CR Sunday Magazine

A Preview of the Next Volume of Mome and a Short Interview With Co-Editor Eric Reynolds



No Room at the Con

The big news of the morning is that New York Comic-Con is shutting down to non-prepaid ticketholders after what sounds like a bear of a Saturday, with reports and rumors of huge crowds, pre-paid registrants being denied access (or asked to come back Sunday), and some artists, editors and writers finding it difficult to impossible to get where they needed to be to fulfill professional obligations.

I'm happy to hear that the New York Con has been a success audience- and interest-wise. New York is a great comics town, maybe the greatest in the world, and both the readers and the various industries can benefit from a successful show.

Still, there's a big difference between having so many people show up you have to turn some away and what sounds like a disorganized mess that is generally frustrating, denies prepaids (some of whom may have traveled to get to New York City), limits severely the amount of time people can spend at the con even if they get in, and hinders the professional and press groups from free movement at the show. This is made worse by the fact that Friday's sizeable attendance should have sent up warning flags that Saturday attendance would be even worse.

The sad thing about this is if I know comics people few will likely give a shit unless they were directly hassled, and some with that splendid, special-to-comics mix of crass opportunism and self-loathing might even be thrilled by the crowds at the expense of anything else that happened.

There's unfolding coverage of the show everywhere. I'm really enjoying Christopher Butcher's.

Note: NYCC is a paid advertiser at CR.

Spotlight on Justin "Gus" Norman



The artist Justin Norman is one of my favorite people in comics, the kind of friendly acquaintance one might only find in a field where you see certain people once or twice a year over a decade or so.

I was pleased to hear that Gus will be doing a regular series from Image Comics, and that he has an on-line gallery here. He also sent me e-mail this morning about his trip to January's Festival in Angouleme, which he did in dedicated blog fashion you can access by clicking through the image above.

First Thought of the Day

When I was a teenager, I used to have a dream about discovering an attic-full of Golden and Silver Age superhero comic books in pristine condition. The most vivid thing about the dream was my excitement not at the monetary windfall but at being able to place my hands on all these old books.

Last night I had the same dream, but it was a bookstore and I kept finding old cartoonists' books I'd never heard of existing before, like an oversized Complete Barnaby for a more than affordable $3.

I bet a lot of you have some variation of this dream. Although I wonder if to share my dream exactly you have to be old enough to remember a time when there were few reprints and no trades and therefore back-issues simply meant getting to read these stories you'd heard about.
 
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