. The book is an absolute gas, by the way, and is highly recommended for fans of absurdist humor.