Fear and Loathing in San Diego: The San Diego Comic Convention Day 1 The first day of the convention is less than half over, and I've already spent more than half my cash. I'm thinking about handing out early Parmiani Doom Patrols to any homeless people who accost me on the way to lunch. Meet poverty with strangeness. Lunch? Ha! I'll be eating lunch around 9:00 tonight. The Eisners are at 7:30. Not only will I be there, but I'll need to hop into the old time machine to make it home for a non- comics party in my own damn home. It's at 7:00. I handed my neighbor a bottle of home-made teriyaki and told her to fake it. Will I ever return to a daylight without comics? I missed the time travel seminar in favor of wandering the convention floor. Scarfed up the last two issues of Gerber's Howard the Duck that I needed. Will it feed the homeless? Stranger things have happened, and Steve Gerber is well known in religious circles as a miracle worker. I'm sitting here waiting for a panel discussion entitled Keeping Yourself Motivated Until You Break In. I've telephoned the San Diego Police Department about this obvious criminal enterprise. Is Moriarty here? In any case, they said the riot troops will be right over. I hope the Secret Service isn't in town: I need this computer. At least it's not mine. There's a small press area somewhere on the convention floor. I haven't seen it yet. Probably hidden in the women's stalls. But the freebie table is full of fliers that Bruno & Permiani wouldn't dream of after their worst potato whiskey binge. Everybody wants to make "their own damn comics," Comic Art Museums are sprouting up like mushrooms. But best of all are the new signs of the times: Cartoonists Against Crime!(tm) Perhaps we should call them at 312-743-5341 and let them know about the Battlestar Galactica convention at the University City Hilton in Los Angeles. Sixty dollars for the full weekend, and you're forced to see Dirk Benedict and Richard Hatch together again. A crime? Under California law, almost certainly. But that's what the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is for. They've a booth on the floor, and fliers detailing the horrible history of comic book censorship. I'll be buying a t-shirt by the end of the con. I'm politically correct and proud of it. Speaking of politically correct, early issues of Turok, Son of Stone prices are dropping like a rock. I've picked up a couple of double-digit issues for 50 cents each. Does this have anything to do with that Lobotomized modern version? Someone needs to contact Cartoonists Against Crime. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been vaporware for a few years now. They've actually managed to paste-up a single page flier to hype it. Steve Leialoha did a few 'character studies'. Every night I pray not to die before baptizing this comic with a six pack of Grant's. It's Coming Soon, according to the flier. A high pitched voice inside my head says it's not even breathing hard. The art looks, well, like a certain M-word house style. The Guide itself, in what are presumably Arthur Dent's hands, closely resembles a Gideon's Bible. The Reverend Mom likes it, though, and my high-pitched bird has been wrong before. 'Comic Book Art,' 'Cartoon Art,' whatever you call it, it's still the funny books. Peter Coogan is pushing Michigan State University's Comic Art Collection. "Over 70,000 comic books published in the United States since 1935 are included in this collection, which is the largest cataloged library collection of comic books." They've even managed to film "several hundred of the rarest superhero books from the early 1940s." They've got a wide variety of comics, ranging from Erotics, Funny Animal, Teen Humor, War, and the Underground. They've a Comic Strips collection, an International Comics Collection-the largest part of which is French, Japanese, and Mexican-and a 'History and Criticism' section, consisting of "at least 5,000 books, periodical issues, fanzines, annotated reprints and facsimiles, theses, offprints, and conference and seminar papers." When are these people going to realize that these are just a bunch of fucking comic books? Probably not until San Francisco's Cartoon Art Museum. The Museum is running a number of exhibitions, including the Art of Snow White and the Original Works of Edward Gorey. They'll be running future exhibitions on French Avant Garde Cartoonists, and Harvey Kurtzmann. You can even join them as a member. You'll get free museum admission, their quarterly Cartoon Times, a 10% discount at their bookstore, and 20% discount on original art. No word about bumper stickers or baseball caps, but the contribution is tax deductible. Write the Cartoon Art Museum at 665 Third Street, Suite 505, San Francisco, CA 94107. Artist membership is $15, student membership $20, and individual membership $35. Trina Robbins' A Century of Women Cartoonists is out! Glancing through it, it seems to be a fine discussion of the motivations and origins of a wide variety of female cartoonists in United States history. As you might expect, there'll be a signing at the Cartoon Art Museum. If you're in San Francisco on August 28th, show up and ask her to sign your "Glory" pin-up. That's Saturday, from 2 to 4 PM. According to the daily