How to use this Page

Tweet

As I suggested in my early con impressions, WonderCon had a reasonable amount of space and handled the numbers of attendees pretty well. It was no surprise that Saturday brought bigger numbers than Friday, and the crowding was more obvious, but still never reached that feeling of pushing and shoving that can easily erupt at crowded cons. The floor occasionally got backed up, particularly around the constantly slammed DC Comics booth, where big names like Scott Snyder appeared frequently for signings and the DC booth’s location, at the very front of the con entrance, contributed to some difficulty getting onto the floor. I noticed that the retail side of things was fairly busy, too, with some crowding and difficulty navigating, suggesting that plenty of fans were there to buy back issues and memorabilia, as well. The artists alley at WonderCon was a little on the scanty side in terms of size and numbers of tables, but those artists who were present were very engaging and passionate about their work. They seemed to have regular followers who were coming in to buy their artwork and there was a strong representation of the fine art side of fantasy prints and original work, as well as handmade arts and crafts.

Open areas like the food court and outside atrium were a welcome oasis, but it also continued to be easy to exit the con into the outdoor plaza areas for a rest and there was no difficulty with re-entry. Though the floor only allowed a couple of doors for access, the many exterior doors were open for comings and goings, with several food trucks outside, far enough from the entrance not to cause back ups. One other surprise was that Sunday seemed just as busy as Saturday, as I heard retailers commenting. They were turning over sales at just as high a rate that day. This feeling may be due to the fact that there were slightly fewer panels on Sunday, making the floor more of a feature, or simply that people waited to do their shopping on the floor on Sunday. When I stumbled into the Arena, a venue I hadn’t seen before, I was impressed with the numbers it could hold, and also that it was completely full for a Joss Whedon Shakespeare film adaptation event. This suggested to me that the con was handling numbers well, since I generally had no idea that so many people were even at the con on top of the numbers moving in the open spaces of the con. It was Easter Sunday the last day of the con, and it closed a little early, at 5PM, perhaps for this reason, but fans still had a sense that they would have been happy for the con to go on a little longer, a good sign regarding WonderCon’s appeal.

One final follow up: I suggested initially in my coverage that people might find WonderCon in Anaheim appealing due to Disneyland access, and that this would appeal to people will kids particularly. Though this turned out to be true, I also underestimated the appeal of Disneyland to singles and younger congoers. I went to Disneyland the following Monday and found that quite a number of WonderCon attendees were there too, from a younger demographic than I expected. You could tell from their conversations and generally less pastel clothing what guests were in town for the con, and I’d say about 1 in 10 were from the con in the massive crowds Disney drew on that post-Easter day.

Final thoughts: it was a well run and appealing con, offering plenty of choice in terms of panels, keeping up with what’s going on in comics and pop culture right now. Marvel were a little under represented, though Dan Slott was participating in panels, and several pros who were there for DC panels were formal Marvel people. Marvel didn’t have a booth on the floor, driving up the demand for DC variants and signings, which they happily accommodated. I was also impressed by the energetic presence of the mid-sized presses like Dark Horse, Archaia, Image, IDW, and ComiXology, for taking the opportunity to flourish and interact with fans when given a little more space to do so. The mid-sized presses really shone in their engagement with fans on the floor, their foresight in bringing new and upcoming books to purchase and get a sneak-peak at, and also through their involvement on panels. This gave the general impression that mid-sized presses are on the rise and taking on the role, collectively, as contenders for the Big Two. Good for them!

Whether WonderCon is in Anaheim again or back in San Francisco in the future, the planning and structure of the con should continue to hold up to make it a comfortable as well as enjoyable, exciting event for fans. This won’t be one of the cons where you have to sacrifice personal amenities just to see your favorite artists speak or get the variant your collection is calling for. They have a sense of putting the customer first at WonderCon and let’s hope that continues; it sets a good model for the growing con industry, and there are some bigger cons who could learn a thing or two from this.

Without further ado, some highlights of the con in photos from my trusty partner in crime Michele Brittany who proved her moxie as a pop culture photographer at WonderCon 2013 in spades. Thanks Michele!

