After the Poe Museum, O'Barr will head to Wizard World Con where he’ll be signing books and selling original prints of his work. He’ll also be on a panel or two about working in comics.

“I usually try heavily to discourage people from doing it,” O’Barr says. “I’m one of the few fortunate ones who is able to make a living at it. I think of myself as one of the last violin players who stayed behind on the Titanic.”

He says jazz and comics “are the only two true American art forms. They’ve both been neglected over the ages. Lately they’ve become something for movie companies to exploit.

“They’re a special art form to themselves,” he says “People tend to think of [comics] as this bastard stepchild of film and literature but it has its own language. It’s very demanding of the reader. The reader has to supply the voices and the music and the sound effects. It’s a very intimate medium. Most things in present culture, like video games, they don’t demand anything of you but your time. It’s a shame really. I learned how to read from comics. They were like this rocket launch pad for your imagination.”