CONNotations, the gaming schedule includes a game of "killer." Is this a job for Cartoonists Against Crime? POW! BZAMM! KA-CHING$ I think I'll pass up the San Diego Writers' Monthly, which purports to be a "combination trade and literary publication", crossing "all genres." If you are a "journalist, novelist, screenwriter, playwright, comicbook writer, editor, poet, teacher, librarian, or book lover-you won't want to miss a single issue of San Diego Writers' Monthly. Who taught them sound effects? Make Your Own Damn Comics! Something a little more interesting is the Small Press Syndicate, based in Cincinnati. The Small Press Syndicate is "a group of self-publishers dedicated to publishing their own comics and helping promote and distribute them." They quote Neil Gaiman as calling them "fun and energetic." Would Death call them perky? In the small print (so small, in fact, that it's going to be unreadable to those without cybervision), it says that membership is "not automatic in some cases. Write for details." My guess is that they're deliberately keeping out Cartoonists Against Crime. If you do want more info, write to J. Kevin Carrier, Small Press Syndicate, 8913 Eldora Dr., Cincinnati, OH 45236. An Appeal for Tony Strobl Who? Someone is campaigning to gain recognition for Tony Strobl. The appeal claims that "for over 30 years, Tony Strobl was the artist of comic book stories for Western Publishing and the Disney Studio Program." He has "been neglected, eclipsed by the attention paid to the better- known Barks, Gottfredson and Murry." Strobl died recently. (Or, his "death was recently announced." Perhaps they've been keeping it a secret. This would explain why Rob Liefeld is unable to meet his deadlines: he's writing for Gladstone.) The anonymous campaigner has decided on Donald Duck in Mathmagicland as a rallying point. You can write, preferably politely, to Gladstone Comics, PO Box 2079, Prescott AZ 86302. I'll defer the worthiness of this cause to those who are more versed in duck lore than I. Motivation Is Something That Keeps You Going What was I waiting for? Keeping Yourself Motivated Until You Break In. Turns out this is actually about breaking in to comics, but I think I'll stay. Societaly, there's no difference. The title quote is from Marcus David. He advises artists not to take it negatively when an editor tells you your work sucks. Trying to get into coloring in Marvel, he continually sent in samples, and continually was told it was "good, but not the Marvel Style (TM)." So he virtually copied the coloring from a contemporary issue of Alpha Flight. This time, the return read "one of the best color samples we've seen, but not quite the Marvel Style." Of course, we've suspected this all along. This was back when the Flight let in undesirables. From Dan Chichester: "Ninety-five percent of the time you're working alone in a room you hate because you're there so often." Dan's a writer, you see. A lot of editors, he says, well, there were no editors in the room, so perhaps he didn't mean that to spread around. Suffice it to say that you've got to be your own worst critic. And when you're a newcomer submitting, you have to be as good as the best, not better than the average. And when you're in? Well, editors feel that they need to earn their pay. They'd better edit something, whether it needs it or not. Steve Mattson is a penciller. He started out like most kids do-he drew what he liked, and let the rest happen. He liked ray-guns, helmets, and armor, and was torn apart by editors. His art included great ray-guns, but horrible anatomy. Nowadays, of course, Steve would be hired as an assistant to Name Withheld. This was supposed to be about keeping inspired, not braving the jungles of the editorial offices. Dan says to "keep looking for the things that inspire you." Then, the topic turned to proposals. Salesmanship is the key, he says. And proposals should be one page, double-spaced. Otherwise, 90% goes right in the circular file, and the rest goes into the toilet. Dan has been an editor. Is this his experience from that side? A one-page double-spaced proposal is a work of visual art as much as it is written. Each line is important, and the whole must show that you can articulate yourself clearly. "Editors," says Steve, "should be busy people." They're not going to look at lengthy proposals. Fifty percent of the writers trying to break in don't have an idea at all. The rest can't articulate their ideas. How do you condense a complicated six issue series? Every single line has to sing, says Steve. And Dan reiterates that you have to keep it to one page. "That's the key-if you send in more than one page, they won't read it." He then went on to explain that Terminator 2 and Aliens 3 were complex movies and could be reduced to one page. Remember that Dan has been an editor, so possibly his brain is just a little fried on this subject. And make sure you tell them everything in that one page! "They want to see that you have figured it out. Don't leave them hanging." Dan tells about a time working at Marvel: a prospective writer took the chips out of musical greeting cards-forty of them, one to each editor. A grand plan that failed miserably: instead of going off in the offices, they went off in the mail cart. Those