SDCC 2008 - Agglomerated
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Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
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Photos
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
Part VI
Most of my CWR compatriots were elsewhere, having wised up and only done part of the show this year. Why couldn’t I just get in that groove? There was always the nagging feeling I was missing something, but not so nagging as to prevent me from actually missing it.
Ah well, no use crying over spoilt milk. Off to the races.
Spent a lot of the day talking to various editors at smaller presses where I could, those who are likely to need freelance work some time down the line. I don’t need a publisher for STRANGEWAYS. I’ve got one of those. Paying work, however, wouldn’t be unwelcome. Even if it pays just a little.
Talked briefly with Brian Azzarello, particularly about his seemingly-overlooked ARCHITECTURE AND MORALITY, which was kind of a welcome poison antidote to the event-driven comics that we’re getting a lot of now. Sometimes you just want to read a good Batman story and not worry about how it fits into the Big Picture, you know? And ALL-STAR BATMAN isn’t it. It has its own pleasures, sure. Now, to be fair, I’m contradicting myself, ‘cause ARCHITECTURE breaks my metatext rule. We’ve had a lot of metatext in superhero comics of late, and that’s a trend that’s continued since really the 80s. Normally I shy away from that kind of thing. But something about ARCHITECTURE clicked for me. It’s not something you can just casually hand to someone and get them reading comics (which we need more of), but it hit my sweet spot nicely.
Which means it probably had an audience of a couple hundred, tops.
But thank goodness for Azzarello and Chiang fighting their good fight, eh?
Made it upstairs for the Jack Kirby tribute panel, which is becoming kind of a tradition for me. There’s always something new to learn about The King and his work and why he did what he did. Most priceless was his advice to Wendy Pini, saying that if he ever caught her doing comics “she’d get a spanking.” Kirby didn’t always think highly of the comics industry. After reading the recent biography of The King, I understand completely why. I’ll probably keep going to these as long as Mark Evanier keeps throwing them. And I’ll note that I saw a lot more younger faces in the crowd this year. Not young as in teenagers, but it wasn’t all 40+ guys like me.
And here’s where it begins to be a bit blurry. There’s stuff that I know I did, but somehow, none of it seems particularly noteworthy. Sure, there was watching Dave McKean’s kids drawing while Dave signed books, and a lovely conversation with his wife. There’s me desperately trying to find kaiju toys for my Godzilla-obsessed son and a My Little Pony shirt for my daughter who’s at That Age.
I was even strangley absent from the “Why We Love Comics” panel that Dan Didio is taking to running now. The word is apparently getting out on these, as the first one I attended at Wonder-Con earlier this year was very sparsely attended. But not so this one. Probably a couple hundred folks in the room, which is easily five or six times the size of the one earlier this year. Interestingly, but not surprisingly, the focus largely fell upon DC titles. But with Paul Levitz in the room, I expect no different. Still, an interesting way to spend an hour, and I’ll be watching as to whether or not these panels continue.
Sunday itself felt like any other day at the show, not particularly quiet as it has in years past. At least by way of comparison. But then when you sell out for all four days, you’re probably not going to have a quiet day, really. But the frenzy has worn off by Sunday. There’s only so far adrenalin will take you, and then you feel all hollow inside. So the buyers were less frenzied and the sellers were more so, trying not to have any extra stuff to carry back. Though truthfully, I avoided most of the big dealer tables. There’s just too much trouble I could get into. And since I didn’t find the Lee’s Comics booth, I couldn’t load up on cheap old singles. Probably for the best.
Funny how there’s a lot of complaints about the Hollywoodization of the show. To be fair, I’d prefer if it were smaller and less mainstream-oriented. But if you work it right, you can skip most of that stuff, filter it out. I spent most of my time split between the artist’s alley, the “big” publishers, the fantasy art crowd (which was much more diverse than all that) and the various small press areas they had scattered about. Yeah, you have to pass through the straits of Warner Brothers and around the jagged rocks of the Mini-E3 off in the corner there, but if you wanted comics and just comics, you could find plenty to fit your taste.
Does this mean I think this sort of growth is sustainable? Hell no. The Convention Center in San Diego is maxxed out. Any expansion would take some time to happen. Some things can be moved to a different hall, but anyone asked to move off the main floor is likely to scream bloody murder since they won’t see the foot traffic that they’re used to seeing. Or they have to get drastically reduced booth costs. Now, do I think that Pilates for Indie Rockers and such should take up a booth that a comic creator could be using? Not particularly. But then I don’t see a lot of use for the videogame booths there, either.
However, SDCC is a pop culture Mecca now. Or is that Mecha? And since pop culture how is utterly heterogeneous, covering the gamut from custom toys to collectible card games to video games to movie props to comics to books and the like, everyone wants a slice of that pie. I’m not sure that the con organizers want to reduce the size of that particular slab of lemon meringue. I do know that the talk of moving the show to Vegas kinda puts me off. Maybe they’ve got a great convention center, but the after-hours activities offer you…expensive restaurants in casinos and sundown temperatures that are only Mercury-like. There’s lots of Vegas boosters. I’m not one of them. Double for LA, no matter how many excuses it would give me to visit friends in town.
But I don’t see it staying the way it is. Nothing ever does.
Was the show a success? I dunno. I managed not to see a whole bunch of people I’d hoped to. Some professional contacts were made, but if I run a cost-benefit analysis, I figure one side would probably come up short. So I don’t do that sort of thing. I went for intangibles (and a handful of tangibles, like this art that I need to get framed sometime), and it’s always easier to declare success on those fronts.
But next year? Definitely staying downtown. Definitely going to have booth space. Definitely going to have two books to sell. Definitely going to find something kaijuriffic for my son.
Probably won’t skip Saturday. Probably.
