The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: News On Cons, Shows & Major Events

By Tom Spurgeon

* I am told that The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo went from a two-day to a one-day show a while back. It was planned for September 25 and 26. Now it just September 25. So do go September 25. Don't go September 26.

* not a ton on the calendar this week in terms of traditional cons: there's apparently a moderate-sized one in Pittsburgh. In terms of events, this thing in Sydney looks conceivably really cool. They want to make it an every year thing, too.

* this site's coverage of July's Comic-Con International has been archived. All that means is I put the final report and the daily reports in one place and added more photos to the dailies. The "collective memory" entry is archived separately, here. I will continue to add entries to the CM as time and contributions from the readership allow.

* most of the heavy-hitters in the comics industry commentary class have come through with articles on Comic-Con International by now: RC Harvey, Douglas Wolk, Heidi MacDonald, Mark Evanier, Augie De Blieck Jr. among them. Wolk's was something of a back and forth with this piece by Lev Grossman. Heidi MacDonald's comments thread may be worth a look if you're interested in experiencing the stark split in attitudes towards the show from a certain cross-section of comics readers and professionals.

* speaking of Comic-Con coverage, the line in my report about feeling surrounded by film and TV at this year's show received way too much play. I blame crappy writing on my part. What received practically no mention at all was the bulk of what I wrote: that I greatly enjoyed the show, that the comics programming was solid to superb, that were was a ton of publishing news to report if you actually reported that news instead of writing another article about lack of coverage, that the film/television feel to the show made it weird not bad, that this feel came as much if not more from the absence of the mainstream comics' companies attention to publishing and a bit of a collapse of comics coverage from the comics and mainstream press and the MIA status of a central retail presence than it came from the fact that a bunch of people wanted to see the Chuck panel or score a Supernatural bag or whatever, and that where CCI is right now is an understandable confluence of events given recent industry events and people should stop playing the blame game. Instead, there was a lot of talk about a ruined show as if some star chamber of organizers out there was actively working to make CCI less satisfying to certain groups of fans. It is to sigh.

* one odd bit of lingering feeling I got from this year's coverage is that the comics community surely has a collective psychosis about Comic-Con International. Some would say that's always been true. If that's the case, it's worse now. My hunch is that what we're seeing is an expression of fear and dissatisfaction with the way the industry is rewarding (or not rewarding) the bulk of its professional class at this moment in time, as a lot of the criticism is status-, access-, reward-, and recognition-obsessed. But who knows? I've just never seen so many flatly illogical, hysterical, outraged, and silly reactions to a funnybook show. Some people complain about there not being a focus on comics at Comic-Con but do so in a way that indicates their own attention is anywhere but comics. Heck, people who don't even go to Comic-Con are angry about it and critical of it. The criticism I understand, the anger… not so much. Being pissed off at the idea of someone standing in a line somewhere to do something you wouldn't do is just sort of weird. A number of those in a privileged position at the show -- savvy, well connected, badged-up -- seem to take so little advantage of the opportunities on hand yet complain about being overbooked anyway. So color me baffled. My new take is that if Moto Hagio had a good time, and apparently she did, that's good enough for me. I'm personally grateful that a show that shouldn't be for me anymore had so much to offer my intense interest in comics that I could have pieced together another two days of enjoyment and enlightenment out of what I had to skip. I'll shut up now for fear of providing another pull quote for people with whom I strongly disagree on a variety of levels. But yeah, good show. Good comics show.

* the next issue up for Comic-Con is where it will spend the next bundle of years 2013-on, an announcement that when made official I will no doubt miss for several hours. I am pro-San Diego. It's the city I'd most rather visit and I suspect that some of the solutions offered by the other cities aren't the slam dunk they assert. I guess we'll see.
 
posted 12:15 pm PST | Permalink
 

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