KAZU AMY CLIO JUNI AND HSU

See this picture?


That's EXACTLY what my lunch was like the other day.

Mr. Kazu Kabuishi was there.
His lovely wife Amy was present.
And there was food.

There was also a lot of other stuff.

Like their sooper mega kawaii baby Juni.

And Clio Chiang.

And Martin Hsu.

And everyone in the Disney commissary.

But other than all that stuff...

IT WAS JUST LIKE THAT PICTURE!!!
(which I found on the internets)

See, many thousands of years ago I just up and e-mailed Kazu to tell him how much I loved his work. You know... stuff like the Flight comic anthologies he put together and contributed to:


And his Daisy Kutter graphic novel:


And, of course, his sooper smash hit Scholastic graphic novel series, Amulet:


I told him that if he ever was in NYC
I'd love to buy him some lunch and hang out.
Well, would you believe that he e-mailed me RIGHT BACK and said he was visiting the East Coast and would be in town the very next week?!?
Which was AWESOME!

Except that I had to find enough money to take him to lunch.

So we ended up meeting up and having lunch. He even brought along his fiancee Amy!
(Fortunately i planned for just such an emergency by borrowing enough money from my mom to cover THREE people for lunch. I'm smart like that.)

We had a great time and chatted about all things comics, animation, friends-in-common, and eleventy hundred other things. And afterwards we kept in touch here and there over the years. But once I moved out to his neck of the woods, it was only a matter of time before we got to hang out again.

And hang we did!

And since we was kind enough to meet me at Disney, we decided to dine with some more of his friends who work at the House of Mouse.

First up was Martin Hsu... who I already knew because he works on Fish Hooks as a soopuh star character designer. He also does some sooper triple beautiful painting of his own, too. Like this unbelievable puppy he did for Sanrio:


Click on his site up above and order up a print NOW before they're gone.

But guess what?


Clio Chiang was also there!


I've always totally enjoyed her work in the Flight books and elsewhere so it was a pleasure meeting her. She's working over in development at Disney features.

And obviously... the minute people finished their lunch I dropped the ol' sketchbook in their laps:

Here's a drawing Kazu and Amy's adorable 1.5 year old son Juni did and then Kazu added to:


And here are some fun creatures by Mr. Hsu:



And lastly, I looooooove this drawing by Clio:


Sigh...

I love when awesome artists draw in my sketchbook!

So there you go.

Now you know what I did for lunch on Monday.
I'm a lucky guy to get to hang with such sooper talented artists, right?