A Few, Brief Notes About Comic-Con International 2015



What follows are some personal notes about attending Comic-Con International in 2015. They are my own observations, as honestly as I can put them forward. I run a show now in Columbus, Ohio called Cartoon Crossroads Columbus, which adds to the number of things you should take into account when processing the following with an active, engaged and skeptical mind.

My thanks as always to my brother Whit for providing all of the photos that will by mid-morning accompany this article, and for CCI's David Glanzer in acting as a point person for the show and answering all my dumb questions. -- Tom Spurgeon

*****

* I had a good time, and from my vantage point Comic-Con International 2015 seemed like a successful if low-key show.

* this seemed like a really well organized convention. Part of that likely derives from the fact there were multiple off-site incidents and moments of general craziness in 2014. This year seemed quiet in comparison. Part of that feeling was just what I was seeing: the crowd seemed pretty well spread out, all things considered, whenever I stopped and paid attention. And it was never in my face unless I stopped and thought about it. I never had problems crossing the road to the convention center, the lines into the big rooms seemed at 2003 levels, and I have a hard time finding a photo my brother took where it's bonkers crowded. This fits into a theme of this year where shows and cons seem to reap the benefits of paying attention to basic issues and problems. I mean, it still required an effort to make my way around, but never had one of those moments where things felt wrong. That usually happens up to a half-dozen times a convention. Kudos to Comic-Con for keeping things flowing, or at least fooling me into thinking they were.

* so here are some thoughts, presented in rough, chronological order.

* I flew out to LA a few days early to hang out with friends and family, and to relax a bit. I drove down to the show on Thursday morning and left Saturday late afternoon. I do this because with the intensity of the convention calendar, my financial situation and the increased cost of going to San Diego, I just can't afford to do the whole show right now. I think it's getting more expensive again, and maybe not gradually. Checking my hotel receipts, the hotel I booked the exact same way two years ago at $192 was roughly $310 a night. Parking at the hotel was $45 up from $24. I had a meal just last year fixed at $19.95 that was $24.95 this year. It all creeps up on you.

* I love driving down that first day, though. I don't toy shop and now that Image is having their Expo a week early the only reasons for me to be in San Diego on Wednesday are extra work, socializing or just added vacation time, all of which are available to me in LA. Driving down starting in the dark is fun and dramatic, and it allows me to bond in nostalgic idiocy with my older brother. It feels like an adventure: a mild and sedentary one, but an adventure nonetheless.

* the traffic wasn't even bad, and it was awful in 2014. There was a bottleneck about an hour up the road from downtown San Diego, but that was at best a fifteen-minute delay. In a preview of being on the ground at the show, I never even got the sense from the other cars that these were con-goers the way I did the year before.

* I recommend the drive to anyone... it's even fun to stop for a breakfast somewhere along the way. If you get into your hotel early that just means you're first in line for a phone call whenever your room is ready.

* we parked way off site again. I'm pretty sure that's not kosher, but it saved us $90.

* the first people I saw from the comics world were Jacq Cohen and Anna Pederson. This was the first time in three years that my first sighting wasn't Craig Yoe. Apologies to Craig, but total upgrade.

* stayed at the Hilton Gaslamp, my favorite of the closer-up hotels. It was quiet and serene in the lobby for most of the weekend, and our room was severely large. I pretty much like all the hotels now, but those years when I'm overweight it is super-convenient to be as close to the show as the Hilton Gaslamp allows. Plus it's just nice. The staff has the right mix of "happy to see you" and "we're all in this together." I had a long discussion with a waiter there who was San Diego local. We talked about the convention in the 1970s and gentrification in the downtown starting in the 1990s. I liked watching the hotel staff hit the windows to check out a fabulous costume or two, calling over their friends.

* I did have a bizarre and unpleasant encounter with one hotel employee that I will take to the Hilton people in the form of a complaint, but it was in every way other than that a great stay.