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

Tweet

“I’m sorry I’m late with my book”, Jimmy Palmiotti said rather humbly, opening a “spotlight” panel on March 31^st 2013 at WonderCon, and asked the audience if he ought to put on some “background music”.  Amanda Conner, his co-spotlighter, and Palmiotti explained, tongue in cheek, that if the panel appeared “random”, months of deep thought had allowed them to “plan it to be random”. Attendees were already engaged by the humor, and probably by their avid fandom of both Conner and Palmiotti’s work, in this panel Conner and Palmiotti hoped would be “interactive”.

For the first part of the panel, they followed a rough chronology of the story of their working and personal relationship together, but Q &A was welcome throughout. Palmiotti explained that the “magic started” between the couple when he inked a GARGOYLES cover for Conner and a friendship developed between them. This friendship allowed them to learn the “horrible, wonderful sides” of each other, Conner commented. Palmiotti added that they “knew each other insanely well” long before they started dating.

Their first big collaboration, where both provided their own input for a personally satisfying project, involved the VAMPIRELLA comic when Conner asked Palmiotti to create a script where she would be allowed to portray the title character “on the toilet”. Palmiotti, in gallant fashion, concocted a plot involving laxative-laced candy on Halloween, a child-eating demon, and a heroic devourer in Vampirella. Palmiotti encouraged writers to play to the desires of artists and “give them stuff they really want to draw” to produce great results. That’s been their “theme ever since”, he said. Comics have been their “career of choice”, Palmiotti reflected, even though their were “other choices” possible. Conner’s other choices, for instance, included working in advertising, and prior to that, owning a comic book store.

This chronological tour abruptly leapt to the present as both Palmiotti and Conner commented on keeping late hours, particularly at the con. The “number one rule”, Palmiotti shared sagely, is “never look at the clock. It ruins the night the next morning, worrying about it”. Then the “only indication”, he said, “is hearing birds. I don’t like that”. This commentary had the audience in uniform, vocal agreement. Conner and Palmiotti introduced another recurring topic in the panel, the sheer number of shoes Conner has managed to assemble. She insisted she had no more than 20 pairs of shoes, but Palmiotti remained dubious, putting the number at more like 600.

This speculation was interrupted by a question from the floor about the “timetable” on the planned collaboration CAPTAIN BROOKLYN. Conner explained that she’s working on a “glut of covers” at the moment, but when she’s finished those off, she’s going to stop other work and focus on BROOKLYN. Conner confirmed that they are “thinking about” the possibility of doing a Kickstarter for the project. CAPTAIN BROOKLYN, Palmiotti explained, is about a garbage man in Brooklyn, with a “house full of cats” and “Russian massage parlor girls next door” who has to devise a financial means of helping his sickly grandfather. On top of that, he comes to possess “superpowers that really don’t help his life”. Palmiotti says the book, as scripted, is “funny” but he trusts Conner to “bring it down to earth” and “ground it”, a power he feels is her particular strength as an artist. Her work “has a soul”, he said, “The eyes have a soul”, but he jokingly threatened her with finding a replacement if she doesn’t pick up the production pace.

Since the panel declared itself to be “interactive”, I asked Conner about her background studying comics art at the Kubert School in New Jersey, and whether she felt it was beneficial to study comics specifically in order to become a professional comics artist. The benefits, she said, of specialized study, is that she now knows how to “use a lot of other tools besides drawing specific to what I want to do”. At the time that she attended the Kubert School, she said, “most other art colleges frowned on comic art” and it was “not respected”. She feels things are “more open now”, but at  the time, she said, the Kubert School was “exactly what I needed”. Palmiotti commented that at that time, the Kubert School also had very few women, about 4 in her class, Conner recalled. Now comics are a “little more accepted”, Palmiotti said, and the word “geek” is on the rise.

“Now we’re the cool kids and can talk about stupid stuff”, Palmiotti commented, including channeling child-like behavior to geek out about things like films. Both Conner and Palmiotti revealed that they are avid film watchers, and particularly Palmiotti, who goes to the movies a couple of times a week. Conner focuses on particular films that catch her attention, which she watches “repeatedly”. As a kid, she was a huge fan of The Poseidon Adventure, then Star Wars, The Terminator, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and more recently, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.  Palmiotti’s most recent film enthusiasm is for the film Upside Down, particularly fascinated by this love story featuring reverse gravity fields and conflict between differing worlds.

