When you’re really hungry, even a bad cheeseburger is really good.
Wonder-Con, Day 3
Used to be that fifty cents would buy an album’s worth of singles. Today it buys you two. Less than six minutes of music. Geez, no wonder the kids love The Pirate Bay so much.
Spoke at length with Aussie cartoonist Paul Power while in the waiting area to get into the con and out of the rain. He had a ton of interesting stories to tell about working with Alex Toth on SUPERFRIENDS and regarding his experiences as a production artist in Hollywood, some of which dovetailed nicely with my experiences there, so we had quite a bit to talk about. Interesting guy.
I trekked over to the Comic Relief booth once more in hopes of landing a copy of the Kirby book (so frustrated was I that I bought a copy of the FOURTH WORLD OMNIBUS from Mike Royer the previous day, at a nice discount even). I hear that he’s even getting work inking the next GALACTIC BOUNTY HUNTER thing from Marvel, so that was nice to hear. Anyways, Rory was indeed able to get a copy of the Kirby book in my hands, and I was yeah and verily thankful for it. You may not care for Kirby’s art, but if you love superhero comics, then you in fact love Kirby’s art, because those comics without his influence would be ever so much duller and more lifeless. Imagination matters. It matters more when coupled with hard work, which Kirby could pull off in spades. Pencil and write (in the FOURTH WORLD era) an entire book in a week? After having done that or more while working for Marvel for the previous ten years? Unimaginable. But then those were different times, weren’t they?
I dropped in on the Future of Comics Retailing panel, and as usual, found it an interesting look into that slice of the world. I probably should have been much more forceful in introducing myself to the guys who sell the funnybooks, but on the third day, folks are beginning to look a little shellshocked. Myself included. And really, I’m terrible at that. Just terrible. I have no business trying to market much of anything. Most interesting, I suppose was the uniform opinion that most superhero comics these days are too dark and too adult to build up a new audience on. Now it might be because these were guys who were my age or older and are just nostalgic codgers. Or they might actually be onto something because they’re the ones selling the comics day in and day out. Nah, it’s just the nostalgia thing, isn’t it? As for predicting the future out of something like this, it’s a good conversation starter, but not much more than that. As Dan from Hijinx Comics pointed out, all of his predictions of 5 years out from last year came true by this year. The future ain’t what it used to be.
More floor wandering. Some tempting things. Like the 15 Godzilla movie set covering the Toho years for all of fifty dollars. Yeah, they’re sure cracking down on the bootleggers this year, aren’t they? It’s no more or less blatant than years before, aside from the fact that I didn’t have that many concert bootlegs to look through, but I could still get all the HERCULOIDS I’d ever want. Which in this case was a sketch of Monolith from THE ELEMENTALS by Bill Willingham himself. The added word balloon spouting “I am NOT Igoo!” was the icing on the cake there. Pity that stuff will never ever see print again. It really helped prime the audience for Vertigo-style books, particularly with the dark superhero flavor. I suppose Dirk will pin it as one of the roots of Superhero Decadence now. I wasn’t thinking about that back then; I just liked the book.
Hmm. What else. Oh yes, the Sam and Max panel. Let’s be honest. It was titled “Making comics you love into games you play,” but it was all about Sam and Max. This is not a bad thing in my book. Some nice glimpses into the early lives of the characters in comic form and some good stories about HIT THE ROAD, the original game from LucasArts. The panel, however, was mostly for the hardcore fans, and they, myself included, got what we showed up for. I only wish Jog could have seen it. Oh, and Jeff Lester (he of The Savage Critics) got a nice shout-out as the genius who breathed new life into Flint Paper, private eye and the guy you don’t want to have in the next-door office. I really should tune into the game, but I’ve grown pretty frustrated with adventure gaming, and I think I’d rather just watch the whole works pre-solved. Is that even an option these days?
On the way out, I spotted friends Ian and Graeme talking in a clutch outside of another meeting room. It happened to be a sort of nondescript “Why we love comics” sort of affair, only it was chaired by Dan DiDio, and featured Mike Carlin, Mark Bagley, Jann Jones and Fletcher Chu-Fong from DC (apologies if anyone’s name got munged – I don’t use Google to check these things because I am lazy.) I’d been thinking about going, but then I’d been thinking about just cutting and running, too. Graeme asked if I was staying for the panel, somewhat in disbelief.