But I ain’t driving down. No Cursed Earth for me.
Apologies if this disappoints. No circling the drain pronouncements as in years past (2006, I’m looking at you). No unbridled enthusiasm either. I’m in this for pictures with words in sequential order; the format or genre isn’t particularly the issue. And there’s still plenty of that to go ‘round.
Comic Book Stores: A Niche Within a Niche | KPBS Comic-Con News
I used to shop there, so it's always weird to see the place get written up, even if KPBS is largely dropping the ball on their "Where Superheroes Matter" subtitle for their SDCC coverage. Haven't had a chance to really read it over, but will sometime shortly. Still have a con report to finish...
Not long after, I received a call from a friend who was down for the day. Seeing as I don’t see said friend all that often, I agreed to meet up with him, knowing full well that it was going to likely gut my con activities for the day. I’m a big boy, I can make big decisions like this.
There was a little time before I’d have to meet up, so I stopped at the Century Guild’s booth. You know them, the crazies who load up on Art Noveau and Deco and Pre-Raphaelite stuff. They’re the ones pushing Gail Potacki on an unsuspecting public (good for them) and they’ve got Big Art on their side. I’m a sucker for this kind of thing, so it’s a natural fit for me.
When I got there, I saw some intriguing black and white art up front, kind of a Rackham-influenced ink thing going on, but with a unique vision and choice of subject matter. The be-nose-ringed artist responsible for this work was one Jeremy Bastian. He’s got a book coming out called CURSED PIRATE GIRL, and frankly I don’t care if it’s an illustrated phone directory. His work is stunning and I’ll happily line up for it. I might even buy…the singles… Let that roll around in your head for awhile. I’ve never heard of this guy before, but I’m keeping my eye on him now. Like Sauron, baby.
And that was mostly it for my wanderings on Friday morning. See, my friend talked me into the unthinkable.
Hall H. The Big Room. See, I was going to the WATCHMEN panel. I haven’t done a big event panel since…2003, the year that I covered eight panels for both Newsarama AND Comicon Pulse (different panels, natch, else Heidi or Matt woulda skun me alive). That year, Hugh Jackman sang “Summer Nights” from GREASE, which I have to admit, made the event for me.
But this was something different. I was entirely ready to skip WATCHMENia altogether. I like the graphic novel, though it’s showing its age, with an increasingly different world around us as opposed to being in college in the 80s when it came out. Granted, that just makes the timeless stuff in the book even more crucial (and it has that in spades). But the book already succeeds for me. The movie was kind of a “I’ll believe it when I see it” thing.
Now I’ll admit that the trailer was better than I thought it’d be. I’d argue some of the costume designs, but really, those are kind of minor considerations. There aren’t any Bat-nipple-level gaffes to worry about (though I always thought the Silk Spectre wore a fabric costume, not fetishtastic vinyl). But I could see that they weren’t throwing out the baby with the bathwater when they shot this stuff. Yes, there’s a lot that can go wrong, but the feeling that I got from the trailer was that the team understood what the book was about and are trying to be as faithful as they can. If anything, that’s the only thing that really scares me, that they’ll try to be too faithful and not let the movie breathe as a movie. I won’t rule that possibility out.
So, my friend, who’s a total WATCHMEN fan, and was equally suspicious until he saw the trailer, convinced me to go along. Of course, to go to one of these panels, you have to plan ahead and get there early. And, really, there’s worse things to do than to catch up with a college friend and surf on the atmosphere of anticipation in the room, which was tangible.
Zack Snyder and the cast (and Dave Gibbons) come out and the room goes nuts. Not standing ovation nuts, but pretty damn enthusiastic nuts. Initial glee aside, the crowd settled and gave Snyder a chance to talk, then Gibbons, and there’s a sense of withheld tension giving way to relief. These guys get it. I mean, sure, you expect Gibbons to get it. But not always the movie folk. You saw CATWOMAN, right? They screwed that up bigtime when they had the perfect blueprint of the Brubaker/Cooke CATWOMAN book right in front of them.
Even the cast seems to get it.
And then we get to the extra footage. Probably another two minutes or so with a generic soundtrack. They’re leaning heavy on the book itself for framing shots, even small sequences. Everything doesn’t necessarily look real, but it does look consistent, evocative of an America that never was, but couldn’t possibly be anywhere else. And from the the selection of scenes, they’re not going to pull any punches. The Comedian isn’t softened down, and he was going to be one of the most likely subjects of any dilution.
Am I bullish on WATCHMEN? Yep. I am. I won’t ask for perfection, as it’s not going to happen. Could it all blow up? Sure. But at least they aren’t fighting Al Quaeda. Now, I don’t see a lot of toys for kids being made out of this movie, either. It’s not going to dodge an R rating, unless the makers totally collapse (but who releases a tentpole action film in March?).
My friend and I come out of that about as happy with it as can possibly be expected. And I hear that they’re moving some more copies of the graphic novel because of the trailer. WATCHMEN really is the comics version of DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, it appears; a perennial bestseller that synchs up nicely with THE WIZARD OF OZ. Okay, I made that last part up. There was a lot of WATCHMEN buzz on the floor, as just about everyone has noted. I think BATMAN BEGINS had a similar kind of swell going for it, but this may be bigger, at least within the realms of SDCC.
So, afterwards, I got a chance to chat with Grant Morrison a bit at the signing. I told him that I was both looking forward to and dreading the last issue of ALL-STAR SUPERMAN, which is no lie. It’s the Superman book I’ve been waiting a long time to read, and evidently, it’s one that he’s been waiting to write. Even got him to caption the sketch that Philip Bond did of the Great Bald Scot, though I think I caught him off-guard with that one.
