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This was the first time in several years that I haven’t been a guest at Fan Expo, but I happened to be in Toronto on Saturday and popped in to say hi to my industry pals. I lasted about 45 minutes. It was nuts, with the main aisles actually reminding me of how the congestion on the floor at San Diego. The Convention Centre was at capacity, resulting in around-the-block line-ups at both entrances, even at mid-day.

I was a guest artist/writer and several friends reported to me of disgustingly long waiting times of 2 or 3 hours for people who didn’t buy their tickets in advance.
I have line-phobia myself because of a bad line-waiting experience in my early twenties in New York and as such I can’t wait in any line for more than 20 minutes. Forget it!

We always urge people to buy their tickets in advance because of the time they will save getting into the show and our advance ticket sales this year were double what they were last year. Going into it we didn’t know if that was an indication of increased attendance or that people were realizing that this is a way to say time. We also sold out of the advance VIP premium pass about 1 week before the event.

We are still waiting on the final attendance figures, but they were way up this year — 2007 and 2008 both had just under 50,000 attendees, but this year it looks like we exceeded the previous record and then some..

I’m workin on it! I’m workin on it!

There was no free wifi at my hotel or at the con, so I’m having to do everything now.

Great convention though. Who needs San Diego? — all East Coasters are thinking.

Okay time flies while having fun. Hard to believe this was my 15th annual one.
Friday was easier to get to guest and get things done. Shortest lineups of the show; greatest selection of items; easiest time to haggle on prices.
Tony Curtis canceled as did Keenan Thompson and Matt Fraction postponed to 2010. Well who needs them when we had Mary McDonnell, Linda Hamilton, Lou Ferrigno, Billy Dee Williams, Beau Bridges, Emma Caulfield, Roger Corman, Bruce Campbell, Avery Brooks, and Leonard Nimoy. Reccession what Reccession people were paying $35 to $40 for an autograph and $60 for Spock. This year no free photos at the booth but there was professional photo ops for a very nice package.
Gaming was split into four sections. Table top was where it’s been since they moved to the South building by the VIP entrance. Sparse on Friday it filled with Settlers of Cattaan and Chaotic and Battle Tech players. Magic players were almost locked out. No Clixsters at all which was a shame because they were selling lots of the figures on the floor. Free Plug #1 Cyber City Comics sold out of WizKids Horror Clix Hero Clix and Halo Clix Boosters early Saturday. Video and Online games was moved from the South of Table Top to the far Eastern side of the floor. The number of people playing guitar hero or Rockband that thought they were good and ended with FAILED on the big screen was almost a hundred each day. LARPers were forced to the evenings to another wing of the show. On another floor. The RPGers which this year seemed like a very close group of the same people over and over were confined to Room 717 by the escalators on the way to the main floor and across from the Photo Ops room. I will say that the Munchkin display for Steve Jackson Games in the Table top section was great Friday and Saturday and non-existant Sunday. Looking better than it has in years was also mostly unmanned for most of the show as people played the game too far away to know if they were with the display or not. No information whatsoever. No organization whatsoever.
Now outside of the usual dealers on the Floor, (Warning) Free Plug #2 to #6 such as Silver Snail who was heavy with figures this year, Big B Blue Beetle Comics who rounded down on a great current selection of comics, One Million Comix who had almost every current comic associated with someone at the show, Anime X who had the BEST paraphernalia for gaming & anime, Harley Yee Rare Comics who had the selection for Golden and Silver Age comics, and The Comic Shoppe of Ottawa who had one of the biggest variety selections comic related. There was a tighter selection of small niche booths or tables on the floor (Warning) Free Plug #7 to #11 such as Twisted Toys who had teddy bears with fangs or the hundreds upon hundreds of TPBs at Grey Region or the classic VooDoo Baby dolls and manga at Hairy T West or even the selection of reprints collections at Dragon Lady Comics not to be confused with the gaming figures over at The Dragon, or the actual gaming supplies at Dueling Grounds. BTW special awards got to Silver Snail who on Friday hired models to be body painted like Green Lantern and Star Sapphire and walk around the show. Body paint and tape and a g-string. All Day Friday and Saturday.
No this year was special because we had an actual pressence from several studios at the same time. (Warning) Free Plug #12 to #19 We had the typical Rue Morgue Magazine who sponsor the Horror side of the show and have the coolest display mannequins, we had Marvel return for the fourth straight year though no one let on about Disney they had the most fun artist line up. Disney had nothing but a video trailer and the Light Cycle on a revolving dais for Tron Legacy. We had DC Comics who had not been at the show with an actual display for a while, and made up with it with the most per pound freebies by far on the show. Udon was pushed to another corner with their Street Fighter IV display, while Aspen MLT did their best to entertain the little kids with their beach balls. Most current of the studioas and first time I recall them there was Boom Studios who had the writer of it’s Farscape comics straight from the airport. DK Books was here too with it’s line of coffee table hardcovers for all ages. Mirage Studios had shrank to one long table but kept pushing away at it and Avatar Press was like the Ennis Ellis studio except they had Max Brooks chained to a table autographing World War Z non stop all weekend.
For something that started with Comic books it was easy to stray. We had the typical Artists alley of smaller players but not small talent from Legendary Playboy artist Doug Sneyd to all the people from Transmission X such as Ramon Perez to some independent press like Galaxion.
Then there was signings in the special autograph areas. This year comics and anime were in the far South East corner while Media were against the cafe in the West wall and it felt like one of the few places you could meet your comics greats like Len Wein, Ivan Reis, J Michael Straczynski, Ethan Van Sciver, Mike Deodoto Jr, Terry Dodson, or Oliver Copiel to name a few.
We had actual Media with Warners offering temp tattoos, Space The Imagination Station promoting The Circuit and it’s fall shows so we can say Hi to Ajay and Natasha and Mark. We had Alliance Atlantis doing free postcard pictures of you in a selection of upcoming film posters. We had G4 Tech TV giving away pens and showing off Viktor Lucas and Scott Jones of Electric Playground & Reviews On The Run. We even had the former WWE wrestlers the Iron Sheik and The Honky Tonk Man.
We had Maple studios give some fine posters and Tobin Bell of Saw fame. We had Medallion Press doing temp victim tattoos and free ashcans of their latest books.
Oh and don’t disparage the people from Sony Playstation 3 who were showing off God Of War III or the Nintedo DS and Wii people showing off the Wii Sports. I am sure they didn’t mean to run out of lai’s or posters.
Speaking of running out, while Friday was the easiset day to access everything Saturday was the longest slowest line ups in history. I think one of my brothers may still be in one. The crowds got so bad that the Fire Marshal came down and said “NO MORE” so for two hours from 1pm to 3pm the lines were stuck and no one was allowed in as it was too crowded. It didn’t help that Everything upon everything was scheduled for around the same time on Saturday. For Example Noon Marvel Digital presentation, 1pm DC Universe editorial, 3pm Q & A Dave Thomas, 3pm Cup O Joe, 2:30 Q & A Avery Brooks, 3pm Q & A Bruce Campbell, 1pm photo op Leonard Nimoy, you get the point. Add to that that Saturday evening is the Masquerade and you have hundreds of people in costume on the floor sweating it out. As Oliver Copiel put it Friday Night it was like San Diego Canadian style. Just add a slight french accent.
Now Sunday was like a busier Friday Night. Less costumes more bargains more running around for line ups. EXCEPT this year at 230 to 3pm autograph areas started to close down. By 4pm the entire celebrity medai autograph area was a ghost town. The Comicbook signing area was a trickle and some guests even knocked out the occasional free sketch. Artists Alley was begging for sales with everyone either looking for the last minute sale or bugging out early. DC Comics left the stand up but everything else was gone. Marvel left the stand and lots of free posters. Avatar Press unchained Max Brooks at 4pm. Chaotic was tossing cans of beverage to the public 40 cases worth. Anything before this was fun and fast. Anything after this was a bargain.
Now the early ticket tallys put this show as the third largest in North America accord to the Toronto Star and the Toronto Sun. Someone swiped my Globe & Mail! Is it worth the hassle of the crowd? Definitely! Just don’t plan cheap and don’t plan for only one day.
Now after five years in the South Building nest year they are returning to the North building but they are grabbing more facilities so smaller Floor space next year and bigger show as they take other halls.
See you all next year.

The Schulz Museum is amazing. We went earlier this year for the first time, and want to return to see the changed exhibits. I hadn’t realized, before walking through the Schulz and Beethoven exhibit, that all the music shown in the Peanuts strips was actually selected to match the tenor of each strip.

It is, in a sense, the annotated Charles Schulz, and I could have spent days on it, and plan to go back and do so on a regular basis.

Although I doubt I go to SD next year, I’d go back to the museum during Con Week, since they will have an exhibit (according to their literature) about PEANUTS and Golf.

Willie & Joe are the only non-peanuts characters to appear in Peanuts, in a D-Day strip.

I keep Snoopy’s tradition alive… I only quaff root beer on soldier holidays, to remember the many cartoonists who served. (which reminds me…when is the Sgt. Rock trade coming out?)

SHADOW OF A DOUBT, along with ROPE, are easily some of my favorite movies!

“Shadow of a Doubt” is the most OVERRATED Hitchcock film (and this is coming from someone who thinks that Hitchcock was the greatest artist of the 20th century). It’s regularly cited in almost every text as being the director’s favorite amongst all his films and most critics seem to view this as license to cite it as one of his best as well, and I never understood why. The scene where MacDonald Carey (sp?) reveals his true identity to Theresa Wright during a night on the town was so abrupt and so jarring and so unbelievable in the way that it was done, that it completely takes me out of the film every time I watch it.

Truly the must underrated Hitchcock film is “The Trouble with Harry.”

I made it to the Schulz museum for the first time in December. It was really an amazing experience. A must for Peanuts fans.

(which reminds me…when is the Sgt. Rock trade coming out?)

Hmm. . . SGT. ROCK’S COMBAT TALES came out in 2005; DC published two volumes of SGT. ROCK in 2007 and 2008. A HC graphic novel, SGT. ROCK: BETWEEN HELL AND A HARD PLACE, came out in 2003. For descriptions of those items and others, including THE SGT. ROCK ARCHIVES and a SGT. ROCK screenplay, see the WorldCat list of SGT. ROCK publications.

SRS

[…] [Scene] Charles M. Schulz Museum Link: Mark Coale […]

We were grateful that the Schulz Museum included so many of Dark Horse’s “syroco”-style statuettes in the characters show. We loaned them about 25 of them at the curator’s request. It was gratifying to us and also to Yoe! Studio, who did the sculpting, that they were recognized.

We were grateful that the Schulz Museum included so many of Dark Horse’s “syroco”-style statuettes in the characters show. We loaned them about 25 of them at the curator’s request. It was gratifying to us and also to Yoe! Studio, who did the sculpting, that they were recognized.

Torsten can correct me, but I assumed he meant the new Billy Tucci series.

Amazon’s date for that book is Dec 1.

I am going for sure to the Schultz Museum next February as a side trip from Wondercon. I LOVe the photo you;ve included here.

Heidi, did you make it to see Ponyo? I loved it and wished this movie got the kind of attention District 9, GI Joe, and Transformers got. I guess Miyazaki needs to have explosions, threats, and villains in his films for U.S. audiences at large to care.

Unrelated: The Billy Tucci Sgt. Rock is excellent and VERY deserving of the hardcover treatment!

I adore the Charlez M. Schulz Museum! The last time I was there, it was for the Beethoven and Peanuts special exhibit, and I loved it. The audio tour put together with the curator of the San Jose State University Beethoven Center was informative and elegant in the way it integrated Schroeder’s performances of Beethoven’s music and his observations about Beethoven with scholarly information about Beethoven’s life and music. They had a reproduction of Beethoven’s death mask, actual strands of his hair, and a reproduction forte piano on display — you couldn’t touch the forte piano, but there’s one at the Beethoven Center in San Jose’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Library that I’ve played. (I also learned that I am taller than Beethoven was, which surprised me.) The exhibit really made me feel excited about Beethoven the way Schroeder is.

I love that they change out the exhibits so different strips and art are always on display. I forget the name of the other special exhibit I saw was — something like “The Language of Comics” — and it was also top-notch. I loved seeing a Pogo original.

Heidi, if you can march through four-plus days of Comic-Con coverage, we, your loyal readers, can scroll down a report that was worthy of our attention.

Having scrolled Google News during that weekend, there was very little reportage on comics. Marvelman got some press, but most of what was reported was media hype.

“What makes a comic seem more like a movie pitch or “media property” than a “proper” comic?”

I can answer that one. Not having read the whole piece, I can only say that what people who use comics for their movie pitch (and why it’s always a challenge to bring new readers into comics) don’t understand, is that comics are a language all of their own. If you take the time to understand the language, still pictures will move before your eyes. The things within them will come to life and talk to each other; will talk to you for that matter. Movie people can’t see that, so they can’t create that. They only see story boards in bound paper, which is not how a comic works at all. A movie doesn’t need the viewer to keep plodding along. It plays out if one, one hundred, or no people are watching. These days, anything but a great movie is like death in motion, each scene dieing for the next, until the movie is over. A comic can’t be that. The brain wont except it. A good comic waits for you to come along, and connect your life with it’s own; to take you into it’s world, and allow you to travel back in forth (though time) through it’s pages. It needs no projector, or electricity to come alive, only you or I. Maybe, that’s the magic for which Alan Moore talks about.

Books have also been criticized for being written as movie pitches. I’d guess they resemble novelizations, with thin plots, lots of snappy dialogue and action, and little stream of consciousness text, thoughts, descriptive sequences, and other material that wouldn’t translate well to the big screen.

Some people come right out and say they’re doing comics as movie pitches. I’d guess that a typical example has a neatly packaged origin, a simple power (e.g, super strength) or set of powers for the hero, a comely love interest, and a standard villain (cabal, corrupt corporation, vicious psychopath).

SRS

Heidi’s SD09 essay weighed in at approximately 7300 words, a couple of hundred words short of the upper limit for a short story. SD09: The Novelette would have been either neat or scary.

SRS

Steve Wacker will never die.

Treasuring the past more often in the present is why I never throw anything away!

I thought it was an excellent report, Heidi.

You know, all the media and movie stuff - yeah, it’s certainly got momentum. But on the comics side of things, my overall experience hasn’t changed all that much. In the exhibit hall, if they moved the artist’s alley and illustrators booths over to abut the independent press pavilion, I don’t think I’d ever go past aisle 2500. Or need to.

Here’s a reason why some of Evanier’s panels weren’t attended or covered with much enthusiasm: The fans who even KNOW who the older creators are (like me) have decided to pass on the “chaos circus” the Con has metastasized into, and the younger crowd (the ones with the strength to endure this slog) don’t seem to have much interest in the more history-oriented material Evanier is so good at presenting. Compounding the problem is the higher profile comic news sites, who are all too busy hanging on Didio and Quesada’s every word (and breathlessly Twittering it) to devote any resources to the far-less glamorous presentations the old-timers care about.

So, to Mark Evanier, there are lots of people still interested in the old-timers, so maybe coverage has to come from venues other than the zeitgeist-chasing, starry-eyed comic news sites. Such a venue doesn’t exist yet….but it should.

the blogger who doesn’t get why some comic book film pitches are bad is obviously not a comic book fan or needs to read more comics.

The problem with bad “movie pitch” comics seems pretty clear to me. They’re bad when they don’t function well as comics.

“Why, hello, hero that looks like a popular actor but has no characterization!”

“And now, for a montage! Pay no attention to the fact that it is less interesting without moving pictures and a sweeping soundtrack.”

“Time for a car chase!”

Yeah. You know it when you see it.

Thanks very much for the mention, Heidi, and to everyone who took the time to offer insight on my question.

This was my post on the other guy’s blog:
A lot of the time you can tell if a comic is just a pitch cause of the art work. It’s drawn by a storyboard artist, or a want-to-be, with a storyboard mentality. No thought of line quality, placement of blacks to help the eye flow, making room for text and balloons, and the panels not working together as a page in themselves.

