From: [j r d] at [frame.com] (James Drew) Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc Subject: CON: San Diego Con (Part 1 of 2): the *Long* Version Date: 26 Aug 1993 14:31:02 -0500 CON REPORT San Diego Comic Con #24 August 19-22, 1993 Part 1 (of 2): Wednesday-Friday For those of you who are impatient to just gets the newsbits, don't bother reading this post. These should be an accompanying short form posted at the same time as this. There *will* be spoilers in here for all sorts of things, most of them minor. As with last year, I also learned things which, if widely spread around, could potentially damage reputations or deals; see my notes at the end of Part 2. Also, since I am openly gay, a lot of my focus at these conventions is on queer subjects or with queer people. If this will offend you, just skip the whole thing. There is nothing obscene in here, but neither will I whitewash anything; this report goes beyond just the convention itself, into my con-related nighttime activities. The mention of a person should not be taken as an indication of their orientation, unless specifically stated. In which arrival occurs amidst uncertainty; Jim meets Valentino, but it's not what you think; WorldCon lines up for registration; The Black Ink Irregulars triumph (of course); Batman balloons; "Send the damn thing in!"; and Trina Robbins speaks on women readers, and Dave Sim on self-publishing. Wednesday, August 18 (and a little bit before): IN WHICH ARRIVAL OCCURS AMIDST UNCERTAINTY My 'zine, Ciao!, has moved into its second volume, now dedicated to queer themes in comics. I have redesigned it, and decided to relaunch it at San Diego. As a result, I was scrambling around for weeks before the con, gathering everything together. I was supposed to pick it up on Tuesday evening, and leave on Wednesday morning. Then the machine doing the cover broke down; people worked on it all day Monday and Tuesday, and it wasn't ready! I made arrangements to have it sent to Kathy Li's home (thanks Kathy), and left for the con. Reno Air now flies from San Jose to San Diego; it's cheap, and the miles are credited to my American Airlines account. At the car rental place, I had reserved the smallest, cheapest thing they had: it turned out to be an Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera, nice, but *big* (I was hoping for a small Honda). I hadn't registered for the con in advance, and I didn't have a hotel room, either. Sharon Cho (Star*Reach Productions) told me that everything in a 20-mile radius was probably booked. Thus, I headed north from the airport (the convention center is south), toward Hotel Circle. I ended up at the Old Town Comfort Inn; not as cheap as I would like, but it did the job. (By Friday, they *were* full, and Sharon's prediction was probably right on Friday and Saturday nights.) After checking in, I headed to the convention center, hoping to register (but I couldn't do that until Thursday), and to go to the Comic Art Studies Conference. I couldn't remember where it was, and the convention staff had no idea what I was talking about. (Take note, Peter: make sure the convention folks know about it next year.) So I decided to take the shuttle to the various hotels, and see if one rang a bell; the second one, the Horton Grand, did. At the Horton Grand, I arrived in time to talk with Scott McCloud before the panel discussion on his _Understanding_Comics_ started. The panel was Mike Friedrich (Star*Reach), Will Eisner (_Comics_and_Sequential_Art_), and I don't recall whom else. I had the opportunity to present some of the thoughts on the single-panel cartoon (McCloud declared single-panels to not be comics in _UC_) that were developed on the comix list, including "virtual gutters," "a sequence of one," and "deliberate juxtaposition of a panel and caption." Following a break, Peter Coogan (an organizer of the conference, and a net.person) gave an excerpted reading of his paper on The Novel, Jazz, and Comics. While I notice Jerry has mentioned the end conclusion, that there comes a point in the study of an art where "boring ceases to be a bad thing," he didn't mention Peter's midway conclusion. When the novel came along, it was embraced by the common people but pooh-poohed by the literati as the lowest form of art; practitioners of the novel went so far as to call the form "historical romance" and the like to