* the third comics person I saw was Michael DeForge, who stared right at me glassy-eyed and didn't remember our encounter when I saw him again 36 hours later. It was creepy. I asked him Patreon advice later that weekend, and we talked about his taking the first steps towards becoming old (the first step is someone younger calls you old). I'll be long gone before he actually needs the bulk of that conversation, so all the better to get it done now.

* registration flew. I had my only encounter with a weird, fussy security guy of the entire weekend when I was asked to get out of the aisle to pin on my nametag. He was right and I was wrong. I traded my oversized bag featuring some sort of Teen Titans thing I was going to send my business partner when a sad looking little boy asked me to trade. He probably e-bayed it.



* this guy was there. I'm not sure it's right to have Cthulu-encounter like terror at times like these, but there I was.

* and then... then I was sort of just on my own for the next couple of days at the show. I wasn't moderating anything. I didn't have a story to write other than this one. I took about a half dozen business meetings for my new gig, but even those were social and merely to set up other, future business meetings.

* the first thing I did was say hi to that swathe of show that encompasses the kind of comics I read most, where I caught up with everyone from Peter Birkemoe to Ben Marra to Peter Bagge to the possessor of the best smile of the show, Tracy Hurren.

* after that, well, I went to panels. A lot of panels. Twenty minutes at a time mostly. Some people, like Kelly Sue DeConnick, I saw multiple times, like she was teaching in my major. Mostly, though, I have flashes of memory of things I saw that I never saw anything close to it again, all of which are super-pleasant and genteel memories. Bob Layton talking about working for Wally Wood. The new Spirit team talking about their comic book and Eisner himself, a mighty row of comic strip collection folks talking about their efforts now several years in and what there's left to do. A Herb Trimpe Artist's Edition popping up on screen. Steve Lieber talking about doing humor Leslie Nielsen style. The First Second cartoonists talking about single pages of their choice. Seeing Susan Kirtley at the back of a panel and talking about her school's new comics focus. Running into Charles Hatfield not once but twice, as he digs into his forthcoming Kirby art show. Apologizing to Scott McCloud. Apologizing to Scott Dunbier. Apologizing to random people named Scott. Seeing a bit of Kevin Nowlan's panel. Catching nearly the entirety of the Tamakis' spotlight, a happy minority by gender.

* seeing that many different avenues of comics making talk in articulate fashion about what they do and why is about the best time I can imagine, and it's an experience that's best realized at San Diego. So yeah, I had a good time.

* I've always recommended pop-ins, although this year was extreme. Just make sure you sit at the edge where you're not a visual distraction if you know you're going to leave, and in the middle if you know you're not. Move quickly and with authority. Never an excuse to spend any time in most of the lines out there.



* there are enough really good cartoonists still attending San Diego that I still miss people. I didn't see Anders Nilsen here. I saw Steven Weissman briefly, with his son, I think.

* my brother and I had dinner that night at a nearly empty local Italian restaurant of the kind I would have waited to get a seat for a half hour were this a decade ago. A lot of the local restaurant more than a block up were easy to walk into. This was it. It was just fine, too.



* one thing I'd never done before -- not in the non-Horton Plaza location, anyway -- was the Scholastic party, which this year as has been the case recently was at the Palomar Hotel. That was pretty great, and about as many top tier cartoonists as I would see all weekend not at the Eisner Awards. Caught up with Andrew Aydin -- very near the end on March Vol. 3 with how to do another volume or related book seemingly still up in the air. I saw the colored, complete book for Craig Thompson's Space Dumplins for the first time, and it's astonishingly pretty. I look forward to reading it. I've been reading Craig since almost his first comics, I think. Craig has moved to LA and seems happy about the change in scenery. Chris Duffy and I did a verbal post-mortem on that nice book of World War I poetry adaptations he edited. I sweated a lot near Chris Butcher.

