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James Dougan on Daniel Holloway and SPX
posted September 15, 2005
 

James Dougan

I'm glad to see Mr. Holloway has enough time on his hands to work himself up to such high dudgeon about the conspiracy of the "master bunglers" at SPX to withhold the announcement of Harvey Pekar attending the show, as some sort of promotional technique. (And even dazzle us by working in a quote from Thomas Paine, no less. Did you know that one by heart, or did you have to look it up?)

The idea that someone running a comics festival would delay the announcement of Pekar’s attendance until the week before in an attempt to "sway" the undecided potential visitors is, well, silly. As it turns out, the explanation is much more prosaic, and blame, if you care to assign it, can be placed at the feet of the mercurial Mr. Pekar himself, for conspiring to withhold his commitment to attend until this past weekend:

http://www.tcj.com/messboard/ubb/Forum1/HTML/010370-2.html

Karon Flage: "Pekar didn't 100% confirm until this weekend. The odds were good that he was going to be able to attend so we started working on background material such as asking Josh to create the cover and setting up ad copy. But until the final "I will be there" combined with plane tickets we didn't feel comfortable announcing him as a guest.

We did realize that waiting this late could prevent people from attending the show but we felt that was better than people making plans and then being upset if he cancelled."

This is something that anyone who's worked to organize a small press show or event of any kind that relies on the attendance of special guests can probably identify with. But rock on, Mr. Holloway. Just because you're paranoid doesn’t mean they're not after you.

*****

Tom Spurgeon Replies: In Mr. Holloways's defense, I asked the SPX rep to whom I was directed why the Pekar announcement waited until 11 days or whatever before the con and was told the following --

"As there are 4 other regional and national shows this month, along with the short attention span of the radio, tv and news media, we decided to announce at this time to make as big a splash as possible to keep peoples attention."

I reported that reason on my site.

As you can see, there was *absolutely* no mention of Pekar making up his mind at a late date. So if Mr. Holloway was misled, he was likely misled by an SPX official not giving me a full or perhaps even accurate answer.