Grabbed one of those spiffy Darwyn Cooke art books that they had for sale as well. Sucker. That’s me. Just like paying six bucks for a bageldog that I could have bought at Ralph’s for half that or less.
Chatted with Jim Ottaviani briefly, and picked up a copy of his LEVITATION, which came out last year (or was it the year before.) He’s still the best at what he does, which is to bring science into the comics and still make it interesting on a human level. Apparently he’s got three books coming out in the next year, a couple of those from publishers relatively new to the graphic novel arena. This is good news.
And this is right about where the Con and I parted ways for the next day and a half. I had a wedding present to wrap and a wedding to go to the following day. I retreated to the sanity of a large shopping mall (not the irony, please) and then showed up for post-convention merrymaking (Happy Birthday, Jess!) with some of the Comics Waiting Room crew (and others.)
Another night of no sleep awaited me. I love those.
Thursday was a placid pool of contemplation compared to the night before. A very loud, roaring, placid pool. I’d hoped to catch up with a friend who started his trip by texting me the following: FLIGHT VERY LATE. MOOD FOUL. So I gave him the wide berth that he was seeking and tried to make some connections as best I could.
Oddly, perhaps to everyone but me, is that I get treated a little differently with a book under my belt (okay, not in my pants, but you know what I mean. I’d never keep a book there…) But it’s still hard for me to introduce myself to editor types and talk up my own work. I know, I’ll go far with that attitude. Just watch me.
So yeah, I did that to the best of my ability, which wasn’t so good. Then I stopped over at IDW’s booth to say hello to Darwyn and see what I could see of his work on the upcoming PARKER books, based on Donald Westlake’s novels. I had to admit that I’d never seen POINT BLANK, though, a touch humiliating given the conversation. I gotta go fix that sometime. What I saw of the art for the book leaves me with high expectations. My hope is that this will build Darwyn’s name outside the comics world to the point that when he launches his creator-owned work, it’ll have a much larger audience. And, yes, I did bug him about his own projects, probably too much so; in fact I know too much so. Enthusiasm trumps manners every time. Seems that the book will be duotoned, like the promo card was, which sits just fine with me.
Spent some time hitting the independent press side of things. Talked briefly with Cameron Stewart and Ray Fawkes about their new APOCALYPSTIX (no, I haven’t read it yet, but was hooked from their first RAID anthology appearance…four years ago? Five?) And yes, I’m one of those who are waiting impatiently for the next SEAGUY book, which is actually happening, or at least it is until I pinch myself and wake up to find it was just a tantalizing dream.
Swept through Image Central and had a nice talk about art and process with Colleen Doran, who happily showed off some of her COMIC BOOK TATTOO pages (which may not have been the buzz book of the show, but along with Blake Bell’s THE WORLD OF STEVE DITKO, PIXU and MESMO DELIVERY were certainly big sleeper books that you couldn’t escape.) Yes, WATCHMEN was omnipresent, but there’s plenty of new stuff to get excited about. Spoke to Jimmie Robinson (of BOMB QUEEN infamy) after I’d seen someone outside reading his AVIGON GODS AND DEMONS, which was an odd bit of synchronicity.
The twins were busy as usual, as was Becky Cloonan, who assured me that EAST COAST RISING book 2 would happen. Fábio, or was it Gabriel, told me that there was some new stuff coming up that they couldn’t talk about. I scrupulously avoided looking at the pages of CASANOVA and UMBRELLA ACADEMY art they’d brought with them. I only had so much money to go around, since I wasn’t selling books. And, of course, they finally got their copies of MURDER MOON that they’d done gallery art for, oh so long ago.
Wove my way through the crowds, past the larger-than-life plastic standups, back to the artist’s alley to see if any more folks had shown up since last night. A few had. Like Jim Woodring, for one. Had a nice little chat with him after picking up a lovely Frank ink sketch that he’d had for sale. Probably should track down JIM sometime, if that’s even possible. He was nice enough to a sketchbook piece for me. I don’t know why I thought he might not be approachable, but I was certainly wrong about that. Now if only he could do that Frank/Mickey Mouse crossover I’ve always been dreaming of.
Spoke with Steve Purcell for awhile as well. Saw a plan for a Max jack-in-the-box that I would dearly love to give to my daughter, if I didn’t think it’d scare her half to death. Lagomorphs can be terrifying if you’re unprepared. But it sounds like there won’t be any more Sam and Max comics, even though we have the online adventure game now. Pity.
On the way back to what would eventually be lunch (actually, moving my car before the Comics Bloggers panel, as my space turned into a pumpkin at 5pm), I noticed that Bryan Talbot was sitting at the NBM booth. Okay, just a quick stop. He doesn’t have any art out. It’ll be okay. Struck up a conversation with him, and got another look at his upcoming GRANDVILLE project (kind of like a steampunk take on BLACKSAD, assuming that’s how it’s spelled.) I’d seen pages last year, but the whole thing sounds like it’s a lot closer to actually coming out. Talked for a bit about why there won’t be a reprint of THE NAZZ (which is one of those forgotten 80s revisionist superhero documents that never gets re-assessed) and then he asked me if I wanted to see some original art.
You have to understand, I’m a weak man. I’m weak and LUTHER ARKWRIGHT hit me at just the right time; once it filtered across the Atlantic (my copies predate even the Dark Horse collection) it fried my brain. So I replied in a quavering voice “Why, I’d love to see some art…” I flipped the pages as casually as I could, and then one hit me right between the eyes. It’s the one where Arkwright is doing the swan dive, perfectly spaced between the cathedral and the clouds, a long panel off to the left of the page. Anyways, I remember reading that sequence and being blown away by it, seeing how deftly multiple simultaneous storylines could be handled in comics, something I hadn’t really seen much of before.