The other give away is, well, people will often just tell you. Mostly as part of their sales-pitch to you… I’m talking about at con, person to person. This comes off like comics are a consolation prize.

They couldn’t get anyone interested in making their movie nor financially backing it, so they made it into a comic. What were those reasons? Story? Character development? To innovative? What?

If it’s innovation, and they want it to be made into a film… why didn’t they make a low-budget film. Even if it’s on a handy-cam, made with friends on weekends. Lots of people break into the film industry this way, George Romero for one. It shows (to me) a lack of conviction in their own work, not to just make it into a the medium they envisioned for it.

I would rather buy a comic from someone that wants to make the best comic they possibly can, then someone that just couldn’t get their movie made. I would rather buy THAT persons low-budget film.

There are two kinds of people when it comes to this kind of thing. Those that just want to make money, first and foremost, they don’t care how or from where. And those that are following their bliss, and hopes that money comes sooner or later, but just want to make something that means something to them. The comic-as-pitch-for-movie comes off as the former.

Mark: the Room 2 and Room 8 panels I went to were fairly full. The Kirby one was esp. crowded; it was standing room only along the back wall. So there ARE some of us among the sold-out crowd of 125K interested in such history-oriented material being presented at SDCC. I suppose it’s a Comics ‘continuity’ thing that makes people sit down at one…

Funny though, is this: I remember half, and quarter-full rooms with similar topics in the mid ’90s. 75 people out of 30K back then vs. 250+ out of 125K now—- quite equivalent ratios! Maybe the portion of Con attendees interested in the topics that Evanier presents is a CONSTANT?

But, it’s heartening to see those Rooms fill out in the same proportion as the growth SDCC has undergone the last 10, 15 years!

Excellent and comprehensive report. I’ve never been to San Diego Con, but now have a better idea of what it has become.

What a complicated formula, with Twilight, Movie, TV and Comic fans all looking out for #1 in one location! The San Diego Con is maturing, and reflecting the character of the Media Conglomerates: Movies, TV, and Comics.

Does this create synergy and excitement, or just resentment of “Douchebags”??
What if there is a separate building for the ComicCon aspect. Away from the FREE stuff people and the um.. so-labelled Douchebags. Would that help isolate the Comics from the chaos, or just frustrate those who had hoped to get a glimpse of the star of the latest TV/Comic/Movie crossover?

Great report, Heidi.

To me, the problem with Comic-Con is the sense of elitism I infer from the movie studios. Not the actors, the directors – they seem delighted to meet fans – but the bosses who want the special treatment. Make the Con about the attendees! They’re the customers! We need them!

Here, I say it at greater length: http://mdwp.malibulist.com/?p=773

Whoa! As usual Heidi gets a little deeper and little more meaningful than most when it comes to bringing scrutiny to the comics world. In comparison to Heidi, I’m still a newbie. I didn’t start going to Comic-con until 2002 or so and it was overwhelming then and its just gotten more so.

I’m not quite as disheartened by the movie/TV invasion because I didn’t care about those panels when you could just walk up and get it and I certainly don’t care about them now that you have to stand in line for 3 hours. I don’t care because I ain’t the slight bit interested in going to them. (I made a lame attempt to get into the Superman Returns screening a couple years back and that cured me of ever trying it again.)

But I guess we have crossed some kind of threshold for SDCC and there’s no going back. I think big is here to stay. I also think big (and by that I mean diverse, crazy crowded and full of opportunities) is ultimately better. But I could be wrong.

[…] Today Heidi MacDonald published her huge, comprehensive report over at the Beat, covering everything from Camp Twilight and Stan Lee to Hall H and the “20-megaton douche bomb” that has hit the con: […]

SDCC *DOES* fulfill its mission statement in one major way though it is really overlooked sometimes: The Comics Arts Conference, run by Peter Coogan, who once again but together an incredibly interesting schedule way down in Room 30: people like Trina Robbins, Hope Larson, Jerry Robinson, Craig Yoe, and ADAM WEST all just talking about comics. If you *really* want to escape the Hollywood machine, go to the CAC next year: you get a good seat, people are nice, and you can always hear something interesting — which is very different from a press release.

Wow, I’m glad I went back in ‘98. It was big enough THEN.

Here’s a theory: The Comic Book Industry follows a similar path that Science Fiction has, but about thirty years later.

First Fandom and historians will remember when science fiction hardcovers were rare. When a lot of short fiction was found in monthly anthology magazines. SF fans will remember the influx of women after Star Trek and mainstream fans after Star Wars. They’ll remember the pride of seeing a “serious” SF movie (2001: A Space Odyssey) get some serious attention from the Academy Awards and critics. The joy of SF and fantasy titles charting on the bestseller lists. They’ll recall the “New Wave” of experimental fiction in the 1960s. Some may even recall an incredible retailer who not only stocked the latest Ace or DelRey paperback, but also had old copies of Astounding Stories, Weird Tales, and Tales From the Crypt.

And so it goes. Tick tock tick tock….

This was my eighth working Comic-Con and my twelfth overall. I have to say, as other industry people I’ve spoken to have, this was the year in which the feeling that Comic-Con has become Something Else was palpable. Almost oppressive. Hollywood’s presence in past years at least made some kind of contact with us, in the form of Hollywood guys who would trawl the indie booths for “properties.” But they’ve gotten much more sophisticated (and less annoying — phew!) in relationship with publishers, even small ones like the one I work for. They familiarize themselves with your output and call the office instead of stopping by your booth and asking for a synopsis of every book you publish.

And you know, as annoying as that was, at least it brought with it a feeling of being part of what was going on at Comic-Con. But Hollywood isn’t hyped about comics at Comic-Con anymore. It’s gone back to the natural order of being hyped about itself. And Comic-Con doesn’t seem to be hyped about comics, either. It’s been almost completely appropriated.

I have to disagree with Calvin. Bigger isn’t necessarily worse, but when it comes to promoting comics, to presenting the diversity of what is in the medium, I think it is worse. It’s difficult enough to be an independent comics publisher under the shadow of DC and Marvel. There’s no getting any sunshine when you have to compete for attention with huge movie studios, too. Small publishers just might forgoing Comic-Con in favor of more publishing-focused conventions where what they have to show isn’t lost in a cacophony of explosive movie trailers.

And I kind of mean that in a positive way. I’m looking for a backlash here!

[…] permalink A REALLY long, but great read on the state of ComiCon: THE BEAT Blog Archive SD09: The New Invaders __________________ My blog: One Of God’s Own Prototypes. Recently played on Last FM: Also check out: […]

Jennifer: I agree with your disagreement — ??? — with Calvin, from the perspective of the indy publisher vs. the Big Two vs. Movie Companies vs. Video Game Producers vs. Stormtroopers/Booth Babes vs. Retailers vs. Toys vs. TV shows. Comics publishers beyond DC and Marvel, and creators, bring intrinsic value to big shows like SDCC that passing pop culture diversions — think TV shows and movies — can’t manufacture. I can’t imagine SDCC existing as a pop culture “Sundance” festival without the CC, nor can comics live apart from Twilight, badly dressed costumed folks and Bruce Campbell (thank God for that!).

Heidi: The fact that your report took a week to come out told me more about the state of the comic book business at 2009 SDCC from your perspective than any other report I read beforehand. Today’s report only confirmed what I already suspected. Comics took a subordinate position at SDCC this year, just a reflection of what’s going on the industry as a whole and in the pop culture economy. Glad I wasn’t there…

A lot to absorb in this article, but it raised one concern in particular with me. If Comic-Con can be so admirably accommodating for the disabled (and kudos for that), why can’t they put an anti-harassment policy into place?

The fact that women are still subject to groping and lewd remarks (this year even at the encouragement of one of the big video game companies) and yet have no official recourse is shameful and unforgivable.

I was allowed to grope women and make lewd remarks?

GLANNNZZZERRR!

Wow, reading that report was almost as exhausting as attending the Con, but in a lot of ways more rewarding. It was a great piece.

For my part, I realize in retrospect that it might be kind of telling that whenever anyone asked me what my “book of the show” had been, all I could think of was The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke, which I’d brought with me on the plane. There was some big comics news (new Bone! Schreck at IDW! Marvelman?) but there was definitely a sense this year that Hollywood had taken over.

I know it was the first year that I said “I think I’m going to take a break” and think that I actually meant it.

Yeah at the con I just focus on the comics, to the best of my abilities. Ignore Hall H, go to the panels that aren’t likely to be covered by Newsarama/CBR (Marvel/DC/Big name creator stuff). I don’t bother chasing exclusive stuff and I’m not an autograph/sketch hound.

My first con was last year and after it was done I wanted to go every year. But after this con I’m thinking I’ll skip next years and focus on the smaller ones, like the new one in Chicago.

Excellent report.

Oh well, I got into the Wired party. But those Twilight fans ruined the con for my guest — my friend’s daughter — so they are on my shitlist forever.

I agree that Comic-Con is large enough that it’s anything you want it to be. I like films as much as the next person, but not enough to wait in line (or sit in a hall for hours), nor do I care about getting some freebie that will just get thrown in a junk pile. Though I was saddened to see the smaller Bud Plant Booth, I was satisfied to do my usual rounds of the publisher/dealer stalls and original art dealers to browse and make the occasional purchase when I was away from my booth.

Like many other exhibitors, I found sales on Saturday awful–not just sales, but people rarely even stopped at my booth (which are related). But this fortunately was made up by strong sales the other days, esp. Thursday and Friday. This happened to me last year, so I was kind of anticipating it, but it’s still a bit of a downer when it happens. But overall, my sales were good. But it’s not a given anymore that everyone stopping by my small press booth will be into comics, unlike the old days….

As I said, Comic-Con is anything you want it to be; since I have no interest in Twilight, they were simply outside my radar generally. But at least they are true fans; I’d rather they come to the con than the people who are simply there because they have bought into the hype and simply want freebies and to see celebs.

Thanks for the great article!

Another great post-Con wrap-up, Heidi! One of my rituals after attending the latest SDCC is to read the various web and blog commentary on what just happened—- it helps in the Con ‘come-down’ recovery phase, and also provides an opportunity to compare/contrast my experiences with those other attendees…

Not being Industry nor Press, those commentaries hold the most interest for me. It’s disheartening to read over the last couple of years, the complaints/threats of various Publishers pulling out of SDCC becoming a repeated motif… as though the previous years’ “Alt Comix” usual suspects’ too-cool-for-not really-COMICS-Con stance has morphed into some ATTENDING Publishers’ growing discomfiture with the multi-media reality of the Con. I hope the SDCC’s Board of Directors will address their concerns to keep them from bolting; I wouldn’t want the Con to be just the domain of the Publishing Big 3 or 4. (Because then it’ll be a WIZARD Con.)

As for the Press’ complaints—- I didn’t know that exclusive, invitation-only
Parties have become the 4th Estate’s version of ‘Hall H’: only the few, the chosen, those blessed by Fate may attend! [Okay, those hotel rooftops and bars probably hold much less than the 6.5K of Hall H, but still.] So, Heidi, who are the competing hordes? Are those meat puppets from EXTRA!HOLLYWOOD!ACCESS!! your “MARVEL Zombies” that took MY spot for the IRON MAN 2 presentation? Are some real-life walkoffs from THE PLAYER scoring the sweet, sweet freebie swag like all them SDCC Newbies
that took MY “Flynn’s Arcade” coin token? Could you spot THEM from a distance, mutter under your breath, and remember the SDCCs before THEY started cluttering the once-wide-open aisles and hallways?

As for a coping mechanism for the Con: “Perhaps I’ll just make a list of panels I want to attend, strategize around that goal, write it up in my room every night, and then go hang out with friends in the time left.” TRUER WORDS WERE NEVER SPOKEN. This has been my m.o. for attending the Con in the last 10 years or so—- and has really paid off in the last 4! It
requires a stringent ‘Con Triage’ of wants and desires when that Schedule of Panels and Autograph sessions gets posted a week before Preview Night… and then a finalising go-through when you get that Events Guide in your hands that evening.

I’ve managed to map out a fairly satisfying SDCC over those years, getting to do most of the stuff I want, while still allowing some open time to let the Con surprise me. Admittedly, that schedule DOES include some
of the latest Hollywood rollout in Hall H, but if that willful p.r. wallowing includes the chance to see Miyazaki, Lasseter, Jackson and Cameron like it did this year—- count me in! (Luckily, their Hall H presentation were all on Fri.) I opted out of the AVATAR and IRON MAN 2 presentations knowing they’d be the clusterf*ck they’d be… so I attended some Room 2 panels instead. Those Comics-centric historic panels are the HEART of my Comic-Con experience, something I look forward to every year of attending—- AND the cleansing ‘penance’ for my going to Hall H, grabbing that WB WATCHMEN bag, lining up for STAR TREK foam finger and Tribble!

Nothing like hearing all those Golden and Silver Age creators and, this year, all those SD ‘freaks and geeks’ responsible for starting the Comic-Con ball rolling 30 years ago, listening to their anecdotes and memories from back then—- and then facing the attending crowd massed under the Sails Pavillion and Exhibition Floor afterwards. From tiny acorns?

So, another Comic-Con over. And another one less than a year away…

(BTW, I’m saving this SDCC ‘09 wrap-up to compare/contrast with The Beat’s future NYCC ‘10 wrap-up. I’ve read that NYCC scouts were at Con this year to take notes… It’ll be interesting to see what lessons REED took away for their East Coast version of SDCC!)

The only good thing I read in that whole report (which of course I’ll add my thanks to Heidi for writing) was seeing that disabled attendees are still being treated with the utmost respect.

Having gone their many times previously in my own chair, the level of help I get from EVERYONE at the con to get my comics signed, purchases made, and entry into any panel (thank god for the aisle right down the middle ) just always makes me happy because we’re shown that WE MATTER!

LOL now if they can just somehow make a wheelchair driving lane for us to go up and down the aisles with on the floor.

Psst… the Big Four publishers do not exhibit at Wizard shows….

The CAC has been chugging along since 1996 or so… I remember them running programming parallel to the trade show.

CCI:SD runs the risk of losing their comics cachet. Were I a publisher, I would publish a book in the Spring, hit Book Expo in May, then promote it through the Con season. Why announce or premiere a title at San Diego when the news will get buried? Besides… July and August are dead retail months, hit the Spring or Fall/Holiday seasons. (And by having a title ready in May means less stress when preparing for conventions.)

Psst… the Big Four publishers do not exhibit at Wizard shows….

They always had exhibits in Chicago - until this year. (Even the year Marvel was reduced to a handful of card tables, they had a presence.)

—

Heidi, how much longer is the director’s cut of this post?

[…] Sorry…it’s just staggering on, and I wanted to link to a couple of reactions to my novella yesterday. […]

Fantastic report, Heidi! I attended SDCC in ‘06 and it was GREAT after 30 years of con attendance to be treated well by the locals and to have just about anything I wanted to see in one place, hellish as it could often be. Then again, it took a different set of survival skills to enjoy the event and after two and a half days, it cheerfully beat my wife and me into joyous submission (sounds like it should be a plot for an old Wonder Woman comic, doesn’t it?).

Remember a day when we’d all sit around and moan how Hollywood was ignoring comics and didn’t even TRY to cater to our desires for a faithful representation of our heroes? Well, we have that now! They know where we are, they try to feed us what (they think) we would like. It’s the price of our success, I guess. I believe there was a line from The Monkees’ HEAD, “The problem with today, my young friend, is that you may get exactly what you want.”

Speaking of being treated well, I am absolutely sickened by the comic-snobs who moan about the infusion of the Twilighters into “their” convention. Did any of the vendors who have complained about sales think to rise off their chairs and try to sell them a comic book? Did any of the toy sellers who tried to foist the latest PVC “collectible” on a gullible public even TRY to say, “I don’t have anything for TWILIGHT, but here’s something else you might find interesting.”

