February 24, 2006
New York Comic-Con Hits

The initial
New York Comic-Con (an advertiser here at
CR) kicks off today -- a heady mix of Gotham, convention giant Reed Exhibitions and (largely) mainstream comic book culture. We appreciate their advertising here, and hope many of you in the East Coast area have a fun weekend at the show.
I imagine if anything even
approaching the fundamentals of local advertising were exercised, the show will be a success. New York has been waiting for a con for a very long time, the professional community seems enthused to play host, and it looks like the two big dangers that popped to mind during the show's initial announcement aren't going to happen. First, New York frequently loses one weekend in February to a heavy snowfall, but that happened two weeks ago. Second, the winter hasn't been harsh enough for high oil prices to cause a regional depression as some feared that would have made spending money on comics and toys less likely.
Very few people talk about this, but the show definitely disappointed some by switching to such an aggressive mainstream comics profile pretty early on in its planning, and has continued to worry a few that wanted something more like an big-tent
Book Expo America with fewer freebies than a Wizard Con with more aggressive programming -- or some unholy mix of the two. The two leading art-comix publishers,
Drawn and Quarterly and
Fantagraphics, are late adopters of conventions and won't be attending this one. Back when I thought I'd have a portion of this site converted to feature news stories by now, I talked to a couple of independent publishers that were worried they might be pushed off to one side, both literally (in terms of show space) and figuratively (in terms of this becoming a mainstream-focused show instead of the all-camps effort that many thought possible at the time the show was announced). But the show also has been largely solicitous towards ameliorating those concerns, or at least willing to provide extra support in other areas, like programming.
Anyhow, if I were attending I'd be stopping by various art comics signings like those set up or endorsed by
D&Q and
FBI in absentia, and going to a lot of
industry-related programming. I'm interested in how the industry-related programming turns out. Again, this isn't Book Expo America; there's no reason -- and no real benefit -- to introductory-type panels where everyone repeats the big type on the last six months of their respective company's press releases. This is a comics audience. If the moderators do their job, and challenge the participants, there could be interesting results. If not, the panels could be a superficial waste of time.
King Features will be on hand with a lot of cartoonists, so that sounds pretty cool; many of those artists don't get out as often as as their comic book brethren. And as always,
supporting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) is a great and a worthwhile thing.
It looks like
Christopher Butcher will be providing the most personal, least agenda-oriented coverage among the major bloggers and news sites, at least in the immediate, you-are-there sense. If you're subscribing to Publishers Weekly's Comics Week newsletter, you should get updates from the the
PW people in on-the-floor mode at their sister company's show. I have at least one writer who promised to give me his impressions when he gets back, and will round-up the results in a "collective memory" entry.
I like conventions as social phenomena, and, occasionally, depending on the guest list, as a celebration of the variety and excellence of the art form. I remain pretty unconvinced they're industry events of note in the way that people would like to think of them. PR concerns drive a lot of announcements that would have been made at some point anyway, and there's an enormous lack of industry-wide will that would be necessary for people to use the time together constructively as opposed to merely hanging out and enjoying each other's company and basking in some measure of social approbation (although that serves a purpose, too). Still, New York is a great comics town and deserves a show, and there's something to be said about a portion of the industry getting into the same room every now and then, if only to more easily measure where things stand and where they're going. Enjoy the show!
posted 1:00 am PST |
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