So yes, I bought it. Nevermind that I wasn’t supposed to be spending money, because to walk into SDCC is to spend money. Six dollars for a bagel dog and a coke. I was spending money on a parking spot that I wasn’t even in. So why the hell not drop some money for a comics page that stopped me in my tracks so long ago?
Yeah, that’s why I go to SDCC.
So I retired to my car, carefully, as I didn’t have a satchel large enough to accommodate the page (but yet, it’s still heavy enough to slowly dislocate my shoulder over the course of a weekend, so it’s the best of both worlds!) And then to retire to the local splendor of Tio Leo’s, where I used to dine regularly, when I lived in San Diego. You can’t go home again, but you can, if you’re lucky, eat there.
Got back to the show in time to catch the blogger panel. Gone was the Spurgeon/MacDonald interchange of years past. And it probably wasn’t the blog-star-studded event it was of years past, though the presence of smouldering supernova-esque Douglas Wolk made up for it. Jeff Lester and the gentleman from The Mindless Ones, too. Now, I can’t say that I read The Mindless Ones all that regularly, as my attention span has dwindled down to that of a rabid mosquito, but I could listen to these guys talk for awhile. Interestingly, the focus was very much on the “next generation” of bloggers, which I find an interesting concept, but only because of my fixed point of reference. Much like the “Dan DiDio and friends talk about comics” panel that’s a fixture of the con circuit this year, the personal experience of bloggers and readers is what makes this interesting. At least for me. Had a lovely chat with Jeff Lester afterwards about working in a vacuum and hurling said work out into the void. Sometimes the void gazes back, that’s all I’m saying.
I’m sure I did some other stuff afterwards, but mostly what I did was to meet up with some friends before attending the IDW party that evening. Parties are loud, and even with free bourbon, there’s only so much of that I can take. Made an early night of it while my friends apparently made it a very late and amusing one. I missed it, but I didn’t miss it, if you catch my meaning. Instead spent the evening in the company of Steve Ditko’s art because I am No Fun.
While waiting (in the correct line, after having waited for fifteen minutes in the WRONG line) to register, I ran across Jason Aaron, who writes the excellent SCALPED for Vertigo (as well as THE OTHER SIDE and a pretty interesting take on the Black Panther, if the book lives up to the preview). He was gracious enough to pass me one of the free gifts he’d offered up on the Standard Attrition board. Tip of the hat to Jason, who I’d never see at the con the rest of the weekend, but I kept crossing paths with the overweight Darth Vader wearing the bondage collar under his helmet. Go figure.
And before I knew it, the floodgates were opened, and the warm hordes of fandom stormed the gates of Heaven, or at least the pop culture promised land. You can’t stop it, but you can ride the wave to a relatively safe location if you’re flexible enough, brave enough. If you enter the zone, you can see the perfect path for navigating the crowd, and time itself freezes, or you become coterminous with it for a short period. Then and only then, may you pass through the shifting human shoals. Then and only then can you know what it is to be one with the Matrix.
Or something. It was a long show. Bear with me.
But Wednesday is now Saturday. I hear Saturday was pretty quiet, at least on the vendor side of things (unless you were selling WATCHMEN stuff, that is), where you could see your neighbor across the aisles at times. Apparently everyone was in panels or previews on Saturday. But those don’t run on Wednesday now, do they? Everyone who’s at the show is on the floor, storming it like Omaha Beach to get that one thing that they were after. Luckily, I’m mostly not interested in the stuff that everyone else is, so I could dodge the crowds.
Seriously. I’m not into the toys. They’re cool to look at and admire, as if I were walking through a museum. But they’re largely not stuff that I want in my house. I don’t have enough room for the books that I’ve got, what on earth am I going to do with a custom My Little Pony, even if it’s painted up by Junko Mizuno? That, by the way, utterly blew my mind. It’s a perfect pairing that I didn’t think any toy company would have the guts to do.
Mostly I’m there for the comics, for chances to talk with the artists and to see the stuff that isn’t making it into my stores. Best way to do that is to head over to Artist’s Alley. First stop was at Dave Crossland’s table. Okay, now get this, I don’t like SCARFACE. It’s become one of the marks of mookery that I avoid, when I see a young wannabe thug in a shirt with Tony Montana on it, I just keep on a walking. It’s unlikely that I’ll have any frame of reference to deal with this person, so I just move on. I read the movie as satire, but guys wholeheartedly embrace it unironically. Stuff like that worries me. The comic, however, is a different matter. It’s crazy shit. Bonkers. Chalk that up to Layman and Crossland that they could get me interested in a project that I normally loathe. And their PUFFED book from a few years back is a pretty fine read, too. No, really.
Anyways, Dave did a nice book sketch (with color, even!) and is a fun guy to have a chat with. Looking forward to giving SCARFACE a thorough read, and that’s something I never thought I’d say.
Strangely, or perhaps not so, artist’s alley was nearly half-deserted by my count. If I were a brave man, I’d just set up, feign ignorance if caught and then set up somewhere else. But I read too many Ditko comics in my late teens. Rules are what separate man from the animals. And granted, I was in fandom’s Thunderdome, where sixty thousand enter and nobody leaves unchanged, and you leave the rules at the door, but even so, there’s lines I won’t cross.
Visited briefly with the Periscope Studios lane, as they’re awful nice folks by and large (but that Lieber’s got a mean streak, you gotta watch him. And yes, he’s doing a second STRANGEWAYS cover, but only because I did…something…something of which I can never speak again.) More on most of ‘em later, as only a few had successfully set up at the show (and lots of ‘em, like Ron Chan and Jonathan Chase and Mr. Parker, didn’t set up at all and simply wandered.)