But how many toy reps and comic publishers might have nervously worked their Blackberries that weekend, hurredly begging for a TWILIGHT license for next year’s con? Hopefully, the smart ones.

If anyone wants this to be a COMICon again, let’s stop wasting time complaining about the “invaders” and try to grow the comic market so they’ll have something to enjoy also. Why waste the energy on being negative when you can do something positive that could have a LOT of ripple?

Bravo. And thanks for the gold star.

I see the crowds of people waiting for whatever (lets call them dinosaur chow) and see opportunities for entrepreneurs (lemurs? Barnums?) to program whatever they think might draw this audience a few hundred yards or way up to the Gaslight district for whatever this con doesn’t do or doesn’t do anymore. We could go from more is less to more is more.

[…] SDCC ‘09 | Heidi MacDonald at last files her lengthy Comic-Con report, focusing largely on Elite Security and crowd control, the age-old question of “Is there any room for comics?” and what the future may hold. Tom Spurgeon zeroes in on what he considers the “core problem”: Publishers no longer know what to do with the convention. […]

Yeah, the Wired Cafe looked like the coolest place I’ve seen on Youtube. Yet, if you were doing business, it sucked with the hotness and all, but if you were just lounging, and swimming in the pool it would be awesome..and free Patron shots!!! O.O

That definitely sucks about all these parties dis-inviting the comic book community.

And for all those nerds complaining about the Twilight fans, get a life! Seriously, it’s not the end of the world. If you want change, complain to the SDCC organizers, they’re the ones who don’t move people out of the hall after a couple of shows. And if you want more tickets, beg the con to provide tix for special events that don’t have to do with the convention experience.

Thanks for such a long and interesting report Heidi!

I wonder what those who think Twilight does not belong at SDCC will think next year when there’s a Twilight comic book? The Buffy comic ended up as a great gateway comic for a number of people. Now Twilight doesn’t have the advantage that Buffy did, with Whedon doing other comics such as Sugar Shock, Runaways and Astonishing X-men providing great jumping points for Buffy fans who were interested in more. Still, it means comic book exhibitors at SDCC will have something to sell the Twilight fans next year.

Personally, despite being a big comic book fan, I think it’s great to see all the different fandoms mix at SDCC and only wish it there was more room for the convention to grow and allow more different people in.

I dunno, Heidi, I was at that Fables panel and I don’t recall any Venture Bros. fans being disrespectful; I do recall Fables writer Bill Willingham talking s**t about “TV fans”. I could tell he was trying to make a joke and repeatedly failing to be funny, but as the last questioner from the audience pointed out, there was more overlap between Fables fans and Venture fans than he was letting on. (Including the new Fables writer, who was wearing a Venture Bros. t-shirt.)

Great piece! I remember going to a bunch of Con’s in Missouri in the early 90s, meeting lots of fellow ‘geeks’ and going through all the bins for rare books. It was so much fun. But SDCC is just a Hollywood marketing machine now. I’ve also discovered I can buy basically any comic I’ve ever wanted on Ebay now (hello Chris Claremont X-Men/Roger Stern Spider-man!) and wonder if that is having an effect on the con status.

Still slogging through copious follow-up, but I your invader POV is dead on. I feel like I had that same converstation that you did, Heidi, with the marketing director of Wired.
The best of times, the worst of times: One of my high points was talking to the fine folks who carry on the Prince Valiant Strip (Gianni, Shultz, and a brilliant husband-wife colorist team). Sadly, I felt like I was the only guy who cared. No lines. No wait. No media coverage.
On the positive side, reading Gianni’s brilliant new coffee table book makes it all worth it.

As I mentioned to Heidi earlier today, there has been talk by Willingham on his message board about taking the Fables panel “off-site” next year to avoid some of the things that happened this year.

I know people have been doing stuff off-site for a while, including stuff at the Bayfront this year, but can’t recall something from the Big Two that was actual “programming” and not a party or the like.

Heidi,
this is a fantastic report. This was my eleventh Comic-Con and it continues to fill me with ambivalence. I only started going in 1999 long after the El Cortez/ old Convention Center days and, with the exception of the Kiwis, have travelled the furthest. I sometimes wish that there was less of an emphasis on the movie stuff but the fact that this is there has meant that I’ve been able to report on it for the past six years, so there may be less of a reason for me to come if it wasn’t there. Considering the amount of people and potential for sheer chaos, the organisers hold it together pretty well. And I did get to meet and do a roundtable interview with Terry Gilliam, which made the whole show for me. Each year I question why I come but I’m sure I’ll go again next year.

Heidi, your excellent, thought-provoking essay on this year’s San Diego Con deserves a long, considered response. (1) In my past blog reports on SDCCs, I’ve made pointed jokes about the security Red Shirts based on their seeming lack of politeness towards the customers. (I’ve actually encountered kind security people at NYCC.) Last time I went I was annoyed at getting ordered about for no good reason, and I’d just duck into areas that weren’t being heavily supervised. The fact that being a pro and a member of the press didn’t afford any advantages in getting into panels or even onto the con floor was irritating. Your comments that the multi-colored Shirts are in large part there to create a “psychological” effect, to keep the crowd “docile,” is brilliantly observed. It is indeed demoralizing. One goes to the San Diego Con to have a good time, not to be reduced to a passive, subdued state of mind. (2) Re: Campers. Perhaps the next time I go to the San Diego Con, I’m going to have to choose whether to spend the whole day in Hall H or to go to comics panels. Three years ago I was able to go back and forth, except on Saturday, when, even after waiting nearly two hours, I was unable to get into the Hall H “Spider-Man 3” panel. I’m now getting the impression that the interminable lines for Hall H are frequent, with people even camping out overnight to get in. Has anyone timed how long the waits were this year for various Hall H panels (“Iron Man 2,” Miyazaki/Disney, “Lost,” etc.) and reported the findings? Are there even long waits for some of the comics and animation panels? I am impressed that hundreds were turned away from Mark Evanier’s interview with Stan Freberg for lack of room, but apparently the Con simply put that panel in too small a venue. Torsten Adair’s suggestion for ticketing panels in advance is intriguing. The Con would then have to get people to check tickets outside panel room doors, thereby slowing things down considerably. This might mean that Hall H events would “sell out” before the Con even starts. I can imagine something like the “Iron Man 2” panel “selling out” online as fast as the hotels do. At least then when people arrive at the Con they won’t spend hours waiting in line for panels they don’t get into. And then think about all the scalpers who will reserve tickers for the prime panels and then sell them at high prices on eBay. (3) Re: The Douchebags. You wonder if it’s “their” con now. It was suggested to me a few years ago that a main reason that hotel rooms for the San Diego Con have become so expensive and so hard to get is because of all the Hollywood people with their expense accounts being willing to pay high prices and buy them up. Certainly this helps explain why the Con sold out months in advance during the Great Recession. In recent years I’ve been envious of those comics folk who get into the many invitation-only parties. Now I feel a certain schadenfreude that even comics people are being excluded from many Comic-Con parties. But I’ve been grateful that the Eisner Awards are open to all attendees, and provide an opportunity after the ceremony for anyone to mingle with major names in comics. I’ve also been amazed the last few times i went at how underattended the Eisners are. For the 21st century Comic-Con attendees, an event devoted purely to comics--even if its our version of the Oscars--doesn’t seem to be considered cool or important enough. (4) Re: Media Coverage. Here’s my theory, based on the scientific principle that the fact of observing a phenomenon changes that phenomenon. Say that you had no interest in comics. But for several years now you’ve been reading in “Entertainment Weekly” and newspapers about this fantastic convention in San Diego where you can see movie and TV stars in person and see sneak previews of footage from upcoming blockbusters. Where else can ordinary people see Robert Downey, Jr., and Johnny Depp and James Cameron and Peter Jackson and Kiefer Sutherland and “Lost” cast members all in person under one roof? You’d want to go, right? For several years now, the mainstream media coverage of the San Diego Con has emphasized the movie and TV panels, and as you note, this year the MSM coverage seems to ignore comics at Comic-Con altogether. I suspect this means that despite Comic Con’s name, the general public now thinks of it primarily as a showcase for movies and TV. And that means that the audience the Con attracts will increasingly be made up of people who are there primarily for the movie and TV presentations. One friend of mine has argued that it’s mainly the comics fans who know enough to book their tickets and hotel rooms early enough to get them. Really? Now that Comic-Con has been a major event for “Star Wars” fans for years, you think they haven’t figured this out? The major influx of “Twilight” fans at this year’s Comic-Con indicates that even such a new fandom knows enough to get their tickets and accommodations early. Has anyone ever done a survey of the Comic-Con audience? How many of them are primarily there for comics? You note that the only “comics-only” personality who gets mainstream media coverage at the Con is Stan Lee, though, of course, he has his movie and TV deals, too. Stan is still the charismatic Face of Comics to the public at large, and I don’t think there’s anyone around now who will take his place. (Art Spiegelman can and does do it for indie comics, but not for mainstream comics.) If Stan stops coming to Comic Con, the MSM won’t mention any “comics-only” personality. Perhaps the MSM’s lack of interest in comics at Comic-Con should also serve as a wake-up call. Despite comics reviews in “The New York Times” and other welcome signs of progress, maybe the mainstream coverage of the San Diego Con demonstrates that the MSM really isn’t that interested in comics, maybe even that the surge of media interest in graphic novels over this decade could be declining. If even “Entertainment Weekly” is excluding comics creators from its party, then the tide may have turned. (I presume that media outlets are mainly sending TV and movie reporters, not reporters on books, who might be more interested in graphic novels.) It’s interesting that the Hollywood people are reportedly less interested in comics; maybe they think they can now generate comics-style properties themselves. (5) You ask, “If the Dbags think it’s so cool to be at Comic-Con with all the quirky comics folks, maybe they all need to chip in to the Hero Initiative?” Or what if Hollywood people contributed to CBLDF, or to the various comics museums? (6) Re: the free bags of swag. I’ve seen one comment that people who grab the bags then go home and auction off the swag on eBay. (7) Re: The locals. This is another reason I’d like to see a survey of Con attendance. How many people who go are locals from San Diego, or from Southern California in general? Pros like ourselves, who travel cross-country to San Diego, hang out at the Con with other pros, and probably have a distorted impression of who the majority of the attendees are. You say, “But as the stress and exhaustion of just Being There increase, the level of will to put up with it decreases.” Exactly. And I don’t think that pros who spend most of their time in panel rooms at the Con realize how stressful and exhausting it is for the rest of us to try to make our way through gridlocked aisles or stand in interminable lines for much of four days. Indeed, the last several times I’ve gone, although I feel it’s obligatory to make my way once through the main floor, I spend most of my time upstairs around the panel rooms for my own peace of mind. If the Con is supposed to be fun, why is it so difficult to endure? It’s interesting that so many pros among my Facebook friends before this year’s Con seemed to look forward to it with a certain dread. (8) Re: Twilighters. Why do the Old Guard of Con attendees dislike them? Fanboy misogyny, maybe? (9) Re: Indies. We have also seen that indie comics people are drifting away from the New York Comic Con, which is too big, expensive, and mainstream for their tastes. Mark Evanier has long propounded the correct theory that the San Diego Con is actually many different cons under one roof, but it would be sad if indie comics aren’t one of those cons. Since the San Diego Con sees itself as an educational enterprise promoting the art of comics, can’t they do something to help small press people attend? Then again, is the small press audience being shut out by rising expenses, too? Eric Reynolds’ observation that “I also noticed appreciably fewer cartoonists that I admire attending the show this year, simply due to hype surrounding the show’s sellout status, hotel occupancy, and the fact that you have to register further and further in advance.” is important. All of these factors may be scaring increasing numbers of comics creators and comics fans away from the con, even if there are plenty of Douchebags to take their place. I’ve seen one person point out that lots of people with day jobs simply can’t plan their schedules as far in advance as is now necessary to book hotels for Comic-Con. (10) Re: “I’m pretty sure I will never again do Comic-Con the way I did it this year. The Land of Wanders is too stressful and tiring for me. Perhaps I’ll just make a list of panels I want to attend, strategize around that goal, write it up in my room every night, and then go hang out with friends in the time left. Or else, I’ll find a table to sit at, get an exhibitor badge, spring for wifi in the hall and just do it that way.” For years I’ve downloaded the SDCC schedule from their website weeks before the Con and planned which panels I would attend. It’s like the advice that travel guides give for visitors to Disney theme parks: with a venue this crowded, you have to plan in advance to see what you most want to see. I’ve enjoyed the occasions when I get to sit down and do a signing at a major con. It’s as if I’m in an island of peace and stillness amidst the tumult, and if I’m in a good location, I can flag down friends who pass by and talk to them. (11) Re: the future of the San Diego Con. Like you, despite everything, I’d still go to the San Diego Con--if one of my clients paid my expenses. In the years that I don’t go, it feels as if a big party is being held that everyone is attending but me. But stories about the hassles reconcile me to staying home, and feeling grateful for the big, mostly-comics cons closer to home, like the NY Comic Con and MoCCA Art Fest. I wonder if G4’s telecast of this year’s Lucasfilm panel is the wave of the future. I am amazed at the number of Comic-Con panels that I’ve been able to watch this year and last on YouTube because they were surreptitiously videoed by audience members. If the Con is sold out, it might as well do official webcasts of various events. The San Diego Con now attracts national attention, so this would be a good next step in broadening its audience. Moreover, virtually all the Comic-Con videos on YouTube are from movie and TV panels. If the Comic-Con did its own webcasts, maybe they’d webcast the Eisners and actual comics panels as well! (12) And next time I go to the San Diego Con, I had better attend and write reports on some of the comics history panels because if I don’t, it seems that nobody out of the 120,000 attendees will.

[…] (The twilight camp out and one attendees reaction. Both images from Heidi’s Beat writeup.) […]

Great piece, Heidi.

Thanks for sharing these!

Gonna listen to those “Secret Origins” and “El Cortez Memories” while flipping through that COMIC-CON 40 YEARS book (great job by Jackie Estrada and Gary Sassaman there!)…

Fantastic resource, thank you Jamie!

You’re welcome

Thanks, Ed! I went to both those panels and moderated the one on Comic-Con in the 1970s (which doesn’t seem to have been recorded). The signing of the 40th anniversary book by the people on the Origins and 1970s panel ran an extra half hour–so many people were using the book like a high school yearbook (whether this was their 30th year attending the show or their very first year at Comic-Con!).

Thanks, Ed! Now I can at least listen to a few panels I had missed. Both The Secret Origins of Comic-Con and Jack Kirby Tribute panels could have gone on longer; we had so much to talk about. Actually, many panel discussions could have gone on longer, and perhaps some topics could be re-visited at future Comic-Cons.

Mark, thanks for the report.
I live in Oakland (the city next door to Berkeley) and if I wasn’t at the convention I’d certainly like to have made the event — though I heard it sold out early.

That’s possible. I ordered my ticket the first day I heard about it and got a decent seat in the mezzanine. On the other hand, I waited a week or two to try and get a ticket for the movie screening and it was sold out. But, I had other plans Friday night anyway.

Well, I went to Comic-Con AND got to see Miyazaki in Hall H on Fri.

Lasseter did a pretty decent Q&A; a nice surprise was when the Inkpot Award was brought out for Miyazaki-san— and he asked if he could use the ink in it!

Sure it wasn’t as ‘intimate’ as the Berkeley appearance— but Hall H wasn’t “cramped and sweaty”, either. And: being part of the 6,500 who stood up and warmly welcomed the creator of TOTORO in his first-ever U.S. visit (ending his imposed boycott) is something I’ll place as a highlight among all my years of attending SDCC…

Ed, thanks for that. I was wondering how the SDCC Miyazaki went. I was stuck behind my table all 4 days (except for the one panel that I was on). Glad to hear it worked out well. I didn’t know there was a boycott of sorts. Hmmm…?

Wow, it looks like an awful NYC party full of wall street types, but at ComicCon. Ugh.