* there was a child at that party, perhaps CeCe Bell's, who was asking very deeply considered questions about comics and cartooning of the adult guests. I'm not sure there was anyone there for him to talk to, really, not on that level.

* that was the party where I had my yearly conversation about Jim Shooter. That's my weirdest tradition, but I think it's happened ten years in a row now. Never instigated by me.



* the CBLDF party afterwards was very packed, the most I'd ever seen. Good, friendly, fun crowd, too. Talked to Kiel Phegley, recent recipient of first teaching position in his field of expertise (go Hurons) and Tom Neely at length. Spent some time with Milton Griepp. I'm told it was the Fund's best party ever. It felt like it.

* I was told that it was a great weekend for the Fund in general, raising-money wise. Jen Vaughn worked their table, and it was nice to catch up with her.

* Friday was more panels, and they've all run together at this point. I talked briefly to Jim Hudnall on the show floor about his recent travails; he looked very dour, and I hope things get better for him. Miriam Libicki seemed to maybe not be killing it as she did on the floor last year sales-wise. It's such a risk for the small pressers given all the costs. Larry Marder gave me a signed book and we reminisced briefly about the 20 year anniversary of the panel where everyone yelled at Larry Marder for Image going with Diamond. He pointed out that despite what we thought at the time, most everyone was still around. I imagine I have fonder memories of that weekend (my first panel! exciting!) than Larry does.

* talked FU Press with Gary Groth, and he seems to be having fun with that line. They're doing a couple of projects from cartoonists I admire very much, and Gary's found a worthy subject for the next big print TCJ lead interview. The Greg Stump book Disillusioned Illusions has to be the strangest book anyone had on sale at that show. I hope to interview Stump this week.



* caught up with Jaime Hernandez and Eric Reynolds and Johnny Ryan, and met Leah Hayes before the Eisners. Johnny Ryan was a week out from his cartoon show's debut and I'm guessing that's already happened in the time I've been sick since the con. It would be the greatest thing for Johnny Ryan to have a successful TV show, and with Dave Cooper also heavily involved that's a double-bonus if it works the way it looks it might. Let's hope, anyway.

* a lot of the show feels like touching base, face to face encounters where a kind of information transfer that just doesn't happen for men of a certain age online. A survey of physical clues... like noticing how someone looks when they smile or how they walk between panels.

* This year's Eisners clocked in at 2:38. I tried to live tweet it, but it was so fast-moving at times that this was an actual challenge. It's a much better show for not being so agonizingly long and full of dead space. One person I know wondered out loud if the show's pacing kept people from responding as strongly to individual moments. That's tough to stay, although there were no standing ovations that I could tell. The speeches, starting with a bearded Stan Sakai for lettering, were all earnest and bordering on adorable. A number of people weren't there to pick up their awards, perhaps most disappointingly the Hall Of Fame winners Frank Miller and John Byrne, both of whom I thought might have a Michael Jordan-level speech in them. The big winner of the night was Winsor McCay, across multiple projects. Gene Yang winning best writer was greeted with an audible gasp, not because anyone dislikes Gene's work but because it seemed like there had been a consensus building around Kelly Sue DeConnick. Lot of strange science fiction show TV actors.

* a few folks later wondered out loud about the jaunty lead-in music-wise to the memorials section of the show, and for the choice of "Sexual Healing" as a play-across song for Sakai.

* I was slightly disappointed that Don McGregor's acceptance of a Bill Finger award wasn't extended across multiple pages.

* the weird thing about the Eisners this year is that they did an almost mid-ceremony switch. The first half, with the late 1970s mainstream comics Hall of Famers and another win for Blacksad, seemed traditional and maybe even a tiny bit illustration heavy. The second half, starting with Yang, shifted to all-ages comics authors like Raina Telgemeier and the team behind Lumberjanes. I thought it was a pretty solid slate overall, but I honestly have no idea how the awards could split in half like that.

* congratulations to my peers at Comics Alliance on their win.