avoid use of the negative term. When Jazz first came along, it was embraced by many of the common people, but pooh-poohed by serious music queens as the lowest form of art; eventually Rock'n'Roll came along and took the "lowest" slot, bumping Jazz into acceptance. Comics are generally deemed the lowest form of art, and some practitioners tend to try and disassociate themselves from the form via terms like "graphic novel"; will it take another, "lower" art form to bump comics into respectability? The third presentation of the afternoon was Arlen Schaumer's (I butchered his name) slide show on the Death of Superman and the Death of Schuster. PEOPLE ENCOUNTERED ON AUGUST 18: Heidi MacDonald (Disney Comics), Steve Leialoha (Spider-Man 2099), Dusty Rhoads (Hyway Man, furry artist), Jim Groat (Red Shetland), Scott McCloud, Mike Friedrich, Jerry Stratton (the net), Carl Potts (Epic Comics), Will Eisner, Dave McKean (Cages), Peter Coogan, Clayton Moore (artist) QUOTES: * "Style is the result of your inability to achieve perfection." - Will Eisner Thursday, August 19: JIM MEETS VALENTINO, BUT IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK That night, I got to go square dancing with Finest City Squares, the local gay and Lesbian club. Asking at the front desk to find Club West Coast, where they danced, I found that I had sure picked the right hotel: CWC was four blocks away (only one as the crow flies). I got asked by several people if I had come down for their fly-in in April, and I quickly resurrected my square dancing opening line: "No, I'm not Chuck Yeo." (He's a square dancer from San Francisco whom a *lot* of people mistake me for.) For the record, I'm not John MacDonald (two-stepper and choral member, late of Los Angeles, now of San Jose), I'm not an air traffic controller from New Jersey, and I'm not artist Brent Anderson; I've been mistaken for all these people. (To my knowledge, Brent isn't gay, but all the others are; maybe I just have a "common" face, but I think that most people just think that we thin men with curly brown hair, beard, moustache, and glasses all look alike). Eventually, I met a guy there named Val (short for Valentino), who actually thought I was *me*, rather than Chuck. It seems I had met him in San Francisco several months ago. "Jim" and "Valentino"; "Oh, I know of an artist named Jim Valentino," I had said. (Told you it wasn't what you thought.) WORLDCON LINES UP FOR REGISTRATION The next morning, I set off to register. I saw a line. A *big* line. Was this to get into the convention? Maybe it was for the Image Table? Or was the Pope making a surprise visit? Maybe it was the line for "Pirates of the Caribbean" at Disneyland? No, it was the line for *preregistered* folks. The line for on-site registration was at the other end. And it was longer... I later heard someone say there had been over 8000 people lined up to register at 10 am; that probably included the preregistered folks, but it's still a *lot*. The average WorldCon (science fiction con; 1993's will be in San Francisco over Labor Day; I'll be moving to a new apartment rather than attending) only gets about 8000 people, I'm told. Rumor has it that this year's San Diego Comic Con topped 30,000 (which is 50% more than last year). As I stood in line, up came Sharon Cho. "What are you doing out here, Jim?!" "I'm waiting to register." "I thought you were a pro!" "Yeah, but the con doesn't know that yet!" After getting the runaround from people who didn't know where to send me, I *did* get to register as a pro (which saved me $50; I spent about $800 over the weekend anyway, including airfare, hotel, and car). How did I qualify? While some people weasel their way in (I'll refrain from mentioning names B-), I *am* a paid editorial cartoonist and sometime comics reviewer for a Silicon Valley gay and Lesbian newspaper. After a lengthy pass through the dealers' room, I hit the first panel: "Small Publishers: Finding Alternatives to the Direct Market," featuring Batton Lash ("Wolff & Byrd"), Edd Vick (MU Press), Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics), and Daryl Mallett (wrote the ST:TNG two-parter "Birthright"). The only really interesting bit that came out of that was that Fantagraphics is doing an ever-increasing percentage of their business via mail order (like, more than 1/3). The next panel visited was "The Black Age of