Booths:

UDON: Booth #5037: I’m going to be headquartered at The UDON Booth this year Weds thru Sat, all the way on the east side near Hall H, booth #5037. We’re debuting artbooks based on the video games Marvel vs. Capcom, Disgaea, and Shining Force Feather, and they’re all totally gorgeous-looking. Plus non-stop creator signings, a huge catalogue of material, and much more. Should be lots of fun!

Drawn & Quarterly  (Beguiling): Booth #1629: On Sunday I’m headed over to the other side of the convention centre to sell some jaw-droppingly great original art! The fine folks at D&Q are once again providing us with a little corner to sell originals, and we’re going to make the most of it with a ton of great stuff. We’ve got all new pieces by Farel Dalrymple, Jason, Shintaro Kago, Pascal Girard, and maybe even a few surprises too…! Brings back memories, being in the D&Q booth. :)

Panels:

I’m actually doing a lot of panels this year! Hosting 2, on 3. I think it’s actually gonna be a bunch of fun, but I gotta make sure to buckle down and get all my work done because there are some VERY heavy hitters on these things! Here’s the quick run-down, and the full panel descriptions are under the cut:

Friday: 4:30-5:30: UDON 2012: Some major new announcements on this, I’m actually a bit nervous. :) (Moderator) Room 26AB

Friday: 7:30-8:30: Making a Living in Manga: I’ll be sharing the results of some of the interviews I conducted with manga creators and editors in Japan! (Participant) Room 8

Saturday: 12:30-1:30: D&Q: Canada and Comics: Discussing the current renaissance of Canadian comics. Kate Beaton, Jeff Lemire! (Moderator) Room 5AB

Saturday: 6:00-7:00: Best and Worst Manga of 2012: Reprising my role from last year. I’ve read SO MUCH manga in the past 2 weeks. (Participant) Room 23ABC

Sunday: 3:00-4:00: PW Comics World: Serious Pictures: Comics and Journalism in a New Era: Mostly I’m here as a retailer/pundit, talking about the place of comics reportage in the industry. Should be very cool. (Participant) Room 32AB

Other Stuff:

I heard there might be a very cool announcement at the Gays in Comics 25th Anniversary Panel Saturday night, so I want to try to hit that one for sure. Otherwise, I’m hoping to get out and see a few panels, snap a few photos, and generally just enjoy myself. I hope if you’re going, you get to do the same! See you there!

- Chris

–

FRIDAY

I’m going to be making the trip out to San Diego for Comic-Con again this year, in service to my various masters, and so as always I’m glad to see Tom Spurgeon’s outstanding “Comic-Con By The Numbers” guide to the show. Better still, he seems to have significantly overhauled it this year, and it’s a pretty darned fun read, in addition to being incredibly useful.

It’s worth noting that attending San Diego Comic Con does not necessitate reading a 170+ point guide to attending San Diego Comic Con, but if everyone who attended the show actually did read it we’d all have a much better time. Go check it out.

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/briefings/commentary/38346/

- Christopher

More info at the website, http://graphicmedicine.org

You can click the “continue reading” link at the bottom to see the whole PR.

PR:

Comics & Medicine: Navigating the Margins
22-24 July 2012
Toronto, Canada
Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto
Biomedical Communications Program, University of Toronto
Office of the Vice-Principal, Research, University of Toronto Mississauga

The third international interdisciplinary conference* on comics and medicine will continue to explore the intersection of sequential visual arts and medicine. This year we will highlight perspectives that are often under-represented in graphic narratives, such as depictions of the Outsider or Other in the context of issues such as barriers to healthcare, the stigma of mental illness and disability, and the silent burden of caretaking.

The conference will feature keynote presentations by comics creators Joyce Brabner and Joyce Farmer. Brabner, a comics artist and social activist, collaborated with her late husband Harvey Pekar on the graphic novel Our Cancer Year (1994), which won a Harvey Award for best graphic novel. Farmer is a veteran of the underground comics scene who nursed her elderly parents through dementia and decline as shown in her graphic memoir Special Exits (2010), which won the National Cartoonists Society award for graphic novels.

We invite proposals for scholarly papers (20 minutes) or panel discussions (60 minutes) focusing on medicine and comics in any form (e.g., graphic novels, comic strips, graphic pathographies, manga, and/or web comics). In particular, we seek presentations on the following—and related—topics:

• Graphic pathographies of illness and disability
• The use of comics in medical education
• The use of comics in patient care
• Depictions of the illness experience from the perspective of loved ones and family caregivers
• The interface of graphic medicine and other visual arts in popular culture
• Ethical implications of using comics to educate the public
• Ethical implications of patient representation in comics by healthcare providers
• Trends in international use of comics in healthcare settings
• The role of comics in provider/patient communication
• Comics as virtual support groups for patients and caregivers
• The use of comics in bioethics discussions and education

We also welcome workshops (120 minutes) by creators of comics on the process, rationale, methods, and general theories behind the use of comics to explore medical themes. These are intended to be “hands-on” interactive workshops for participants who wish to obtain particular skills with regard to the creation or teaching about comics in the medical context.

We envision this gathering as a collaboration among humanities scholars, comics scholars, comics creators, healthcare professionals, and comics enthusiasts.

300-word proposals should be submitted by Friday, 28 February 2012 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org.

Proposals may be in Word, PDF, or RTF formats with the following information in this order:

author(s)
affiliation
email address
title of abstract
body of abstract
Please identify your presentation preference:

oral presentation
panel discussion
workshop

While we cannot guarantee that presenters will receive their first choice of presentation format, we will attempt to honor people’s preferences, and we will acknowledge the receipt of all proposals submitted. Abstracts will be peer-reviewed by an interdisciplinary selection committee. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be completed by 14 March 2012.

Please note: Presenters are responsible for session expenses (e.g. handouts) and personal expenses (travel, hotel, and meeting registration fees). All presenters must register for at least the day on which they are scheduled to present.

*Information about the 2010 conference, “Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels,” in London, England, and the 2011 conference, “Comics and Medicine: The Sequential Art of Illness,” in Chicago, Illinois, USA, can be found at www.graphicmedicine.org.

East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair
December 10, 2011, 10am-4pm
@ Berkeley City College

PRESS RELEASE:

Hello Bay Area!

As a d.i.y. kick in the ass to the holiday shopping season and a way to discover those lovely treasures to wile away the long winter nights, zinester Tomas Moniz of Rad Dad Zine, artist Brooke Appler, and others are organizing a one day event to celebrate the amazing quality and diversity of independent writing, publishing and all around crafting of the Bay Area.

The event will take place on Saturday, December 10th in downtown Berkeley at Berkeley City College (one block from Downtown Berkeley BART) from 10 am – 4 pm. With over 60 different tablers sharing their wares, this year’s Book Fair will be cram-packed with opportunities to talk with, mingle, and support local and independent artists such as Manic D Press, 1984 Printing, PM Press, and The Littlest Elle, and so many more. We also will have a Variety Show featuring work and art the evening before the book fair at Rock Paper Scissors Collective on December 9th. Some tables still available!

For more information, give us a holler!

East Bay Alternative Press – ebapbookfair@gmail.com
Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/?ref=home#!/event.php?eid=235581366488296
Review from last year: http://www.berkeleyside.com/2010/12/09/cartoons-and-comics-ondisplay-at-berkeley-fair/

Air Canada, who I booked my flight to NYC with, was scheduled to have their flight attendants walk off the job 6 hours before my flight. Today we hear the strike may or may not be blocked by the Federal government, or they might be legislated back to work, or something.

Oh, and, the airport I fly out of? The security people are currently on a work-to-rule campaign which is slowing things down so much that Air Canada “is advising customers travelling from/to Toronto Pearson that some flights might be delayed or cancelled today.”

What I’m saying is, fuck Air Canada, fuck the stress of flying, and while I am sad to be missing my first NYCC, I’m not going to stand in what may or may not be an infinite line for a flight that may or may not be cancelled, and may or may not be staffed and therefore may or may not be cancelled again. Fuck all y’all and the horses you rode in on.

I’m staying home.

Have fun at the show guys and gals.

- Christopher
P.S. Yes, I should’ve flown Porter.

“Save the date! We are excited to announce the debut of the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (or “CAKE” for short) in the summer of 2012! Taking place June 16th and 17th at Columbia College’s Ludington Building, CAKE is focused on celebrating independent and alternative comics of all stripes. The festival plans to feature over 100 exhibitors along with a two-day program of signings, panels, workshops and lectures. With Chicago’s long legacy as a stronghold for underground and alternative comics, the Windy City is an ideal locale to showcase some of the most wild, weird and wonderful contemporary comics talent.” – From the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo Press Release, http://www.cakechicago.com/

It looks like a new outlet for indy and art comics have thrown their hat into the ring! Everyone welcome the good folks from CAKE and mark June 16th and 17th on your calendars.

Meanwhile,

“The Small Press Expo (SPX), the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comics, graphic novels and alternative political cartoons, is pleased to announce nominees for the fifteenth annual presentation of the Ignatz Awards, a celebration of outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning.” – From SPX’s email announcing the Ignatz nominees.

You can see the full list over at http://www.spxpo.com/ignatz-awards. I’m trying to stay out of commenting on awards, but it looks like most of the folks on my Twitter are quite pleased with this list.

Finally,

“VanCAF has been about a year in the making up to this point–we just chose to keep it on the down-low until we had some definite guests, in order to get people more excited once the announcement was actually made. We knew that the now-defunct Anime Evolution was in its dying throes so we were eager to think up an event that could replace it, since the artist’s alley was always full of great local cartoonists. So we took the opportunity to fill the gap with a show that was more about comics.” - VanCAF organizer Shannon Campbell, chatting with Sequential.

You can read the whole interview at http://sequential.spiltink.org/?p=9268. I know quite a few people have pinged me about the name of this upcoming fest. I’ve expressed my concerns to the organizers, and I’m helping them out with opinions and advice where I can. I personally think it’s exciting that there are new events cropping up and, if they want to pattern themselves after TCAF and our vision of a comics event, well that’s pretty cool. I think I can say without hubris that they have a lot to live up to with the name they’ve chosen, but I’m confident they’ll succeed with flying colours. And if not they can change the name for year two ;).

- Chris

I put a question to Twitter today, with the aims of improving those shows, thereby improving things for everyone. The question was:

“So, let’s say you are a comic (book/web/novel) creator, and you do small shows (Stump/Spx/Mocca/TCAF/local cons). Let’s say. Let’s say that tomorrow, the point of those shows went from whatever they currently are, to “let’s make comics creators a lot of money.” So instead of fundraising, enriching the artform, etc., it was just “exhibitors at our show need to make $$$”. What changes would need to happen? If you are a creator, what behaviours by shows do you feel are costing you money? Answer freely, it won’t affect exhibiting at my show.”

So far I’ve gotten I think a few hundred responses. They’re all interesting, and I’ve been careful not to disagree with any of it because I think the question, and the discussion, and having it in public, is important. Very important. I’m pretty happy.

To see what people are saying, you can search Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/search/realtime/comics212. If you’ve got suggestions feel free to jump in!

Unfortunately (heh) I’ve hit some sort of maximum-tweet limit, and I’m locked out for a few hours. I’ll follow-up on Twitter and here a little later.

- Chris

So one of my more sensitive friends had a little mini-blow-up on Twitter the Friday or Saturday of Comic-con—he wasn’t at the show but like the vast majority of the people interested in it, he was following-along online via reportage from Comic Book Resources, Newsarama, Comic Alliance, etc., In dramatic fashion he announced (paraphrasing) that he could no longer follow CBR’s coverage of Comic-Con on Twitter, because they insisted on abbreviating the show by CCI, meaning Comic Con International (the show’s official name), rather than the classic and beloved SDCC, San Diego Comic Con.

I can empathize, to a degree—a press release I wrote using the official CCI got changed by my boss because, frankly, no one uses CCI and no one outside of nerds knows what it is. But I thought it was important to play the game, try and play the game anyway. And CBR, which parks a MUTHAFUCKIN BOAT in the harbour behind the convention centre, and which had more than 40 registered reporters at the show, and is prrrrrretty tight with the Comic Con organization, they’re playing CCI’s game and so they call it CCI. If the fans don’t like it, they can go and get their own boat.

