Dining with the Howards

Me and Emma had the pleasure of dining with Ben and Karen Howard on monday night. I rarely get a chance to get my comic geek on and even rarer to get my australian comic geek on so it was kind of exciting to catch up. However with Emma there, i had to try and not bore her with dull comic conversation for 3 hours. Therefore my geek had to contained in short bursts.

We drunk beer and wine and ate some decent Thai food. Salt and pepper crocodile is really nice, the texture of chicken but with the seafoody taste. Yummy. Watched Karen eat kangaroo for the first time. My description of beefy sweet lamb was apparently way off the mark.

Talking with Ben, in particular, its clear on what he's all about. He wants to make comics that will be distributed and loved all over the world. He wants to do business (underlined and circled in red- they type of business). That's commendable.
I picked his brain every now and then. I'd like to think he picked mine, but he probably was being polite. It gave me the opportunity to figure out, or at least think about, what the hell I'm doing and why.

Anyway, its good to see someone so passionate about what they are doing, with a clear goal and a singleminded determination. On the tuesday, i had the chance to check out Ben and Karen presenting their Phosphorescent comics to some of the local shops. Confident and smooth unlike me and Ozcomics magazine, where its "Um, hi, um would you, be like, interested in, um, well, i've got a magazine about, um, australian comics, would you like to, um, you know, um, sell it?"

Monday though was a stinker of the day so we drove down to the beach and had dessert on a marina by the coast. Nice and relaxed. Found out that we did the same degree but at different unis and we both knew our respective partners for 10 years. Also found out that Ben played the flute but had no idea what 'bling bling' was. However, I have found that i can not say "Phosphorescent" when they are around.

Introducing them to girlfriend
"Em, this is ben and karen, they run a comic company call phosphorent"
"Phosphorescent"
"Yep, sorry"

Introducing them to comic shop dude
"Matt, this is ben and karen, they run a comic company call phosphorent"
"PhosphoRESCENT"
"eeek!"

I had a good time with them and just a note that the PC crew will be appearing in issue 6 of the magazine.