Comics." As the person who started the Ania/"anti-racism" flap, I felt I needed to attend. The panel featured Roosevelt Pitt (Purge), Cassandra Washington (Sistah Girl), Alonzo Washington, and Turtel Onli (NOG; pronunciation: tur-TELL). (I don't recall Alonzo and Turtel's current projects, sorry.) I didn't introduce myself, and didn't ask any questions; I just wanted to listen. It was an interesting but sparsely attended panel. Michael Davis (Milestone) showed up at the panel, and we got to hear a little bit about the Milestone/DC relationship. According to Davis, DC owns no stock in Milestone. They just have a one-year licensing deal with Milestone to publish the characters. The company can make deals with other people for other things, which is why Eclipse was selling Milestone shirts and caps. Immediately after (in fact, before it was over), I went to the "APAs and Fanzines: A Roundtable Discussion" panel. I don't really recall who was there, beyond the publisher of Modern Mythology. Oh, yeah: and Tom and Mary Bierbaum (Legionnaires). Dani Zwieg and Tom Galloway were also present. One guy from Interlac decried the fact that the article-fanzine has largely died in the past couple decades, replaced by the photocopied comic book, essentially. (Ciao! is still out there, but it now has a limited focus.) Afterwards, I got to talk with Tom and Mary (Mary, mostly), and they gave me a copy of their Sky Zero ashcan (from Sky Comics). (Ashcan, feh! The thing had a goddamn glossy cover! [It was supposed to have foil logo instead.] I saw somebody else with a different glossy-covered ashcan for sale at the con, too.) Having read the ashcan, I'd say give all the included series a miss, although the ones with art by Brad Gorby and Quentin Hoover may be worth a look; Tom and Mary's strip is "Dead Boy," about a zombie skateboarder, or something (Jamm-in', huh dude?). Mary laughed when I suggested it, but said they had no intention of blowing up the Sun come issue #100, had they stayed on the LSH. Sales on Legionnaires apparently aren't all that hot, so they're going to be futzing with it some, making the stories a little more complicated (that's what she said). She had never seen the reprint of the net.famous letter by Tom and Paul Estin when I showed her Ciao! #6, and didn't seem to really remember the original letter. Mary did say, though, that they received a *lot* of mail on the moon explosion, so it sounded like we were "lucky" to have seen even the tidbit of the letter in the Legion Outpost that we did. THE BLACK INK IRREGULARS TRIUMPH (OF COURSE) And then there was the Trivia Contest. After a momentary shake-up where we didn't know if we would get to participate as a team, the Black Ink Irregulars (Dani Zwieg, Tom Galloway, Jim Drew, and a warm body [was it Jim Harkins?]) tromped all over our first opponents (about 200 to 20 for the final score). Our second opponents also fell, at about 160 to 50. We completely blew the Enigma question, but got all the Sandman and Legion ones, of course (including the "city in a bottle question," as audience members, when both the then-playing teams failed). All four of us contributed correct answers. Next year, we may have to become the Black Ink Regulars. BATMAN BALLOONS The Net.Dinner immediately followed, at Horton Plaza's "Fast Food of All Nations" (I had a vegetarian burrito and guava soda). Dani, Tom, me, Bill Sherman, and a couple other people whose names I don't recall attended. We saw Batman balloons in a bookstore window. On the way back to the Convention Center, we ran into Paul Grant ("Zeus", net.person on Compu$erve and COMICS-L), and posited one of the Sandman trivia questions to Neil: "How did Death get her Ankh back?" "She didn't," he replied, which is what we had answered in the contest; not quite the answer the moderator has wanted ("She bought a new one.") "Well, that's true, too," Neil said. The post-Eisner award entertainment was a bust, so we went our separate ways. I headed out to Wolf's, found it dead, went to Kickers for a little dancing, and then went to bed. PEOPLE ENCOUNTERED ON AUGUST 19: Sharon Cho, Reuben Avila (furry sculptor), James Pruett (what does he do?), Gene Colan (Tomb of Dracula), Phil Foglio (Buck Godot), Kaja Murphy (artist, Phil's other half), Edd Vick, Doug Murray (The 'Nam), Marco Lumio (editor at Edizone-*, an Italian magazine; I probably butchered