* Sergio Aragones seemed to be high-energy, which is great. I saw him a couple of times away from those awards and thought there was a familiar spring in his step.

* it was Sergio that got to talk his way out of Bernie Wrightson's no-show. That led to some pretty bleak rumors by the next morning (Wrightson has had some recent health issues), but it turned he had just fallen in his room.

* Jonathan Ross killed like a pro should kill in that room. It was a smart, textbook performance, working in a lot of material from early in the show and making sure not to punch down. That was a very professional Eisners all around, and there were a lot of happy winners of those on hand. One person pointed out to me that every time she sees Raina Telgemeier she seems more comfortable in her role as a category-defining, best-selling cartoonist and if that is true I am all for it.

* saw Eric Kirshammer of Chicago Comics after the show. I really like that guy; he was my retailer for only a brief time. He mentioned that Chicago Comics and longtime, high-profile employee Eric Thornton had parted ways amicably earlier in the year, and told me that Gabby Schulz had turned out to be a great hire so far at Quimby's. (He replaced Edie Fake.)

* the artist David Aja introduced himself after the show and could not have been nicer. I hope that guy had a great weekend.

* I congratulated a sheepish Denis Kitchen on his Hall Of Fame selection. He seemed genuinely surprised.

* I finally caught up with a bunch of cartoonists I hadn't seen yet in the lobby of my hotel. One cartoonist was confused by the whole San Diego experience, the contrast between the overwhelming interest in film and TV and toys and the much more modest although still very nice interest in the kind of work she did. I mention this mostly because it was at that point that I realized how much of my show had been pure comics... I saw no celebrities, had very little difficulty getting around, and saw a ton of comics makers and comics makers only. It was pretty great, and it's fun that that kind of show is still possible in San Diego.

* this is probably where I should mention that I was exhausted to the point of being sick the entire weekend, and as a result could barely talk. My apologies to nice people like Eric Shanower, Rob Salkowitz, Jenni Holm, Steve Ringgenberg and Chris Roberson who each seemed paralyzed for a few seconds by the nonsense that tumbled out of my mouth at one time or another. That is a bad weekend not to be able to carry on a conversation. If anyone out there thought I was mad at them, or upset about something, I sure as heck wasn't.



* learned of the actor Roger Rees' passing right before bed. He was a favorite actor of my brother's, and I remember fondly that jaw-dropping, nine-hour Nicholas Nickleby production that was eventually televised. For some reason it felt like hearing about a much beloved in high school cartoonist.

* had my final breakfast of the show with a friend of recent vintage and traded recent personal life stories. Comics people are very resilient.

* more panels. Saw an Image panel where they had cosplayers stand up for a round of applause after everyone had finished speaking, which is really good PR. There was some significant grumbling about the cosplayers on the floor, that they were particularly in the way this year (which I don't believe) and that many were charging money for photos (which I sort of do believe) despite not having a booth or formal merchant set-up at the show. Cosplay seemed down to me, maybe 20 to 30 percent across the board. I wasn't the only person that thought that.

* in fact, the two groups I noticed most this year were Hollywood people, or what I was guessing was general creative class people milling about, and then high-end consumers, if that makes any sense. I always forget how much people come to that show to buy.



* it was great to be around Ed Piskor enjoying himself with a big, hit book. Here he is with two other cartoonists of the moment (or one of the moment, one about to be): Ben Marra and and Ed Luce. That's one panel I forgot until now, a non-fiction comics panel with Calvin Reid moderating Jen Sorensen, Ed and Peter Bagge, all of whom were funny and super-articulate even if there never developed that second gear of back and forth conversation. I saw the writer Brian Doherty at the panel; he's now living a bit east of LA and plots his return.

* I began to head out right after the interview with Guy Delcourt transcribed here. As mentioned, there was a smashing G. Willow Wilson signing going on at comiXology at the same time. Got to meet and clear up some things with David Hyde (all from my end; Hyde seemed every bit the hardworking pro to me).

