Posted in: Comics | Tagged: auction, captain america, gail simone, greg hildebrandt

Gail Simone's Mystery Unboxing Leads To "Absolute Joy Meltdown"

Published Sat, 11 Jul 2020 12:00:02 -0500

A couple of months ago, Gail Simone organised a Twitter auction for comic book writers, calling on them to give up a piece of comic book art the owned that meant something special to them. Gail began, giving up George Perez' final Wonder Woman pages from his final comic book story, that Gail wrote and that George sent to her. She also managed to guilt me into doing similar with a cover to my self-published comic book from the early nineties, Dirtbag, that had been drawn by Neil Gaiman and Bryan Talbot. A lot of people contributed from all manner of fields, including… well, we'll get to that. Last night, Gail Simone started tweeting about a mystery unboxing she was planning. She began tweeting.

You guys…we got a note that we had a package coming that we have no idea what it is…and it has to be signed for. We missed it yesterday. Son and hubby took turns waiting for it. It's huge. Have no idea what it is.

You guys wanna open it with me? We do not recognize the return address.

First, it's big, it barely fit in the back of our SUV.

Here's some scale, it takes up a huge chunk of this king sized bed!

Cutting across the middle, not showing my hands because I have been gardening…

Lotsa packing stuff!

It's something framed. I'm not kidding, we have no idea what this is!

Okay, here we go…wrapping is removed. Just this foam.

OH MY GOD.

Okay. Hang on a second guys. There must be a mistake.

She posted a video. I'll turn that into a comic strip.

Holy mother of GOD.

Okay, I seriously am shaking so hard I can't type very well. You guys know as much as I do. We got a note for a packages, that is all I knew. I can't even talk.

Okay. This is a painting by GREG ^%$#ING HILDEBRANDT. He donated it to the recent #comicwriterschallenge and it was won by a poster with the handle @BlueSkemono who also generously donated the amazing set of Usagi Yojimbo books. I don't know any more than that.

It also sold for over $7500.

I don't know what to say. I don't mean to be weird here but…like, one Christmas in high school, I got socks. For real, not complaining but that was just how it was. I've never had anything like this. As a gift? From a complete stranger?

Crying pretty hard. @BlueSkemono, if this is a mistake, PLEASE let me know, I will happily forward it to the rightful owner. If it isn't a mistake, I have no idea what to say.

BlueSkemeno replied

I don't understand the question. I don't want anything of yours. Why?

Gail continued

I can't keep this, can I?

Guys, I thought someone might have sent me a lovely print. No porch is THAT magic.

I can't stop looking at it! The photos do NOT come close to doing this justice.

'Hey, Gail, how was your day? Anything interesting happen?' 'oh, not much, did some gardening, bought groceries, and a COMPLETE STRANGER SENT ME A GREG HILDEBRANDT PAINTING OF CAPTAIN AMERICA THAT I WILL TREASURE FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.'

There's crying, there's ugly crying, and then there's this thing I'm doing right now. I have to go get myself together and I wish you guys could be here to see this thing, it freaking GLOWS.

This is taking a while to process. Thank you all for putting up with me during an absolute joy meltdown. I hope I have better words about this. Later. Not right now, because all that's coming out is gibberish.

I have to go just sit and look at it and let this sink in. Thank you for not making fun of the redhead bear, you weirdos. I love you all. Thank you, @BlueSkemono. This is going to stick with me a long, long time.

And later, when challenged over why she was posting on Twitter at 3am in the morning,