An audience member brought up the subject of the completion of Conner’s run on SILK SPECTRE from the BEFORE WATCHMEN series, a project that ran only four issues rather than a possible six. “It could have stretched to 6”, Conner said, but she found it wasn’t necessary to do so. She declared herself relieved to have finished the job, since it was “labor and research intensive” to make sure she “blended it into the original storyline” of the mid to late ‘60’s. Her goal, which made the job more difficult, was to present “not people’s perception of the 60’s, but actually the ‘60’s” in contrast to our current, commercial views of the time period. This quest led her to contact her mother and her aunts, the youngest of which was “Laurie’s age” during the same time period. Palmiotti, who witnessed Conner’s rather excruciating commitment to historical accuracy in her art, came to call SILK SPECTRE “that effin’ book’ (which was the PG-13 version of the phrase).

Palmiotti said that Conner “became obsessive with every building” she drew, as well as clothing. The “layout” for Laurie’s house, apparently, was drawn from a single panel featuring a single room in the house in WATCHMEN. Conner built an “entire house” around a living room contained in the original comic. Palmiotti reminded the audience, who then applauded, that Conner’s work on SILK SPECTRE has since been nominated for a Reuben Award in “good company” with Evan Dorkin, and Bernie Wrightson, two of their favorite creators.

I asked Conner and Palmiotti what, particularly, they are looking for that they find attractive in a project in terms of character and plot. Palmiotti replied that he’s looking for several things, including the “soul of a character”, “what they want”, “what they fear” and “something at stake”. He’s very drawn to idea of romance in comic books. “It’s there even in JONAH HEX”, he said. “I like the idea of two people who have something in common, a goal”, Palmiotti explained. Even if he’s writing “horrible people”, he’s “looking for a likeable trait”. His example prompted a lot of laughter from the audience, proving the maxim “It’s funny because it’s true”. He said that even “Hitler’s dog thought Hitler was awesome” because the dog, being fed and tended by his master, could find a likeable trait. You have to “find those things in the characters”, he said, and ask yourself, “Why would we care?”.

Conner’s particular take on character focuses on the idea of perfection and imperfection. “I try not to make the character so perfect”, she said, preferring to create a character who is “someone like you know”. She wants her comics audience to react by thinking, “I know somebody who’s just like that”. That’s one of the reasons Palmiotti finds Spielberg films compelling, he explained, since they “start with the hero screwing up” and “we relate”. If a hero is “too perfect, there’s push-back”. He doesn’t respond to films where there’s a “super handsome guy and a perfect girl”, finding them “boring”.

An audience member’s question about Conner’s work drawing BARBIE in the past led to an energetic discussion of Wonder Woman as a character and the possibilities of new directions for her books. “I would love to write WONDER WOMAN”, Palmiotti admitted; he sees her as “more down to earth, less superior” than some other creators since being “too perfect” is a turn-off, though he thinks some solid work has been done on WONDER WOMAN. He observed that in some WONDER WOMAN comics he’s read, the creators “make everyone else more interesting” than Wonder Woman and he can’t understand that approach. “She’s the most interesting person in the room”, he pointed out, not her surrounding characters. Of course, he added, he would only want to write WONDER WOMAN with Conner as the artist on the project.

The last few questions fielded by Palmiotti and Conner included their typical work schedules, which they revealed to be opposite, and therefore difficult in timing, Conner’s recollections about her work for indie magazines, which she described as “guerrilla comic book making”, and what comics they like to read right now. Conner cited Terry Moore, finding herself “rivetted” by every story. Palmiotti’s a big fan of Darwyn Cooke’s work, but also always comes home with a “stack” of comics from the shop on Wednesdays. He buys every #1 issue from every company, he revealed, and continues to “try everything… like it’s my job”.

