At MoCCA, the only comics I picked up by a creator who’s work I already knew I loved were issues 17 and 18 of Linda Medley’s Castle Waiting, two of the three issues completing volume II (there’s a longer and more complicated publishing story here, but I don’t know all the details and I”m not going to go into it). They did not have issue 16 at the Fantagraphics table, so I nearly didn’t purchase the other two issues, but my love for this series runs too deep for me to be able to walk away from unread Castle Waiting comics.
A few days later, I went online and found issue 16 on Amazon. Being a graduate student with a tight budget, purchasing a book online would be splurging, particularly after I spent most of my last freelance paycheck (web design) spending a weekend in New York and buying books at MoCCA. But I decided that having the last issue of volume II was more important to me than having to tighten my grocery budget a tiny bit to compensate.
To my surprise and delight, Amazon remembered that I had a gift certificate loaded into their system. So I got to give myself a present via my mom two years ago (I obviously don’t use Amazon very much), and it arrived this morning. I wasn’t expecting it for another couple of days and it made my morning. I greatly look forward to reading all three of these issues, and I highly recommend the series to anyone and everyone who loves beautiful comics and fairy tales.