San Diego 2011 was all about playing the game, about recognizing that Comic Con isn’t gonna be what any of us wants or needs or cares about, it’s instead going to try to be a little bit of what everyone who comes there cares about. All the starfuckers just there to see someone who was on TV one time, all of the PR flacks looking for the next big thing or trying to sell us the next big thing, the toy makers, the funny t-shirt hawkers, the deep discounters, the booth-babes, and even the comics folks–this is the year we all just sucked it up and realized that we were all gonna be in this together, and it’s gonna be in the same old San Diego convention centre in the same old gaslamp, and we’re all just gonna get used to it. So we did. We’re all playing the game now.

Note: Placement of all pictures unrelated.

–

My SDCC in a nutshell:

Lots of good friends
13 energy drinks
10 different kinds of cheese
7 days
5 badges
3 different hotels
2 booths
1 panel

–

I headed to San Diego a day early to decompress from what has been the busiest spring of my entire life. From 2 months before TCAF until the day I left, I was on a rollercoaster of obligations, assignments, and my many day jobs. I thought to myself when booking the flights—I’ll go in a day early, help set up the UDON booth, and just chill. Maybe go for a swim.

What happened was I desperately needed that extra day in Toronto to get shit ready, and I didn’t have it, and so I was a total wreck by the time I got on the plane Tuesday morning. I rolled into San Diego, checked in with Erik Ko of UDON, went back to my hotel room for a nap, and woke up the next morning at 11am. This was followed by a week of hard work, and coming back to another convention I forgot I’d committed to, followed immediately by a vacation to New York, and 2 dozen things due on the same day.

That’s why this con report is 3 weeks late.

–

We confirmed a TCAF Guest on honour at the show. Announcement in early September.

–

So I wear a lot of hats, metaphorically, at a show like San Diego. I am there representing myself as a journalist/reporter/blogger with Comics212.net, I also represent The Beguiling and our original art sales (run out of  a corner of Drawn & Quarterly’s booth on the con floor). I’m also the dude in charge of TCAF, and so I end up taking a few meetings, following up with cartoonists, and planning out the next year’s show while working at this year’s San Diego. This year I added another hat, in that I booth-managed the UDON Entertainment Booth. UDON is a Toronto-area publisher entering their 11^th year, best known for their various STREET FIGHTER comics but also translating a wide range of manga and Japanese art books, and publishing original comics and art collections. They’ve been very good friends of mine for years, and I was happy to be able to help them out. They also have almost nothing to do with any of the other tasks I set myself, so hey, no conflict of interest!

Booth managing UDON meant that, out of 5 days of exhibition, I was at their booth working with artists and selling books to fans 4 of those days, meaning I spent 4 days less on the con floor doing my own thing than I have for the past few years. I love having the ability to duck behind a booth and work for a while; just getting out of the aisles and the convention centre crowds is absolutely amazing. But it’s also, heh, it’s also like working a con. I know, that seems obvious, but San Diego (and NYCC) had become a sort of a ‘macro’ working show, where I’d get things going for the year to come. The micro level, actually selling, while I do that a few times a year (most notably Anime North for The Beguiling, and Penny Arcade Expo for UDON), I hadn’t really psyched myself up for that.

It’s hard work to be on your feet hustling all day. Just a reminder.

It was a good show in that respect, I am reminded that I am good at selling things to people, but it was a little tougher than Anime North or PAX because of the sheer number of people that:

a)     Do not come to the show with any money in their pockets, they just come for the “experience”, and
b)    Are aggressively not interested in what we have to offer.

UDON produce beautiful, exceptionally high-quality books. Meticulously translated, often printed from the same files and at the same printers as the Japanese editions of their work, and with an equal amount of care and attention paid to their original creations. We were debuting 3 new works at the show; an original graphic novel, a limited-edition collection of comics material, and a fan-sourced art collection for a major international IP. I would say that for roughly ¾ of the folks coming by the booth, getting them to even look at the work we were selling was like pulling teeth.

Comic Con is a collection of niche fandoms united by a common spectacle, and particularly where we were situated amongst the video game demo booths (every one of which giving away some tchochke or another), selling a comic or an art book was a foreign—near alien—concept. Some people don’t want art books, some people don’t even want books. Some people were perfectly content to purchase a $25 art print but turned their noses up at paying $10 for a book that had that piece of art in it alongside 200 more pages of art and story.

It’s been said for years that the insane hoops that the public has to jump through for tickets, and the mega-stars that attract folks to Comic Con that have nothing to do with comics or sales or whatever, that hurts the bottom line for book sales at all pubs, and its only the sheer volume of attendees that keep the show profitable or break-even for pubs. Hearing that, and experiencing that, are two very different things.

I would say that I experienced that this year, and the vast majority of publishers I talked to were in the same boat.

In the end, I want to say that the sales were solid and UDON feels like it was a good show. But coming out of doing shows where 100% of the audience was potentially interested in 100% of what I was selling, it was a hell of a different experience.

–

I flew to Japan last year, twice. I flew to Seattle, and to New York, and to San Diego. And if you can manage all of that on the same airline, they bump you up to “Elite Status”. You can go into the short line at the airport when you’re checking in, and you don’t pay for checked bags. You’re eligible for free upgrades to business class where there is free-flowing booze, metal utensils, and a choice of braised sirloin or pan-seared mahi mahi. For breakfast.

I’m writing this on the plane on my way back from San Diego, where I ended up business class both ways, and check-in took a grand total of 7 minutes, combined.

+1 Recommended

–

After this spectacular bit of hubris, I spilled a gin and tonic narrowly missing my computer, then I ended up in coach on my connecting flight, sat on the tarmac for a little over 2 hours, and ended up landing in Toronto in a lightning storm. Today’s lesson: Never Enjoy Anything.

–

My personal book of the show.

Let’s talk about the phrase “…of the show.” When I started going to SDCC, there was a “Book of the show!” every year. One year it was Kramers Ergot, one year it was Blankets. One particularly memorable year it was Bone One Volume Edition. Books of the show, the buzz book, the the comic that everyone was talking about, that people had to get. There hasn’t been a book of the show for a few years now. There have been some great books, for sure, but nothing that has captured the buzz or imagination or… anything… like when I was first going to San Diego.

One of the pieces of press I got Monday morning after San Diego was from a publisher who started off, informally before their PR, with “I’m not sure if you heard, but we won Comic-Con.” In general, I find it hard to disagree with the sentiment of that statement–that publisher had an amazing year. They had good books debuting, they had tons of announcements, they had media buzz (both imminent and future), they had at least one contender for “Book of the show…” They had an awesome year. And yet (and yet) at ICv2 on Monday, all of the news was pretty predictably about Marvel or DC’s show offerings (mostly encapsulating things everyone knew before going into the show), or media, or whatever. That pub did get some coverage, for sure, but from their point of view they kicked ass–from the general media perspective, they contributed to an exceptionally busy show.

Now obviously I’m aware that it is the PR person for a company’s job to talk up the accomplishments of that company, but realistically, I have a pretty good bullshit detector and even 5 years ago with all they’d accomplished they would have been the talk of the internets for weeks afterwards. It didn’t happen, which is too bad. Maybe there are other PR problems there, maybe their announcements weren’t touted loudly enough, or to the right people, or who knows? But if a publisher can have a massive, 100% successful show on every front and still just be a footnote, that speaks volumes about the sort of show that San Diego Comic Con has become.

That they can still be happy with that on a Monday morning following the big event shows that they know what the game we’re all playing is.

–

I sat on the con bus headed back to my hotel. It is amazing that the con runs shuttle buses all weekend–super classy of them. I got on, and the seats were largely full, except for a family of 4 who had spread out into 4 rows of seats so that all of them could get a window seat. I sat amongst them, and over the course of the trip to the hotel watched with fascination and horror as they scanned faces in the crowd, desperate to see a famous person.

“Over there!” one shouted (shouted). “It’s Amy*! Amy from season 2!” and they all stood up and peered into the crowd of hundreds to see if they could see someone who was on season 2. Of what program, I have no idea. They leaned and stretched to watch, right over me in fact.

“Man, that was awesome! I can’t believe we saw her!”

I have never felt less like I belonged at Comic Con in my entire life.

*I cannot remember which name she said. It was a woman’s name that started with ‘A’.

–

The following folks and friends contributed enormously to my having a lovely time at San Diego this year, and I would like to thank them.

Peter & Krystle. Erik, Stacy, Matt, Ash, Koi, and the whole UDON crew. Deb, Eva, David, and Carlos. Alvin and Leyla and Gina. Jeff, Terry, Lillian, Jeff & Holly, and everyone I am forgetting.

–

Comic Con International: San Diego 2011 was the smoothest-run, easiest-to exhibit at and traverse, and busiest year of the show in 4 or 5 years. I feel like all involved truly figured out the show this year. My sincere thanks to all of the staff that made it happen, and I am looking forward to 2012.

- Christopher Butcher

“Again, it makes me think of TCAF and the effect that the show actually has on the community of Toronto. It’s educational, it promotes literacy and it’s free! It’s not about the money. It’s about creating a new audience and laying a foundation for the future.”
- Frank Santoro, The Comics Journal

Go read, it’s an interesting think-piece about where all of this comic-conning is actually taking the industry, and I’d think so even if it wasn’t incredibly complimentary of what we do at TCAF.

“Probably the single issue I’ve most enjoyed in the last little while though? I was fortunate enough to get an advance look at Casanova: Avarita #1 debuting this September from ICON. I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Cass fan from before the first issue came out, so it won’t be any surprise to hear that I liked the new issue… but man, it’s great. ”
- Me, at Robot 6 / Comic Book Resources

I was the guest on this week’s “What Are You Reading” Column at Robot 6, and in addition to some much deserved love for Adachi’s CROSS GAME I talk about some recent floppies I read and enjoyed.

- Chris

–

All images link to hi-res versions suitable for use online. For interior art or previews, or to follow-up on any of the listed debut books, please contact us at mattmoylan@udonentertainment.com

2011 marks the beginning of Publisher and Creative Studio UDON Entertainment‘s second decade of operations, and one of its biggest San Diego Comic-Con outtings ever! With three new books debuting at Comic-Con International and more than 16 creators in attendance signing and sketching for fans across all five days of the show, no comics, video game, or art fan is going to want to miss out on all the great stuff going down at UDON, booth #5037!

–

Art Books and Graphic Novels Debuting at Comic-Con:

MEGA MAN TRIBUTE HC

Celebrating over 20 years of the ‘blue bomber!’

Hundreds of artists from around the world join forces to pay homage to one of the most iconic figures in gaming with Mega Man Tribute! This 300+ page, full-colour art book is the ultimate celebration of the blue bomber, featuring the characters of Mega Man classic, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, Mega Man ZX, and Mega Man Legends in every style you can imagine! Includes original pieces by comics superstars Hitoshi Ariga (Mega Man: Megamix), Sean “Cheeks” Galloway (Teen Titans: GO!), Sanford Greene (Dark Horse Presents), and many more!

Premiering at Comic-Con, this limited edition hardcover version features exclusive cover art by Mega Man manga artist Hitoshi Ariga (Megamix, Gigamix), and is only available direct from UDON! Limited to 500 copies. SRP $80.

COMIC-CON EXCLUSIVE: Meet the artists featured in Mega Man Tribute at the UDON Booth #5037 every day from 1:30-3pm for a special signing! Participating artists are scheduled to include Joe Bluhm, Andrew Dickman, Sean “Cheeks” Galloway, Sanford Greene, Edwin Huang, Ryan Odagawa, editor Matt Moylan, and UDON members Jeffrey Cruz, Omar Dogan, Joe Ng, Eric Vedder, Long Vo, and Jim Zub.

RANDOMVEUS VOL.1 HC

By Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz! UDON’s first original graphic novel!

All-out action meets off-the-wall wackiness in RandomVeus Volume 1, an original graphic novel from the mind of artist Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz! Join bouffant-sporting hero Raimundo and the team of One-Dimensional Couriers as they deliver mysterious packages to every corner of the wild world known as the RandomVeus! Octopus ninjas, jazz playing demons, robot gorillas, samurai mushrooms, and giant furry squid monsters are all on tap in this zaniest of zany adventures!

RandomVeus Volume 1 is UDON’s first-ever original graphic novel, featuring an entirely original story and characters in a beautiful and unique artistic style! The hardcover graphic novel will debut at Comic-Con with an SRP of $29.99.