Took a quick glance through the Marvel and DC booths, hoping to see something like a schedule for signings and where I might, y’know, actually find people I wanted to talk to. Was largely disappointed on that. However, I was struck by the complete lack of comics to be found at these booths. I remember, back in the old days, back when you rode your brontosaurus to the show, you could see Photostats of upcoming issues and read them over. As we now live in the PREVIEWS age of comics, I guess that sort of things just doesn’t fly anymore. Or people already know. Or they just don’t care and they want to see the Comedian replica pistols. Yes, I know, I took a picture of those. It’s called irony. But the foundation of the show was comics, all of these properties were born out of them. And now they only seem to have legitimacy when they’re turned into films or cartoons or toys.
That huge spike in interest for WATCHMEN? It’s not because of the intrinsic value of the book, but for the trailer. That huge comic con you’re attending? It’s because comic characters have finally come to the pop culture ball, but the reality of it is that they’re still slump-shouldered Peter Parker casting Spiderman’s shadow as he’s snubbed by the in crowd. I could say something blasphemous here, but I’ll pass on the opportunity. Shocking, I know.
The crowds finally won. I left after probably too short a time, to grab dinner with Marc (the guy who puts up with my hand-wringing about the quality of my column every two weeks or so, when I bother to do ‘em) Mason of the Comics Waiting Room. I know a place that serves a pretty decent fish and chips, but they don’t serve cider any more (and I’m allergic to beer), so I probably will have to start heading up to The Field, like all the pros do (and The Field serves a mean curry fries).
Talked comics and what we wanted to get out of the show. I was pretty vague, as I am about this sort of thing. Talk to editors, put the book in meaningful people’s hands, talk with friends, maybe find some artists for EATERS (and I’ll need a bunch—send ‘em my way if they’re reasonably priced and can tell a story, not just do pin-ups.) It’d be nice to sell a couple books, but every time I had a chance to actually sell them, I passed ‘em out for free or traded for something neat instead.
I gotta work on that business sense of mine.
Went back to my room, which is too damn far from the show (three trolley lines out or play the “find a parking space” game) and called it a night. Longtime readers may remember that I don’t sleep well in hotels. Still true.
Of course, I was only driving on the outside chance of actually finding a table so that I’d have a reason to drag down all the stuff that I was dragging down which made it necessary to drive. You can see where this Sorkinesque circularity is leading because you’re already there. But at the moment, I held out hope that I’d have a place to park and hawk STRANGEWAYS to passers-by. If I’d have been a brave man, or at least one with more chutzpah than I posses, I’d have sat down in artist’s alley and just declared my own space and protected it like a ravening badger. But I have neither spine nor chutzpah.
So this drive down would prove unnecessary, but I undertook it anyways. Besides, I’ve been on a plane quite enough this convention season. At least I thought I had. But now it’s been suggested to me that Baltimore might be worth a trip, so who knows. And there’s still APE coming up, too. That would leave…a three month break or so before things start up all over again.
Oy, but I’m ahead of myself here.
Back in California, I’m driving down the 5, marveling in how much better my gas mileage is when I’m not running the air conditioning and occasionally checking my bid at the HERO initiative auction by way of my phone. I wasn’t talking on the phone, so I don’t think I was breaking the law. Technically. Maybe. Of course, you can lead in an auction for 99% of the auction life and have it not matter a tiny bit by being sniped. So, my mostly-winning bid got clobbered by a mighty THREE DOLLARS in the closing minutes. That was sort of a perfect start to the midmorning. Put me in a good mood.
I cruised the agricultural heartland of the Golden State at a decent seventy or so most of the way, stopping to top off the tank north of LA and eating lunch south of it. I love LA, don’t get me wrong, but I wasn’t in a good frame of mind. Instead, I admired the smudged patina on the Glendale Boulevard overpass and wove my way absently, neural pathways worn dull by this particular commute.
Southern California in summer has two distinct flavors: one of them is brilliant and hot, clear skies and postcard weather that gets trotted out for the tourists once in awhile. The other one is overcast, cool and humid. I was wondering which one I’d get. The answer was made definitive as I rolled south of Dana Point (home of my high school alma mater, true fact). Lazy tropical cloud shoals hung in the sky, high enough for the sun to drizzle down, but by nightfall, those clouds would thicken into gray soup. Uncomfortably humid for me now that I’m acclimated to the wilds of the Sierra Nevada foothills where thirty percent humidity is cause for alarm.
Those of you from the east can stop laughing now. Really. That sort of mockery is unbecoming.
At least it was cool, but just crossing the street made me glow with sweat. I miss the bosom of the great Pacific and all that, but I don’t miss gray cool and humid summer days. Sure, I take perverse glee in the resounding debunking of the BAYWATCH myth (I maintain that they got their blue skies through CGI and matte paintings), but sticky sweat and me aren’t really on speaking terms.
Checked into my hotel, and was promptly appalled to find that I’d have to pay for parking as well as my room, as well as internet for my room. I’m pretty sure that the shower was metered. Though I was tickled when the desk clerk asked me what I did in the comics business (and no, he didn’t guess that because I was wearing my Batman costume into the lobby). I was so sorely tempted to say that I was the EIC of “One of the big companies” and had to stay out here because I was going to be hounded by fans if I stayed in town. Oh yes, I was on the far side of Hotel Circle. That means two trolley transfers to get to the show.
Yeah, I sure can pick ‘em.
Just so it’s not all doom and gloom here as I load up my car and get ready to cross The Cursed Earth on the way to Mega City Two, here’s a few things I’m looking forward to down at SDCC. In no particular order.
1. Getting a look at the new Darwyn Cooke project, whatever form it might take. Y’all got the issue of JONAH HEX that he did the art for, right?
