Waiting for a Hangover Cure

It's Saturday morning and I'm nursing a considerable hangover after two large glasses of port and 3 beers last night. I'm not as young as I used to be, and my tolerance for alcohol is a shadow of my college self. All I want to do is lay in bed and finish Linda Medley's massive Castle Waiting collection, which I'm about half way through at this point. I would trade my left arm to be able to draw like Medley. With such expressive, distinctive and fully realized characters and settings, literally every panel is a delight. I find myself reading the dialogue quickly then, before turning each page, savoring each panel, taking in the many rich details and characters. At 450+ pages, Castle Waiting is worthy of the label "magnum opus," but its interesting how little Medley's style changed over the years it took to finish this book. I have several of the original Olio Press issues and did a quick eyeball test to see how much, if any, of the art Medley reworked for this collection, and was surprised to see that very little was redrawn, other than the usual relettering and removal of credits, etc. Like Charles Burn's, Medley was such an accomplished and talented artist when she began the book, that its consistency makes for a very satisfying read in this collected format. At least so far. I'll hopefully have a full review in the next week or so, once I finish the book, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this sketch I got from Medley at the 1998 Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. It's one of only 2 sketches I've ever gotten at a comic convention (the other is by Adrian Tomine). But now, I'm gonna pop a couple aspirins and crawl back in bed. Hope you all enjoy your weekends.