COMIC-CON EXCLUSIVE: RandomVeus creator Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz will be signing at the UDON booth #5037 every day of Comic-Con! Come meet the artist, and get your copy of RandomVeus Volume 1 signed and sketched-in by the author!

STREET FIGHTER LEGENDS: THE ULTIMATE EDITION HC

By Omar Dogan, Ken Siu-Chong, Jim Zub, and more!

It’s the entire Street Fighter Legends series in a gorgeous, oversized format to catch every detail! Collecting the complete Sakura, Chun-li, and Ibuki comic series, this ultimate collection shows why the lovely ladies of Street Fighter deserve to be called Legends! Plus appearances from Ryu, Sagat, Dan, M.Bison, Karin, Makoto, Elena, and more of your favorites!

This is a beautiful companion to UDON’s smash-hit Street Fighter Ultimate Edition v1 and v2, featuring 350+ pages of comics! Entirely drawn by UDON artist Omar Dogan, and written by Ken Siu-Chong (Street Fighter) and Jim Zub (Skullkickers), this limited edition hardcover version features exclusive cover art by Omar Dogan. Limited to 200 copies! Debuting at Comic-Con with an SRP of $80.

COMIC-CON EXCLUSIVE: Street Fighter Legends creators Omar Dogan and Jim Zub will be signing at the UDON booth every day of Comic-Con! In addition, Street Fighter Legends variant and pin-up artists including Adam Warren, Alvin Lee, and Jo Chen will also be doing select signings at the UDON Booth!

More great creator signings!

Here’s the complete list of creators who will be signing at UDON Entertainment, booth #5037:

Joe Bluhm (Mega Man Tribute), Jo Chen (Street Fighter Legends, Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Jeffrey “Chamba” Cruz (RandomVeus), Andrew Dickman (Mega Man Tribute), Omar Dogan (Street Fighter Legends), Sean “Cheeks” Galloway (Mega Man Tribute), Sanford Greene (Mega Man Tribute), Alvin Lee (Street Fighter Legends, Hatsune Miku), Matt Moylan (Mega Man Tribute), Joe Ng (Street Fighter), Ryan Odagawa (Mega Man Tribute), Arnold Tsang (Street Fighter), Eric Vedder (Darkstalkers), Long Vo (Street Fighter, Inception), Adam Warren (Street Fighter Legends, Empowered), Jim Zub (Mega Man Tribute). Plus one very special guest that will be announced closer to Comic-Con!

Please see the UDON Website or the UDON booth #5037 on-site at Comic Con for complete schedule and signing times.

Come to the UDON Entertainment Panel!

UDON will be taking you behind the scenes on some of their best and most high-profile video game, comics, and art book projects. In addition, several MAJOR announcements about forthcoming projects will be made at this panel! Don’t miss it!

UDON and the Art of Comic & Game Design.

Friday, July 22

Room: 4, 7:00-8:00 PM

UDON create great comics, translate your favourite Japanese art books, and design some amazing video games! Join them as they share their trade secrets, learned from working with a host of different comics and game companies over the past 10 years! Take a tour of winning design elements through UDON’s vast portfolio of works, and get ready for special announcements of which comics, manga, artbooks, and video game properties they’ll be working on next! Featuring Jim Zub (Skullkickers), Jeffrey Cruz (RandomVeus), Long Vo (Inception), Matt Moylan (Mega Man Tribute), and more!

PRESS

If you have any inquiries or questions about UDON Entertainment or to arrange follow-up interviews, please contact UDON Managing Editor Matt Moylan at mattmoylan@udonentertainment.com.

ABOUT UDON ENTERTAINMENT

UDON Entertainment is a Canada-based publisher of original comic books, graphic novels, and art books. UDON’s best-known projects are those based on popular video game franchises such as Street Fighter®, Darkstalkers®, Okami®, Resident Evil® and Mega Man®. The publisher’s ever-growing library also includes English editions of several Japanese manga titles, the anthology art book series APPLE, and the Manga for Kids line for children ages 7-12.

http://www.openbooktoronto.com/magazine/summer_2011/smart_producers

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“I just did a quick count and Marvel have about 100 ongoing series and mini-series set in the main Marvel U coming in August, give or take. Looking at the DC list, it seems the vast majority of books getting issue #1s are, in fact, being rebooted rather than exploring entirely new concepts or characters, which means that as retailers we have hard sales data on those books. We know what Action Comics #900 sold, and we know what Grant Morrison’s All Star Superman #1 sold, and we know what really big event books with real-world press coverage tend to do to sales, so we’ve got a usable metric to figure out orders on Morrison and Morales’ Action Comics #1. Again, I think we know the general ballpark of where to place our orders on almost all of these titles, and that they’re #1 issues will largely mean more copies are sold than the previous issue, not less. Compared to Marvel’s 100-title continuity, 52 books in the DCU seems almost quaint, and certainly easier to deal from an ordering perspective.”

http://www.comicbookdaily.com/wp/championing_comics/retailer-q/retailer-q-1-dc-reboot/

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Just in case you missed me writing about the comical books on this here blog, you can go check out what I’m thinking about these days over on those other sites.

- Chris

THE BEST AND WORST MANGA OF 2011

at the San Diego Comic Con (or, more properly, Comic-Con International: San Diego). I will be catching right-the-hell-up on all of my manga reading in order to be as informed as possible, but will clearly be schooled by my fellow panelists. It should be fun! And it would be delightful to see you there. Here are the deets:

Best and Worst of Manga 2011
Friday, July 22nd
Room: 26AB
6:30p.m. – 7:30p.m.

- Christopher

TORONTO—Toronto’s Illustration and Artistic Community comes together on April 17th in a 12 hour art-event at Revival. The unique event will raise money to aid relief efforts in Japan following the devastating recent earthquake and tsunami there. Spearheaded by a consortium of Toronto illustration studios, the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event is the local iteration of a charity movement begun by Pixar Art Director Dice Tsutsumi. The Toronto edition will feature live art shows, a silent auction, and dozens of artists and illustrators selling commissioned drawings, with all proceeds benefiting the Canadian Red Cross.

“As artists we are tremendously inspired by Japan and Japanese culture,” says Bobby Chiu, the illustrator, teacher and founder of Toronto’s Imaginism studios behind the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event. “We were all personally affected by the quake, tsunami, and resulting damage. It is important to give back for all that Japan has given us, and we can think of no better way to do so than with our art.”

Artists Help Japan: Toronto will feature more than 24 artists and illustrators from the Greater Toronto Area creating original drawings for 12 hours! This is an unprecedented opportunity for the general public to commission an original drawing from a professional artist and watch its creation in process; the artist’s fee will be donated entirely to the Canadian Red Cross.

In addition:
- Dozens more cartoonists will donate original art, books, and other rare items to be featured in a silent-auction on-site at Revival Bar.
- Live art demonstrations from Toronto Illustrators on stage, with the final pieces to be auctioned off live at the event
- $1 from the sale of every drink at Revival Bar will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross.

Admission to the ARTISTS HELP JAPAN: TORONTO event is free, and all ages are welcome. The event will run from 12 Noon to 12 Midnight.

ABOUT:

Artists Help Japan is a charity movement initiated by Dice Tsutsumi, an art director at Pixar Animation Studios, who was also behind 2008 Totoro Forest Project to help preserve Sayama Forest in Japan and Sketchtravel Project, to gather the force of communities of artists and creative minds around the world. We believe artists have special roles to contribute to the society. http://artistshelpjapan.blogspot.com/

Artists Help Japan: Toronto is spearheaded by Imaginism Studios President and illustrator Bobby Chiu, who was contacted by Dice Tsutsumi to run the Toronto event. Working with Illustrator Alvin Lee, Udon Entertainment CEO Erik Ko, writer/artist Jim Zubkavich, and Christopher Butcher of Toronto comic book store The Beguiling and the Toronto Comic Arts Festival, the team hopes to bring together Toronto’s diverse and exciting artistic community to engage the public in an unprecedented fundraising endeavour.

All proceeds from Artists Help Japan: Toronto will be donated to the Canadian Red Cross, specifically earmarked to aid in Japanese earthquake and tsunami relief.http://www.redcross.ca/

SPONSORS:

Revival Bar has been entertaining guests, visitors and fans as a premium event space since 2002. Revival has generously donated the use of their main space for the Artists Help Japan: Toronto event, and will be donating $1 from the cost of every drink to the fundraising efforts.http://www.revivalbar.com/

I came across Spurge’s thoughts on NYCC last night, and the thing that stuck out at me was that he thought despite giving out 2900 press passes, the show did not get 2900 press passes worth of coverage. Now, while I might suggest that NYCC organizers Reed being able to sell access to 2900 members of the press is worth it’s weight in gold (let alone free admissions to the Comic Con), I will admit that my own coverage was somewhat anemic and so I thought I’d follow-up with my thoughts on the show.

I will also intersperse those thoughts with photographs so you don’t get bored.

My first thought on NYCC, and this is brutally unfair I know, is that Reed has utterly and completely blown it with this show. What I mean by that is that they had a chance, a real chance, at doing a book- and comic-oriented event, that engaged people with the work. There’s a lot of room within that description to have famous people and spectacle, but the promise of NYCC–to me–was that this could be a book show, a comics show, a successful event that could be the antithesis of San Diego Comic Con’s Freak Parade.

Make no mistake, New York Comic Con is a Freak Parade.

And that is exactly what the organizers were hoping for.

Like I said, this is a profoundly unfair thought… It’s not kosher to judge the relative success or failure of an event based on what you hoped it might be. Sure, that first year was more modest, with (to my recollection) less of a focus on stardom and more of a focus on creators/authors/artists. Modest, publisher-oriented booths, programming that centered equally on the business-side and fandom-side of things. Maybe it was the then-presence of a reasonably vital Wizardworld: Chicago to take some of the burden off of NYCC needing to be the North-East version of SDCC, but that first year, it looked like NYCC could turn into anything.

And anything is what it seems to have turned into.

Walking in the main exhibition entrance, one was greeted by a giant booth which blared Michael Jackson songs all weekend. There was a stage with dancers–you could even get up and dance with them–trying their best to capture and replicate the late pop-singer’s moves as directed by a videogame (out this Christmas!). It’s hard not to smile when you come across a giant stage with a Michael Jackson impersonator and backup dancers aggressively “Beat-It”-ing; it was a genuinely fun moment.

It just also happened to be the death-knell for NYCC as a comics/book event.

Massive video-game booths taking up huge swaths of the floor, give-away masks/hats/swag bags, all that was missing was a giant golden throne. Maybe they needed it on set.

So yeah, NYCC has become SDCC-East, which is personally disappointing (because I already _go_ to SDCC), but I think we’ve covered that. How did it succeed as SDCC-East? Well, the part of me that wants to be invited next year is inclined to be more charitable than I otherwise might, so let me say first and foremost that a the show was  intensely marketed, and people showed up, and they had a good time. Those are, to my mind, the three most positive things I can say about the show.

Personally, I’d take issue with the way it was marketed, the number of people that showed up, and why people had a good time, but that’s because I’m kind of curmudgeonly.

Last one first: I had a great time in New York last weekend. Seriously, it was great, and the con was a good part of that, and I’m grateful for that experience. I met a lot of wonderful people and met people in person for the first time, it was valuable personally and professionally. That couldn’t have happened without NYCC being a big-enough draw to get all those folks, myself included, out to New York in the first place.

But has been pointed out online already, how much of an excuse does anyone really need to go to New York City in the first place? It’s AMAZING, I ? NY a great deal and would go every weekend, if I could afford it.

Not to discount NYCC’s good fortune at taking place in NYC , but I feel like that’s the starting point, the plateau: “Hey, this is New York City. People are gonna wanna come.” There are more people in NYC than in all of Canada; you’ve got a massive built-in audience, a massive talent-pool, it’s easy to get to, plenty of hotels, and an international tourist destination. Unless you don’t want people showing up to your event, it’s easy to get people to come to your event… or at least a hell of a lot easier than San Diego. Or Toronto for that matter. It’s easy to have a good time in New York, and hella-easy for nerds to have a good time if you throw a bunch of them in a big room together. That isn’t the best indicator of success, it might not even be a particularly good one.