Without much commentary about whether or not it was a party worth attending (though it looks fine), wall streeter parties are very different thing. For one, no one who works in wall street has facial hair.

fun times indeed! great pic of me, brea, zane, & jen. but just a little type w/ my last name. there’s no “C” in AQUINO. thanks!

the unknown gent is Zane Grant. Brea’s brother.

Zane (”unknown gent”) is collaborating with Brea on a comic for IDW (out next year, I believe)! Awesome peeps!

this was one of the better parties at the con

That was one hell of a night. Amazing party. And why so negative, Eric? Those are some awesome people. You know them?

Yeah, I’m a little confused by Eric’s comment as well…

Yeah, I’m a little confused by Eric’s comments as well…

Yeah, I’m a little confused by Eric’s comment as well…

Ugh. Sorry about the triple threat…

The Popcult party was EPIC. The crowd was intensely diverse and easygoing (it’s the Con, so ranging from geek to chic). Ask anyone who was there, including myself, and you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone without a huge, mischievous grin :]

Popcult II next year? *Crossing fingers*

Well, I was the sweaty dancing guy in the blue shirt above and having been to plenty of NYC parties that were actually fun, I can say that this party was off the hook. great sound system and a really fun crowd….and I am as far from “Wall Street crowd” as you are going to get…

I agree — I’m not above saying that was one of the coolest parties I’ve ever been too — music, people, art, The Flash. But I am from Ohio, so…

This aggression will not stand. Guess that’s what you get for drunkenly throwing yourself into that lady heidi m’s conversation.

That Eric dude is a ong term troll with a new ISP so consider him GONE.

Also, Zane, sorryh for the lack of ID!

I was super impressed with Paul Pope’s set.

Looks Like it was a DOOZY.5 : so wish I could of been there

Based on these Party Photos, I’m going to start saving
to go to next year’s Comic Con in San Diego!

I wish I could have gotten one of those Paul Pope Prints!!
Pop Cult II Here I come

Feminists partying with live painted nude models? Check your convictions at the door, apparently.

Huh. Didn’t recognize Pope at first glance. For some reason he looked like one of the brothers on Supernatural. Anyway, as much as I like Pope’s art, I can’t stand Coke Zero. So torn on that print.. which I had no chance of getting. Also.. there was a black version of that Paul Pope shirt with the comic panels?!

From my experience in the small press area, Saturday has long been a bad day for book sales. It’s the day that was just too crowded with enthusiastic fans there just for the panels, making it hard for the casual shoppers to navigate. The crowds were all looking for freebies and giant promo bags. Sales went back up when the crowds died down.

I’d have to agree with Dave regarding Saturday. Along with the crowds, in the days before the sell-outs, Saturday seemed to be more the “locals” day where you had more folks there for freebies and “the experience” rather than to buy. That may not be the case as much now, but Saturday was still the first single day to sell out and our table had more folks coming by and absent-mindedly picking up business cards (freebie!) than looking over the books that day.

Saturday has been our lowest sales day for several years now. However, this year by Friday night our sales at Exhibit A Press had already equaled the sales for the whole show in 2008, so we’re not complaining! Saturday was a good day to take breaks and go to some programs. We did have a constant stream of people throughout all 4 1/2 days–not really any “dead time” this year. In fact, we had several folks tell us they tried to stop by on multiple occasions but that our booth was so busy they didn’t want to interrupt to say hello.

I don’t know that SLG has ever had a slower Saturday than Friday — at least in the seven years I’ve been working the convention — but we did this year. Wednesday (remember when you could walk around and talk to other exhibitors on Preview Night?) was very busy, and Sunday was better than Saturday for us, despite being two hours shorter. It was an interesting year.

I believe Saturday was the the day of the more-than-an-hour-long log jam in the double-wide aisle between the SLG booth and the DC booth. A bunch of costumed people decided to pose at the DC booth and people made a HUUUUUUGE circle around them to gawk and take pictures — making it impossible for anyone to get past. The crowd took up the whole double-wide aisle and we had to start asking people to stop leaning on our tables. It took way too long for security to break it up. So I imagine there were navigation issues like that all over.

I think for years there’s been the inclination of smaller press to go to those other forementioned cons, for the reasons given. And it makes sense. But, I don’t think that bodes ill on SDCC.

Yes, SDCC is a BIG media event and it does make money for the big productions, promoters, etc., but I think it’s still also tentpoled by the comic book community and it’s fans and the comic book base. I mean without our support, there would be no big promotion of movies, etc. While it is sad that comic books may not be the main attraction to go, I think the sheer popularity speaks volumes to those who don’t often get a weekly fix on comic books and other geek outlets. And that’s a tremendous ad for this ‘little’ hobby.

I’m also happy to hear that Dave, Jackie and Jennifer felt their companies did some good business there. They are some very talented people who’s books I support.

Also, if you want more complaining about Elite, G4 has a video where one of their news reporters goes off about how he was treated. it’s pretty funny, in retrospect, I guess. But it sounds like if this is the way things were for most unknown reporters, than it was kinda a problem. But the well known celebs don’t have to deal with the same.

I don’t know why a small press person would set up at SD. Go, sure, to schmooze and what not and maybe squat with a friend who does have a table.

as for security, I don’t begrudge any of the folks for being overly diligent, given the mass of humanity there.

thx for the shout out, heidi! yeah, my recap is a little linear and detailed, but the kids love it like that! check out our con recap on my podcast too! Comic News Insider
www.comicnewsinsider.com

“We’d back up the idea that there was just too much chaos to Twitter, BUT we do have to point out that Variety was talking about FAN twitters, and Goellner is talking about WRITERS/REPORTERS…two different beasts.”

Has anyone examined the “..will Twitter for pay” idea?

My understanding is that Comic-Con trended pretty high the weekend and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Comic-Con, and then fell off. So sounds like the same is true for fans as for writers. There may have just been too much to do, even in lines.

It probably didnt help that at least for me the At&t/iphone coverage in the area was pretty poor. Most days I didnt get around to looking at anything online until after being back at the hotel.

The Variety article is ridiculous. Comparing the 6500 people max who were in Hall H with the hundreds of thousands watching Harry Potter is absurd, even factoring in RTs. And I saw the white whale at least once during the show.

According to Twitter’s homepage Comic-Con was the second highest trending topic of the past seven days, over Jay-Z and the Iran Election and only beaten by Harry Potter. I don’t know what bizarre standard Hollywood is applying to twitter’s success or failure but they’re obviously setting it too high or grossly misunderstanding social networking (no surprise).

Some of us don’t know or care to use hashtags, either. And the coverage thing.

And the overthinking everything, too.

Twittering is as twittering does.

I wanted to echo Bon’s comments about the Variety Twitter story, which clearly didn’t look at the larger picture of Twitter’s role during Comic-Con, but only from individual publicity concerns, which is ridiculous.

I’m quite confident that were you to compare OVERALL Comic-Con trending tweets to Harry Potter, we’d see huge numbers. Comic-Con was the top trending topic every day during Comic-Con when I looked at it. But when you narrow this down to a panel-by-panel basis, it becomes instantly clear that huge twitter expectations were absurd.

Let’s put it this way — if EVERY single person in Hall H tweeted about “Iron Man 2,” and each of those tweets were retweeted an average of three times, and then those were retweeted an average of three times, that still would only account for 58,500 twitter messages about said panel. But the truth is only a small fraction of people in any given panel would tweet. If 1 in 6 people tweeted, that would only be 1000 tweets. Multiply that out by the admittedly pulled-out-of-the-air math above, that would only account for 9000 tweets.

Twitter can be an excellent tool to help promote your product if done well, but more importantly it’s a tool to help engage your audience directly. Publicity and marketing people who don’t get this — and I’m afraid there are plenty of them out there — need to figure it out soon, or they might find themselves out of a job when they set expectations so high.

Hunks of Comic-Con? How sexist!

Twitter as a news gathering tool was phenomenal.

It was SO good that we had people that were able to write entire articles about panels in almost real-time from reports from numerous people, using tweets as front line reporting and having people back at the home office doing rewrite– and did so well that people were upset that they missed seeing me at the convention, when I was at home hosting my wife’s 40th birthday party.

Being on twitter reminds me of being at a comic-con, so I didn’t feel any need to jump on while I was at the real thing.

Man, this gallery of convention hunks is a good idea. Enough boobs! More shirtless beefcake!
Now, I’m really disapointed there seemed to be no hawkman this year… THAt is one costume that you c’ant hide behind! :p

I think a lot of the venom directed at Twilight fans could just be frustration over the fact that they dominated facilities and didn’t clear off for panels and such. The fact that all the Twi-tarts are icky girls is an exacerbating factor in the backlash towards them, but it may not necessarily be the only reason for the hate.

Either way, it’s still nerd infighting (and mostly one-sided at that, from what I can see), and about as interesting as Star Wars vs. Star Trek arguments.

Didn’t affect me in the least. And besides, what I like about Comic-Con (and my wife, who attended for the second straight year, liked) is the huge diversity of product and spectacle. She can peruse the Ugly Doll booth while I get a copy of “George Sprott” signed by Seth.

Everybody wins at Comic-Con!

Let me just say that, bigger isn’t better. Out of 15 years, this year was my worst convention experience. It mainly had to do with the size of the crowds and the inability to even move once you entered into the main aisles. I would be curious what vendors felt about the show. Were they successful in terms of business? Was all of the hassle worth it, to be involved in the chaos of the convention? Was anybody else frustrated with not being able to move from one end of the hall to the other? Were there too many people there? Did anybody else wonder about what would happen if there was a fire? I think I will continue to support smaller cons like Wondercon in the future, and by pass the mess that is San Diego.

Wow, it’s amazing (and amazingly pathetic) to see someone so terrified of having to ENDURE another form of geekery. I’ve seen worse scenarios of fan chaos at comic conventions over the last 15 years, so I question whether this is more just a case of someone crying because the girls got let into “the boys clubhouse”. In which case I say put on your big boy pants and suck it up, dude. There’s plenty of room for everyone.

Considering some of the “promotions” EA was doing at the Con, TWILIGHT is the least of both the Conventions and attendees’ worries.
I’m actually glad they’re there.
Comics, scifi, fantasy, etc has been a sausage fest (yes, it has) for far too long and I’m glad to see the other 50% of the human race has something to celebrate the way the rest of us celebrate Star Trek or Transformers.

‘Twilight’. . . I’m with Neeb here- My girlfriend doesn’t want to stand with a group of people and recite the GL Oath anymore than I want to watch the vampire-Luke Perry look bored. I am just glad there’s a flavor of GeeKola for everyone

“I found it harder to deal with Megan Fox/Olivia Munn fans than I ever did dealing with TWILIGHT fans.”

Matt Maxwell wins!

There are four places in the continental U.S. that must be visited and fully absorbed in one’s lifetime: The Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, the top of the Empire State Building, and the Cattle Zone, roughly the distance between Lego and Warner Brothers along the center aisle of the Exhibit Hall at the San Diego Comic-Con (any day will do).

I had a brief interaction at the very end of the convention that sort of summed up the disdain and unconscious sexism indicative of some male Comic-Con goers attitude toward Twilight. Basically, the guy asked, with many disclaimers about how he wasn’t asking for himself (because it’s shameful to like anything girls like!), where the Twilight booth had been. My male co-worker didn’t know, but I did, and as I started to answer, he interrupted with, “Yeah, a chick would know.” The way he said was just so… I don’t know how to describe it. He was completely clueless that it could be offensive, but I and the guys around me set him straight and told him he’d better leave.

Overall, the message is always clear: Girls can like things that boys like, since what boys like is what everyone should like anyway; boys cannot like — or even tolerate — what girls like because the feminine point of view is inherently inferior.

Anyone complaining about the Twilight panel in that manner has obviously never been to any comic convention panel because that sounds LIKE EVERY CONVENTION PANEL EVER!

Two anecdotes:

While standing in line for one of the room-6-something panels, I saw Olivia Munn get mobbed by several dozen people with cameras as she tried to get to the entrance for a panel. Actually, that’s not true. I saw a mob several people thick and a good 15-20 feet in diameter accumulate spontaneously around the door, many of them holding cameras over their heads, and I was told that Olivia Munn was in there somewhere.

While standing in line for Hall H shortly after the Twilight panel ended, my wife saw a black car drive out of the loading area, stop where the line was crossing the street, and get mobbed by a bunch of fans who actually started pounding on the windows, plus paparazzi trying to shove in their cameras and microphones.

I’d like to think that neither is representative of the Olivia Munn or Twilight fanbases, just as I’d like to think that neither is representative of the general SDCC congoer. But they made for an interesting parallel.

It was kind of surprising the number of people I heard tell me directly they didn’t buy comics.

Or the number of people who said they LOVE comics, then defended said statement by telling me how they watch Smallville or have seen all the Spider-Man movies.

Comics is a medium, Super-heroes is a genre.

It was kind of surprising the number of people I heard tell me directly they didn’t buy comics.

Or the number of people who said they LOVE comics, then defended said statement by telling me how they watch Smallville or have seen all the Spider-Man movies.

Comics is a medium, Super-heroes is a genre.

Hey Folks,

Did badly and interestingly dressed Klingons, Stormtroopers and Princess Leias dressed as slave girls interfere with your SDCC experience before Twilight?

Welcome Twilighters, there’s room in the pool for everybody!

I can’t believe that people were saying the aisles were crowded. I think things moved along quite well (well, maybe with the exception of Preview Night), especially compared to memories I have of the con on Saturday three years ago. Considering this could be because the “Twilight” fans cleared out after Friday, I say yay! They certainly didn’t bother me at any other time. Plus you could always make your way along the sides of the room fairly fast.

The real fear of “Twilight” happened because originally their panel was after “Avatar,” which a lot of non-Twlighters wanted to see. So all they have to do is make future “Twlight” panels the first panel of the day. It certainly worked for all the “Lost” fans the following day.

The real problems that make things crowded are people stopping to take photos of costumed fans on the floor (maybe they could make costumed fans stand in a gallery and people could go take photos of them, but I’ll admit it’s not that big a deal) and the grouping of all the movie booths and toy booths so close together. If they mixed things up more, the problems would be solved. Actually, my biggest problem was not with Hall H, but with the TV stuff in Ballroom 20. A lot of people missed out on panels they wanted to see there.

One assumes there were also lots of screaming fangirls at the DR WHO panel for david tennant, as well as your typical Dr Who fanboy.

I only braved the G4 area once on Thursday, to catch a glipse of Alison Haislip (who I normally think is cute, but had the look of a raccoon this day with all the extra make-up). I hate to think what it was like when Munn was there. (boy, if ever there was someone who knows how to play her demo audience like a fiddle, it’s this lady.)

I’m one of the many people who really didn’t buy anything. I bought 2 comics at one table and 1 ashcan at another. I never even got around to try and do any actual comics shopping. Just no time.

And again, I had no negative interactions with any obvious Twilighters, as opposed to people in costume, babymen or dudes wearing their Afflication T-shirts two sizes two small.

Only Kurt Busiek gets to win, Chad. I’m lucky to place.

Re: Jennifer De Guzman:
“Overall, the message is always clear: Girls can like things that boys like, since what boys like is what everyone should like anyway; boys cannot like — or even tolerate — what girls like because the feminine point of view is inherently inferior.”

Sadly, well put.
And when the fanboy driven comic industry gets too old and bloated to wash itself with a rag on a stick, and wonders where all the new generations of fans are to support it, all they will hear is the distant laughter of females and males of all ethnicities, shapes, sizes, orientations and levels of geekery from the anime/manga conventions across town, enjoying comics and games made for everyone, not just socially inept and/or testosterone propelled male comic readers.

“Barely controlled chaos” could be a lot of things at SDCC… and really, if we start poo-pooing properties at Comic-Con because the writing isn’t up to whatever our individual standards are, there’s a whole lotta comics that would disappear from the show as well.

