A Tour Through the Art Gallery, Part 7: Kyle Baker

Here's an original Joker sketch I picked up from Kyle Baker during an very small comic book show in Akron during (I think) the winter of early 1988. I'm pretty sure Kyle, who was working on DC's Shadow comic at the time, only charged me a mere ten bucks for this beautifully drawn, paisley-covered clown. 
So that's the sketch. Here's the story that goes with it...

I went to that Akron comic book show while I was a student at nearby Kent State with my good friend and fellow comic book fan, Howie Blecher. (He drove.) Like I said, the convention (really more of a sale than an actual convention) was very small, and Kyle Baker was the only guest there, as I recall. God knows why he was there -- as he said, he lived in New York and traveled to Los Angeles, but the middle of Rust Belt, Ohio, USA, was foreign territory to him. What's more, he had no idea what to do on a Saturday night, alone, in Akron. So Howie and I made a suggestion...
Kent, Ohio, was only about a half-hour away, we told him, and we were friends with comic book artists Craig Russell and Jay Geldhof (still are, in fact), and they'd definitely be up for dinner and drinks. Kyle said that sounded great, but he stressed that he HAD to be back at his hotel that night, however late things went, because he HAD to be at the show Sunday morning. Howie and I said sure, no problem. Half an hour trip. What could possibly go wrong?
So we had dinner and some beers at Craigs, and played the game of Pit (a Kent favorite) long into the night. Sometime around 3 a.m. or so, we decided to call it, and Howie and I got set to drive Kyle back to Akron. Trouble was, all the time we'd been having fun inside Craig's house, outside it had been blizzarding something fierce, and the snow was still coming down heavily as we hit the road. Howie, bless his heart, white-knuckled it all the way to the hotel in Akron, then white-knuckled it back to Kent. I got into bed sometime near dawn, spiritually clutching my new Joker sketch.
Epilogue: A few months later, we ran into Kyle at the Chicago Con. We said hi, reminding him about the fun times at Craig's house and how we almost killed ourselves getting back to his hotel. And his response? "Do I know you?"
Ha! Comic artists!