Mark Brooks live! at Invasion! Comics

Singapore Toy, Game and Comic Convention guest Mark Brooks has been in town for a few days now, and other than spending hours in the hot tub with Leinil Yu he’s been busy hiding his art book around town and on Thursday night he was at Invasion! Comics for more than 2 hours (closer to 3) signing and sketching and talking to the fans just 2 days before the convention’s supposed to start.

Mark Brooks is in town with with his lovely wife Lisa Kwon-Brooks, and the dastardly duo (I’m assuming he’s Diablo) had some of the best stories I’ve had in the queue. Mark Brooks himself says he can pretty much talk while he draws – that is, until you really get him started.

For starters he had a thought experiment where he challenged an aspiring artist to picture the finest details – in this simple case, the hubcap of a car – and then telling him to always be able to have that mental picture, of which the best way to do so would be to constantly practise. Fill 300 pages of sketches in a month, he said. That’s what worked for Mark Brooks – and looking at his art, it shows.

Mark Brooks also spoke about the requests he gets for sketches by fans. The weirdest one he did was an octopus doing a tree, because the fan asked him to “draw anything you want”. He says some of his weirder ones range from Scully and Mulder in bed to Samwise and Frodo in bed. The best one was one where the fan asked him in steps: “Can you do Chun Li?” “Can you draw her with M Bison?” “Can Chun Li be on her knees?” “Can Chun Li be wearing a chain and M Bison be holding it?” and finally, leaning over to whisper: “Can Chun Li be naked?”. The fan went away disappointed.

The topic also came to food (duh) – they’ve not had pure durian, but have had durian puffs (tastes like mango with cheese). Lisa really loves her ketchup, and they’ve have the (strongly tomato flavoured) chili crab from Jumbo Seafood. You know what, Lisa really loves her condiments. Reminds me of Matt Fraction and Kelly Sue. Also:

In honor of @cbcebulski , Lisa and I chowder on some shrimp mcnuggets KFC style #Singapore lockerz.com/s/239760957 lockerz.com/s/239760972

— Mark Brooks (@MarkBrooksArt) August 30, 2012

I’m quite sure there was lots more talking going on, but I can’t seem to remember much else. Still – many thanks to Invasion! for flying Mark Brooks and Lisa in, and for organising this. Looking forward to STGCC!

Last but not least, here’s a lucky fan who got his Scarlet Witch Comiquette base signed. Check out what the comiquette looks like in real life!