Date: Fri, 22 Jul 1994 22:02:41 CDT From: Jeff Mason <[j r m] at [elm.circa.ufl.edu]> Subject: JEFF'S REVIEW: Dragon*Con - Part 1 - S.T.A.R.S. Dragon*Con/ACE '94 Report Dragon*Con/ACE in Atlanta, Georgia is usually the convention I most look forward to every summer, this year was no exception. Most years previous to this, I have spent the majority of my time involved with the gaming aspects of the convention. This year I went as a retailer, Independent Comics mail-order, and as a member of the Press, Indy Magazine, so spent most all of my time involved with the comics. I went up two days before Dragon*Con to participate in the Southeastern Trade and Retail Seminar (S.T.A.R.S.). It was put on by a handful of the exhibitors so that retailers would pay more attention to their specific products. I drove up from Gainesville, Florida painfully early on Wednesday, July 13 with the nice folks from Twin Comics, a fast growing distributor in Florida. It took us a little over 5 hours to drive, and we saw very little sign along I-75 of "The Great Flood of 1994" that had swept through the Southeast. Many parts of Interstate 75 had been closed up in Georgia prior to our drive, but were open when we went through the area. The convention was held at the Atlanta Hilton in the downtown area. For the first few days I was there I ate every meal at the wonderful buffet they had in the hotel. It was somewhat expensive, $9.50 for lunch and $7.50 for dinner, but was exceptionally good food and in comparison to other local fare was relatively inexpensive. After eating lunch at the hotel, I wandered throughout the convention area, basically poking my nose where it did not belong. Yet again, Dragon*Con has proven itself too large to be run efficiently by the fan-organizers that put it on every year. The staff-army of volunteers were very friendly and well meaning, but disorganized and quite often clueless. Many times when I needed the answer to a question, I was referred to any of a dozen mystery convention organizers that I never laid eyes on for the rest of the convention. It was hard enough finding my friends in the seething throng that was Dragon*Con, how was I supposed to track down some person I have never met before? An early treat at the convention was the "dealer swap meet" which was intended as a place for dealers to bring their overstock to sell to or trade with other dealers. The first thing I noticed was this exceedingly annoying fellow stake claim to 7 of the 20 or so available tables. He was not just annoying because he was unconcerned about the possibility that other dealers may need a table, or that some may wish to spread to two tables. He was one of those fellows who have managed to stay in the comic industry for man years, and assume to know it all because of their longevity. He spent much of his time away from his 7 tables to pontificate to the other dealers on "the way things are and should be" in the comic industry. The swap meet was very underwhelming. I was impressed by how few retailers actually showed up on Wednesday, and how few attended the swap meet. The Sunday before Dragon*Con I had set up a table to sell comics at the Tampa Mega-Con. Being the slack fellow that I am, I did not take all of my comics out of my car from the show and had a trunk full of long boxes. This led to the opportunity for me to display those comics at the swap meet. Some handy work with a luggage dolly and some freight elevators allowed me to display and sell enough comics to pay for my trip to Dragon*Con, including my buffet face-stuffing, and my hotel stay at the nearby Ramada. Wednesday evening, and also during two time periods on Thursday, the retailers were able to get a sneak peek at Dragon*Con's exhibition hall, where a number of exhibitors, specifically those that supported the S.T.A.R.S. event, were set up early. There was not all that much at the sneak preview that interested me. As is implied by the name of the convention, Dragon*Con/ACE, the Atlanta Comics Expo (ACE) is only part of the entire convention. The major exhibitors at the preview were White Wolf (gaming), Wizards of the Coast (magic the gathering), Del Rey Books (sci-fi and fantasy novels), and Capital City (comics distributor). The nice aspects of the preview included free snacks provided by the exhibitors, yes I am a sucker for snacks; Dave Sim showed up on Thursday to man his couch and coffee table set-up; and a handful of independent publishers, such as Raven Publications with their book Fenry, were on hand early to display their goods. The most negative aspect of the preview was the seemingly shark-like nature of retailers. When the Del Rey Books fellow set up his display of free books, it was if someone dumped a tank of chum into shark infested water. I almost lost an arm in an attempt to get a copy of the latest Alan Dean Foster novel. It was truly frightening. The White Wolf folks were giving out "free drink" coupons to promote their Vampire live role-playing game Wednesday night at midnight. Although I do not drink, I went to the Vampire: Masquerade live role-playing event. It was enjoyable, but I feel that the Vampire gaming system, as are most other commercial live role-playing systems, is much too rules-laden in that a first time player has no chance against a mediocre player who has played a couple of times, no matter their actual skill at role-playing. I feel that live role-playing should reward people for being able to act like their character and get into the plot of the event, interacting with others, as opposed to being rewarded for having a powerful character on paper and being able to translate those paper driven skills into game mechanics success. Thursday morning started a bit too early, because of my late night role-playing, with the Capital City distribution breakfast. As with their breakfast last year, they seemed eager to drum up more business as they are the 2nd banana in the distribution end of the comics industry. The best thing that can be said for Capital City, in my opinion, is that unlike Diamond, Capital City has to go out of their way to support independent/small press/self-published comics to compete. Whereas Diamond has a larger business, the folks at Capital City pride themselves, and rightfully so, on having a much more diverse selection of comics. Additionally they touted the fact that whereas Diamond was still hawking their non-existent vaporware software to do reordering, Capital City has been on-line with reorder software for quite some time. After the Capital City breakfast, Dave Sim, creator of Cerebus, gave a talk entitled "The Direct Market Under Fire: Stopping a Premature Death," a very common topic of industry conversation over the past few years. Sim stressed that most retailers try to have "a little bit of everything" in their store, and that does not work. He argued that retailers do 10% of the things they are doing really well and the other 90% of the things they do really poorly. He suggested that retailers aggressively carry the comics they like and to do a good job at stocking those comics. He mentioned how most stores have a handful of Peter Bagge's Hate or Evan Dorkin's Milk & Cheese, but very few gave adequate support of those creators to make them profitable for the store. Dave argued that a well-stocked inventory of Evan Dorkin material for example, Milk & Cheese, Pirate Corp$, Dork, t-shirts, etc, could and should be an extremely profitable line of merchandise for those retailers that chose to "do Evan Dorkin comics well. I tape recorded the talk and Sim gave me permission to transcribe it even though he will eventually print it in Cerebus. On Thursday afternoon there were 5 seperate 90 minute panels that started at the same time, A couple on store diversification, one on the legal issues surrounding mature comics, one by the book buyer for B. Dalton/Barnes & Noble books stores, and the seminar I decided to attend: "Nailing the adult alternative market: how the dark can bring you green." That panel was supposed to discuss the ever-expanding comic, game, and book lines that feature horror, death, and macabre -- and how they can fit into stores to immediately register sales. Unfortunately the panelists didn't show up for their talk. Thursday night was the Wizards of the Coast (WOTC) dinner. They spent quite a hefty sum of money on the lavish set-up they provided the retailers, though I am sure that it made no dent in their current vast fortune from Magic the Gathering. The WOTC folks made it abundantly clear that they wanted good relations with the retailers and stressed that unlike many companies, they realized that the success of retailers and that of WOTC are completely intertwined. Nice atmosphere. All in all S.T.A.R.S. was enjoyable and worthwhile. Perhaps next year I'll get up there a bit later so that I won't have to suffer through the chaos of staff members gearing up for a huge convention. ------------------------------ ------------------------------ End of COMICS-L Digest - 21 Jul 1994 to 22 Jul 1994 - Special issue *******************************************************************