* impressions... I think the operational elements discussed early were really important. Another year of widespread mini-calamities, even outside of the show's purview, would have been rough.

* I think studios are also rethinking how to use the con, just as publishers are thinking about publishing news announcements, in the post-ubiquity-of-Twitter world.

* speaking of which, there wasn't a ton of comics news compared to recent years, but there was plenty. The announcements that caught my eye were the Kramers Ergot new volume with Fantagraphics and the Delcourt digital translation news that came out week of show, the crush of Vertigo titles announced for the fall, and a new book from Raina Telgemeier having some of the impact and attention a book from a cartoonist with her sales history should have. The Tarzan variants done by a wrecking crew of mostly mainstream comics art talent for a Joe Kubert School scholarship auction were very nice looking. I'm sure there are other stories I'm forgetting, but it's hard now with everyone announcing everything all the time.

* a lot of comics people were talking about San Diego in terms of winding down or diminishing their involvement there. Some of that is natural; it's just not a show most cartoonists under 45 can afford to do without being a guest or having a publisher foot the bill, and that only comes every few years if that. Some of it did seem to hint at a further fraying of the comics fabric. NBM wasn't there this year -- although Papercutz was, completely with smiling Terry Nantier (you'd smile, too, if you moved that many units).

* I still think we're getting to a place in the near future I wouldn't be surprised to see one of the big core alt/art players take their leave, if only Top Shelf, perhaps consolidating their presence with parent company IDW. It's not like the show ends if that happens, not at all, but that kind of loss would be something like the loss of retailer Comic Relief; it changes the whole show for a chunk of people, to a slight but significant degree. Say 15 percent. I'm not even sure the con can do anything about it.

* I'd never seen Kate Beaton original art before. She works at a fairly standard size, but landscape-style and all in one corner, which is fascinating. They're really nice-looking pages, too. Totally lovely. The Jillian Tamaki pages are still the ones that people were gushing over to me without my prompting, same as last year.

* my brother and I joked about selling our badges, but chickened out. It would have been easy to find a buyer; people were working it like a 1970s heavyweight championship prizefight. One rumor had 40,000 people in those adjacent areas. That strikes me as absurd, but I'd believe eight to ten thousand for sure.



* Whit and I stopped by on our way out of town to say hi to Anne Ishii and Graham Kolbeins at a Massive show in a bar north and east of the convention center, a bar I think built to deny anyone parking. That's them to the left of Chip Kidd at their Fantagraphics signing earlier on Saturday. They did well at the event -- I heard some other off-site stuff wasn't that well attended -- and it's great to see them when they can afford to do a comics show, which of course is only part of what they do. I hope we'll get some comics-focused announcements from Massive in the near future.

* I heard about... let's say one and half pending big-time publishing deals, including one that may not come off but if it does it will be stupendous. It's also nice to hear people still excited about working with certain artists, certain works of art.

* Whit and I piled into his car with very little incident and arrived back to LA early enough to eat Mexican in NoHo, listening to the kind of Saturday evening live band where the musicians triple up on instruments. There was a ballgame on. The 1999 version of me might have been bummed to miss that nice, last night on the beach or an alt-industry party, but the beaches are empty of cartoonists as far as I know, and the alt-/art- folk on hand might have a hard time filling a party-sized room.

* I never stayed up past 1:00 AM.

*****

* A Quiet Moment
* Anna and Jacq
* Aieeee!
* Tracy Hurren
* Anders Nilsen
* 10 Years Of Graphix Parties
* Alex Cox, Deputy Master Of His Funnybook Domain
* Eric Reynolds asks Johnny Ryan while he always has to work blue
* Sergio! Sergio! Sergio!
* Roger Rees in Nicholas Nickleby, 1980
* Ed Piskor, Ben Marra, Ed Luce
* Graham Kolbeins, Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd
* photographer Whit Spurgeon and a friend; that's the first selfie this report has ever won (below)

*****



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