Left Bank Books in St. Louis sponsored this book signing thing for Mike/Gabe and Jerry/Tycho of Penny Arcade at the Mad Art Gallery last week and I went and it was awesome.

First off, Mad Art is housed in this old Art Deco Police Station, complete with holding cells–very cool stuff. Also, it’s right across the street from Anheuser-Busch–not a brewer of my favorite beers, but the smell of beer-brewing is unmistakable. Not the best smell if you’re trapped with it in a basement, but pretty damn sweet out in the open from across the street.

Mike and Jerry were very entertaining, as expected, and the signing was a well-oiled machine. My daughter has some medical drama (which I’ve mentioned before) and is therefore kind of a regular at Children’s Hospital, so getting face-to-face with (some of) the guys responsible for Child’s Play was really nice. I stumbled my way through an awkward thank you while they were signing my copy of The Splendid Magic of Penny Arcade: The 11 1/2 Anniversary Edition, and Jerry just looked up and said, “Had to be done.”

Awesome.

Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention–the lady from Left Bank Books who was sort of running the show that night mentioned a site called STLWebcomics.org which is a growing network of webcomic folks here in the greater St. Louis area. I’ve read a couple of those comics before, but had no idea the creators lived so close to me–cool.