The Never-Ending, Four-Color Festival: Shows And Events



By Tom Spurgeon

* Johanna Draper Carlson digs into CCI's announcement they'll be launching a subscription TV service.

* Pittsburgh, one of our great cities for general geekdom and a comics creator hotbed, has one of those comics-culture shows this weekend.

* I'd say with Emerald City and SPACE out of the way, the season has begun. I've only talked to a couple of dozen people about this, which a terrible sample size, and I know a lot of grumps and gadflies, but the early season return seems to be pre-burnout and a sort of jaded attitude about what the shows can do for a comics person. It feels to me like we're at the beginning of a trend where a greater percentage of pros than the previous generation has checked out of shows that won't make them a special guest, and I think sales coverage is such now that I'm not sure convention sales are as significant a wow-factor as even three years ago. That doesn't mean that's everyone's experience. You read enough ECCC tweets and for some people it's 2009 all over again and the joy at meeting their people, and selling some art, and buying some back -- it's all contagious. But I do wonder that as most things in comics are cyclical what the convention surge cycle is going to look like. I can't imagine it means a whole lot of people doing nine to eleven shows for too many more years.

* that's a darkly hilarious lead-in to this: it's the last day you can apply to exhibit at the 2016 iteration of the show with which I'm involved. You can start from the front page and scroll down a bit for the form. That's mid-October, and I will endeavor to help put on a good, rewarding show for those that attend, exhibit and grace us with their guesterly ways. CXC has an academic symposium component this year, with a fun topic that's sure to appraise one of my career highlights (TCJ #210) poorly, but it's all in the service of greater understanding and Jared Gardner is bound to show all you academics a solid time.

* The Beat notes that a convention green room crasher case is based on an erroneous ticket price point, and points to an article about convention green rooms more generally. I hadn't thought about it before, but I guess those kinds of rooms take on a whole new importance for celebrities of the kind that within seconds might get mobbed by 20-30 people that caught on to their presence in public.

* I don't remember a music act headlining a Wizard show before, but their basic set-up is strangely inclusive for its tendency to throw a handful stuff at a wall every five minutes to see what sticks. I would have probably flipped out if a music act I liked played one of the shows I went to as a kid, although I'm not sure the ELO stage set could have fit in the Travers Room at the Holiday Inn in Broad Ripple.

* finally, last night I received an e-mail saying a con in Rhode Island secured the special-guest services of Stan Lee, but I was too afraid to open up the attachment.
 
posted 5:25 pm PST | Permalink
 

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