I say disbelief because there were maybe thirty people in the audience. That includes the guy who came in to ramble (expertly cut off by Mr. DiDio) and finally fall asleep on some chairs in the front row, beer gut hanging out for all to see, and the brave to perhaps draw funny faces on in permanent ink. So, this wasn’t a bitch about the other guys and how they’re killing comics panel, but that got touched on. And it wasn’t a cheerleading session for DC, either, though there was some of that. Instead, it was folks sharing their experiences with comics, what they want to read out of them, how they got started in comics and how do they actually read comics nowadays.
It’s really hard to call this a focus group, because this was a self-selecting thing, but there was certainly an element of that to the proceedings. Mr. DiDio was particularly interested in how folks got into comics, many of whom seem to have been introduced to them by their parents, so there had to come a distinction between “the first comic you read” and “the first comic you bought for yourself.” In my case, it was KAMANDI #22 and MICRONAUTS #20 respectively. There might have been a STAR WARS comic or two in there, but I wasn’t reading them regularly at that point.
Conversely, there was a question, and some interest, about lapses in readership. Oddly enough, a sizable number of readers came back for the same reason I ended up coming back to comics: Grant Morrison on NEW X-MEN. Granted, this was not a scientific survey, but I did find it an interesting coincidence. There were a number of folks who’d bailed out about the same time I did, around or before the Bust in 1994, most of which were citing “lots of crap comics” (my words) as a reason for bailing (my reason.)
The matter of timeliness came up in reference to the recent story regarding DC’s crackdown on slow artists, as it had come up during the other DC panels I’d attended. If it’s a hoax, it’s a pretty good one. Now whether or not it’s an attempt to circle the monthly reader wagons remains to be seen. There’s certainly an emphasis on the periodical side coming from Mr. DiDio, and rightly so, as that’s where his main market resides. There was some digging at “trade guys”, yes, that’s me. Because we’re killing the industry. Or transforming it, whichever. But I talk about that all the time already, no reason to bore you (again) with that now, right?
But I can take a ribbing. “Why trades?” Mr. DiDio asks. Because I want the story in a single place. Because I don’t have the ability to drive out to a comic store every month to follow it, assuming the book is monthly. Because I don’t like dealing with the advertisements in the comics magazines. Because with some projects, I never know if the story is going to finish serialization until it actually does. Because I want a more permanent form, as the monthly books are already being written to be collected and included in a permanent form. And mostly because most material doesn’t have such a hold on me as to demand my immediate purchase of it, honestly. I only got to cover a couple of those when I answered the question, though. Stating the rest for the record.
In a lot of ways, I’m a bad guy to have in a focus group. I’m going to skew their curve. A lot. But I suppose if you just ignore the outliers, your marketing plan becomes a lot easier. But then, trying to define anything resembling a “typical” comic book fan is folly. Granted, it might be folly that desperately needs to be undertaken, but folly nonetheless.
Though in one way, I wasn’t an outlier, ‘cause I’m a comics blogger. And bloggerdom was very well represented there. I’m guessing that at least a third of the audience blogs or writes for the press, which is certainly unlike the wider comics audience, even the con-attending audience. And given that there’d been a lot of joking in previous DC panels about how this was being blogged/reported as it happened, DC is clearly aware of the level of engagement that’s been spurred by a shift to online reportage.
And no, I’m not a reporter. I’m far too imprecise. Same reason I’m a pretty dodgy critic, too.
An interesting panel, to be sure. Certainly the highlight of the show for me. Of course, now that I’ve publicized it, all ten of you who read this blog regularly are going to go stuff the room next year. Then it’ll have to be moved to a big room and become another impersonal pep rally.
As for the rest of the show? I spent it scouring out some bargains. The first DEVLIN WAUGH and CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN collections amongst those. Oh, and some cute toys for the kids. Then it was drop a friend off at the airport and drive back home through the drizzle while munching on a Carl’s burger that was the first thing I’d eaten in ten hours. Water to a dying man and all that.
I’ll miss prowling next year. But only a little.