Conner and Palmiotti certainly presented a fully interactive panel, so much so that when panel time ran out, it felt like an interrupted conversation with plenty more to say. Hearing stories from their daily life and their work suggested that the divide, especially for these collaborators, is artificial, with influences moving back and forth constantly. Maybe that’s the secret to their wide-ranging output in comics, and a glimpse of the reason behind the energy they continually bring to the industry. The panel illustrated well the benefits of the “spotlight” approach to con appearances giving enough time and focus on particular creators to generate a conversation with their audiences.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

Tweet

While the Nerdist Industries’ arena event at WonderCon this year was ostensibly about the future of the Youtube based pop culture conglomerate, and, indeed, plenty was said about upcoming projects, the question and answer period really expanded into a call to arms for fans to help directly determine the future of pop culture.

Nerdist founder Chris Hardwick took the stage, joined by panellists Paul Provenza, Troy Conrad, and Matt Bennett, on March 31^st, in the lead up to the season finale of The Walking Dead. Hardwick’s job as host of Talking Dead meant there was plenty of frisson in the audience about the upcoming show, and Hardwick teased, but didn’t deliver, spoilers on the show’s finale several times. In fact, he informed the audience that he was about to “get into a car to film Talking Dead” following his WonderCon appearance. Envy at his early viewing of the finale was palpable.

While Hardwick has a cult following as host of Talking Dead, and also from plenty of Nerdist projects, his presence live is even more dynamic, bringing with it plenty of his stand up comedy background. Since it was also Easter Sunday, Hardwick opened with a relevant quip: “That’s one person who came back from the dead and didn’t do it to rip someone’s heart out. Just put the love in it”. About a thousand attendees found this hilarious. Hardwick showed a promo video preview of upcoming Nerdist projects, often punctuated by applause and cheers from the audience when they recognized an anticipated segment or a celebrity guest coming up on a project, and followed by discussing several of the projects in a little more detail with his panellists.

Bennet’s new series, currently being filmed, entitled Nerdy Jobs, a play on Dirty Jobs, got particular attention. The series will involve him visiting nerdy “cool” companies like tech industries and comic book shops to give an insider’s view of working there. Hardwick pondered what Bennett would find to say if he visited NASA for the show: “Uh, sorry about your funding?”. Another big push for Nerdist is the launch of a comedy combination of stand up and improv based on the British series concept Setlist, a competition that will tour around the world. As a veteran of stand up, Hardwick was particularly enthused, commenting that forcing stand up comedians into an improv situation is like “looking for the God particle of comedy”. His request to the audience about the upcoming new shows: “Please don’t feel compelled to say horrible things IN ALL CAPS in comment threads”.

This led Harwick to speak for a moment about Youtube as a venue for hosting programming. Though delivered in a comically serious tone, the message had some bite: “No longer do companies tell us what to watch”. It was the first of several comments that indicated that Hardwick still has a lot to say about the role of open access and its giant-killing capabilities in relation to big media. Nerdist Industries, he said, is going to be expanding, but not along the lines of some of their peers on Youtube, who branch out into “piles of channels”; instead, they are aiming for a “hyper-curated partnership” with 6-8 channels and plenty of intensive “cross promotion”. They are also considering a move, based on fan request, to try out video podcasts, though Hardwick is a little skeptical of why people would want to watch them. Demand has been high enough that he’s prepared to yield to the experiment. Upcoming guests for the video podcast will include Seth Rogan, Steve Young, Scott Adsit and “surprises” too. Nerdist will also, finally, launch a major app to link to its content and, even more surprisingly, will be venturing into filmmaking following their purchase by Legendary Entertainment. They hope to work as producers on smaller budget films in this new role.

While Hardwick was delivering his energetic spiel, Provenza interjected, “Do you ever sleep?”. It was true, Hardwick looked a little peaked. “I have a robot heart”, he intoned, and continued on to the question and answer period. Questions began with a repeat offender from SDCC who Hardwick had once hugged in the past for his super fandom regarding Superman. “Comic Con is about getting super freaked out about stuff you love”, Hardwick reminded the audience (and he would deliver another hug later to a girl dressed as Wario in sympathy with his own Mario Brothers t-shirt). Harwick was then asked what he would do if his girlfriend was found to be “patient zero” in a potential zombie apocalypse. “Oh, I’d shoot her in the fucking head. That’s what you do for your loved ones”, he said without hesitation, to much hilarity, and added that he hoped she’d do the same for him.