Which brings us to the crowds: Thank Christ No One Died. I don’t say that lightly, I really don’t. The show was a zoo, particularly Saturday 12-4, wall-to-wall people. San Diego at its absolute worst. The aisles were too narrow in the main hall by at least 2 feet, and they were far narrower in the Small Press Pavilion on the south side of the convention centre. Worse still, the Small Press Pavilion was adjacent to artist alley, and the aisles didn’t match up creating HUGE human-traffic jams in the aisle that connected them.

Overstuffed.

This isn’t just bitching. I mean, it’s bitching, I’m not backing away from the tone of this as unnecessarily cranky, but Saturday at the show felt legitimately unsafe at points. I really felt like very little thought had gone into the layout of the hall from a safety/traffic point of view. Whether they had a layout that needed to be entirely trashed because of the construction or whether they came up with a bad design, the layout needs to be severely changed for 2011. Wide main aisles/throughfares to move people quickly from one end of the show to the other, fewer exhibitors crammed near essential services like escalators and washrooms(!), and what the hell was with the massive, empty space at the entrance to the south hall? Maybe we could’ve spaced out some of the Small Press booths into that space?

I will say that from an exhibitor POV, it was nice that the majority of medium-to-large publishers were clustered together making it easier to browse the stuff I was most-interested in. But honestly, it’s been like that since year one, and I feel like that’s more of a hold-over from previous shows than a conscious decision for 2010.

Which brings us to the marketing: Wow. Listed as Press for the event, I was put on the list fairly early and received at least one update a week from NYCC itself, and a hundred+ PR emails, almost exclusively from film and video game producers. I don’t know if the comics pubs just didn’t want to pony-up the dough to buy access to the press list, but the majority of comics promotion happened in the body of the NYCC emails, and again, felt paid-for or part of an in-kind promotion… and even then, they were exceptionally rare. No, both inwardly to subscribers and outwardly to the public, this was marketed as a POP CULTURE event, a freak parade by and for media-friendly Geeks, and a place to come and get your geek on. Come meet Stan Lee! Come see a J-Pop Band! Video Games! B-Movie Actors Film Guests! (There was comics content in almost all of the official NYCC emails I received, but it was always after other info, and other media.)

The marketing for the show, hell the whole website if you look at it, has a Carnival Barker vibe that’s… well, it’s successful as fuck. Seriously, it’s fucking amazing how many people showed up, talked about the show before it happened. It was happening. But this is starting to get into broken-record territory here–Reed STILL isn’t good at running consumer shows.

(Kind of telling that it took 20 paragraphs to get to the thesis…)

So Reed Exhibitions have integrated themselves with PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo, a video-game show that started as a grassroots effort that topped like 70k attendees this year. They’re wholesale-running PAX East, in Boston, in early 2011. PAX has always been a well-run show, nearly seamless and exceptionally enjoyable as an exhibtor, and as an attendee.

Reed has done everything in their power to figure out why PAX runs so well, and attempted to duplicate it to the best of their ability. For example, at PAX, the volunteers are called “Enforcers” and they will bend-over-backwards to help you. This year (and I believe this is the first year), NYCC branded all of their volunteers as “Heroes” and their yellow volunteer shirts had “Hero!” on the back. The staff shirts were red… and I don’t think they had anything on them.

The problem was, every volunteer I encountered was unempowered. They had the barest of instruction, and didn’t even feel confident in that.  There weren’t enough maps, and no one from one section knew anything about any other section, so no one could answer where anything was that wasn’t right in front of them. Any harder question was met with “ask my supervisor.” These weren’t random volunteers I asked either, these were people at the check-in desk. And this wasn’t just the first day, it was all weekend.

You can call your volunteer a ‘hero’ to thank them for helping out; I think that’s swell. But if you don’t give them any information, if you don’t empower them to basic questions, if you don’t even give them basic orientation, then you’ve done a poor job.

Which leaves you to rely on the convention centre security. I’ll say one thing about the Javitz Centre Security: They don’t give a FUCK. This was the antithesis of San Diego Comic Con in at least one way: there was almost no security, doing almost nothing, and by Sunday they’d given up entirely… which when you’ve got an overstuffed convention centre full of folks who’ve been invited in to stare at/be the freak show, creates more of those overcrowding problems I was talking about. A security “guard” at the south hall entrance couldn’t be bothered to tell people not to stop directly in the center of the narrow entrance way to talk. Literally looked over at them blocking the way, then looked away. I don’t like being the guy who shouts at comic book conventions, but “THERE ARE BETTER PLACES TO STAND” may have been uttered at one point. Loudly.

If one is going to be undiscerning about who one invites into their home, then it behooves one to make sure that one is prepared for what follows. I’d submit that NYCC was not, from a staff, volunteer, or security POV.

In Closing: I really felt like the show had a slapdash feel to it. Because Reed moved NYCC from February to October, they had more than 20 months between 2009 and 2010 to prepare the show, nearly two full years, and it felt considerably more poorly-organized than the 2009 show. I’m aware that as an event organizer (though on nowhere near this scale) I’m way more sensitive to organizational problems than the general public, and as such I try hard to pull back a little on criticism… and I did, honestly… (The programming, the integration of New York Anime Festival, the last-minuteness of their info going public). It’s tough because NYCC isn’t the show I’d run, but I can get over that to judge it in the context of the shows it’s decided it wants to be: SDCC and PAX. And honestly? It comes up short. Or at least this year it did.

So there are my thoughts on NYCC 2010. I had an amazing time, I got a bunch work done, and met some great people, but in the end I don’t think that’s going to be enough for me, for next year.

- Christopher
I’ll caption some of the photos later if I have time.

It’s been 20 long, long months since I last hopped on a plane to head out to the New York Comic Con. This weekend’s show marks the first since NYCC up and moved their show from their initial late-winter/early-spring time period to the (theoretically) more-stable Beginning Of October time period. The show is, to my mind, the hallmark for the explosive boom in the popularity of comic cons over the last 4-5 years, with NYCC considerably over capacity in its very first year. It’s not hard to glance at the con schedule and see stories of shows reaching or past capacity, sometimes dangerously so. I think the mainstreaming of nerd culture is at the heart of it, the idea of shows like this as a gateway into not just the comics and graphic novels that inspire Hollywood, but direct access to Hollywood itself. Before 5 years ago it was basically impossible to meet an A-list Hollywood Celebrity—now they advertise their public appearances and your chance to meet them 3-6 months in advance, and all you have to do is be determined.

But that first NYCC was, I think, a tipping-point. Showrunners Reed had never run a consumer show before, only fairly sedate—though expansive—trade shows with the occasional consumer element. Their advertising wasn’t a patch on what it is today, and yet still in that first year the folks who showed up to the con nearly doubled the capacity for the allotted space. Their entire set-up was both ineffectual and inadequate, and the stressfulness of the situation was at a fever pitch for most of Friday and Saturday. It couldn’t be much fun for the folks trying to run the event, but as an observer? The cacophony was glorious… and what a story!

Since then I’ve seen the show grow and change considerably—I’ve made it a point to attend every NYCC so far after that fireworks first-year. I’ve seen the staff fight tooth and nail to increase the size of the show and their space within the Javitz Centre, with 2009 really feeling like the first year that the show had come into its own. I’ve seen Reed expand further into the consumer-show business, most-notably their partnership with Penny Arcade on the PAX shows in Seattle and Boston. I’ve seen them become incredibly media savvy, leveraging their number-two-within-the-industry position to attract an almost unheard-of selection of A-list guests to the big event. I’ve seen their preparation for the 2010 NYCC which, I have to say, has felt more than a little slap-dash considering the 18 month lead time they had to prepare. Now it’s time to see what 2010 has to offer.

Today I’ll be attending the ICv2 Conference focusing on Digital comics, and I’ll try to update with my thoughts throughout the event. Tomorrow, I’ll be attending Diamond’s retailer breakfast to see what my number 1 supplier has to say about the industry in 2010, and then following that up with some fun professional programming and apparently 2-3 video game demos. Saturday I’m on a panel and giving a lecture, and then Sunday I’m just going to get lost in the crowds.

Feel free to say hi if you see me around!

- Christopher

To that end, I’ve been very fortunate to be asked to speak in a number of venues over the coming months, and so I put together a little “Where’s Chris?” box on the right there, which lists all of the panels, seminars, and presentations I’ll be participating in in the coming months. Also if I’m going out of town for more than a few days I’ll try to list that cool, in case anyone wants to meet up while I’m travelling. Feel free to contact me and say hello, I’m generally very amenable to being bought a drink :) Here’s a quick outline of those upcoming engagements:

Oct 7-11 New York
Oct 7: ICv2 Digital Comics Conference (Press) – I’ll be covering ICv2′s Digital Comics Conference as ‘press’, which should be pretty interesting.
Oct 8-10: New York Comic-Con (Press) – Likewise, I’ll also be covering the whole New York Comic-Con as a member of the fourth estate, and I’m hoping to do some real blogging and coverage this year akin to some of my better coverage from years past.

I’ll also be participating in a panel discussion and giving a lecture at the show.

Saturday Oct 9:  Comic Events that Really Work Panel, 5pm-6pm, Room 1A17 (Speaker) - I’m going to be giving a lecture on how and why to run comics-related events, from micro to macro, book signings to Scott Pilgrim Parties to The Toronto Comic Arts Festival, and everything in between. I’m tailoring it to booksellers

Saturday Oct 9: Gay for You? Yaoi and Yuri Manga and GLBTQ Readers Panel, 7:30pm-8:30pm, Panel Room 2 (1E12) (Panelist) – A panel that will be not-at-all controversial! I’ll be joining a range of very cool ladies and gents from all aspects of the comics industry to talk about how yaoi and yuri intersect with actual Gay/Lesbian/Bisexual/Trans/Queer concerns.

Oct 25-Nov 8: Tokyo
I’m heading back to Tokyo for a buying trip for The Beguiling and, fingers crossed, for a touch of TCAF-related business. If you’re in the area and want to go for a drink, drop me a line.

Nov 14: Toronto: Gamercamp
I’ve been invited to lead a discussion on narrative and the intersection between comics and video games. Details tba, but will be announced soonish at http://www.gamercamp.ca/.

2011
Feb 23: Toronto: Freedom To Read Week
I’ll be a guest speaker for Toronto Public Library’s Freedom To Read Week. My Speech will be entitled “Censoring Manga For Fun And Profit”.

May 7-8: Toronto Comic Arts Festival (Festival Director)
Oh My God you guys. http://torontocomics.com/

- Christopher

Anyway, if you’re out in Toronto this week come check all this out, it’s gonna be awesome!

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Wednesday September 22nd: Skullkickers #1 Launch Party w/ Jim Zubkavich
Saturday September 25th: Bill Everett: Fire and Water Book Launch w/ author Blake Bell and daughter Wendy Everett
Saturday September 25th: Lewis Trondheim!!!

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SKULLKICKERS #1 Book Launch!

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FIRE AND WATER: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner & the Birth of Marvel Comics
Book Launch and Discussion with Author Blake Bell, and speech by Bill Everett’s daughter Wendy Everett
Saturday, September 25th, 4:30pm-6pm
Innis College Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue (St. George south of Bloor)
FREE
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=150867711602264

For a Preview of this book, click this link: http://beguiling.com/firewater-8p-pre.pdf

UPDATE: We’re pleased to announce that Wendy Everett, the daughter of Bill Everett, will now be attending this book launch and discussion, and will be participating in the discussion of her father’s work. We couldn’t be more excited, and we’d like to thank Ms. Everett for participating!

In 1939, decades before it would become the powerhouse behind such famous super-heroes as Spider-Man, The X-Men, and Iron Man, Marvel Comics launched its comics line with a four-color magazine starring a daring new antihero: The Sub-Mariner, created by the great Bill Everett.

The Sub-Mariner alone, and his status as the original Marvel (anti-)hero, would have insured any cartoonist’s place in comics history. But Everett was a master of many kinds of comics: romance, crime, humor, and the often brutal horror comics genre (before it was defanged by the Comics Code Authority in the 1950s), for which he produced work of such stylish and horrific beauty that he ranks with the artists who kept the legendary EC comics line awash in blood and guts.