2. Seeing some more preview art for BATTLING BOY by Paul Pope.
3. Looking over original art from the brothers Moon and Bá.
4. Knocking over a gas station outside Fresno so I can afford it.
5. Yes, I’m kidding.
6. Seeing bloggers face to face to remind myself that they’re not just words spewed out by a series of perl scripts.
7. Roberto’s, probably the one on Convoy street, for a carne asada platter. Those tortillas are big enough to sleep under.
8. Finding a picture to replace as my most popular SDCC photo over at Flickr.
9. Daily temperature variations of no more than ten-fifteen degrees.
10. The trolley ride down through the middle of downtown SD. Remiders of a more civilized time.
11. Very Serious Disucssion of the best AVENGERS story arc post issue-200. My money’s on that epic Buscema/Palmer drawn arc featuring the Wrecking Crew, Attuma AND Kang.
12. Maybe actually attending the Eisners this year. Maybe.
13. Nah, I’ll probably be somewhere in the marina instead. Good luck, Parker!
14. Getting a copy of that Blake Bell Ditko book.
15. Maybe getting a sketch from Jim Woodring, too.
16. The Jack Kirby panel.
17. Watching everyone get worked up about how the WATCHMEN film is going to suck and how it will never be as good as the comic.
18. Maybe seeing THE DARK KNIGHT.
19. Playing hide and seek with my editor from Comics Waiting Room, in an effort to avoid explaining my total inability to write a readable column for the duration of the summer. Marc’s faster than he looks, so this could be a challenge.
20. Finding undiscovered talent so I can get some EATERS stories illustrated.
21. The Vertigo Panel. I don’t buy nearly as many Vertigo books as I feel I ought to, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested.
22. Shellshocked Sunday. Something about the air that day.
23. The Alan Spiegel Fine Arts booth. I remember when you could get Dave McKean pages for only two bills.
24. Registering for next year so I might even be able to get a table space of my own. Know anyone who needs to get rid of theirs?
Go ahead, name the song. Sean Collins’ guesses (ha) don’t count.
It occurs to me that my first San Diego Comic-Con was twenty years ago, give or take the couple of weeks that the show floats around on. Needless to say, to reconcile the two is a Herculean task.
For those of you who weren’t around then, which is most of you who read comics now, the world, particularly the world of comics was different, perhaps unrecognizably so. If you walked into a store asking for a trade collection of, well, just about anything, you’d likely get a “Wut?” in reply. Then you’d be pointed at the vast back-issue bins where legions of yellowing newsprint soldiers waited, sheathed in mylar and securely taped. If your town had a comic store, you were fortunate, and instead you probably bought them from a spinner rack or maybe even at a supermarket. Glossy pages? Never heard of them. Creator-owned titles? Not in Marvel or DC. Manga? What, there’s Japanese comics?
The comics world was both bigger and smaller. Bigger in that you could buy monthly comics outside in the Real World and the Direct Market was a brand new thing. Smaller in that you maybe had five characters that non-comics readers could reliably recognize, having seen in other media.
And smaller in that you could go to comics shows, even big ones, and do it all in a day. Lines? You have to wait in line to talk to artists? And believe me, it was always artists. Writers didn’t command huge crowds, but maybe for Chris Claremont (remember, this was in the heady days of Merry Mutant Mayhem). You could rub elbows with the English writers like Jamie Delano and Grant Morrison (yes, I know he’s really a Scot), and even guys like Neil Gaiman with little or no effort. Yes, this was even after SANDMAN (okay, so that would have been the 1989 SDCC), where he could walk the floor without being mobbed. No, I don’t recall him wearing sunglasses back then.
But back to that first show.
In those days, SDCC was held at the Civic Center, split over the small convention floor and the nearby Civic Theatre. If you didn’t dawdle, you could walk the whole thing in maybe half an hour? An hour on the outside. Now, try that with the current show. Go ahead. I’ll wait right here.
You’re back? Already? You must have been marching real good there.
Meanwhile, I’ve been over here talking to the guys from PUMA BLUES, you know, Steven Murphy and Michael Zulli. Got a sketch of the Chernobyl Death from Mr. Zulli. Man, I really loved that comic back in the day. That’s one of the few stories I’d like to see completed some time, even if it would read as dated by us jaded folks in twenty oh eight. Oh hey, look, there’s Steven Bissette, I think I’ll ask him to draw me up a Cthulhu. Oh. Cthulhu has dangly bits. That’s…uhm, just wow. He even gave me a break on the price since he didn’t get a chance to spot the heavy blacks. He said “Go ahead, you can fill those right in yourself if you want.” Me? I can’t draw. And I can’t spot blacks.
Hey! Over there! The Pander Brothers! Lemme go get a sketch of Christine Spar for my (then) girlfriend (now wife). Hey, when’s that MAX HEADROOM miniseries ever going to come out? There’s another disappointment. After the work they put in on GINGER FOX, I was really looking forward to their take on Mr. Headroom’s zany world. Another one lost to the ages.
This place is great! No matter where you look, it’s comics, comics, comics! Sure, you got some bootleg videos there, some old smut collections over here, freaky kids in costumes. They’re weird, but they’re my people. I’m weird. I’m down with that. The proceedings feel a little low-rent in places, a number of hand-sketched placards, shaky hand-held video documenting the odd panel here and there. But there was a lot of scrappiness keeping things going.
Hmm. I think I’ll go get something to eat over at the Gaslamp. Oh. Look at that guy. He don’t look so good. And over there, he’s picking fights with passers-by. Man, this place could use a new coat of paint. Maybe some bleach. I guess I’ll just head over to the non-Euclidian tourist trap that is Horton Plaza. Yeah, it’s hard to get around in, but you can get a decent meal there, if you’re willing to pay.