the spelling of his surname), Dan Chicester (Daredevil), Todd Johnson (Tribe), Colin Upton (Colin Upton's Big Thing), Barbara Kesel (Dark Horse; pronunciation: KEE-suhl), Randy Stradley (Dark Horse), Tim Sale (Billi 99), Scott Benefiel (Freex [I think]), Abby Janifer (Star*Reach), Leo Duran~ona (Race of Scorpions), Barb Kaalberg (Elfquest), Lia Graf (Tigerwingf Press, furry artist), Christina Hanson (furry artist), Larry Marder (Tales of the Beanworld), Don Simpson (Megaton Man), Mark Wheatley (Tarzan), Roberta Gregory (Naughty Bits), Mart Nodell (Golden Age Green Lantern), Ron Randall (JLE, Trekker), Mercy Van Vlack (Evolution Comics), Jeff Smith (Bone), Chuck Wojtkiewicz (I don't recall what he's on now; used to do Southern Knights and Jaguar), Batton Lash, Kim Thompson, cat yronwode (Eclipse), Ernie Chan (Conan), Barb Rausch (Barbie), Roosevelt Pitt, Cassandra Washington, Alonzo Washington, Turtel Onli, Michael Davis, Dani Zwieg, Tom Galloway, Mark Lucas (letterhack), Tom Bierbaum, Mary Bierbaum, Mick Collins (furry fan), Bill Sherman (net), Kathy Li (net), Neil Gaiman, Paul "Zeus" Grant NEAT THINGS BOUGHT OR ACQUIRED: a trading card for "Adventures of Deadman" ("You see, he's a corpse!"), a card for the upcoming Simpsons comics from Bongo Comics Group (four bimonthly series, staring in November and December; pgive me a break, please!), the Sky Zero ashcan, The "Leonard & Larry": Domesticity Isn't Pretty ashcan (see below), Wizard #20 (with the photos of the Legion dolls), and the free with registration copies of Lobo Convention Special #1 and San Diego Comic Con Comics #2 (Dark Horse; it's better than #1 was, last year) NEWS AND SUCH: * The DC booth was huge, and looked like it belonged in a car show. Indeed, Ford was having a car show upstairs the same weekend. Lines everywhere; it was pretty poorly laid out. Nice big television screen setup, but without much impressive to show on it. * Marvel and Dark Horse had "zones," but nothing to compare with DC * Image was tucked back in the corner. Thankfully, because you weren't allowed to walk through the area; you had to stand in a 100+ person line to get in at any time. I managed to poke my head around the corner an take a peak, but that was it. I was neither impressed nor interested. I never saw any of the big Image boys all weekend, or even heard if they were there. * Miracleman #24 is out. Really. So is Tales of the Beanworld #20. (Two signs of the Apocalypse at one con!) * Pogs everywhere! (Feh! Talk about your artificial collectors craze.) I picked up a Booster Gold one that I found in a parking lot, but otherwise escaped unscathed. * Palliard had a 250-copy run of an ashcan of the new "Leonard & Larry" collection (photocopied and a small pressrun; *that* you can get away with calling an ashcan), and they gave me one to use as review material. The collection will be about 160 pages, and will feature *every* L&L strip to date (except for the most recent several, of course). It *will* be great; go tell your shop to order copies (one for you, at least one for the shelf) *today*; don't wait for it to come out in October, since by then the print run is set and it will be too late to make more. * Sarah Byam is no longer being represented by Star*Reach; she was listed as a C.I.A. client, instead. Sharon Cho didn't give details, but I didn't ask; she didn't seem happy about the matter, though. QUOTES: * "My next husband will be normal" - seen on a t-shirt (not at the con) Friday, August 20: "SEND THE DAMN THING IN!" Another fine day at the convention. First up was a workshop with Daryl Mallett, "After You Finish Writing." The gist of this boils down to "be dedicated, and don't get discouraged," with a dose of "be a *writer*." In other words, be professional with your writing (be it prose or comics), keep at it, and don't limit yourself to "just" science-fiction. Pretty much the same stuff you'll hear at any such con panel, albeit with a few anecdotes particular to Mallett, but there were a number of people there who had never heard it before (or never listened). You know the type: "I've been working on my novel for eight years. I put the 300-page manuscript through one last editing pass, and now I've only got 100 pages left. What can I do?" (One woman really said pretty much exactly this.) In the dealers' room, I ran into Jeff Lang and Katie Fritz (writer and editor [repectively] of Roadways; Katie's on the net). They offered some advice on how to get a publisher interested in a writing proposal, mainly in the form of get art in the proposal, *any* relevant art will help. AND TRINA ROBBINS SPEAKS ON WOMEN READERS, AND DAVE SIM ON SELF-PUBLISHING After lunch (roast beef and cheddar on rye, with grapefruit juice), the next panel was "Attracting Women Readers: Superstuds' Buns Just Aren't Doing It," with Trina Robbins (Barbie), David Campiti (Beauty and the Beast), Don Simpson (Megaton Man, as mentioned earlier; also Wendy Whitebread, Undercover Slut, so I *really* wondered what he was doing there), and others whose names meant nothing to me. You've undoubtedly seen a lot come from my account in recent months on this subject. I'm strongly of the opinion that most of the "we want to attract women readers" talk you hear from the industry is just lip service. Even books like Black Canary are only meant to pacify women while they attract male readers; Innovation is the only current publisher really putting out product intended to attract women readers, especially from outside the current market, and even they only do minimal marketing. Trina spoke of talking with a retailer in Central California who wanted to attract women readers but really had no idea how to go about doing it. She gave him a lot of the standard ideas: make a shelf of women's comics, put Barbie in the window rather than Wolverine, etc., but she felt that it probably just went in one ear and out the other. Campiti said that there will be a two-page article on the Beauty and the Beast comic in an upcoming issue of TV Guide; even so, he looked rather blank when I suggested that directing people to a comic shop and offering subscriptions are insufficient to attract new readers. After the panel, I got to meet Ted Slampyak (Jazz Age Chronicles, Roadways), and bought some stuff off him. Nice guy. The next panel was "Is Self-Publishing the Backdoor to the Comics Business," with Dave Sim (Cerebus), Brad Foster (Jabberwocky Grafix), Randy Reynaldo (I forget what he does), Shannon Wheeler (Too Much Coffee Man), and Martin Wagner (Hepcats). Self-publishers of quality really are getting noticed, thanks to the likes of Dave Sim, Neil Gaiman, and Don Thompson. First it was Dave, then Dave and Martin, then Colleen Doran (A Distant Soil), then Jeff Smith (Bone), now James Owens (Starchild). Expect to see Teri Wood (Wandering Star) join the clique in the next year, and maybe Jo Duffy and Maya Sakamoto (Nestrobber), if they get in gear. The essential bit from this panel was a reiteration that work-for-hire is not necessarily a bad thing. You just have to realize that every hour you spend working on something like that is an hour that you *don't* spend working on something that *you* own and *you* control and *you* profit from. In addition, there was a question about copyrights and trademarks. Dave indicated that he wasn't particularly worried about someone trying to steal Cerebus, and even invited anybody who wanted to try it to self-publish their own Cerebus comic; just remember: Dave will still be there when *your* comic fails. During another pass through the dealers' room, I again happened on the Star*Reach booth, where Abby Janifer (Star*Reach) told me about Steve Howearth's plans to have a charity booth at next year's con: Comics Against AIDS. He is looking for corporate sponsors to help underwrite the costs of the booth (Neal Pozner [DC submissions editor] has pledged DC Comics' support and he apparently already has a pledge of support from Dark Horse; Marvel is expected to donate, too, as are Star*Reach and the Con itself). Volunteer artists will staff the booth, doing sketches for $15 apiece, the proceeds all going to AIDS charities; Steven already has pledges of support from lots of people. Other pros will also be contributing, as staff or with creative items for sale for the charity. (I've pledged Ciao!'s support in whatever ways I can, naturally.) The chosen charities are the Pediatric Aids Foundation, AMFAR, and the Mercury Phoenix Trust. If you are interested in contributing to or learning more about Comics Against AIDS, just send me e-mail, and I'll put you in touch with Steven. After they gave everybody the boot out of the dealers' room at 7:00, I looked for someone, anyone, to have dinner with. Who should walk up but Peter