Written by Blake Bell (the author of the best-selling critical biography of Steve Ditko, Strange and Stranger) and compiled with the aid and assistance of Everett’s family, friends, and cartoonist peers, Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner & the Birth of Marvel Comics is an intimate biography of a troubled man; an eye-popping collection of Everett’s comics, sketchbook drawings, and illustration art (including spectacular samples from his greatest published work as well as never-before-seen private drawings); and an in-depth look at his involvement in the birth of the company that would revolutionize pop culture forever: Marvel Comics!

In celebration of this book, The Beguiling will be welcoming author Blake Bell to Toronto to discuss this new book, and the life and career of Bill Everett. Special guests may also be on hand to help us celebrate this release, keep watching this space for details…!

FIRE & WATER: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics will be available for sale at this event, alongside other classic Marvel Comics collections and previous books by Blake Bell.

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Lewis Trondheim, In Conversation et “Rencontre Desinée”
Saturday, September 25th, 7PM
@ Innis College Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue (St.George south of Bloor)
FREE
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=100335500031016

The Beguiling is proud to be partnering with The French Consulate in Toronto and The Alliance Francaise de Toronto to welcome the bestselling French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim to Toronto! Mr. Trondheim will be in the city for the last two weeks of September, and we are thrilled to have the chance to present this English-language engagement with him.

Trondheim is the creator or co-creator of such wonderful series as Dungeon, Little Nothings, Kaput and Zosky, ALIEEEN, Tiny Tyrant, Bourbon Island 1730, Mister O & Mister I, and more, and those are just the ones in English! He’s created dozens of albums in French as well, and is one of the most famous and respected cartoonists in the entire world—this is quite possibly a once in a lifetime event.

Mr. Trondheim will be giving a drawing presentation and will be interviewed in an event that will primarily take place in English, but will have some small French-language components that will also be translated.

Books are currently available for sale at The Beguiling and will be available for sale at the event.

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- Christopher

Minneapolis Indie Xpo
Saturday August 21st, 2010 (THIS WEEKEND)
@ The Soap Factory
518 Southeast 2nd Street, Minneapolis, MN 55458
FREE TO ATTEND
http://mplsindiexpo.com/

“The Minneapolis Indie Xpo was founded in 2010 as a one-day show celebrating independent comics and Midwest cartoonists. It grew out of the local comics community’s desire to have its own venue for exhibition and was cobbled together by two veteran event coordinators who happen to be big comics fans.  You can call us “MIX” and, as the name implies, expect a bake sale at the show.”

Special guests include Chris (Dr. McNinja) Hastings, Zander and Kevin Cannon (Big Time Attic), John (King-Cat) Porcellino, Aaron (“Walker Bean”) Renier, and dozens more!

San Francisco Zine Fest
Saturday September 4 and Sunday September 5
@ The County Fair Bulding (formerly Hall of Flowers)
9th Ave. at Lincoln Way (in Golden Gate Park)
FREE TO ATTEND
http://www.sfzinefest.com/

“SF Zine Fest is a FREE annual two-day conference for independent and underground publishing. Exhibitors come from all over the West Coast, and while the focus is on zines, all walks of DIY life are represented — comics, arts and crafts, literary presses, and more. SF Zine Fest was founded in 2002 by Jenn of Starfiend Distro.”

Special guests include Artnoose (Ker-Bloom!), Jesse Reklaw (Slow Wave), and V. Vale (Search & Destroy).

–

Check out the website, make your plans!

- Christopher

+ So my friend Corey Mintz, food writer for The Toronto Star, has shown his true nerd colours and slavishly devoted a surprising amount of time and effort into running a post compiling every panel with food and/or eating from the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. It also includes a short interview with Mr. O’Malley about his seeming obsession with his characters pigging out. Neat post.

+ It didn’t get much attention at the time, but the giant Gundam that they built on Odaiba in Tokyo last year was part of a tree-planting initiative, somehow. I didn’t really get it myself. Well, while the Gundam may be gone (moved to Shizuoka), there is a new tree-planting initiative in roughly the same spot, and this time it’s an 8 metre high Hello Kitty… that shoots lasers. Check it out at Pink Tentacle.

+ One of the best announcements at the San Diego Comic Con was that of Shigeru Mizuki’s work finally being translated and released for an English audience, courtesy of the fine folks at Drawn & Quarterly. Mizuki is a huge creative force in Japan, and his creations are ubiquitous. For more on that, check out this recent posting from Japan Probe which takes you to “Kitaro Town”, Mizuki’s hometown which has been completely kitted-out with characters and illustrations from Mizuki’s work, most notably his famous “Gegege No Kitaro”.  Instantly going on my “to visit” list next time I make it to Japan…

+ Two fantastic cartoonists, Gabrielle Bell and Jillian Tamaki, are running recaps/reportage of their time at the San Diego Comic Con, in comics format! They’re fabulous, and I highly recommend checking them out.

Jillian Tamaki’s got a two-parter (part one, part two) and I make a cameo in part one… part two is more of an ‘epilogue’.

Gabrielle Bell’s updates are still ongoing, with three parts currently up at http://gabriellebell.com/.

- Christopher

How I Spent My Monday Night: Chatting with hundreds of people at the Scott Pilgrim Costume Contest. Photo by Alex Davies from http://www.rgbfilter.com/?p=6631

So about 8 hours after I got home from the Scott Pilgrim event, I hopped in a cab and headed to the airport to hit the San Diego Comic Con. It was fun times! But then so was the big event, but because of the timing and rush of it all, I didn’t get to really read any of the event coverage, or thank the fine folks who covered it or mentioned it or had a great time. While Google is turning stuff up, I’d hate to miss anything, so if you covered or attended the Scott Pilgrim v6 Midnight Launch at The Beguiling and wrote about it online, please drop a link to the coverage in the comments section here! I’d really appreciate it.

All the best,

- Christopher Butcher

Comics In The Classroom

Comic-Con International: San Diego

Saturday, July 24^th 2010, 3:30pm, Room 23AB

Panelists:

Anastasia Betts (UCLA) – https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/InstructorBio.aspx?instid=27588

Christina Blanch (Ball State University) – clblanch@bsu.edu

Deborah Ford (San Diego Unified School District) – http://www2.sandi.net/IMC/,

Tracy White (NYU). – http://www.traced.com

Moderated by Christopher Butcher, manager of The Beguiling books in Toronto and writer for http://comics212.net.

Anastasia Betts, UCLA: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

Success: The biggest success and most satisfying experience I have had thus far is using several different GNs and other texts (written and multimedia) to create a learning experience for students on understanding the WWII events (among others) that ultimately led to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by the United Nations.  It is an integrated humanities unit that includes both literature based lessons as well as history and ethics. I use the following:

GRAPHIC NOVELS:
Maus I (and II if time) by Art Speigleman
Barefoot Gen Vol. I (and vol. II if time) by Keiji Nakazawa
Excerpts from History of the American Empire, by Howard Zinn, Mike Konopacki, & Paul Buhle

FILM
Barefoot Gen (the animated feature)
White Light Black Rain (documentary)

ONLINE RESOURCES
Hiroshima Peace Site (Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum): http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/index_e2.html
Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN Site): http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/
World War II Remembered (Scholastic Online): http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/wwii/index.htm

The combination of all of these resources (I have found) has a profound effect on the students.  Especially when they watch White Light Black Rain after reading Barefoot Gen.  The characters in the manga become real, not just mere illustrations drawn on a comic book page.  I also include some interviews with the artists/authors that are easily found onlin (Nakasawa and Speigelman).  Primarily the interviews with Nakasawa are moving and tragic, as he experienced the bomb and its effects first hand.

I find that students are familiar (a bit) with WWII and the Holocaust.  So, they have some prior knowledge going into the reading of Maus.  We usually start with Maus in this unit, because its the most familiar material.  The format is usually entirely new for students, or rather the format combined with the heavy subject matter.  The visual metaphors portrayed through the use of the animals is both startling (in that it so concretely defines the predator/prey relationship), and relatable (hey, they are mice and cats).  Students often report (at the end of the reading) that it is easier to connect with the characters and gives a much more intimate look at relationships through the use of animals, than it would have it human characters had been used.  The characters as animals also seem to provide another layer of protection for the reader to absorb some material that in horrific.

We talk about this choice (animals vs. humans) a lot after reading Barefoot Gen, where the artist/author chose to use human characters.  It is often pointed out that even though humans are used, they are still quite stylized (manga style) and over the top — which again seems to add a layer of insulation between the reader and the horrific outcome.  However, by the end of the book (vol.1) the reader is completely absorbed and realizes this really happened, this is one person’s TRUE story, and despite the traditional manga plot devices (of crazy humor and gratuitous name calling and physical chicanery), the events that the author lived through are truly tragic.  It is not uncommon to see students crying near the end of the book, as they read through the final scenes of the bomb’s immediate aftermath.

However, sandwiched between Maus and Barefoot Gen, we read the excerpts from History of the American Empire — the chapters on the decision to drop the A-Bomb.  We get into this discussion by discussing (just based on our prior knowledge) whether or not it was right to drop the bomb – -was it necessary.  This is coming on the heels of reading Maus, and so the discussion always takes the route of, if you knew this type of human rights abuse was happening, wouldn’t you feel justified dropping the bomb on the enemy to put an end to it?  Then we read the chapter from American Empire — which of course presents Zinn’s very biased view of US motives for dropping the bomb.  Then, we begin Gen.

Sprinkled throughout the unit, we investigate the websites, and after Gen we watch the film White Light Black Rain.  The transformation of students from only passively interested in WWII and the UDHR (or not interested at all), to impassioned rights activists is a marvel to behold.  At the completion of the unit, students are ready to write letters to congress about any number of current human rights crises, from Darfur, to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict in Gaza, to Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan, and more.  The challenge at the end of this unit is for students to take what they’ve learned, to analzye what we’ve learned from these events as a global people (which they usually surmise is pretty much nothing), and to apply it to a modern day issue.  What have we learned?  What should we have learned but didn’t?  Where is your proof that we did/did not learn it.  They write a paper and pick an NGO or an issue to become involved with.  Later we have follow up discussions related to their choices.

My biggest goal with this unit is that students CARE about what happened, and have reasons TODAY for caring about what happened.  They always exceed my expectations in this regard, and that is why I feel so successful with this unit.
CHALLENGE: As I am sure my colleagues will share, some of the biggest challenges that can be overcome with graphic texts are those with reluctant, struggling, or second language readers.  This past year I had a fourth grade ELL (English Language Learner) at my school that absolutely hated to read.  He had some major issues, was not reading on grade level, etc.  No books interested him and it was extremely difficult for him to get into any books.  Normally with a boy like this I might suggest the Wimpy Kid series — but he had already read that.  Next on my list was Bone — but he had already read that.  So, we were running out of options.  Finally I had just had a copy of vol. 1 of Amulet come across my desk.  I decided to give it to him and he LOVED it.  He kept coming to my office asking when the second volume would come out.  His teacher reported that she actually had to stop him from reading to tell him to go out to recess.  We ordered the second book and he read that as well.  He shared the books with his guy friends, many of whom were not eager readers themselves.  Basically this book really turned him on to reading.  We were able to provide other books, combining text and graphics with great success — but really, it was Amulet that lit his fire.  I wish there were more of these.
Along those same lines, my own children were reluctant readers.  As most adolescents will do, they found anime and manga, and got very interested in that world.  Before I knew it, they were always reading!  They wanted to go the book store, the library… I couldn’t keep them away because they always wanted to read the next installment.  Because Manga traditionally deals with archetypes and the heroes journey, it was easy for them to apply the ideas they had been exposed to in mange to their more “traditional” school reading, like Catcher in the Rye and Great Gatsby.  Because they had become used to “reading” and holding a book in their hands, it no longer seemed like such a chore.  They were more receptive to reading traditional texts, and got over their aversion.  They no longer identified themselves as “non-readers” — rather, they considered themselves readers.  They would go online to research anything and everything about their favorite manga series.  They would read up on Wiki about their favorite characters, story arcs, and more.  They watched English subbed anime (which required very FAST reading), because they truly couldn’t stand the English voice acting on the dubbed versions.  Their reading skills GREW by leaps and bounds.  Then reading a traditional book was no longer an issue.  It was amazing.

