A Different, Anonymous View of The Graphic Novel Breakfast At BEA 2008

It seemed like there was very little in the way of breadth of coverage of the Book Expo America this year from Team Comics, although in fact I preferred the comics coverage to a lot of the book industry blogging I saw, which seemed like 80 percent "these are the books I got," 15 percent "here are some pictures of people at a party," and 5 percent "did you hear xxx got fired/quit?" Anyhow, because of the dearth of multiple-source observational reporting, I wanted to share this dissenting opinion on the ICv2.com graphic novel breakfast in the interest of getting different views out there, even though the author is slightly mean to people I like and is remaining anonymous. I can vouch for the author as a person that covers the industry. Here you go:

"I read ICv2.com's and Heidi Macdonald's coverage of the first-ever graphic novel breakfast at BEA, and I certainly disagree with ICv2.com that it was a 'resounding success' simply because it sold out. My table included a musical chair in which the first attendee got bored and left, was replaced by another who got bored and left, and then became a nice spot for the graphic novel breakfast swag bags for those of us who stayed. While Jeff Smith is certainly a major name in the field these days, his moderating the panel basically consisted of asking everyone why they became cartoonists.

"Art Spiegelman came prepared with a funny, historically informative video of his own personal history and the medium's in his lifetime (I'm guessing this comes partially from his revised Breakdowns) but overall the event was less focused than your average comics convention panel. Since the audience consisted mainly of booksellers and publishing industry types, I hoped a little more insight into what's going on in the industry would come out. True, it's an author's breakfast, not an executive's, but there is lots to talk about. Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly are currently poised to release a line of kids graphic lit (Spiegelman's own entry in the line was a nice giveaway item), he showed examples of newer non-fiction lit in his video (not his own stuff, but a variety of new voices), and DC was in the main hall with their new line of Young Adult graphic lit and IDW with their crime line. Instead of going into how comics are adapting to the traditional literary genres in every bookstore section, we got to hear how unhappy Jeph Loeb was with the final production of Teen Wolf yet how it still represents his fascination with the 'duality of man' and that the Spider-Man movies were a turning point for the graphic novel and his career. He's a talented guy, but what's that got to do with books? Then Mike Mignola told everyone how much fun movies are but that he stays focused on the comics, all of which received several 'boo Hollywood' rounds of applause. OK, but books? All of this led up to Spiegelman giving the panel (not the audience) a history lesson on comics predating movies, not the other way around, as has been reported.

"Also, it wasn't a breakfast. It was orange juice, coffee, pastry, and bagel. That is, it was BEA's first graphic novel continental breakfast, which I hope they make properly clear next year for those of us on diets. If I go next year, some eggs and fresh orange juice would be nice.

"Another item not reported much, at lunch time the convention hall food servers went on strike. So for next year's breakfast, bring snacks."

So there's that.

I don't know if it's just me, but reading the majority of stuff out there I didn't get the sense of progress in terms of comics' presence at BEA like I expected. There has to be more going on in comics in the book world this many years in than a progression from "Hey, they like us!" to "Hooray, they still like us!" If anyone at the show could tell me what that is, I'd love to run it here.

This would be a lot more convincing if I had actually gotten out of my house and gone to the show, I know.

I'm also confused by the fact that Reed is signing years in advance with multiple cities for BEA but doesn't seem to know when the heck they can schedule NYCC, so if someone .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) I'd appreciate it. I'm totally going to BEA in Vegas, though.
 
posted 8:05 am PST | Permalink
 

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