He seemed pretty serious about that topic, but not as serious as he became immediately after the question on the subject of open access production. “There is literally no excuse for you not to pursue things that you love now. You are living half a life if you do not pursue the things that you love”, he said, referring to the tools now available for fans and pop culture creators alike. When a middle school teacher asked him for ideas to keep her students interested in pop culture in their newly formed lunch club, he gave a very invested answer, repeating that the most important thing the teacher could do for them would be to get them to “make things”, whether videos, or other media. “Teach them to be creators vs. consumers”, he pleaded, to much approbation from the crowd.

One of Hardwick’s winning qualities that keeps him from drifting too far from his fanbase  due to his ever increasing media success is his earnestness, often placing himself in the role of the fan once more. He described himself as a “lamprey” feeding off the “giant sperm whale” of pop culture products and feeling grateful, trying not to “impose” when working with actors from major shows. The Nerdist panel emphasized again that Hardwick still sees himself as an outsider in the mainstream, and an insider to “nerd” culture, no matter how many celebrity friends he accrues. That lends credence to his requests and his advice that fans continue to interact directly with the things they love through becoming “creators” too.

Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.

Tweet

A panel on Friday, March 29^th, the first day of programming at WonderCon brought together a rather iconic cast to discuss “iconic characters” and what keeps a character “true” to their origins over long periods of time. Mark Waid opened as moderator by pointing out that the table full of seasoned pros had more than 125 years of comics experience between them and most had worked on longterm characters and newer creations alike. The essential question posed by Waid was how to “vault” characters “into the 21^st century without losing what keeps them special”. The question seemed particularly pertinent to Waid, whose ongoing work on DAREDEVIL has evoked critical acclaim. Waid asked his panellists how they handle the “core elements of characters” to face this challenge.

J. M. De Matteis introduced an image that stayed with the panellists as a reference point for discussion. He felt that creators handling long-lived characters work “within a cage”, so they can’t “go wide” with the character in term of change, but they can “go deep” in terms of making new discoveries. For De Matteis, personally, it’s all about the “Big Why” of characters, figuring out what makes them tick. He prefers working with super-villains to pose questions about the formative impact of their past histories because there’s “always a little corner of the psyche to dig into”. Ann Nocenti, however, in her recent work with Catwoman found that “her archetype was pretty clear” as a troubled kid originally, “on the streets” originally, and moving through “foster homes”. Her intuitive approach is to “play with a character and see what feels right” and she doesn’t mind the fact that later creators will do the same with long-term characters. It’s “like treading water”, she said, “You give a sense of constant, dynamic action, but you’re really not moving far”, and she expects later creators to be under the same constraint.

Doug Mahnke’s challenges, as an artist working on long-term heroes, is rather specific, handling costumes and their overtones. He observed that heroes, even today, often don’t look “contemporary” because their appearance has become iconic and we no longer question the anachronism, like Superman’s “underwear outside his pants”. Other features like capes and boots, Mahnke said, “made sense at the time” they were created based on a “swashbuckling” influence. In fact, he explained, an artist’s job is to “bring out the majesty in the character. It doesn’t matter so much what they’re wearing”, but you can use costume as a “tool” to use to your advantage.

Several of the panellists then commented on the fact that objectively, some of the nomenclature and costumes of characters created decades ago would seem “stupid” now. Nocenti’s example was a resurrection of a minor character, Zebra Man who was “visually fantastic” but the name and concept bizarre. Slott felt that once an icon is an icon, “the fact that it’s an icon gives it weight”, preventing further critique from readers. Even Waid’s considered opinion was that “Green Lantern” is a “stupid name for a character, but after 75 years”, it has “gravitas”.

The panel then tackled the question of when and how exactly a character becomes officially iconic, and they set the bar high on awarding this status. De Matteis opined that “nothing about the character idea makes it iconic. It’s the execution”, and not every character reaches this status despite reasonably strong storytelling behind them. Dan Slott interjected that it only takes “one writer and one artist to do it”, like Frank Miller on DAREDEVIL. The discussion often drifted into slap-stick commentary on the more absurd aspects of superhero lore like the possession of a super vehicle as an icon accoutrement. Nocenti provided the little known detail that Cat Woman’s car is known as a “Catillac”. Slott confessed to proposing in a “meeting with real adults” that Superman’s car should be known as “Superman’s Ford Taurus of Solitude” with disasterous results.