chips were durable. You could stomp 'em and they'd keep on going. The disposal was singing until garbage day. But, he says, it was the right idea. "Be shameless!" Work with an artist, says Steve to potential writers. But all the good artists already have writers. You have to learn about art: learn enough so that you can detect potential. This, so the story goes, is how Mike Baron found Steve Rude. What about writer-artists? "Check your pride at the door," Dan points out. "Getting published is a great motivating factor. Paychecks are good too." Steve's cat pays the price for Steve's art. Steve recommends allotting at least 10 minutes a day to do nothing but create-write, draw, color, whichever you're aiming for. Do it for ten minutes, no less, and do it constantly, even if you can't think of anything. Write nonsense if you have to. And when you hear that plaintive meow, "the cat needs to be let out, but I can't let him out, because I still have three minutes to go." Good luck, Tabby. I recommend blues. "There's never any new rock'n roll songs written-they're all old blues songs." Dan advised ritualism. "Don't light candles or sacrifice animals," but set up a place to inspire yourself, a shrine to your creativity. An art table or writing desk, surrounded by things that inspire you, such as art prints, movie posters, inspiring quotes, and Understanding Comics. Scott McCloud is everywhere today, and we'll soon be sacrificing animals to him. While "the smaller companies are becoming bigger companies anyway," Marcus David advises that you've a better chance of getting in, and a better chance of getting feedback, from a smaller company. And a parting piece of advice from Steve: "Don't ignore assistant editors; they wield a lot of power in the office, and they eventually become editors." Strained Brains There was a lot of straining going on at the trivia contest. Dani, Tom, and Jim were joined by a third unknown. The Black Ink Irregulars were well on their way to trashing the 'Young Punks' when I left. A question about Peter Parker porking pickled pasties offended my virgin sensibilities. I went to talk to Steve Gerber at the Malibu signing table. My second signed comic: Howard the Duck #1, picked up for $1 in some back alley comic store. The first was Arkham Asylum, but I wouldn't let Grant deface that cover. He had to sign on the inside of the paper jacket. I'm certain that I bought that Arkham Asylum from a store on Danny LaRue, but I can't prove it. Steve denied it, but the conclusion is inescapable: KISS took off their makeup because Marvel decided they owned the rights to KISS. Mr. Gerber gave some convoluted reason involving time wasted getting into makeup and heat, but those of us in the know know better. If you've been passing over the Ultraverse line, check out Prime. Steve Gerber has nothing to do with it, but heavily recommended it. Does KISS make an appearance? Probably not. But it's possible, though just a rumor, that there's going to be a new KISS comic. Will Gerber be on it? You heard it here first, but there's a drug-induced haze that keeps me from understanding. Never mix coffee with alcohol. What else has Steve been doing? Cybernary, in Deathblow, for Image, and a WILDCats annual due in the late fall. Exiles and Sludge for Malibu. Exiles will be good, honest superheroes. Sludge will not be the Toxic Avenger. That's too bad. With George Bush out of office, we'll need a new hero for the nineties. And Deadline Doom is not an example of how to write a comic book. I'll still leave it on the shelf next to Comics and Sequential Art, Understanding Comics, and Toxic Mushrooms of North America. In his comic book hiatus in the eighties, between Howard the Duck and She-Hulk, he did some work in animation. He also did the Void Indigo comic for Epic, and the Phantom Zone comic for DC, with gallopin' Gene Colan. While it makes our job as consumers a pain in the ass, the boom of new comic companies is a good thing for creators, and a good thing for quality. "When one company puts out a lot, you'll get trash. When many companies put out a lot, you'll get competition." When your sister puts out a lot, you'll get herpes. An Omen For The Future The Eisner Awards ceremony is getting bigger and bigger every year. This year room 6A was filled with people. Seven hundred people responded to the vote mailing. And this year an retail award was set up: to honor and recognize retailers, the people on the front lines who are pushing "our" work. Sounds vaguely similar to what Dave Sim has been talking about in Cerebus: know your retailers, know who's selling you and who's not. I skipped out on the Awards after the Best Continuing Series. Neil Gaiman pointed out that "it really is an honor just to be nominated." I know who's been nominated, and there's some teriyaki chicken, good friends, and a video of the Blues Brothers waiting for me back home. I did discover from the Reverend Mom that there is a new video disc of the musical 1776. Yes, there is life after comics, but there is no life after musicals. As the bus pulled away from the convention center, I noticed that the name of the St. James has been changed to the "Hotel St. Janes." I predict that our pre-occupation with big weapons will last for at least an extra year. Rawhide!