At least a guy can park without his car getting messed wi…hey! Some rat bastard snapped my antenna. In the freaking parking structure. Yeesh. Ah, well, back to the show for awhile.
Huh. I just noticed. There’s not many new toys for sale here. They’re all old and beaten up, like some garage sale of the damned. Yeah, it would be several years before companies like Hasbro would be out in force and erecting their Lucite shrines to the armies of variant figures made out of characters who were only onscreen for a millisecond, or the millionth costume change (cause everyone knows Bespin Han is cooler than Hoth Han, right).
Oh, you’re looking or movie studios? I think there’s one over there announcing WILLOW or somesuch. Other media? This is a comics show, my friend. We’ve got comics here, and a lot of them. This has both advantages and disadvantages. Smaller crowds, but I’m probably one of the only guys who thinks that’s an advantage. All the other vendors would probably prefer to have more people to sell comics to, or toys or T-shirts or whatever.
Funny though, I’ve noticed that the more people who come to SDCC, the less people actually read comics by and large. That may not be entirely true, I’ll admit. There may be no correlation. None at all. But it seems that when the show is a leviathan, it’s not a leviathan because of comics per se. It’s been made huge with the injection of movie studios and celebrities (I’ve never seen Crispin Glover look so glum as wating around at the New Line booth for fans that never came; I wanted to give him a hug.)
Yes, I’d rather go to a full-out comics show than to a multimedia behemoth. I’ve been to E3 during the days of Wretched Excess. Been there, done that, cackled at the geeks staring agape at the catholic schoolgirl booth babes. But still, I’ll go to SDCC. Truthfully, I can’t imagine not going. As I walk the aisles of swag-laden con-goers, I always hope that some of them will be inspired to pick up comics and read. And if they’re reading already, to try something new and perhaps out of their sphere of comfort.
Ah, but now, it’s time to return to the hotel room that I’m sharing with four friends. Man, that floor was sure comfy, but I’m not sad that I’ll be going to the con in 2008 with a room to myself. Not one bit.
1) Yes, I'm going.
2) Not entirely sure why, aside from attempts to talk to editors.
3) No, I don't have a table space. You got some for rent?
4) No, not in the bootleg video aisle, either. Something closer to comics folks.
5) No, I'm not interested in throwing my books in a pile of other books and hoping that someone will pick them up and buy them.
6) No, I'm not flying. I'm driving down because I'm evidently a masochist.
7) Yes, I'm going to Tommy's in San Diego. And The Original Pancake House.
8) Yes, it's weird coming back as a tourist after living in Southern California my entire life previous.
9) Yes, I'm avoiding Saturday as much as possible, going so far as to arrange an old friend's wedding that morning so I don't have to go to the convention center.
10) Yes, I'll be happy to sell you a copy of MURDER MOON if you find me on the floor.
11) Yes, I'll sign it.
12) Yes, I'll give you a custom bookplate, too.
13) Yes, I really need to give copies to the twins after they did such nice gallery art for it.
14) No, I still haven't found any table space.
15) Yes, I have a hotel room. Single bed, though. No sharesies.
16) Yes, I should probably have my head examined.
17) No, STRANGEWAYS: THIRSTY isn't done yet. Working on the last chapter now. Art is into the third chapter of a long four.
18) Yes, I'll be happy to show you some b/w art pages.
19) No, the book won't be in color, unless you want to subsidize that effort.
20) Yes, I'm available for freelance writing that pays.
21) No, you won't see me at Ralph's.
22) Yes, the city of San Diego has treated SDCC like a red-headed stepchild forever. Just that the stepchild is now six feet tall and runs a successful Ebay business out of its bedroom, making it hard(er) to ignore.
23) No, I don't expect it to change. Ever.
24) No, I don't want any vinyl toys.
25) HERCULOIDS? Okay, mayyyybe...
26) Yes, I'm bidding on at least one of the HERO Initiative charity auctions. I'll tell you if I win.
27) No, I didn't think that WORLD WAR HULK was terrible. In fact, it was quite good, bordering on better than it had any right to be. Until it became the lead-in for another event book. Cover price is steep, too.
28) No, I still don't have any table space. Yes, I'm still hoping for one to manifest itself.
29) Yes, that's my own hair.
30) Yes, I'm mostly going to see friends I only see at shows and pretend to network. You got me. Now, you got a table or what?
See you there if not before.
And they so almost had it.
I wasn’t convinced that Will Smith could successfully pull off his performance of Robert Neville in the recent adaptation of I AM LEGEND. As it turns out, he was the most solid link in that chain. Mr. Smith, should you ever read this basically anonymous voice howling in the wilderness, you have my most humble apologies. You made Neville both human and sympathetic, freaky and mirror for the viewer. Hats off.
What else was right? Seeing Manhattan turned into an open-air zoo and collection of community gardens run amok was great. Instead of fighting traffic (which was still an omnipresent issue, even if it was frozen in death), Neville is fighting off lions so that he can get himself a bite to eat. At least a fresh bite; he’s got canned goods, but variety is the spice of life, right?
Manhattan in silence was convincing and far scarier than anything that was cooked up in terms of the societal meltdown that got shown in flashback (though the endless ad campaign kinda robbed that of its power, didn’t it?) I’d almost wished that they had strung the whole thing together in sequence, starting with the cancer cure announcement, and then the spread of the virus, meltdown and then to Neville in the current day.
But then I’d have also made it so that Neville was the guy who started the plague in the first place, so that we had that as a motivation for him frenziedly pursuing a cure, instead of the “It’s my incident!” explanation we got when he told his family he was staying in New York. Makes more sense, doesn’t it? He’d be seeking redemption for something that he had a hand in causing. Chalk that up to a missed opportunity.