Waid observed that some characters are iconic in pop culture without necessarily being long-lived, like Woody Woodpecker, who’s highly recognizable, but not a currently active character. Waid commented that the tendency toward merchandizing may encourage the slow-down or freeze of new developments in a character since “every character becomes a beach towel” in the end. The entire panel segued into a long and fairly serious discussion of Wonder Woman as a character and why she has, or has not, lived up to her iconic status in terms of actual comic storytelling.

Most felt, like De Matteis, that Wonder Woman comics have not always been “all that good”, nevertheless the character definitely qualifies as “iconic”. Waid had a fairly idiosyncratic theory behind why this is the case. He observed that there was a strong “sexual element” to the “first 10 years of the strip” that was later removed to render the character more “plain vanilla”, and that now, lacking that “x-factor of sexuality”, stories fail to live up to the early days (an issue, he said, he frequently discusses with Grant Morrison). Slott disagreed pointedly with Waid’s assessment. He instead blames the lack of verve in Wonder Woman comics to the fact that comics are essentially a “make dominated industry” that has not explored the “many angles of the character” sufficiently. Slott still feels that if the right team is put together, the stories can rise to iconic status again, without recourse to the “weird quirky bits”. His choice of phrase caused plenty of giggling among the panellists.

This led Waid to ask his panel how they decide what elements are most essential to a character, what continues to translate, and what can be left behind. De Matteis advised to “always approach the characters psychologically and emotionally” and not worry too much about the “other stuff”, and sometimes that psychological appeal can be found in lesser known characters. Nocenti commented that her current work on KATANA based on the strange but intriguing concept of a “girl with a sword” produced “good potential” for developing “obsessional love triangle” elements between herself, her murdered husband, and his murdering brother.“The less iconic a character, the more fun you can have!”, she enthused.

Slott agreed with Nocenti on  this idea, up to a point. When you’re handling an iconic character, readers lose the fear that their reckless lifestyles will do them in, whereas if a character is “unknown”, “Everyone is worried”, wondering if they will survive from issue to issue. Slott and Nocenti shared an interesting moment of commiseration, albeit brief, about their mutual killing off of Spider-based characters, and the emotional reaction of fans. “Screw letters from emotional fans”, Slott concluded, laughing, but Waid intervened by informing the audience that he’s sure Slott “weeps himself to sleep at night with 6 year olds’ fan mail” over the death of Spider-Man .

The panellists didn’t always find their subject matter easy to decipher, nor did they feel that there’s always an easy answer for why some characters “click” as icons and some don’t. Batman, particularly, has a mysteriously successful dynamic, they said. But some things do change. Waid observed that he “couldn’t have imagined a world where I walked down the street and everyone knew who Tony Stark was” until after the Iron Man films had been made. Waid suggested that iconic status for characters might be measured in the number of imitators who have sprung up. De Matteis returned to his general position that archetypal patterns determine iconic status, however. Slott provided examples, stating that Superman is like Hercules, Batman a being on a vengeance-quest, and Tony Stark is, too, iconic in formula, as a combination of “Man and Machine”, an icon that the world is ripe for right now.

The panellists’ parting thoughts during the Q and A period focused on an interesting point made from the audience about the superhero/villain ratio. With so many more supervillains than superheroes in comics, “recycling” them is the norm, but at what point do they become “stale” and need to be retired, at least for awhile? De Matteis was firm about the roles of the artist and writers, insisting that there are “no stale characters but stale interpretations of characters” and that good work will prevent this problem. “Every character is great if you did into them in the right way”, he said. Waid’s closing example to support De Matteis’ point was that “20-25 years ago, no one would have thought that GREEN ARROW would become 2 times the best selling DC book, and then get his own TV show”. His bottom line: “If you dig deep enough you can find something that resonates”, and that’s the key to creating an icon, something that may not happen overnight.

 Photo Credits: All photos in this article were taken by semi-professional photographer and pop culture scholar Michele Brittany. She’s an avid photographer of pop culture events. You can learn more about her photography and pop culture scholarship here.

Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.