I find the biggest challenge to teaching graphic novels to the uninitiated (other than overcoming the bias that it’s not real literature), it teaching the students to SLOW DOWN and READ THE IMAGES.  Its more about understanding visual literature.  Newbies tend to want to read the comic the same way the read a book.  They just glance at the images, read the speech bubbles, and move on.  Then they are done and find that they really didn’t get anything out of the book.  I find myself playing that scene in Lion Kind when Rafiki says to Simba (who has just said he sees nothing in the reflection in the stream), to “look harder…”  To help students look harder, we typically take the first panels/pages one at a time on the overhead, discussing each as we go.  I invite them to REALLY LOOK.  What is the artist showing us?  He isn’t going to tell us what he wants us to know, he is going to show us. Etc.  Moving through that way, you can really see the light bulbs go on for students in ways they hadn’t before.  We also talk about perspective and gutters.  What is he showing us?  Why is he choosing to show it to us inthat way?  Why is he NOT showing us?  Why is he NOT showing it?  What happened between what he showed us HERE and what he is now showing us HERE?  Etc.

Anastasia Betts

https://www.uclaextension.edu/r/InstructorBio.aspx?instid=27588

Tracy White, NYU: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

SUCCESS: Third idea: Something unique to comics and important to grasp when reading them is the experience of reading/seeing how words plus images together can create an understanding bigger than the sum of those two parts.
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic Alison Bechdel ISBN: 978-0618871711

Epileptic, David B ISBN 978-0375714689

The Greatest Marlys! Lynda Barry   ISBN-13: 978-1570612602
CHALLENGE: TIME. Every choice a write/artist makes within a graphic novel is deliberate including how time is depicted.

The Arrival, Shaun Tan ISBN-13: 978-0439895293

Buddha Osamu Tezuka ISBN-13: 978-1932234565
–
Tracy White
www.traced.com

Christina Blanch, Ball State University: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

SUCCESS: I teach in Higher Education, but the idea of how I use graphic novels in my Anthropology class can be easily adapted for 9-12th graders in High School Anthropology, Sociology, or even Cultural Geography.

I use the first volumes of “Y: The Last Man” in my Introduction to Anthropology class. In the class throughout the semester, we learn about culture and how culture affects everything that we do. We first learn how to study culture, or ethnographic methods. Then we study different topics relating to culture such as language, economic exchange, adaptations, marriage, kinship, religion, social stratification, and globalization. We also look at how culture is integrated, i.e. if one part changes, it affects the other parts of culture. During the class we learn about a variety of cultures including the Dobe Ju/’hoansi of Africa (sometimes referred to as “bushmen” and featured in the movie “The Gods Must Be Crazy”), the Yanomamo that live in the rainforests of Brazil and Venezuela, and the Inuit (commonly referred to as “Eskimo”) who live in the northern regions of North America.

After we get a grasp on culture and how much we depend on our culture for survival, we read “Y: The Last Man.” This graphic novel is about a man named Yorick and his monkey Ampersand who, after a disaster, become the last males on Earth. As you can guess, this changes culture drastically. The students are asked to look at this culture (American culture) and see how this one incident will change our culture. Simple things like language…do you still call a manhole a manhole? Will the masculine words eventually disappear from our language? How will this affect marriage and family? We talk in class about things like in the United States more than 95% of commercial pilots, truck drivers, and ship captains are male. Also, 99% of the mechanics, electricians, and construction workers are dead. How will this affect our culture?

After the students look at how this will affect the United States, we look at global culture and how other cultures will be affected. How will this affect matriarchal cultures as compared to patriarchal cultures? How will magic and religion be used or not used to explain this? Will horticulturalists be better off than hunter/gatherers and agriculturalists?

Then finally, we look at globalization. How will this affect world culture? Will it be nation against nation or will women band together to help each other out? With many members of the United Nations dead, how will leadership be affected? There are many possibilities to discuss in this area.

Results from this were outstanding. Not only were the papers excellent, but the students told me they read the graphic novel ahead of time and many times over and over and that it made them WANT to read the textbook (something that ALL teachers struggle with) so that they would better be able to understand Yorick’s story.

This year I am using the first four volumes of “The Walking Dead” as a text as we are also looking at the cultural construction of zombie culture.

CHALLENGE: One of the most challenging things to get students to understand about culture is how different cultures can be. They see them as strange or weird sometimes, and we try to teach cultural relativism, accepting cultures on their own terms. Not judging them by the standards of another. To help them understand this, I use comics. I show them a foreign comic, such as manga (not Pokemon or something they are familiar with). First, having to read it “backwards” and “the wrong way” is challenging and the jokes and terms, even translated, don’t make sense. They just think it’s silly. Their assignment is to take an American comic that is humorous in some way (I provide several that they can use or they can use one of their own) and read it and then explain why it’s funny to our culture. Then they have to try to explain why it’s funny to another culture of their choosing. Sometimes I will let them use comic strips if they are pre-approved by me. Finally, they have to think of how to change the comic to make it funny to their chosen culture. One student chose a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin is buying lemonade from Susie’s lemonade stand. The culture he chose was a very patriarchal culture where women would never dress without being covered, would never own a business, and would never talk to a man the way Susie talked to Calvin. This exercise really gets the students to take off their cultural lenses and see that their culture is just one model of reality and other cultures are not failed attempts at emulating our culture, but as Wade Davis said “unique manifestations of the human spirit.”

Christina Blanch
Department of Anthropology
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
clblanch@bsu.edu

Deborah B. Ford, San Diego Unified School District: Graphic Novel Successes and Challenges:

Success Story: “Non-reader”: Sammy comes from a family that “does not read.” When his mom told him he had to read Coraline before she would take him to see the movie, I sent him home with Coraline, the graphic novel. He begged to stay up and finish reading it. He read it twice and then moved on to Diary of a Wimpy Kid. His mom says he is the first reader in their family.

Coraline / adapted & illustrated by P. Craig Russell ; colorist, Lovern Kindzierski ; letterer, Todd Klein.

Publisher: HarperCollins, c2008

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-082545-4
ISBN-10: 0-06-082545-6

Coraline / Neil Gaiman ; with illustrations by Dave McKean.

Publisher: HarperTrophy, c2002

ISBN-13: 978-0-06-057591-5
ISBN-10: 0-06-057591-3

Diary of a wimpy kid : Greg Heffley’s journal / by Jeff Kinney.

Publisher: Amulet Books, c2007

ISBN-13: 978-0-8109-9313-6
ISBN-10: 0-8109-9313-9

Challenge: Connecting to the Curriculum: Teachers can use comic books and graphic novels to teach what they already teach. Many are award winning books that are directly related to the curriculum. Capstone Press publishes graphic history, science, and biography graphic series. Toon Books publishes early readers in graphic novel format. First Second Books publishes many different level books that can be used, including their new series on mythology.

Toon Books- Benny and Penny series

Benny and Penny in The toy breaker : a Toon Book / by Geoffrey Hayes.

Publisher: Toon Books, c2010

ISBN-13: 978-1-935179-07-8
ISBN-10: 1-935179-07-1

Olympians. 1, Zeus, king of the gods / George O’Connor.

Publisher: First Second, c2010

ISBN-13: 978-1-59643-625-1
ISBN-10: 1-59643-625-5

Websites:

Deborah B. Ford blog, Libraries Matter http://deborahford.blogspot.com/

Capstone Press http://www.capstonepub.com/default.aspx

First Second Books http://www.firstsecondbooks.com/

Toon Books http://www.toonbooks.com/

Deborah B. Ford is an award-winning teacher librarian, author and international speaker with over twenty five years of experience as a classroom teacher and librarian in K-12 schools. She is the author of Scary, Gross and Enlightening: Books for Boys. She is currently working as the District Resource Librarian for San Diego Unified School District, serving over 180 schools. Traveling in the United States and Canada, she also does seminars for the Bureau of Education: “Increasing the Effectiveness of Your School Library Program,” and “Books and Boys.” Deborah Ford is available for workshops and keynotes at conferences, as well as for school districts. Contact her at auntbettyblue@yahoo.com for more information.

Heya!

So I’ve been twittering photos live from the floor of the San Diego Comic Con all day–you can follow me at http://twitter.com/Comics212 and see all the fun I’m having. That’s me up top, posing with the Super Pro KO Championship Belt–a neat spin-off of the new Oni Press series that looks great. Anyway, here’s a bit of a photo parade from the set-up and preview night! Enjoy!

The Webcomics area, chock full of webcomics.

Jon Rosenberg and Rich Stevens in the final battle.

Dylan Meconis (Family Man), Gary Tyrell (Fleen.com), and Meredith Gran (Octopus Pie) are having a GREAT TIME!

The Topatoco booth… If you want T-shirts, they’ve got you… covered.

This is the emptiest the show will be all weekend.

Sunday Press, publishers of fabulous books.

Oni Press: They got lotsa books.

Oni Press designer Keith Wood models the Super Pro K.O. belt!

Ever wanted to know what 4,000 copies of Scott Pilgrim looked like? Also shown: Charlie Chu.

Hellboy Skelanimals.

Miles and a statue from anime.

It’s the D&Q booth with the energetic Peggy Burns, keep’n it fully real today.

Look, it’s me and the McClouds! Its me in back, then from left Winter as Envy Adams, Ivy, Scott, Robynne (honorary McCloud), and Sky.

So JD Arnold and Rich Koslowski put tigether a special box set for their new album BB Wolf, complete with all kindsa bonus stuff… I forgot to ask how much it was!

- Chris

“I have to admit, I think it’s nice that Robert Kirkman and Bryan Lee O’Malley are due big, crazy weekends at CCI tied into comics work they own and control; I think a weekend-long display of the virtues of that arrangement is a positive for comics. I mean, it’s nice when a big corporation has a big corporate movie for you to enjoy, but I like those projects where if you stare back you can see the primary creator fully invested — figuratively and literally — as opposed to perhaps the latest caretaker who may even be paid for those “handling” duties more than original creator was rewarded.” – Tom Spurgeon, ComicsReporter.com

Well, yes. Yes exactly. I haven’t done a very good job of covering non-me-related happenings at San Diego Comic Con this year, but luckily Spurgeon has, and he’s got the perspective on the show most in tune with my own, on the con floor. So assuming you’re not already doing it, go check out http://comicsreporter.com

- Christopher

Some con-goers taking a break at San Diego 2007.

Hey everyone! After my one year hiatus (first since 2002) I’m happily headed back to the San Diego Comic Con July 21st-25th! I love me some comic-cons, and I really love the biggest comic-con the most–it’s just completely insane. I’m planning on writing about and from the show whenever possible, and hitting up all the parties and visiting all the booths and all of it. Keep reading the blog for updates, and if you’re a PR person/rep and wanna invite me to something, feel free to drop me a line at chris [at] beguiling [dot] com.

On that note, I’ll also be working The Beguiling’s original art sales area periodically, located in the Drawn & Quarterly booth (same area as last year I believe). Official PR about that one a little later, once we have the booth number and such.

I’m also quite honoured to be moderating or participating in a number of awesome panels and programs. I’d be delighted if you’d come out and visit, I think they’re all going to be pretty awesome (though all very different):

Thursday, July 22
The Best and Worst of Manga 2010
4:30-5:30pm, Room 3
It’s been a wild year for manga, with new publishers springing up while old ones fade away, and sometimes it seems like the one constant in life is that One Piece will go on forever. Join our five panelists—Deb Aoki (manga.about.com), Jason Thompson (Manga: The Complete Guide), Christopher Butcher (comics.212.net), Tom Spurgeon (comicsreporter.com) and Kai-Ming Cha (Publishers Weekly)—as they talk about the best and worst manga of the last year, the manga they want to see translated, and the most anticipated upcoming releases!

Friday, July 23
Comics Design
3:30 – 4:30pm, Room 26AB
How do pages of art become a book? Six designers – Mark Chiarello (DC Comics), Adam Grano (Fantagraphics), Chip Kidd (Random House), Fawn Lau (Viz), Mark Siegel (First Second Books), and Keith Wood (Oni Press) – discuss what’s involved in the process of comics design, and the importance of design to a book’s critical and consumer reception. Moderated by Chris Butcher (The Beguiling).