I think Jennifer de Guzman has got it right — TWILIGHT is a property with a lot of female fans, and therefore it’s not entirely welcome at SDCC. My girlfriend came with me to SDCC this year — it was her first comic book convention ever — and though she was excited to meet the Sixth Doctor and pick up a CASTLE WAITING hardcover, her overwhelming take away from the show was that comics is an industry of misogyny. She was uncomfortable with the booth babes, with a lot of the art on display, and with the comments she heard from pros and from fans.

She’ll still read comics and watch a lot of the sci-fi/fantasy shows that are represented at SDCC, but it’s gonna be a miracle if she attends another show with me, and I don’t blame her. Maybe something like APE…

The only complaint I have with the Twilighters is that they prevented me from getting into Hall H to see the Avatar preview and panel. I waited for HOURS and under normal circumstances, I would have gotten in (I got perhaps 100 people away). But no. A lot of those gals and their Mom’s stayed and probably did not even like it.

Jennifer,

Sometimes the opposite can happen. I was having a conversation with a woman who has three daughters, and she was saying how cool it was that she could share Twilight with her offspring. I thought that was neat, and was similar to the experience I have with my sons and our shared interest in Lord of The Rings.

She was very dismissive of the analogy.

Oh well……

You know what is sounds like? It sounds like this bloke kind of wished the girls were chanting *his* name.

I think that’s the problem a lot of guys have with this stuff, its just yet more competition for the attention of a girl.

If there’s “plenty of room for everyone” as a couple of the above poster’s have said, then why do tickets sell out so far in advance?

In the industry in which I work then July is always a very busy month and I never know very far in the future if I will be able to take time off to attend. This year I would have been able to, and I would have had a lot of money to spend on comics and Trades, but it didn’t sound like there was any room.

Actually, Jennifer, you don’t have it quite right. If girls like what boys like, then they can be thought of as being a tomboy, which might mean they will be tolerated by guys or not and might be ostracized by girls. If boys like what girls like, then they can be thought of as being a girl, which might mean being ostracized by boys but not necessarily being welcomed by girls. Generally speaking.

Not saying it’s right or fair but just that’s the way it is. To borrow from Nietzsche, until human beings become cafe au lait colored hermaphrodites, our differences will define us for the most part.

And I say this as part of that 22% of romance novel readers that are male.

Vincent:

But being a tomboy or a girl into “boy” things has an entirely different connotation culturally. As a literary/pop culture archetype, tomboys are embraced. But in reality, usually marginalized and criticized for not being “feminine” enough.

And there’s the fact that, in pop culture, male things are the default. They’re even “neutral” as an experience in the way “girl” things are not. Boy stories are generally accepted as being for “everyone” and are far less ghettoized than “girl” or “chick” stories.

Boy who like girl things will, most likely, be embraced by girls. Not to generalize, but ask any gay man about that. Girls into boy things can be ostracized by girls and boys, and if embraced by boys, are constantly told how “different” they are and how few of them there are.

In comics, women and girls are constantly told they flat out do not exist in the fandom and are still treated like aliens. The Twilight phenomenon shows a few things, but one of them is that there are plenty of women and girls ready to geek out about a story they relate to. The backlash is, unfortunately, highly gendered.

TWILIGHT fans were okay by me—- I don’t think they took MY seat at those Evanier and SDCC El Cortez Memories panels I attended.

They might’ve been part of the competition/fellow Hall H attendees on the Sat I went to those presentations, but I couldn’t definitively i.d. anyone there as a Twi-fan: they didn’t ’sparkle’ in the dark. (Are Twi-fans into Miyazaki?)

Should the films continue, and should those Twi-fans return and become regular SDCC attendees (who knows, some of them just might be into OTHER things in the Convention Center?), I think the “big umbrella” of Comic-Con can accomodate them under its aegis. For me, they’ll be just like those Anime Cosplayers, 501st Stormtroopers, Card Gamers, MARVEL Zombies/DC Diehards “tribes” I’d pass in the crowded aisles and hallways—- they have THEIR interests, I have MINE—- and we’ll go our separate Con ways… Peacefully.

Um, make that the Fri Hall H presentations after the TWILIGHT one… so maybe by then the Twi-fans already vacated the Con?

Steven:

I’m not sure either of those things are so different, though. Lots of people don’t like any given writer. There are people who can’t stand Tolkien or Rowling, and both have thriving bases of geeky, female fans. The level of her writing could be argued back and forth, but the truth is, it can for any writer. As an editor, I’d be looking for very different criteria than someone who just reads whatever is on the NY Times bestseller list, and our ideas of “good” writing will be quite different.

Twilight is, until the last book, devoid of sex. It’s actually a “chaste” series, with all kinds of sexual/religious undertones. Which is not new or unique, either. Especially in vampire stories. That’s a huge theme in Stoker’s Dracula, for instance, vampirism as a metaphor for repressed Victorian sexuality.

There’s really nothing unique or different about Twilight, except for the glitter, and everyone likes to make their own individual mark on whatever genre they work in.

People are turning it into something “strange” and different, when it really isn’t. It’s just a series that happened to come out at the right time to find the exact audience it wanted. And it took off. I think half of the phenomenon is that, unlike a lot of other stories, it’s written by a woman and clearly intended for a female audience. Like it or not, there’s a huge group of neglected readers/fans who were waiting for something like this. And they found it.

I would say that Twilight is an dangerous any other story, because stories have power. And the series does have some extremely troubling message about love, relationships, and other assorted issues. But then so do many books and films. Teenagers are in a constant state of heightened emotional tension, and I think they feel things a great deal more intensely than people realize. But eventually, you grow up, read better books, and get embarrassed by the stuff you read when you were younger. We all have stuff like that, from Piers Anthony to V.C. Andrews.

I just think it’s odd that so many folks seem to react to this as though it’s unimaginable or something that hasn’t happened before. And I think way too much of the backlash is because it is “for” girls in a very direct and unrelenting way.

I brought a 14 year old Twilight-er girl to the convention as a guest. We waited for 3 and a half hours to get into Hall H. She filled up her memory card with photos and is the envy of her friends back home.

The rest of the convention, she tagged along as I took her to various other comic book, sci-fi and video game panels. We even watched the Masquerade and joined in on the Buffy sing-a-long. She walked out with a bag of free comics… one trade paperback purchase (Buffy) and anxiously looking forward to coming next year

I’m looking forward to bringing her along again, too. Though next time, I’ll remember sunscreen for the wait outside Hall H.

it’s sad, from at least one vid i’ve seen on Youtube, a girl cosplayer took some signs from some guys who were brandishing their Twilight hate signs and posed with them. Apparently one booth had even gone the extra measure of printing up Twilight hate tee shirts for the con, in a ‘thinking-ahead’ move.

Seriously, when a cool girl cosplayer doesn’t see the irony of having some guys expressing their hate of some other geek interest, at SDCC, for goodness sakes! I don’t know what to say…..

I’m still wondering if any of the people who came specifically to go to the Twilight panel bought 4 day passes just so they could get in and never bothered to go back?

While I doubt it, I would think that might cause more con regulars to get their panties in a bunch.

I think the problem some are having with Twlighters is that they view them as if they were a mob of squeeing Jonas Brothers fans at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Twilight, essentially, has no “street cred” with the average fan and after years of watching vampire films and TV shows like INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE, THE LOST BOYS, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER, ANGEL and now TRUE BLOOD, it’s hard to embrace vampires that sparkle in sunlight instead of spontaneously combust.

And unlike HARRY POTTER or the LORD OF THE RINGS, there’s little in the way of common ground for old-school fans to bond with this new crop of rabid fangirls. However, I see this as simply an adjustment period where things may be contentious until fandom in general becomes used to having the Twilighters around or something totally new comes along for both groups to shake their collective heads at.

What Barreca had the most problems with was the relationship between Bella and Edward. If you look at it strictly from the psychological viewpoint, there are elements in it that are repulsive. If people are going to be fans of something, they should celebrate the positive, thought-provoking, intellectual aspects of it, not, as Barreca put it, “. . .the latent, covert lessons of feminine subjection, abjection, and erasure of self inherent in the novels.”

If the romantic aspects of Twilight are what excite Meyer’s teenage fans, then they might be reading the books for the wrong reasons, rather like older women getting hooked on rape fantasies. The readers who react to the content the most and become the most ardent fans might also be the ones most susceptible to being influenced by the characters’ attitudes. It may be safe to assume that a large number of readers will grow out of the series, but what about the ones who don’t?

I’ll read a Twilight book within the next couple of days and highlight any objectionable material I see.

SRS

Steven said:

“If the romantic aspects of Twilight are what excite Meyer’s teenage fans, then they might be reading the books for the wrong reasons, rather like older women getting hooked on rape fantasies.”

I say:

In erotic fantasy there are no ‘wrong reasons.’

Wrongful real-life applications of fantasy exist.

But not wrong reasons in the domain of fantasy proper.

gene phillips said: “In erotic fantasy there are no ‘wrong reasons.’
Wrongful real-life applications of fantasy exist.
But not wrong reasons in the domain of fantasy proper.”

Exactly. People can read whatever they want and get whatever they want out of it.

That was one of the points of Lost Girls. Something that most people could find something objectionable in it, but was still worth reading and discussing and allowing people to celebrate in their own way.

As much as I loathe the Twilight series because it glorifies abusive relationships and a girl-giving-up-everything-for-the-guy-because-it’s-love mentality (not to mention it makes a writer’s soul wither by its excessive use of cliches and thesauric language at least twice in every paragraph), it still has as much of a place at SDCC as any other media geekery fanbase.

Wouldnlt twilighters have had to buy 4 day passes, not knowing what day the twilight panel would be?

Charles Skaggs hit it the most on the head, in my view. As any longtime Con vets here know, there are always new entertainment phenomena coming along that create major geek-outs at San Diego. If said phenomena last and develop a notable following they eventually become part of the gloriously crazy pop-culture landscape of each SDCC.

Sometimes I wonder if too many of us feel there is a “proper” fandom, even though it seems unlikely you could rub any two fans together and get anywhere close to agreement on just what “proper” fandom is.

I think the straw man has been sufficiently beaten into submission. News flash: Comic Book Guy is a stunted adolescent angry at the world for dismissing his obsession with muscular men in spandex!

I’m with the people who say Twilight is badly written teen crack and emotional pornography for teen girls (and I guess the occasional guy). Then there’s the questions of weak female role models, bad romance / relationships, and even Mormon propaganda surrounding the franchise.

There are plenty of other female heavy fandoms I’d rather see get more popular and be at ComicCon than Twilight. Supernatural for example. A friend who got me into that told me how she despises Twilight after she read it. Plus wasn’t comic con hit by numerous fangirls of good vampire shows like Buffy in previous years? I don’t remember complaints about that.

I dunno. I think it really is that people in most other fandoms at the con think that Twilight is simply crappy.

Charles, there’s also the possible idea that in spite of how rabid the fans of Twilight are, they’re still looking down upon the rest of us for all our fannish behavior thinking they’re better than us because its about romance and we just wanna see guys in spandex fight.

It would be nicer if Twilight fans were like “Now we understand the rest of the people here” but they don’t, they seem to still think they’re above it according to various Con reports I’ve read.

Mariah:

For the most part, it sounds like we agree on things regarding the relative acceptance of those who cross gender lines pop culturally.

As for whether boy’s pop culture is treated as the default, I can’t really say one way or another. Being male my whole life I’m inside the bubble. I can say that as a young child, I knew there were GI Joes and Barbies. I knew GI Joes were what I was attracted to, while Barbies were for girls. In terms of stories, I knew I was more interested in Marvel and DC books than I was in Archie, which always seemed more interesting to the girls I knew. So it might be that the differences between boys and girls are more innate than culturally influenced. I think culture more often reflects our needs than shapes them. Look at all the stories on the internet of modern mothers that end up frustrated in their efforts to raise gender neutral children, where the girls end up making families out of toy trucks and boys make guns out of anything they can find.

As for Twilight and its fans, it was interesting to see more women and girls at CCI than ever. I also saw more interracial couples than i ever did. This year’s show brought a more diverse group of people together under one roof than in years past. That’s a good thing. I’m not a fan of Twilight but they don’t need me or my permission to come to CCI anyway.

Bitch offers a spicy perspective on Twilight:

The Twilight series has created a surprising new sub-genre of teen romance: It’s abstinence porn, sensational, erotic, and titillating. And in light of all the recent real-world attention on abstinence-only education, it’s surprising how successful this new genre is. Twilight actually convinces us that self-denial is hot. Fan reaction suggests that in the beginning, Edward and Bella’s chaste but sexually charged relationship was steamy precisely because it was unconsummated—kind of like Cheers, but with fangs. Despite all the hot “virtue,” however, we feminist readers have to ask ourselves if abstinence porn is as uplifting as some of its proponents seem to believe. 
 [. . .]

The rape fantasy is apparent, of course, but even more salient is the fan writer’s subconscious understanding of the theme Meyer has been establishing: that sex is dangerous and men must control themselves. It’s a matter of life or death, and ultimately men are in charge.


It’s clear from both the books and the fan fiction response to them that Edward has taken on the role of protector of Bella’s human blood and chastity, both of which, ironically, are always in peril when Edward is nearby. Bella is not in control of her body, as abstinence proponents would argue; she is absolutely dependent on Edward’s ability to protect her life, her virginity, and her humanity. She is the object of his virtue, the means of his ability to prove his self-control. In other words, Bella is a secondary player in the drama of Edward’s abstinence. 


Reader Shimmerskin again astutely notes, “…it’s so clever that these books aren’t just about sexual abstinence. Edward is fighting two kinds of lust at the same time. Abstaining from human blood has probably been good practice for tamping down his sexual appetites now that he’s with Bella.…”


It’s arguably clever, sure, but it’s also a sad commentary on Bella’s lack of power. Ultimately, it’s a statement of the sexual politics of Meyer’s abstinence message: Whether you end up doing the nasty or not doesn’t ultimately matter. When it comes to a woman’s virtue, sex, identity, or her existence itself, it’s all in the man’s hands. To be the object of desire, in abstinence porn is not really so far from being the object of desire in actual porn.

Re: women’s “lack of power”–

“You got your cultural conditioning in my biological determinism!”

“Yeah, well, you got your biological determinism in my cultural conditioning!”

“Two great tastes that go great together.”

Tune in to my blog next week for the real answer!

Hey. Is that bitch magazine downing actual porn? Or is it saying that actual porn is better than this abstinence porn bs? And then what about lesbian porn? There is no man in that situation so th… hmm.. Damn. They ended it on porn and my mind went from there.. ‘~’

[…] The series has attracted its share of criticism as well as controversy. While not referring to Twilight explicitly, Neil Gaiman stated that vampires needed to go back to their frightening ways in a recent article on EW.com. A while ago, The Beat practically blamed fanboys for being sexist by using a double-standard when they deal with Twilight fans. Frankly this surprised me, because in my experience the chief critics were female fans — such as Tasha Robinson and Genevieve Koski of the AV Club — who were more than a little insulted that the generally mature vampire genre was being hi-jacked by a Trapper Keeper friendly version that sparkled in sunlight. […]

I’m just impressed that Stan Lee had more camera presence than Jimmy Fallon, Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns, Jon Favreau, Michael Emerson, John Holloway, Don Cheadle and Sam Rockwell. I guess that’s why he’s The Man…

so, THAT’S what he was showing the Lost cast. i was up in the press room for Lost when fallon was in there doing that bit about “here’s my comic”. haha.

haha, pretty funny.

I think Emerson’s complete ambivalence and hatred of it was my favorite. Favs looking ready to punch him for messing with his guys was fun too. Plus I think I have those goggles he used.