And another one, just a small one. You remember that scene where the Butterfly Woman is talking to Neville while looking at a picture of him with his dead daughter, and she asks something. She asks “What’s her name?” And the scriptwriters had a chance to show exactly how far Neville had gone in writing off human relations. He could have answered “Sam”, which would have been the name of his canine companion (the one he’d had to strangle to death fifteen minutes previously when she became infected with the Virus.) The Butterfly Woman could have answered “Sam, that’s a pretty name. Is it short for Samantha?” And that little exchange could’ve hung in the air, giving Smith another chance to push things a little further.
I was so hoping that they’d do that. That would have gone a long way towards redeeming my opinion of the film overall.
Don’t get me wrong. Smith took the previous scene with the Butterfly Woman and her son and really ran with it. Him slipping into a trance and reciting the lines of SHREK while the boy was watching the video, that was great. You could really get the feeling that Neville probably spent days doing that, withdrawn from humanity. Yes, that got touched on with his mannequins and his reaction to seeing one of them moved (those vampires is clever, but…more on that later.)
There were some nice nods to THE OMEGA MAN, with Neville having acquired a number of masterworks from various museums. Though his collection was mannered, ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST as opposed to Heston’s plundered GUNS AND AMMO-style apartment, where he played chess with the bust of Caesar. Smith’s Neville lived in townhome splendor, just watch your step around the generators and keep the door to the lab clear. Heston, however, lived like a cramped, grabby bachelor, looted remains of High Culture strewn carelessly about.
My recollection tells me that Heston’s Neville was much a more in-control guy, very stalwart in the face of an encroaching Family of albino vampires that talked like someone’s idea of Helter Skelter Hippies from hell. Sure, Heston might’ve hooked up with Afro America in the form of Rosalind Cash, but he was very upstart, making a last stand against the ravening hordes of anarchy. Hey, someone’s gotta keep America safe for real Americans, right? Yes, I read THE OMEGA MAN as a primarily reactionary document, something that’s harder to apply to say, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, though they share similar roots (Romero himself admits that I AM LEGEND was the germ of his zombie oeuvre).
I mean, hell, Heston becomes Christ and gives up his blood to offer a cure to benighted humanity. Sledgehammer-applied metaphor at its finest. Though I find it interesting that that at the end of THE OMEGA MAN, the ragtag survivors make their way back into the wilderness in a jeep, casting off civilization and its trappings. Now, contrast that to the serene ending of I AM LEGEND, where Smith’s Neville sacrifices himself in a Shymalanesque fashion (or at least invoked by a series of Shymalanesque metaphors and script moves), and the Butterfly Woman and son drive their SUV right into a walled-off suburban paradise with friendly military escort (check a blood sample at the door). Talk about your reactionary documents. At least the metaphor was applied with a velvet sledgehammer this time.
Now it seems like I’m being a little unfair to I AM LEGEND. Maybe so. The first two thirds or so provide some great, creepy moments. The sequence where Neville chased his dog into the abandoned apartment, right into the nest of vampires? That was great. Nice, palpable tension with a genuine sense of risk. I mean, you figure that Neville is gonna make it, but that dog… Yeah, that dog was a good candidate for not making it into act III. And, as mentioned before, the sense of alienation and isolation that Neville had to live with on a daily basis came through, masked by the tedium of routine, punctuated by the thrill of the hunt (or being the hunted.)
Which comes to one of the great shortfalls of I AM LEGEND. And, to be fair, it’s something that no adaptation of the original novel has embraced fully. THE OMEGA MAN brushed up against it, but couldn’t go all the way. What am I talking about? I’m talking about red-blooded humanity losing. Flat-out wipe the slate and start over with Humanity 2.0v, with vampiric enhancement! Just watch the sun, ‘cause those UV rays will do a number on infected cellular structure.
Matheson’s novel was as much about the triumph of the antithesis as it was one man clinging desperately to his thesis. All the adaptations so far have been about the latter and not so much the former. Now I can’t speak as to THE LAST MAN ON EARTH much, as it’s been a long, long time. But in Matheson’s novel, there’s two classes of vampires: the wandering subhuman bloodsucker and another, more evolved model that is intelligent, uses technology, has a culture, and is amazingly manipulative and deceitful (in a word, modern humans). And these vampires exterminate humanity. We lose. There is a new order and we’re not on top. We’re not even in the picture.
Now, this is an admittedly bleak vision, one that doesn’t make for blockbuster fodder. So my expectation that Matheson’s vision be consummated on the screen is, optimistic at best. The recent version of I AM LEGEND begins to hint at it. There’s a suggestion that the Hemocytes (vampire fast zombies right out of 28 DAYS LATER, climbing walls like ALIENS, infectin’ you with their rabies) have intelligence. But really, they never rise above a modern stone-age society (though I gotta ask what they’re eating three years after the easy meals are gone). They set traps, hunt in packs and can trick Neville into doing some really stupid (but not unreasonably motivated) things. But they’re not a culture. They’re not a New Order. They’re not even the caricature of The Family from THE OMEGA MAN.
They’re certainly not the manipulative, clever and emotionally developed vampires of Matheson’s vision. The point of the title isn’t that one man has made a noble sacrifice to save humanity, or one man who’s kept the light of civilization alive through darkness. It’s that humanity is wiped away, and that only the story of the last Man on earth dying on captivity has become the myth, the legend. And that thought is far more frightening than just about anything that the film I AM LEGEND can muster.
Funny, I’m usually the guy who says that movies are scarier, too…
Jeff Parker, you know him from AGENTS OF ATLAS and THE INTERMAN. Me, well, you know me as the guy who occasionally posts stuff to this blog. In the above link, one of us interviews the other.