One Overly-Dramatic Way To Look At A Series Of Convention Listings

It may be the lack of coffee, but checking out the ambitious schedule that the CBLDF is pursuing at this week's Comic-Con International -- and I support it all, particularly the boss-looking Masters series panels -- I'm reminded of something little-discussed and I think undervalued in comics. The fact that the CBLDF can pull off so many events in so many venues says less about the ideas inhabiting either the con or the Fund than it, I think, comes about because both entities have experienced a degree of institutional maturity. Instead of constantly reinventing the wheel, as comics has seemed inclined to do in so many ways perhaps most famously in the 1970s collective, self-inflicted mind wipe that reinterpreted all of comics history through the perception of 1960s hardcore superhero fans, people and practices at both CCI and the CBLDF have stayed in place long enough to be improved upon. The CBLDF is ready to run a bunch of events at the show; the con is ready to host them or facilitate them. It's something you don't often hear about in comics, with its endless theorizing about cultural forces and central ideas or its adoration for folks that swoop in and change every deck chair in sight: sometimes people just get more effective at doing their jobs.

One thing in which I take a bit of solace as comics staggers forward full of opportunity but lacking any sense of a moral position on just about anything and with the bulk of additional money being made almost structurally locked into pipelines that move up and away and out of the core industry and its artists (breathe), is this: there are many highly-skilled people in many key positions reaching a place of maturity and influence within comics. These people are devoted to putting on better shows, making better comics, creating firmer financial backing, fighting grander fights. If they don't always have a strong sense of ethics in the theoretical sense, their interests are focused in a way that keeps them from being exploitative. I have hope that some things within comics can be improved merely by virtue of having smart people stare certain problems in the face long enough to figure out how they can at least be negotiated, if not knocked down.
 
posted 8:20 am PST | Permalink
 

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