I posted the video on a certain imageboard and most people are commenting on how surprisingly buff and sexy Geoff Johns is. “Stupid sexy Johns..” “Nothing at all… Nothing at all… Nothing at all…”

I gotta say the artwork for the Recharger is pretty good, lol. really.

and… if i m the big timers, i’ll say yes cos, comics, where were the good days where its suppose to be fun? this is something different. You want everything to make sense?…

Everyone so serious and stuff…

I agree that spending time and money to wait exclusively for one panel IS a waste of time, and this is why everyone should ask themselves ahead of time if that’s really how they want to enjoy SDCC. I’d just as soon read the news here after the fact.

Wolk makes much the same observations about style in ASTERIOS POLYP that Fulton and Rogers did in their reviews, but he’s less critical about the overall results:

“Asterios Polyp” is a dazzling, expertly constructed entertainment, even as it’s maddening and even suffocating at times. It demands that its audience wrestle with it, argue with it, reread and re-examine it. Isn’t that the ultimate purpose of style?

Another question is: Since a graphic novel is a combination of words and art, shouldn’t the words work as well as the artwork does? If they don’t, then the result is somewhat the same as a superhero comic with dynamic, heroic figures, but little story content — or concrete poetry that has doggerel forming the impressive shape. Does Polyp exist to serve the artwork, or does the artwork exist to serve Polyp?

I’ll be getting ASTERIOS POLYP this week, assuming that a local bookstore has a copy.

SRS

I spent the five days of Comic-Con following it via Google News. There was very little comics reportage featured via news feeds. Most of it centered around media, with Twilight, Alice in Wonderland, Tron, and Avatar being the primary winners. (Feel free to do your own keyword survey.)

Regarding the fewer freebies and carny huckstering, it could be a result of tighter budgets. I doubt CCI imposed behavior modification.

And the EA fiasco… the above link got filtered by work, so here’s a more friendly link:http://tradeskill.blogspot.com/

Did anyone attend the panel at the end of the con where people can complain to Con management?

What did people think about Kim Munson’s panel on the Comic Art Show and related topics?

SRS

[…] The Beat has good ongoing post-SDCC coverage, check it out!  I’m taking a few days break to recoup.  More commentary and pictures on SDCC in the next few days. […]

While I sympathize with the person who couldn’t make it into the Iron Man panel, I think the story is a bit exaggerated.

I posted this on that blog (awaiting moderation):

I totally sympathize with what happened in your situation. I wanted to watch the Avatar panel, but gave up when I saw the enormous line an hour before it was going to start.

I did make it into the Iron Man panel, however, and luckily it did not require being there six hours early. A little over 2 and a half hours, but not six hours.

Going by my text message logs from the day, I lined up at 1:20 PM. Got in by 1:40. Watched the Extract panel. Watched the Sony panel. The Iron Man panel started at 4 PM. So 2 hours 40 minutes to get in. It was fairly full by the time I got in, but people were getting in for at least an hour or so after.

My girlfriend lined up at 1:06 and had a seat by 1:18. Her texts are why I decided to try the line.

Are you sure you were there at 1 PM and in the right place? By my experience, and by how many people were still coming in after me (I was by the entrance), I’d guess that if you had lined up as late as 1:30-1:45, you had a shot at making it in.

It’s time to return the Comic-Con to it’s original intent. I’m finding fewer and fewer reasons to go, as it becomes less and less about comics. I know people think now that this convention has hit the main steam, that it is better. I couldn’t disagree more. Hollywood needs to go away and have their own love fest.

There are so many disturbingly bad trends occurring, that it has ruined what I once enjoy about the convention. It is way too big and chaotic, and I feel like soon the name will be changed, and more and more corporations will take over and just crush any of the original intentions of the Comic-Con. Please someone, start a new convention and return it to it’s original roots! This one is a bloated beast and needs to be destroyed, before it consumes everything in it’s path.

Ah… the last time I attended was in… 2002? I was helping the always enjoyable and interesting Trina Robbins at her booth in Hall F, home to the small press tables. That was the frontier, with Halls G and H closed off, the corridor at that end somewhat empty and forlorn. During that show, I felt the distances were too great, that the Convention Center should install a monorail so one would not need to trek to Hall A or the meeting rooms upstairs. Now, with crowds, the entire Center being used… I can’t imagine.

“There was very little comics reportage featured via news feeds. Most of it centered around media, with Twilight, Alice in Wonderland, Tron, and Avatar being the primary winners.”

Isn’t comics a medium too?

“It’s time to return the Comic-Con to it’s original intent. I’m finding fewer and fewer reasons to go, as it becomes less and less about comics. I know people think now that this convention has hit the main steam, that it is better. I couldn’t disagree more. Hollywood needs to go away and have their own love fest.

“There are so many disturbingly bad trends occurring, that it has ruined what I once enjoy about the convention. It is way too big and chaotic, and I feel like soon the name will be changed, and more and more corporations will take over and just crush any of the original intentions of the Comic-Con. Please someone, start a new convention and return it to it’s original roots! This one is a bloated beast and needs to be destroyed, before it consumes everything in it’s path.”

Like Comic-Con and TheBlob-Con?

i recorded the whole thing (audio only) and will probably release a special for my podcast (COMIC NEWS INSIDER) w/ it including some smaller press bits w/ some cast and a longer one w/ michael emerson. i’ll keep ya posted!

Aint It Cool News has YouTube links that contains most of the panel (some of the video presentations they had are missing):
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/41823

Quite funny and self-deprecating at times. Hopefully they might come back to SDCC to do one last panel to promote the DVD’s.

Chuck’s bitching is unwarranted and would likely have gone unsaid had he brought an interesting product mix to the show and done better business.

Hundreds of readily available trades at above-amazon prices, peppered with “We Prosecute Shoplifters” signs is hardly in keeping with the stuff/environment that SDCC buyers are after.

If Chuck’s stores have the weight & inventory he suggests they do, he ought to be looking for exclusives, signings, etc to lure customers to his tables. Trades were almost uniformly at 50% off list throughout the con, but not from Chuck.

But Chuck wasn’t the only retailer with his sights set on the past, so it’s hardly fair to pick on him alone (although he’s certainly in a better position to leverage a better booth than most). Many sellers had tables full of near worthless dead inventory that, it looked to me, would not have covered the cost of the booth even if every piece was sold.

Inventive, savvy retailers were all telling me sales were up. Antiquated old school con dealers with formerly “hot” books and 15 year old McFarlane toys were all singing the blues. Hmmm…

And now, to be “fair and balanced”…

Mark, you haven’t really experienced the overload at Comic-Con yet. You should have stayed through Saturday — Saturday always makes Wednesday and Thursday look like a very sparsely attended, run-down carnival. Or, alternately, last year’s Republican presidential convention — same thing, really.

Take what you felt today, double that, then multiply it by ten, then subtract deodorant, add about forty Stormtroopers, divide by the creeping, ever-present paranoia that the air conditioning could give out at any second[1], and then multiply that by 10^87gagillionth power and you’ve got Saturday at Comic-Con. God, I miss it.

— Rob

[1] I was there the year that happened. On Saturday. Didn’t know the dealer’s room could develop its own weather system at all, much less a half hour or so after the air conditioning broke.

Sure, lines suck. But there’s something awesome about getting my nerd tendencies validated and so catered to, plus the pride and zeal that shit economy or not, our niche genres are still a vital force.

I’d prefer more artists be overloaded with commissions than complain about a con being a dead scene.

If I hated people Wednesday and Thursday, I wouldn’t want to think about how crazy I would be on Saturday. I’m happy to have a reason* not to be here for the weekend. And if the air conditioning was working Thursday, I’d hate to see it not working. :>

* should be coverage on the Beat sometime next week

Ah… Mark… no byline on the article… (Also, the image isn’t loading. Perhaps the “I Hate People” cat from that Tex Avery cartoon, as he gets stepped on by pedestrians, would be better?)

Rob, you forgot to include the Slave Leias and other distractions which cause instant traffic jams as attendees stop to gawk and take pictures.

As always, the Berra Axiom applies, “Nobody goes there, it’s too crowded.” I’m saving my indy jones for SPX, my comics and trade show jones for Baltimore. Any exclusives or must-haves I’ll purchase on eBay with money saved from not paying for airfare or hotel room.

Curiously, I would attend Komiket, with 500,000 attendees. Can’t get that here.

“Rob, you forgot to include the Slave Leias and other distractions which cause instant traffic jams as attendees stop to gawk and take pictures.”

Ooops, yeah, I forgot the traffic jams caused by the costumers and cosplayers — I still have nightmares about the anorexic 6-foot-tall transvestite who dressed up as Supergirl a couple of years ago. And i was soooooooooooooo over all the Captain Jack Sparrows even before they started showing up to the cons.

One thing, though: I don’t consider the Slave Leias — possibly the first Post-Modern fetish — to be a distraction. Especially if some of them turned out to be, say, Yvonne Strahotski[1] or Olivia Munn.

— Rob

[1] Spelling intentional. That pun on her last name actually started on the set of “Chuck” even before the pilot premiered.

I mentioned this on twitter yesterday but maybe not here:

One of the funniest things I saw yesterday was, while eating dinner at the Bayfront, I saw an older fellow carrying a bunch of designer shopping bags walking with an attractive young (adult) lady dressed as Supergirl. I’m sure it could have been his daughter, but my mind lurks in the gutter. :>

Also, one of the few things worse than being stuck in a stuffy convention center with 100,000 nerds: being stuck on an airplane in the same row as two mis-behaving small children. Thankfully, it was only a 40 minute flight. At least there was TV and I watched part three of last year’s LOST season finale (meaning season 4, not season 5).

I did have a great time today where I went, so let this not be a totally curmudgeonly post.

Does Ian MacKaye know that apparently, you can get Minor Threat shirts at hot topic now?

Hey, thanks for the very much appreciated twitter shout-out, Heidi!

Loved reading those awkward Comic Con moments, thanks all.

Feelin’ your pain there, Zena. In terms of reporting from afar.

“…the ever-witty Ben McCool…” — somebody is a little bias

I’m following San Diego by using [”san diego” comics] on Google News and refreshing every ten minutes. Most of the news is movie/TV.

Other interesting things: Robert Zemeckis considers a sequel to “Roger Rabbit”. Tim Burton will direct “Dark Shadows” next. The Black Cat models a super-cool Spider-Man nightshirt at the Mondo Marvel panel which would sell well if produced. No one has mentioned the Breast Cancer Awareness Darth Vader helmet from Gentle Giant. (No, it’s not a bust, it has no shoulders.) http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci09_actionfigs_2.php

And most shocking… the Beatrix makes no mention of the new Astro Boy movie which was paneled yesterday.

Star Trek fragrances: Diamond Previews, July 2009, p. 401
Red Shirt cologne, Tiberius cologne for Men, Pon Farr perfume for women
Genki Wear

Those Watchmen ladies were pleasant - I was crossing Harbor with them and about 1000 other people at one point on Thursday.

“- Adult Swim creators recount their most awkward Comic-Con moments.”

Except that one of them is partially false. Breckin Meyer talks about 2008 as his first time at Comic-Con.

Except that the photographic proof is pretty hard to deny. Breckin signed autographs with myself and others to promote Freddy’s Dead for Innovation in 1991. Gotta say, he may not remember it because he was being kind of a brat (chaperones were with the younger actors because a few of them were underage), but he was definitely there:
www.andymangels.com/images/fdcp3gang91.jpg

Best,
Andy Mangels
www.AndyMangels.com
www.WonderWomanMuseum.com
Member, International Association of Media Tie-In Writers

Congrats to Bob. One of the best of the best in comics!

Chip
BOOM!

A very good place for Bob to be. A win/win for everyone. Ted Adams continues to prove why he is the best business mind in comic book publishing.

Beau Smith
The Flying Fist Ranch

There seems to be a busted italics tag in this post that is putting the entire blog in italics.

That’s awesome news there — I think Bob’s a very good fit for Ted’s crew.

-B

one again i am shocked and impressed at IDW’s giant steps away from its embarrassing beginnings and towards being a great and respectable publisher of good comics.
i can only hope that some of the other new and smaller publishers decide to walk in a similar direction.

all the best to Bob, and i eagerly await all the big names that will be announcing projects with IDW in the near future

Not a huge surprise at all but excellent news.

“Embarrassing beginnings”? Back when they primarily published unique and experimental creator owned work as opposed to the tv, toy and movie licensing house they are now? You really think pushing out tons of GI Joe and Transformers makes them a more respectable publisher? I don’t fault them for running their business any way they want but that was a moronic statement.

I never really looked at any IDW books until the last year or two when they started publishing more stuff with an indie flavor. Just because something is creator owned doesn’t mean it’s any good.

Congrats to both Bob and IDW!

Bob’s one of the few great editors in the field. IDW’s lucky to have him.

Here’s one live report on the campers. There might be a lot of blogging about the campout afterward.

Aura Reynolds and Liberty Griffen nabbed the first spot in the long line by getting here Tuesday night at 9 p.m. with their daughters Rebecca and Kristen. Their yellow and blue tent marks the beginning of rows upon rows of tents, chairs and blankets that form the twisting line outside Hall H, where the panel takes place at 1:45 p.m. tomorrow. The landscape looks like a giant family picnic, with bright-colored folding chairs and sleeping bags littered with black Twilight T-shirts and banners.

The parents are named Aura and Liberty? Love that their daughters have “normal” names!

Wow… Woodstock become Nerdstock…

Did they move?

Or has the sun turned them into ashes, and the wind has swept them away?

The sun just makes them twinkle.

If i was a publisher of comics that I thought that those camping girls would read, ( and maybe buy later) I’d have been down there giving away free promo copies to them all. Talk about a camptive oops, CAPTIVE audience… Did anyone do that, I wonder?

That’s really great news!

Awesome scoop, Beatrix!

Will Scholastic reprint “Stupid, Stupid Rat-Tails”?

And any FIRM date on the Pogo collection Mr. Smith is designing? It keeps getting pushed back…

also:
Bone Handbook 9780545211420 February 2010 $9.99 96p.

The Bone press release seems a little confused to me. First of all, it’s under the impression that “Rose” was new when it was published by Scholastic a little while back, when in fact it was published years and years ago during Bone’s initial run. “Tall Tales” is also not as new as the press release claims. It was put out at the same time as Rose.

Not that any of that matters, but what it does make me wonder is if Tom Sniegoski is in fact helping Smith write the new Bone trilogy as the press release claims, or if the press release was just confused about Sniegoski’s writing credit on the original “Tall Tales” mini.

Oh snap Torsten- I didn’t realize that the old miniseries was actually called “Stupid, Stupid Rat Tales” and not “Tall Tales”. I bet “Tall Tales” actually is “Stupid, Stupid Rat Tales”.

AWESOME. My 6 year old daughter just nearly exploded with excitement. BONE FTW

[…] Via: The Beat, Comic Book Resources y The Comics Reporter […]

[…] There is going to be some more Bone comics! I know someone’s nephew who is going to be quite happy about that. […]

[…] The Beat – Exclusive: More BONE on the way from Scholastic […]

Tall Tales actually is a repackaging of Stupid, Stupid Rat Tales, according to Smith’s blog.

Oh, and to be clear, the new material (Quest for the Spark)isn’t comics, it’s illustrated prose.

I think the new material will still be very cool… Looking forward to it.

Very cool! Will there be a t-shirt?

Unfortunately, most Google users outside the US won’t see it, because they’re redirected to their respective countries’ Google site, which doesn’t feature the Jim Lee artwork (at least here in Germany). Proxies like http://www.proxyking.com/ can be used to prevent the redirect, but most people don’t know that.

those are pretty cool!

Comic themes sounds so cool eagerly waiting for it..Thanks for the news.

“This is fandom as powerful and focused as anything. You haters just don’t understand!”

The thing is … they’re creepy - like the girls who chased Orlando Bloom in Spain, the teenagers who would scream and faint in the presence of Elvis or the Beatles. They’re people who have obsessively focused on other people to the point at which they have abandoned rational action in relation to those people, and often act as a frenzied mob in which there is no rational concern.*

*I know this isn’t entirely true, but it is true too often. The case of Orlando Bloom’s car being chased into a traffic jam outside a studio in Spain (or of Robert Pattinson into traffic in New York) is a good example of the frightening irrationality of the persons involved in this sort of behavior. What did they hope to accomplish by chasing his car? Why did they surge forward with such glee? It’s clear they were treating him as essentially an object, not a person, and that he himself was relatively irrelevant to the intensity of their pursuit. It’s very creepy.

