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Daniel Holloway on SPX: Pekar GoH, Ignatz Nominees
posted September 14, 2005
 

Daniel Holloway

I'm sure folks more in-the-know than me have been aware for a while now that Harvey Pekar would be at SPX. I was not.

"Common Sense" dictates: "Society is produced by our wants, and government by wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher."

It does not dictate that obscure comics conventions make the best use of a high-profile guest by announcing his presence 11 days before the curtain goes up.

I'm watching the results roll in for the New York City primaries right now, and it occurs to me that the folks who ran the Virginia Fields campaign must also run the Small Press Expo. Only such master bunglers could take a plum opportunity (read: presence of one of the only three artcomics creators who normal, well-adjusted people might recognize) and fail to capitalize on it. I guess there's a chance that there's a large group of people out there who were on the fence up until now about whether they were going to SPX, and holding off on the Pekar annuncement was meant to sway them. There's also a chance that John Paul Stephens will live to see a Democrat in the White House.

I live within comfortable travel distance of Bethesda. I have friends in D.C. I could stay with. But most people, some time after college, start requiring more than a week's notice before they let you sleep on their floor. I was on the fence about going to SPX for a while. Pekar's presence might have been enough to sway me if I'd known about it, say, a month in advance. I didn't.

Is there any promotional value in announcing a high profile guest this late in the game? Certainly, this is nowhere near as bad as the Balti-con flirtation a few years ago, but it demonstrates that management has yet to right the SPX ship completely. MoCCA was enough Eastern Seaboard chaos for me, thank you very much.