A brush with comic book fame

Last week I was on TV. They didn't just pan across a crowded room I happened to be standing in, and they didn't just show a snippet of a comment I made in passing. On Thursday afternoon I found myself at a local TV station sitting in front of several glaring lights, with a wine glass filled with water, some scratch paper and a pen sitting in front of me, translating for a non-Spanish-speaking American comic book artist who was being interviewed as a invitee at a local comic book convention.

Patrick Gleason doesn't speak Spanish, so when the English-speaking convention representative was delayed getting into Málaga, a friend of my roommate called to ask if I could come to lunch as Patrick's translator. I like free food--I think it tastes better than its paid-for counterpart--and I like my roommate's friend, Lucas, so said I'd go. Lunch was yummy and fun; there was seafood stew, which I hadn't had since being in Chile, and tuna steaks and dessert, as well as non-alcoholic flavored shots which seemed utterly ridiculous to me. At some point, Lucas left the restaurant to go pick someone up at the airport, and I agreed to accompany the group to the TV station where Patrick was set to do an interview. Upon arrival, it became clear that things had not quite been thought through all the way, and the mysterious interview was actually an hour-long program dedicated to interviewing Patrick and two other convention-invitees. No one spoke English except, of course, for me.

In addition to Patrick, the moderator, and myself, there were two Spanish comic book artists: Jesús Redondo, famous for his Capitan Trueno, and Paco Roca, a graphic novelist who just won Spain's most prestigious national award for the genre. Patrick is himself a well-respected young artist who's currently working for DC Comics doing a Marine Corps version of The Green Lantern.

I didn't even know where I was supposed to look--at Patrick, at the moderator, or at the camera (or at the other camera). At one point I hit my water glass with my pen and it made a loud "ding." At another point I mistranslated "slapped in the face" as something having to do with blinking. It turns out my Spanish isn't quite at the level where I can seamlessly relate explanations of comic book characters and the daily travails of deadlines and graphic novel markets from Spanish to English and back again. The next day, two of my students stopped me to tell me they'd seen me on TV the night before; it was hard to tell if their giggling was due to star-struck awe or the fact that they were laughing at me. A friend I met up with the next night told me that he too had seen the show; he didn't say much else. Despite my stumbling, everyone was very nice to me, and I got to wear one of those mic packs that bizarrely fascinating to me.

The show aired later that night, but I didn't see it because I'd been invited out to dinner with the convention gang, this time as a the special friend of the organizers since the English-speaking rep had finally decided to show up. I was picked up around 10:30pm (Spanish time is killing me--I've forgone meals in favor of just eating 'round the clock), and, after meeting up with the rest of the group, we drove to the tiny mountain town of Borge where we'd been specially invited by the town's mayor. We inched our way up the windy pitch-black road to the tiny lights of a town even smaller than Periana. Once safely parked in the town's single parking area, we walked the rest of the way to an 18th-century restaurant that was once the safehouse of a famous Robin Hood-esque Spanish bandit. It was quaint and endearing and most definitely closed. We stood in the cold and waited. Lucas called the convention organizers who assured us that the same thing had happened last year, and that the mayor had come down from house to personally open the restaurant for the group. This seemed odd to me since it would mean that there was nobody in the kitchen, no food being prepared, and no dinner for us for quite awhile (a painful thought at 11:15pm). We waited some more. Patrick, his wife Emily, and I talked about the image of the mayor majestically appearing from out of the darkness, with trumpets and velvet banners, to thrust open the doors of the restaurant...and then turn on the stove and start to cook? Lucas got a call a little while later after some others had joined us in the cold; apparently Paco, the convention director, was standing on the mayor's doorstep knocking, but no one was answering. Lucas looked a little irritated. I cringed thinking about what Patrick and Emily must be thinking. Finally, we decided to head back to the car, drive back to Vélez, and eat there. We ended up in Torre del Mar where we feasted on tapas and wine while sitting around enormous barrels.

I saw the comic book group once more on Saturday when I went to Málaga where they were having a book signing. Now somewhat a part of this very weird circle, I got to stand around and chat with Patrick and the others as they signed autographs and drew pictures for fans. I even got a couple drawings of my own that have now earned spots on my increasingly-decorated bedroom wall.