“Interestingly, a few folks suggested that IRON MAN 2 was the biggest thing at the con — and in terms of superhero movies which are in short supply, that may be true. But everything is dwarfed by TWILIGHT and luckily tomorrow at 1 it will all be over!”

On the other hand, Iron Man has a very good chance of being the highest-grossing film promoted at the convention. It’s all but certain to lead Twilight by hundreds of millions of dollars. Which, I would suggest, makes it the most relevant film to general culture, just not to fandoms. (Which are kind of weird and overrated, anyway. I’ve been a fan of many things, and I’ve talked about them with other people who enjoy them, but none of us has identified ourselves as a member of a fandom; they’re things we enjoy, not things that define us. Our sense of community is elsewhere - school, state, city, country, generation, political faction, etc.)

[…] SDCC got under way last night, and Tim Sheehy reports on Preview Night at Japanator. Lissa Pattillo checks in as well, and she has photos. Deb Aoki has a manga-lover’s guide to the exhibit hall at About.com. Heidi visits the huddled masses at Camp Twilight. […]

It’s a shame HBO’s TRUE BLOOD series doesn’t have the mass fandom appeal that TWILIGHT does. IMHO, it’s a much better production and considerably more fun.

Not much that people can accomplish by knocking Twilight.

I saw the Twilight movie recently, loved it, and have just begun to read New Moon.
I do agree that the writing is not Charles Dickens or Alice Munro, but the ideas are good, and the story seems to be going somewhere.

What can we take from this?

Teenage girls WILL buy something, even during the days of ” everything must be free and online” and WILL camp out on the lawn in front of an American convention centre to be a part of something they feel passionate about.

Oh, c’mon, Greg. They’re (mostly) teenage girls, and they’re just having a little fun, camping out to be sure they see some stars they like. Do you find the crowds camping out for tickets to various sporting events just as creepy, or is it only the obsessions of teenage girls that brings out the haterade?

[…] Gestern Abend war nun die sogenannte Preview Night. Das heisst, die Halle ist offen für ein paar Stunden am Vorabend des eigentlichen Anfangs, an denen sich die Superfans die erste Menge Swag und Exklusivgoodies angeln können. Wie ihr auf dem Foto unten erkennen könnt war das Conventionzentrum zum Brechen voll. Offenbar soll die Air Conditioning auch schon ihre Wirkung verloren haben und es soll unangenehm heiss gewesen sein. Der klare Filmfavorit dieses Festivals ist Twillight, für dessen Panel sich die jungen Mädchen schon gestern Abend mit Schlafsäcken vor der Halle angesammelt haben, wie man in einem Blogeintrag auf Bleeding Cool sehen kann. Das ist Hingabe! Würde für Comics wohl kaum passieren. Auf dem gleichen Blog gibt es auch noch eine Meldung, dass das erste Hotel in San Diego schon kein Wasser mehr hätte. Das kann ja heiter werden. Ungewaschene Geeks in einer gefüllten Halle ohne Air Conditioning… The Beat (der Blog von Heidi MacDonald von Publishers Weekly) hat eine gute Zusammenfassung mit Bildern. Nichts weltbewegendes, aber ein paar nette Eindrücke. Mehr, wenn wir weitere Berichte finden. […]

Heh… “drinking too much Hater-ade”… joining the disdain targeting a specific group or demographic online. Similar to “Drinking the Kool-Aid” (see: Jim Jones).

I think it’s cool there’s a makeshift camp for Twilight fans. If Summit Entertainment is clever, they will return next year with an actual compound of tents and stage and booth set OUTSIDE the convention center. (Much like the first Image booth at the Chicago Comic-Con many years ago.) Maybe hold it at the Petco parking lot. (And if you can’t stand Twilight, ask Summit about “Hurt Locker”.)

The True Blood box set is currently #8 on BN.com. The Season One DVD collection is #2 in DVDs (followed by Coraline and Watchmen). And it got four pages in the comic-con issue of Entertainment Weekly. It’s big.

I definitely think Twilight belongs at SDCC, but any time I see fans camped out for anything, I always think, couldn’t the organizers just hand out wristbands and let them go home (or in this case their hotels)?

But then they would camp out to be first in line for the wristbands.

The people at Jonestown didn’t drink Kool-Aid.

the couple times I passed by, the twilight folks seemed to be having a good time camped out, chatting and making friends.

a contrast from your stereotypical introverted and anti-social comics nerd.

James Owens has NOT sold Millions of books. Indeed he has not sold A million books. His books barely sell at all if one looks at actual sales charts. Pimping friends is fine but if you do so inaccurately you lose credibility.

pictures!!!!

thanks H!!!

I am glad that I wasn’t crazy about the egress/ingress of the hotel. I was looking to move the BOOM party there this year… and when I scoped it out in may I was just FLABBERGASTED at the layout. The designers obviously didn’t count on foot traffic… wild!

lol@ Chad and Greg

I havent heard of reports of teen guys going after hot actresses in a mod like fashion.

“Why did they surge forward with such glee? ”

tears coming out of my eyes at this statement, reminds me of a manga that drew girls like that. I can imagine the sparkles

Boom Party? Can I come and ask Marc Platt how all the Boom movies AREN’T doing?

Frankly, there’s little about Twilight fandom that’s more extreme, nerdy, or creepy about other fandoms. And hey, it’s not like comic nerds won’t be clamoring to get into panels about event comics that are just as crappy as Twilight, if not more.

By the way, Heidi, don’t read Twilight. It’s terrible on every level, and you will never get that time back.

Teenage enthusiasm for anything can be extreme. Twilight fans camping out is no worse than teenage boys playing video games so much that they develop joint problems, or anyone standing in line for hours to buy a video game or book, just to able to say “I was one of the first!”

As long as the fans of a show don’t confuse fantasy with reality and make the actors’ lives miserable in the process, they’re being exuberant and socializing.

SRS

Frankly, there’s little about Twilight fandom that’s more extreme, nerdy, or creepy about other fandoms.

Yep. See also: sports fans after The Big Game, rioting, looting and burning because some objectified athletes chased an object around a playing area and got that object into the opposing team’s goal a superior number of times. Or they didn’t. It’s as rational as mobbing Orlando Bloom.

^ I think most of us could agree that rioting is, though not creepy, very disturbing.

What separates the crazed-teenage girl phenomenon from other fan-based ones are its objectification and its power. (That the persons involved are teenage girls isn’t germane; teenage girls and boys can both be involved in all sorts of obsessive activities without creepiness being involved.) The adoption of persons as obsessive objects is what’s disturbing about Twilight fans, and of the phenomenon in general.

“They’re people who have obsessively focused on other people to the point at which they have abandoned rational action in relation to those people, and often act as a frenzied mob in which there is no rational concern.”

Replace “people” a few times with “comics,” or “anime,” or “busty resin statues,” and that describes…well, pretty much all of us, at some point in our lives or another. Or maybe RIGHT NOW.

Maija, I suspect there is almost universal agreement that rioting is very disturbing.

What separates the crazed-teenage girl phenomenon from other fan-based ones are its objectification and its power. (That the persons involved are teenage girls isn’t germane; teenage girls and boys can both be involved in all sorts of obsessive activities without creepiness being involved.) The adoption of persons as obsessive objects is what’s disturbing about the phenomenon evidenced in Twilight fans. Not at sporting events*, not at male-dominated rock concerts, not at video game releases, not at geeky movie openings do you see the stars chased, the fans passing out with excitement, or the treatment of persons as desire objects in an obsessive way. The phenomenon is creepy. Twilight fans as fans aren’t, nor are teenage girls.

*With a few exceptions, which are generally viewed with horror.

Sorry, I didn’t mean to post twice.

““They’re people who have obsessively focused on other people to the point at which they have abandoned rational action in relation to those people, and often act as a frenzied mob in which there is no rational concern.”

Replace “people” a few times with “comics,” or “anime,” or “busty resin statues,” and that describes…well, pretty much all of us, at some point in our lives or another. Or maybe RIGHT NOW.”

But that’s an important difference. Comics and anime *are* objects. So are busty resin statues, but their similarity to people makes them creepy when they’re sexualized. (My grandmother collects resin statues, some of which happen to be busty, but which have angels and other religious matter as their subjects, but aren’t creepy the way, say, DC’s imported Japanese statues are.*) Objectifying and obsessing over *persons* is categorically different from obsessing over objects.

*Not because they’re religious, but because they’re non-sexual.

As it happens, I’m fairly sure I’ve never obsessed over comics. I have a tea box full of them (most in sorry shape), but I’ve never really been one to focus on them much. Even when I was little, X-Men, Wonder Woman, and Spider-Girl weren’t any more important to me than, say, Star Trek and Law & Order, or Duck Tales and Talespin. Actually, I’ve always found the obsessed fan element (like Comic Book Guy) creepy, for much the same reason that I don’t like setting foot in record stores. There’s a degree of excessive focus, counterculture, and exchange of shibboleths that I’m just not comfortable with.

Psychology Today recently had a short series by a blogger on the Twilight phenomenon that includes the reasons why one teenage girl loves the (book) series. The girl has discovered fandom. The blogger, a well-adjusted woman, “loathes” Twilight and fears that attitudes toward the characters could be transferred to real-life affections and relationships.

Part 1:

As a “treat” to myself I decided to read TWILIGHT during my recovery from the operation. My expectations were high. Rebecca wasn’t the only one to be a fan of Meyer’s work: the books fly off the shelves (no bat wings necessary), some of my best undergraduate and even graduate students at UConn (smart babes all) are also wildly enthusiastic readers of these books, and the movie adaptation did incredibly well at the box office.[. . .]

What happened? I loathed TWILIGHT. I was surprised. What was I missing? I wanted to like it, I was willing to like it, I was waiting to like it.

I didn’t like it.

Part 2:

1. Finally, it is very easy to see the Twilight-obsessed girls as a kind of cult. And, indeed, that’s a bit what it felt like when I first started reading. I was welcomed in with a “Isn’t he great?” by my friends who were fellow obsessives—though not, I am proud to say, by any weird, preteen, Edward-devoted websites. Though the hearty welcome didn’t really make me feel any cooler for having read the book, it was kind of a thrill to be joined in this alternate reality by your friends—to discover that what you thought was a private universe that took place in your room was actually shared by people you know (and millions of others, predominantly twelve-year-old girls—though I prefer not to think about that). Ultimately, Twilight becomes more than a book—it is an experience.

Part 3:

Precisely BECAUSE the TWILIGHT franchise is more than just a goofy boxed-set of romance novels, a la Barbara Cartland or Danielle Steele (both of whom, no kidding, are far better writers than Meyer), The TWILIGHT Experience IS scary and people should be warned.

I’m serious. [. . .]

So the BIG reason to loathe TWILIGHT?

Fear of your lover should not be an aphrodisiac.

Ever.

[…] SDCC got under way last night, and Tim Sheehy reports on Preview Night at Japanator. Lissa Pattillo checks in as well, and she has photos. Deb Aoki has a manga-lover’s guide to the exhibit hall at About.com. Heidi visits the huddled masses at Camp Twilight. […]

“Objectifying and obsessing over *persons* is categorically different from obsessing over objects.”

Not when the objectifiers and obsessives are treating the objects like persons. Which is pretty much the definition of obsessive fandom: forgetting it’s all make-believe.

““Objectifying and obsessing over *persons* is categorically different from obsessing over objects.”

Not when the objectifiers and obsessives are treating the objects like persons. Which is pretty much the definition of obsessive fandom: forgetting it’s all make-believe.”

Yes, but the problem with obsessively objectifying people is that the objects *are* people. If you forget that, say, “His Majesty, The Scarecrow of Oz” is imaginary, it doesn’t affect anyone. When you forget that Edward Cullen is a person, not an object of obsession, it can hurt him. It nearly did in NYC.

Greg: “What separates the crazed-teenage girl phenomenon from other fan-based ones are its objectification and its power. (That the persons involved are teenage girls isn’t germane; teenage girls and boys can both be involved in all sorts of obsessive activities without creepiness being involved.) The adoption of persons as obsessive objects is what’s disturbing about the phenomenon evidenced in Twilight fans. Not at sporting events*, not at male-dominated rock concerts, not at video game releases, not at geeky movie openings do you see the stars chased, the fans passing out with excitement, or the treatment of persons as desire objects in an obsessive way. The phenomenon is creepy. Twilight fans as fans aren’t, nor are teenage girls.”

Mmm-yeah. As if Halle Berry wasn’t nearly trampled to death at Comic-Con by overly hormonal fanboys when she was there several years ago to promote a Movie Which Shall Not Be Named.

As if the repugnant mouth-breathers among the fanboy crowd didn’t make the same requests for hugs, the same marriage proposals, and stuff that is, frankly, sexual harrassment (poor Jennifer Love Hewitt — and I hate The Ghost Whisperer) at Comic-Con and other conventions.

Greg, please quit while you’re only this far behind and only bordering on misogyny rather than fully epitomizing it.

— Rob

It seemed like every line today was crazy.

I only went to one (sparsely attended) panel partially cuz I didn’t have all day to just wait in line.

It also seemed to take at least 20 minutes to get from the dc booth to artists alley, if a person didn’t wisely go outisde the hall to make the trek.

Mark: “It also seemed to take at least 20 minutes to get from the dc booth to artists alley, if a person didn’t wisely go outisde the hall to make the trek.”

That’s pretty much been the case since about 2002. If you really want to get from the north end of the floor to the south end of the floor, you’ve absolutely *got* to skip the middle because of the traffic jam caused by all of the TV and Movie booths and the Mattel and Hasbro booths in the middle.

That’s a large part of the reason why, when I’m able to go out there from Missouri — I’ve had to miss the year due to a family-related vacation taking up all the money this year — I do most of my comics buying on Preview Night. Actually, I do most of my comics buying on the Day of Preview Night at my old LCS, San Diego Comics, two miles east of SDSU.[1] Because, well, the comics dealers’ tables at Comic-Con all suck *and* because San Diego Comics has, well, a great back issue selection, better even than most of the larger stores (glorified convention tables with walls) these days. So I fill my wantlist at the store and limit my movement at the Con as much as possible by sticking to the Movie and TV panels.[2] So when I absolutely *have* to get from one end of the floor to the other — say, I’m at the Comic Relief table and need to get to Stan Sakai’s booth because I finally remember the title of the next Usagi Yojimbo TPB that I need to get (I’m still about 10 TPBs behind), I go into the lobby and walk always the across the lobby hallway to get to the south end, where Sakai’s booth (and Terry Moore’s and Dave McKean’s and . . .) always are.

If I don’t do my shopping on Wednesday or take the lobby “shortcut” (short by time), then I wear myself out waaaay too fast and have to ditch either Thursday morning or go back to my motel early on Thursday or Friday. Limiting travel and standing time is the name of the game, IMO.

— Rob

[1] A relatively easy trip from Mission Valley via the Green Line to SDSU and then the 15 down El Cajon to 70th.)

[2] I don’t even go to the comics panels anymore because I read The Beat, Newsarama and Journalista on a daily basis throughout the year and thus, the panels are boring, partifcularly when they get to the fan Q&As, which are always the same old newbie questions.

Mark: “It also seemed to take at least 20 minutes to get from the dc booth to artists alley, if a person didn’t wisely go outisde the hall to make the trek.”

That’s pretty much been the case since about 2002. If you really want to get from the north end of the floor to the south end of the floor, you’ve absolutely *got* to skip the middle because of the traffic jam caused by all of the TV and Movie booths and the Mattel and Hasbro booths in the middle.