David (Incredible Hulk) and Kathy Li? Peter invited me to join them for an evening of television, room service, and Soulsearchers and Co. in his hotel room; sounded good to me! (Peter and I had pizza; Kathy had filet mignon.) Kathy and I got to read photocopies of Soulsearchers #3 (the Sandman issue, featuring Dweeb and his sister DEAF!). We watched Fern Gully and part of Aliens, and got to kibitz on the name (and possibly the design) of the ship that the Hulk and the Pantheon will take into space. At about 10:00, Kathy and I packed up our stuff, thanked Peter for an enjoyable evening, and took off. I ended up heading to Wolf's, where I ran into some of the gay pros, like Andy Mangels (Gay Comics). Andy said Clive Barker (Tapping the Vein) and his boyfriend might show up, but they apparently didn't. PEOPLE ENCOUNTERED ON AUGUST 20: Andy Mangels, Katie Fritz, Jeff Lang, Trina Robbins, David Campiti, Don Simpson, Ted Slampyak, Steve Englehart (Strangers), Shannon Wheeler, Dave Sim, Martin Wagner, Steve Stadnicki (net), Neal Pozner, Teri Wood, Brad Foster, Joe Staton (E-Man), Steve Gerber (Freex), Liz Schiller (Angry Isis Press), Dave Garcia (Panda Khan), Christopher Taylor (Legion), Brian Sutton (Furrlough), Joe Rosales (Wildlife), Mel. White (Duncan & Mallory) NEAT THINGS BOUGHT OR ACQUIRED: promo trading card from the Sandman set (they will be taller than standard cards, fitting 6-to-a-sheet rather than 9); ashcan of Looking for Nanny Katie (Malcolm Bourne, Jeff Lang, Steven Lieber); ashcan of Suzi Romaine #-2, by Ted Slampyak; Blue Moon #1 (which never came to my shop); Wild Kingdom #2 (furry sex book; first story is "Doc Cougar: Man of Fur" by Doug Rice and Hilary Barta [the hero looks vaguely like Pomru]); the Jazz Age Chronicles collection "The Case of the Beguiling Baroness" NEWS AND SUCH: * Jeff Lang and Ted Slampyak apparently have a new publisher for Roadways, but they (and Katie) were *very* closemouthed as to whom. I would guess Cult Press. * Jeff will be writing a new series with Malcolm Bourne (art by Steve Leiber), called "looking for Nanny Katie," due from Cult Press next May. It has faerie overtones to it, and Charles Vess will do the first issue's cover. A preview story will appear in Dark Horse Present #77. * Craig Russell won both an Eisner and an Inkpot Award for his Fairytales of Oscar Wilde vol. 1, in addition to the Harvey awarded in Chicago. I guess that's a Triple Crown? * Phil Foglio won either an Inkpot for Humor Cartooning. * Nominees for the Best New Artist award (the Russ Manning Award) included Travis Charest (Darkstars) and a bunch of Image-eers... and Jeff Smith. The crowd went wild, and Jeff won, deservedly. * Neal Pozner is now walking with a cane (he didn't need one at Wonder-Con, in early April). If you don't know what that probably means, don't worry about it. * Christopher Taylor is a new penciller at DC, and has done Legion #51 and #52. His favorite Legionnaire is Dream Girl. #51 apparently has a lengthy flashback to the five-year gap, and Chris got to design Giffen-pocket-outfits for Dream Girl and Star Boy (who will be sporting a handlebar moustache). It will also feature the final appearances of Kent Shakespeare and Ivy -- "But they actually *do* something!" said Chris. He also got to redesign Grimbor the Chainsman, keeping the basic costume the same, but adding shoulder pads and the like, because Tom McCraw said, "I want him to look like Cable." (shudder) Chris is exactly one day older than I am. He is black, and is already talking to the people at Milestone. QUOTES: * "My train of thought just derailed." - Daryl Mallett * "This guy's lucky if he can find the bathroom, much less self-publish." - Dave Sim on the average self-publisher Part 2 will be along in a few days, with details of Saturday and Sunday. ------------------------------ | In retrospect, a lot of little things fell Jim Drew | into place once I knew that Greta was a [j r d] at [frame.com] | vampire: the lack of garlic in her spice rack, (Furry: Randy Puritan) | the stainless steel formal silverware, even her "Innocent, but not naive." | award-winning nighttime photography of Eastern B2h t c s k g+(p) rv p e | Europe. S8/5 g l+ y+ o+ a+ u++- j++ | "I never had a problem with my finger {opinions: mine != frame's} | covering the lens," she told me. | - Marc Lynx, "Broken Bokken" | (for Karl Anderson; d. June 27, 1993)