Saturday, July 24
Comics in the Classroom
3:30 – 4:30, Room 26AB
Comics are becoming increasingly common in the elementary and Secondary classrooms. But how can teachers incorporate comics into their course curriculums? This panel provides practical strategies for teachers to do just that. Presented by Anastasia Betts (UCLA), Christina Blanch (Ball State University), Deborah Ford (San Diego Unified School District), and Tracy White (NYU). Moderated by Chris Butcher (The Beguiling).

–

See you there!

- Christopher Butcher

http://www.comicsreporter.com/

It’s a bit of a long one, and it was almost entirely written between the hours of midnight at 4am, so it is considerably more honest and off the cuff that I originally intended, but I think it holds up okay. I kinda wanna give it another edit, but that’s life.

Originally I was going to save any official commenting on the show until our wrap-up, but as that’s been a while in coming I didn’t want to miss this opportunity to thank our staff and volunteers for all of their hard work, and Spurgeon’s is a pretty prestigious website upon which to send out those thanks. There’s still an official wrap-up coming of course, where we name names… in thanking all the wonderful people who helped out. And talk a little bit more about how things went, and what we’re going to do next time.

Also of note, not sure I mentioned it but there are a ton of photos of TCAF 2010 up online at flickr including my own. Here’s all the tagged TCAF 2010 shots:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/tcaf2010/

Alright, nuff of me. More commenting coming soon.

- Christopher

And I’m going to be very blunt with you too: we’re not doing this deal in the media. Anaheim and San Diego – San Diego just woke up and put out that offer a day late and a dollar short, in my view. Our offer’s been out there for five years. And our offer is superior to their offer. I won’t say all the details because I’m not going to play this all out in the media, but I will say that that offer is a chump change offer. It’s kind of an afterthought to me. It’s like, “We think we’re going to lose it, so we’re going to throw a few bucks out there.” And I’ve got to be honest with you, to Comic-Con it isn’t just about that. That’s how I interpret it. It’s all about “How can we grow and enhance the show?” And my primary mission here is to grow and enhance that show. If I can’t improve that show for Comic-Con and for your industry here in Los Angeles, then I would not pursue this show. And I would not have busted my rear end for five years to do it if I couldn’t present them with that option. My offer today is only improved by the fact that I have A.E.G. and the LA Live development in partnership with me.

- Michael Krause, part of the comittee wooing Comic-Con to move to Los Angeles, @ CBR

I have 10,000 other things to do today, but I came across this in a link from Scott McCloud on Twitter (who is firmly in favour of Comic-Con staying in San Diego, I should say), and the bolded part up there (Emphasis mine) jumped out at me.

My response? Yes. Exactly.

Despite some public commentary to the contrary, San Diego has been routinely horrible to the Comic-Con, and their efforts to “work” with their most volumnous show of the year have been sad. The big “public show of support” this year is a fucking joke, flat out. You don’t look at what they’re promising to do, you look at what they _actually_ do, and this year the biggest hotel and the closest hotel basically told Comic-Con to fuck off, holding a giant conference (very police and security-heavy) on the same weekend, blocking off a bunch of rooms and holding them away from an event that they’ve known was coming for… years.

It’s a joke, the city from an infrastructure point of view does not like the show. They don’t. This ‘show of support’ they made is tokenism at best, it’s a to cover their asses with the hotels and restaurants–their constituents–if 125,000+ tourists and their associated tourist dollars disappear in a few years.

I run a show. It’s less than 1/10th the size of San Diego, I’m on nowhere near the same playing field. But running a show like this, making demands on people and organizations and venues and having to make concessions and the wonderful back-and-forth that goes into planning a large event? You begin to be able to tell when the folks on the other end want to make something work, and when they don’t, and in my opinion San Diego isn’t really interested in making the Con work.

This isn’t important, in the grand scheme of things. I think we all know that, but I do think it’s nice that someone–even someone coming from a competing organization/area–came forward and said “We’ve got a better offer, San Diego doesn’t really give a shit” because that’s been my observation all along. And then their recent promises and shows of support? WOEFULLY inadequate. Chump Change.

So yeah, I like walking out the back doors to the pristine Bay view and the good food as much as the next guy, but… I also want a better offer. I want more floorspace, more hotel space, better organization, and I want to be at an event where everyone involved is actually on board, and not barely tolerating each other’s presence.

Where’s that event?

- Christopher

March 12, 2010 Toronto—Running the gamut from the acclaimed to the unconventional, the 15 finalists for this year’s Doug Wright Awards were announced today in Toronto.

Hand-picked by an esteemed panel of comics experts, the 2010 finalists represent the finest, most thought-provoking work produced by Canada’s vibrant comics community.

The shortlist contains works that explore diverse subjects, from the legendary life of Kasper Hauser and the fictional life (and death) of a fading TV host, and spans a range of formats, from wordless lino-cuts graphic novels to “manga” inspired by Western Canadian Haida mythology.

The Doug Wright Awards finalists for Best Book are:

Back + Forth by Marta Chudolinska (The Porcupine’s Quill)
George Sprott: (1894-1975) by Seth (Drawn and Quarterly)
Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)
Kaspar by Diane Obomsawin (Drawn and Quarterly)
Red: A Haida Manga by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Douglas and McIntyre)

The Doug Wright Awards finalists for Best Emerging Talent are:

Adam Bourret I’m Crazy
Michael DeForge Lose #1 (Koyama Press), Cold Heat Special #7 (Picturebox)
Pascal Girard Nicolas (Drawn and Quarterly)
John Martz It’s Snowing Outside. We Should Go For a Walk.
Sully The Hipless Boy (Conundrum Press)

The finalists for the 2010 Pigskin Peters Award (for unconventional, “nominally-narrative” comics) are:

Bébête Simon Bossé (L’Oie de Cravan)
Dirty Dishes by Amy Lockhart (Drawn and Quarterly)
Hot Potatoe by Marc Bell (Drawn and Quarterly)
Never Learn Anything From History by Kate Beaton
The Collected Doug Wright Volume One by Doug Wright (Drawn and Quarterly)

Founded in 2004 (in a dimly lit Toronto bar) to celebrate the finest in English-language comics and graphic novels, The Doug Wright Awards have since evolved into one of North America’s foremost comics awards and one of its most anticipated events.

Wright Awards finalists defy easy categorization, and include past and present masters of the form and off-the-beaten-path newcomers alike, all vying for one of the most unique and coveted trophies in comics.

This year’s nominees were chosen by a five-member panel who chose from works released in the 2009 calendar year. The panel included: comics historian and author Jeet Heer; filmmaker Jerry Ciccoritti; cartoonist Chester Brown; Walrus comics blogger Sean Rogers, and; writer and Sequential.ca publisher Bryan Munn.

The winners are chosen by a jury that includes cartoonists, writers, actors, directors, musicians and, on occasion, politicians.

A featured event of the Toronto Comics Arts Festival (TCAF), the 2010 Doug Wright Awards ceremony will take place on Sat. May 8, at 7 pm at the Toronto Reference Library’s new Bram & Bluma Appel Salon, 789 Yonge Street.

For more information, please contact:

brad@wrightawards.ca
mackbrad@gmail.com

About The Doug Wright Awards

The Doug Wright Awards are a non-profit organization formed in 2004, and are named in honour of the late Canadian cartoonist Doug Wright. The annual awards recognize graphic novels, comics, mini-comics, and experimental comics-based works published in English (including first-translated editions). To be eligible, a work must be a first-edition, full-length or a collection, and created by a Canadian citizen or a permanent resident of Canada. www.wrightawards.ca

About the Toronto Public Library

The Toronto Public Library is the world’s busiest urban public library system. Every year, more than 17.5 million people visit our 99 branches and borrow more than 31 million items. To learn more about Toronto Public Library, visit torontopubliclibrary.ca or call Answerline at 416-393-7131.

About the Toronto Comic Arts Festival

TCAF is a celebration of comics and graphic novels—and their creators—that takes place annually in Toronto, Canada. The next TCAF is Saturday May 8th and Sunday May 9^th 2010, at the Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, and will feature Daniel Clowes (Eightball, Ghost World), Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth), Dash Shaw (Body World), James Sturm (Golem’s Mighty Swing, Market Day), and Jim Woodring (Frank) and more. For more information please visit http://www.torontocomics.com.

Here’s a brief outline of this year’s programming, and I hope we see you out this weekend (oh and please feel free to repost):

11:00am-11:15am: All about Comics & Graphic Novels: A brief introduction.
Hosted by Christopher Butcher.

11:15am-12:00pm: Creating comics with Owlkids!
Featuring CTON (Clayton Hanmer) and Brian McLachlan.
Bonus: The first 200 kids 12 and under that attend this panel will receive a gift bag filled with great comics!

12:00-13:00: Creating Comics and Raising a Family: Finding Balance.
Featuring Jim Munroe (Sword of My Mouth), Tara Tallan (Galaxion), and Claudia Davilla (Luz: The Girl of Knowing).

13:00-14:00: No Rules, No Budget, All Fun! How and why you should make comics!
Featuring Georgia Webber (gangLion), Ruth Tait, and steflenk (The Haircut)

14:00-15:00: Graphic Memoirs – 3 New Works.
Featuring Tory Woolcott (Mirror Mind), Lesley Fairfield (Tyranny), and Adam Bourret (I’m Crazy)

15:00-16:00: Sequential Presents: Oh, Canada. Surveying The Landscape of Canadian Comics.
Featuring Bryan Munn, Salgood Sam, Brad Mackay, and Kevin Boyd.

16:00-17:00: Sequential Presents: Three New Comics set in Canada
Featuring readings by Willow Dawson (100 Mile House), Jeff Lemire (Essex County), and Evan Munday (Quarter-Life Crisis).

17:00-18:00: WEBCOMICS
Featuring Andy Belanger (Bottle of Awesome), Faith Erin Hicks (War At Ellsmere), Emily Horne (A Softer World), Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics), Kean Soo (Jellaby).

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For full programming descriptions and stuff, check out The Word On The Street website at http://www.thewordonthestreet.ca/wots/toronto/whatson/comics.

Thanks,

- Christopher

CHICAGO COMIC-CON 2009!
600+ Guests including Twilight Saga Actors, former UFC heavyweight champion, Andrei “THE PITBULL” Arlovski, scores of Star Wars guests, wrestling legends and some of the HOTTEST actresses including Michelle Rodriguez, Emma Caulfield, Orli Shoshan and Rhona Mitra.  Get a premier weekend pass or VIP Package and get into the show 1 hour early each day.  Advance tickets start at $25, more at the door.  Get your tickets now at [redacted].
A Paid Advertisement from Wizard Entertainment

Did… did you notice the lack of comics? At the Comic-Con? I mean it’s Wizard, I think enough has been said about Wizard’s relationship to comics to put them into the ground by now (and yet…), but still. They went through all that trouble to rename the convention and everything add “Comic-Con” back in, and their promotion seems to be downplaying, or ignoring completely, comic books. In favour of “hottest”ness. It’s a little strange?

Or maybe not, if you look at San Diego.

One of my biggest criticisms of The New York Comic-Con is that, in its early years, it showed enormous potential to be the sort of comics & publishing-oriented show that this industry needs and deserves. It’s not like it hasn’t been more-or-less sold out every year, particularly the early years that were all about New York Publishing (including and especially comics!). Yet every year the show becomes more and more about movies, toys, and tie-ins. They’re pushing the show closer and closer to the San Diego model and it makes for a weaker show each year. What is the San Diego model btw? Simple: A gateway to nerds. Comic Con International: San Diego is selling floor-space (and advertising space and mind-space) sure, but what they’re really selling is access to mouthy nerds with blogs, tastemakers, half-comprised of the people that make up their audiences and the people that will incite the rest of the country to be their audiences. Comic-Con is all about access, and who’s willing to pay the most for it.

Let’s get this out of the way: I love comics. I think comics are awesome. And I think comics as an industry and a medium needs big events like NYCC and SDCC and hundreds of other regional comics shows: they act as ambassadors for the medium. And so the question for the organizers of these events should be “does any of what we’re doing serve comics as a medium? or an industry? or is it just about the value of the access to mouthy nerds with blogs?”