That’s a large part of the reason why, when I’m able to go out there from Missouri — I’ve had to miss the year due to a family-related vacation taking up all the money this year — I do most of my comics buying on Preview Night. Actually, I do most of my comics buying on the Day of Preview Night at my old LCS, San Diego Comics, two miles east of SDSU.[1] Because, well, the comics dealers’ tables at Comic-Con all suck *and* because San Diego Comics has, well, a great back issue selection, better even than most of the larger stores (glorified convention tables with walls) these days. So I fill my wantlist at the store and limit my movement at the Con as much as possible by sticking to the Movie and TV panels.[2] So when I absolutely *have* to get from one end of the floor to the other — say, I’m at the Comic Relief table and need to get to Stan Sakai’s booth because I finally remember the title of the next Usagi Yojimbo TPB that I need to get (I’m still about 10 TPBs behind), I go into the lobby and walk always the across the lobby hallway to get to the south end, where Sakai’s booth (and Terry Moore’s and Dave McKean’s and . . .) always are.

If I don’t do my shopping on Wednesday or take the lobby “shortcut” (short by time), then I wear myself out waaaay too fast and have to ditch either Thursday morning or go back to my motel early on Thursday or Friday. Limiting travel and standing time is the name of the game, IMO.

— Rob

[1] A relatively easy trip from Mission Valley via the Green Line to SDSU and then the 15 bus line down El Cajon to 70th.)

[2] I don’t even go to the comics panels anymore because I read The Beat, Newsarama and Journalista on a daily basis throughout the year and thus, the panels are boring, partifcularly when they get to the fan Q&As, which are always the same old newbie questions.

Darn, long double-post! The second one is the correct one!

Sorry,
Rob

“Greg: “What separates the crazed-teenage girl phenomenon from other fan-based ones are its objectification and its power. (That the persons involved are teenage girls isn’t germane; teenage girls and boys can both be involved in all sorts of obsessive activities without creepiness being involved.) The adoption of persons as obsessive objects is what’s disturbing about the phenomenon evidenced in Twilight fans. Not at sporting events*, not at male-dominated rock concerts, not at video game releases, not at geeky movie openings do you see the stars chased, the fans passing out with excitement, or the treatment of persons as desire objects in an obsessive way. The phenomenon is creepy. Twilight fans as fans aren’t, nor are teenage girls.”

Mmm-yeah. As if Halle Berry wasn’t nearly trampled to death at Comic-Con by overly hormonal fanboys when she was there several years ago to promote a Movie Which Shall Not Be Named.

As if the repugnant mouth-breathers among the fanboy crowd didn’t make the same requests for hugs, the same marriage proposals, and stuff that is, frankly, sexual harrassment (poor Jennifer Love Hewitt — and I hate The Ghost Whisperer) at Comic-Con and other conventions.”

I wasn’t aware of this phenomenon. I’ve never been to a comic convention. I suspect, though, that these creeps are much more the minority than they

“Greg, please quit while you’re only this far behind and only bordering on misogyny rather than fully epitomizing it.”

My concern isn’t sex-related, but behavior related. Please note that I’ve taken care above to point out that I’m not discussing the behavior of females, but of a certain subset of society which happens to largely be female. The sex of those persons isn’t apposite.

(I do see that I poorly referenced “male-dominated rock concerts”. What I intended was to differentiate non-Beatle/Elvis-like events from

^ Please disregard the above. I seem to have a tendency to accidentally click the submit button while still writing. : o

“Greg: “What separates the crazed-teenage girl phenomenon from other fan-based ones are its objectification and its power. (That the persons involved are teenage girls isn’t germane; teenage girls and boys can both be involved in all sorts of obsessive activities without creepiness being involved.) The adoption of persons as obsessive objects is what’s disturbing about the phenomenon evidenced in Twilight fans. Not at sporting events*, not at male-dominated rock concerts, not at video game releases, not at geeky movie openings do you see the stars chased, the fans passing out with excitement, or the treatment of persons as desire objects in an obsessive way. The phenomenon is creepy. Twilight fans as fans aren’t, nor are teenage girls.”

Mmm-yeah. As if Halle Berry wasn’t nearly trampled to death at Comic-Con by overly hormonal fanboys when she was there several years ago to promote a Movie Which Shall Not Be Named.

As if the repugnant mouth-breathers among the fanboy crowd didn’t make the same requests for hugs, the same marriage proposals, and stuff that is, frankly, sexual harrassment (poor Jennifer Love Hewitt — and I hate The Ghost Whisperer) at Comic-Con and other conventions.”

I wasn’t aware of this. Given that we recognize such persons as creepy and socially maladjusted, this may provide a useful male example of the behavior - like the stalker.

On the other hand, what has been seen at Comic-Con (why is the city omitted?) may be stampede-like behavior based on the individual obsessions of individual persons rather than the apparently group-linked behavior evidenced in the Twilight/Bloom phenomenon. (The latter is remarkably similar to the so-called “collective hysteria” which has brought on rashes of fainting spells among similar groups in other contexts.)

“Greg, please quit while you’re only this far behind and only bordering on misogyny rather than fully epitomizing it.”

My concern isn’t sex-related, but behavior related. Please note that I’ve taken care above to point out that I’m not discussing the behavior of females, but of a certain subset of society which happens to largely be female. The sex of those persons isn’t apposite.

(I do see that I poorly referenced “male-dominated rock concerts”. What I intended was to differentiate non-Beatle/Elvis-like events from concerts that are of that type. I should have phrased it more clearly (Pink concerts, say, don’t evidence the behavior).

Actually, “Eyvind Earle”, with three books (and counting) in the series, in hardcover and paperback, it’s not hard to get to millions of books sold when the books are being published in a couple of dozen countries. If the books hardly ‘”sold at all”, then the first book would not still be in print (and in its sixth hardcover printing) three years after release. And taking shots at authors like myself and successful companies like Boom under a pseudonym hardly adds to your credibility.

Greg, you might be overcomplicating things in trying to explain the actions of teenagers. Take a look at the linkage of impulse control and obsessions, also called “impulsive obsession.” As people age and mature, they develop impulse control.

SRS

Boom is held together by paste. They do not support creator ownership. They are NOT successful, James.

Your books about something that nobody can pronounce may be good but they have NOT sold anywhere near a million copies on planets Earth or Venus.

Fact.

By sheer coincidence, we’ve just announced that the rights to the Imaginarium Geographica books have been sold on Venus:

http://coppervale.livejournal.com/226989.html

YA fantasy has done pretty well there, although as I understand it they won’t be using my cover art (opting to instead use a local artist, as my Spanish and Portugese publishers have done). Still, the books won’t be released there for some time, so it’ll be a while before we can add in the sales figures to the total.

James may want to look at using proper punctuation (the comma goes inside a the quotation marks) the next time he chooses to defend his writing ability against a fact-producing critic.

Also ready to descend into the Madness that IS Comic-Con! Preview Night should be a good taste of what’s to come— crowd size, mood, a/c at the Convention building operational?, what swag to be expected, surprises to be found at the various booths…

(But still have 4 more hours to go before I can pick up my tix.)

I’m missing the con for the first time in 23 years, but I’ll be there vicariously through your reports!

I hate humanity already. More than usual.

Rant maybe later in separate post from ace.

The show hasn’t even stated and my misanthropy level is already up to a 7.

Fist bumps? Hows about Bootie Bumps? Sounds more fun.

I’d like to thank the three or four people, out of the tens of thousands at Preview Night, who said “excuse me” when either cutting in front of me or bumping into me.

Non-schmoozing highlight of the night: seeing a woman who was waiting in line to get her pro badge wearing flip flops change into four-inch heels when before going into the exhibit hall.

Also on the plus side, I quadrupled the highest number I’ve gotten in three months on the pedometer I’m now carrying. And tomorrow could break it I bet.

And glad to see friends not seen in years. It makes better up with the unwashed masses worth itl.

Just got back. Picked up the check-in bag o’goodies: nice touch in having Rick Geary provide the covers for both the Events Guide and Souvenier Book (whose year-by-year look back at SDCC history makes a nice complement to that COMIC-CON 40 Years of Artists, Writers, Fans & Friends hardback I also picked up).

I think the biggest surprise of the Con so far was found on p.8 of the Events Guide: next year’s Pre-Reg for all 4 days will cost you $100!
ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS, up from last year’s Pre-Reg of $65— and it doesn’t seem that there’ll be an on-site discount from the regular price either.

I’m guessing all those High and Jr. High School students I saw today on Preview Night will be prohibitally priced out of going to SDCC next year…

THIS is the “turning point” of Comic-Con.

I’ve always liked Seth Green. I don’t know about anyone else, and anyone else can do as they please, but I’ve learned that the best way to have fun at comic con, is to make it about the comics. I’m looking forward to driving down and being there this morning, and I hope that I get to meet a lot of you there. Here’s what I look like if anyone wants to come up and say hi… http://vipglamour.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/jessica-alba-1.jpg

Just kidding. This is me… http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_nxQrT6TMV5o/RvipIiCWZ4I/AAAAAAAAAjo/ZUxzxwHbWB8/s1600-h/Shrine+Comic+Con+092307+001.jpg Let’s hang out at the con.

Bad italics tag! Bad! No biscuit! Bad tag!

““Very few have come away saying, ‘That’s the worst experience I’ve ever had,’” Walker insists.”

I suspect that comics have been reduced to a kind of tolerated minstrelry at these massive media events, which is probably okay I guess. I mean, if you like being a minstrel. It’s hard to protest when odds are in 5 years we’ll all be wishing again for more mainstream attention.

Bad italics tag!

The misbehaving tag has been punished.

SRS

I love that Green is a fellow TMNT geek. Represent!

I’m not sure why Comic-Con has to be primarily about comics. I agree that the show should change its name to reflect its evolution into something different, but I’m not sure why we spend so much time discussing ways for the show to change back to what it used to be.

The San Diego show today is a general gathering of fans to celebrate a lot of fan cultures — sci-fi, horror, superhero, action-adventure, blockbuster film, blockbuster comics, video games — and it makes sense since all of those genres and media and art forms overlap so often. From that perspective, comics doesn’t have to struggle to be heard amongst the noise that threatens to crowd them out. Comics just has to accept its slice of the general fan culture pie that’s served at the show.

We have plenty of other industry shows that focus primarily on comics, just like there are shows focusing exclusively on video games or horror or what-have-you. I think it makes sense to let Heroes Con (or Wonder Con, NYCC, etc.) be the huge comics love fest we all need and let San Diego be what its particular attendees want it to be.

Me, I’m waiting for the day when the “Science Fiction” part of the original
Comic-Con triumvirate of “Comics Art, Films, Science Fiction” [as seen in that ‘73 SDCC Program Cover by Neal Adams, say] will take over the Convention Center as much as its older brothers…

Not a good sign though, to see that SCI-FI Channel NOT on the Exhibitor Floor this year—- that landmark purple blob is GONE?? Where will we sit now while waiting to meet up with friends?

All I know is that I’m not at Comicon this year and that has me bummed out.

And naturally, it seems that every time I pick up a newspaper, watch the news on TV, scan the Internet news, or read a weekly periodical, there’s a mention of Comicon.

@!!##?!!

The problem with SDCC becoming a multimedia entertainment event instead of comics-centered might be that the change feeds the perception that the comics format, as such, isn’t worth much attention, and that comics are useful primarily as storyboards and for generating characters to use in other media (videogames, movies). If comics stories aren’t appreciated for what they are, the industry isn’t going to progress.

The critical attention ASTERIOS POLYP has garnered is wonderful; the book has gotten reviews that examine the effectiveness of practically every panel and bit of dialogue, but such reviews are nothing like the standard review that gives an issue a numerical rating and assumes that artwork can entertain a reader by itself, even if there’s no story. ASTERIOS POLYP isn’t a model for the comics industry.

It’s possible that in the next several years, the split between the low end of the market (DC, Marvel, comics as storyboards, etc.) and the high end (indie creators) will widen, leaving readers who just want good genre fiction with little to choose from.

SRS

Good one, Christopher! I liked the first photo better, though.

[…] So Heidi wrote this: “From the other side, many con vets are just wondering when the Hollywood contingent of San Diego Comic-Con is going to do an “E3? and try to scale back. Our own concept of one possible course is that in a few years, Hollywood is going to wake up and wonder why they are spending so much money on giving fans tchatchkes and try to scale down to a press-only event, just like E3 tried to do.” – Heidi MacDonald […]

[…] • Christopher Butcher counters an assertion that Comic-Con is too big by arguing that the real problem is that it isn’t big enough. […]

MIYAZAKI IS THERE? WHY AM I ANYWHERE ELSE? Holy crap.

I love how that guys says “very few” have come away with saying “this is the worst experience ever.” Meaning, there’s been a few. LOL Ah, Nerd Prom, we love thee.

Put the computer down and rest up Heidi. I know that you know that you’ll feel so much better for knowing that you should know, so you did. Note: If it takes you more than two times reading that to get it, you need your rest.

Forget snakes on a plane….

We’re now stuck on a plane.

No rest! LIVEBLOG EVERYTHING! Let no detail escape unobserved and unrecorded!

You know, with the right iPhone app you can blog en route on the plane, and upload your entries when you get online again.

Just be careful with airport WiFi… security is not the best.

Southwest recently offered $29 and up flights for Autumn (price based on distance traveled), and Amtrak also has some discount fares, for those planning to travel to Baltimore or DC for shows.

And Heidi…. hardcore bloggers use Treos and Blackberries. Cellphone, camera, web browser, lightweight. Wi-Fi = Where-Fi.

“Taking a caffeine nap in a bit.”

Egads! I thought I came to a blog, but I seem to have stumbled onto Twitter somehow.

I feel your pain.

I had a 12-hour travel day to get from baltimore to SD that included mechanical delays and apparently a DUST STORM in Phoenix.

Now, for a day of Balboa Park, Phil’s BBQ and the Padres.

Have a great time out there, Ace! Remember, lots of water and don’t exhaust yourself. Oh, and if you can drop a name with some prominent publishers and editors it wouldn’t hurt.

I left this morning at 8ish - the rain didn’t help at first - but Jet Blue was wonderful - and California is sunny and warm. Huzzah!

Haha… that’s awesome! Have a safe flight.

Jet Blue non-stop came to my town for one year, Alaska started up a non-stop in response, now they’re both not doing it and I’m back to one-stop shopping. Oh well, we leave in the AM and get there before noon tomorrow! Yay–it’s finally here!

I’ve heard locals complaining about the heat today.

It might be 80.

Oh the jaded sd homies.

It’s 100 here, just 3 hours north of San Diego. I like it.

I cannot decide if it is funny or sad that this is the most commented upon San Diego story?

I cannot decide if it is funny or sad that this is the most commented upon San Diego story?

[…] Heidi at the Beat has confirmed that Disney will be producing an original graphic novel to go alongside their production of the Jake Gyllenhaal film The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and will be discussing it at 11:30 on Friday at the Disney Comics panel at the San Diego Comic Con. […]

Do any of the stories feature the people doing their laundry on the Prince’s abdomen?

mine does…

[…] Source: The Beat […]

Didn’t First Second already put that book out last year?

The First Second PRINCE OF PERSIA isn’t a tie-in. It was Jordan Mechner’s creative offering, with a script by the Iranian poet A.B. Sina. It’s a kind of keystone to the various POP universes.

Screenplay credits for the movie go to Jordan Mechner and Boaz Yakin—two amazing storytellers with scripts in development for First Second (SOLOMON’S THIEVES for Mechner, and JERUSALEM for Yakin.)

[…] Heidi over at the Beat says, Cameron Stewart (”Seaguy”), Tommy Lee Edwards (”Marvel 1985″), Nico Henrichon (”Pride of Baghdad”) will collaborate with writer  Jordan Mechner to bring the Jake Gyllenhaal film to four-color pages.  Mechner  wrote the video  game to which the film is based upon.  And that’s right, you guessed it, there will be a panel discussing the book at SDCC, at 11:30 on Friday at the Disney Press panel. […]