Now I’m not an idiot, I know the preceeding sentence is naive as fuck. Seriously, Microsoft shows up with a suitcase of cash and they should ask them “but how does what you’re doing serve comics?” Of course not. But there’s that idealism of mine: why not? Something like SDCC but just for the entertainment industry? It doesn’t exist. The movie studios, the video game producers, the TV Shows and toys and Bud Bundy and all that, they’re coming to the comic book show. SDCC has got all the power, because nothing else like that event exists anywhere (Gareb Shamus tried and clearly failed; Reed is travelling the same road Shamus took). Imagine if SDCC really did take the ideological position of “how does what you do help comics?” with their exhibitors, and charged them accordingly? What if they used ideology as the wedge to expand the show into the parks, into the stadium, into the giant parking lot that’s as big as half the convention centre? Here I Drew A Map. Imagine the best possible things happened! Wouldn’t that be great? Why not work towards the best?

Pipe dream, sure. But I like having comics at a comic-con, and if it’s a zero-sum game with attendence: 150,000 people each year, and more and more of the people attending have little-to-no interest in anything other than their specific blinkered fandom (which tends to exclude comics), that means less money for the folks doing and selling and bringing comics to the show. Which tends to mean less comics at the show.

As an aside, the 10,000 TWILIGHT fans at the con really were a problem for the show, but a lot of the reasons that got floated came from a sexist, xenophobic, bullshit fanboy place. I actually feel bad even writing this, but truly, legitimately, 6,000 people at the show JUST for Twilight means 6,000 people that weren’t spending money at the show means 6,000 people that might’ve wanted to go that had an interest in dropping a few bucks at the various vendors? Shut out. Twilight is just the biggest, most concentrated fandom in years–maybe ever, so it puts the problem of Hollywood “stuff” into the clearest relief against the traditional convention crowd. I don’t begrudge anyone taking a road-trip and having a great time for the weekend; I hope the fans had fun. But with a very tight, closed economy at the show (due to space limitations) and little-to-no crossover with the rest of the event, what did having those fans and that event bring to the show? To comics? Why was Comic-Con the best place for that event to happen? And if it wasn’t the best place, and space is at a premium at Comic-Con, then why was it held there?

Two last things:

1. Anime Cons. The big buzz in anime conventions right now is that prices have gone up, and the recessionary economy means that attendees have less pocket-money. Anime Expo, typically one of biggest shows of the year, was reportedly a very poor sales show for most-if-not-all exhibitors. No one had any money. They did have costumes, they did come to hang out with their friends, and they did spend a not-inconsiderable ammount of money on a 3-day pass. They just didn’t have any left-over, afterwards. This wasn’t isolated either, not trying to pick an AX, this is the buzz from most anime shows I’ve been hearing. When a show becomes primarily a place to participate in fandom, a closed circuit, it tends to decline… rapidly. Sci-Fi cons are the biggest examples of this. If your convention is a place to break-out your Klingon costume, hang out in a hotel for three days and go to room-parties, then your convention is not long for this world. Or rather, it’ll be around forever, it’ll just shrink and be sad. No one wants that. Imagine 20 years from now, 40 year old dudes breaking out their Naruto costumes and drinking schnapps out of a bottle in their Holiday Inn 2 dbl bds room with 10 other similarly dressed people. That’s the difference between a vibrant, thriving medium, industry, and fandom, and one that has started to eat itself.

2. PAX: The Penny-Arcade Expo. From nothing to the second-biggest nerd-culture convention (for the public) in just under 5 years. Anyone who follows convention planning/news/whatever is in awe of what they’ve accomplished, and they’ve done it in a smart, controlled way–with an iron fist. First rule of exhibting at PAX? PAX IS A VIDEOGAME SHOW. If what you “do” isn’t directly about video games? You can’t exhibit. Period. 5 years, second-biggest nerd-culture event in North America, accomplished by sticking to their guns. Cooooooool.

Alright. That’s 1200 words of nonsense. Time to go.

- Christopher

Graphically Speaking: Webcomics!
Tuesday, April 7th, 2009, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
@ North York Central Library
http://www.keeptorontoreading.ca/events/graphically-speaking

Ever wondered how to publish your comics online? Top Toronto graphic novelists discuss web comics, from developing an idea to publishing and distribution.

Featuring:
• Kate Beaton (History Comics)
• Willow Dawson (100 Mile House)
• Emily Horne (A Softer World)
• Brian McLachlan (The Princess Planet)
• Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics)

• Moderated by Christopher Butcher (Comics212.net, The Beguiling)

–

Graphically Speaking for Kids
Saturday, April 25, 2009 2:00pm – 3:30pm
North York Central Library, Room 1
http://www.keeptorontoreading.ca/events/ktr-for-kids/graphically-speaking-for-kids

Julie Faulkner from Udon Entertainment (Street Fighter comics) leads a workshop where kids learn the basics of creating comics. For kids ages 9 to 12. To register, call 416-395-5630 – or drop in on the day of.

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Anime Bash: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
Saturday, April 18, 2009 2:00pm – 5:00pm
North York Central Library, Auditorium

http://www.keeptorontoreading.ca/events/books-art-and-fashion/anime-bash

Come in costume and cosplay with other fans. World-class costume designer Jacqueline M. Ward gives tips to designing jaw-dropping costumes. Then catch a screening of acclaimed anime film The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

Film synopsis:
When 17-year-old Makoto Konno gains the ability to “leap” backwards through time, she immediately sets about improving her grades and preventing personal mishaps. However, she soon realises that changing the past isn’t as simple as it seems, and eventually, will have to rely on her new powers to shape the future of herself and her friends.

–

- Chris @ The Beguiling

From Canada: Dave Lapp (Drop-In), Brian McLachlan (Princess Planet), Michael Noonan, Joe Ollman (Chewing on Tinfoil), Steve Rolston (Emiko Superstar) and Jim Zubkavich (UDON).

From England, and attending TCAF for the first time, is Jamie McKelvie, author of Suburban Glamour and artist of Phonogram, amongst other works.

From the U.S.A.: John Campbell (Pictures For Sad Children), Scott Campbell (Hickee), Becky Cloonan (Demo, Pixu), Kevin Colden (Fishtown), Joshua Cotter (Skyscrapers of the Midwest), Justin Hall (True Travel Tales), Dustin Harbin (Heroes Aren’t Hard To Find), Cheese Hasselberger and Dave McKenna and Brian Musikoff from House of 12, Chris Hastings (Dr. McNinja), Jeph Jacques (Questionable Content), Matt Kindt (Three Sisters), Joe Lambert (CCS Grad), Miss Lasko-Gross (Escape From Special), David Malki (Wondermark), Sean McCarthy (Partyka), Erika Moen (Dar), Tom Neely (The Blot), Lark Pien (Long-Tail Kitty), Jonathan Rosenberg (Goats), Jeffrey Rowland (Wigu, Overcompensating), and Jason Shiga (Bookhunter)!

We’ve also confirmed exhibition space by publishers Adhouse Books, Anteism Books, Buenaventura Press, Fantagraphics Books, Le Dernier Cri,  plus The Doug Wright Awards, Broken Pencil Magazine, and Taddle Creek Magazine.

–

Cool beans!

We do have a number of potential guests who are still firming up their schedule so there’ll likely be more additions in the weekend to come, though another 30 creator update is unlikely. 

- Chris

Hello, readership! I actually wanted to follow up that post yesterday and address some of the stuff in the comments section, but I’m going to be a little busy at the New York Comic Con for the next few days. I just wanted to give a heads-up that you can follow me on Twitter and Flickr for updates from the con-floor.

Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/comics212/

Twitter: http://twitter.com/comics212dotnet

I’m currently getting ready for the afternoon programming at the ICv2 Conference (the morning stuff on the internet seemed strange–no web-cartoonists on the webcomics panel?–so I passed) and gotta get my but in gear to get to the show. Very public thanks to my lovely host Liz who put us up in Brooklyn and took us out for delicious gin cocktails last night, as seen above. 

Cheers,

- Christopher

I just checked it out, and it looks like retailer weekend badges are going to run $10 this year (Diamond had been making them available for free to retailers), which is still a pretty significant discount off of the weekend ticket price. I usually get at least $10 of enjoyment out of the con-floor, so I’m not worried. What I really need to get, somehow, is an exhibitor badge…

- Christopher

“As Josh notes, there are smaller cons that cater to indie comics – SPX, APE, MoCCa, etc. — cons largely by and for activists, who’ve decided to make that niche their bread and butter. But any con that hits a certain size has to start looking at their bottom line at all times, and, as in most arenas, what brings in the most money gets the most attention. That’s just how it is, and expecting the New York con to change it is looking in the wrong direction.” - Steven Grant

I’m just gonna flat-out disagree with this. It’s certainly much harder to have a creative and curatorial vision for a comics show, to believe in what you’re doing and keep it running when there are external monetary pressures, etc., but it’s nowhere near impossible, and while the bottom line is important, it’s by no means where the eye needs to be kept “at all times”. Far from it. Look east for inspiration, my good fellows, to the mighty shows of Europe. America may “not have culture” but there are art galleries and museums in areas other than New York and California, and all it takes is some smart event planners that know how to make a spectacle and get folks out.

I understand that Mr. Grant has a long-accumulated wealth of knowledge acquired over many years of con-going, but if I sincerely thought that “indie comics” (a phrase that means absolutely nothing, btw.) had an inherently limited audience of converts, I’d probably drop everything tomorrow and just go work in banking or something. Instead, “indie comics” actually encompasses everything that’s not WFH corporate comics, a huge field that now includes everyone from D&Q, Oni, Fanta, Top Shelf, and even Image, all the way to Random House, Simon & Shuster, and First Second.

Comics are literature, comics are entertainment, comics are excellent. The limit to the audience for comics is people who respond to art or the written word. Believing otherwise is narrow-thinking and self-defeating. We should be bigger, brighter, and bolder from now on, but in celebration of the medium, not the “culture”.

- Christopher
Quick edit for spelling.

First and foremost, Weidenbaum’s new title at Viz is “Editor-in-Chief, Magazines. Vice President, Original Publishing” which kind of makes sense, as the two manga magazines are where more-or-less all of the original content is being generated at Viz right now. The recent cover-art/interview/short comic by Bryan Lee O’Malley on Shoujo Beat sort of brought this fact to everyone’s attention, though Viz has done original content in the past, including a Pokemon comic strip for newspapers a few years ago. But the original publishing aspect of Marc’s title will likely become very important to the comics industry in the next few years.

According to Marc, it’s all about television.

Marc Weidenbaum: “We’re in a golden age of television right now,” specifically referring to the critically and commercially successful serialized entertainment offered up by HBO, BBC, Showtime, and even some of the networks. Marc feels that there are all of these wonderfully episodic shows that build up a serial storyline with amazing cliffhangers that you can’t miss. And he doesn’t seem inclined to cow-towing to any particular ‘style’ or genre of story either, with a crime drama being just as interesting and well produced as a comedy or historical epic… Editorializing a bit here, it’s no mystery that Brian K. Vaughan (for example) was picked up for LOST–his work on Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, and even Runaways is built on the gripping last-page reveal, and his work is structured in an incredibly compelling way. If I’m reading Marc correctly, he sees this not so much as a model, but as inspiration for a new line of comics work: One that has broad appeal, strong construction, and the benefit of a talented and trained editorial staff.

That last part is particularly intriguing to me, because while producing licensed material does have Viz editors sharing some of the same duties as their original-content producing counterparts in the rest of the North American comics industry–scheduling, proofing, working with creative talent–the Japanese editorial system, the one that Marc referenced a couple of times, is quite different and even more involved than anything you’ll find in North America… In a bit of a coincidence I picked up a new manga by Fanfare/Ponent-Mon at the New York Comic Con just before I was talking to Marc, called Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma. It’s about this manga-ka that goes nuts from stress and becomes a bum living in the mountains. In it, the protagonists manga editors are variously portrayed as abrasive, mean, and egomaniacs who threaten and taunt him, draw over his artwork to change it to their liking, and ignore or encourage any number of truly life-destroying behaviours on the part of Azuma-san… as long as the work comes in on time. It’s a comedy. And autobiography to boot.

But Marc’s a smart guy with–believe it or not!–creator interests at heart. He seemed to be talking about a sort of a hybrid system, where he and other editors at Viz had worked closely with Editors within the Japanese comics production system to learn from them, and have brought this system back to North America to put their own spin on it. This also tied in nicely to the fact that Viz’s big guest-of-honour the NYCC weekend wasn’t a manga-ka, but rather an editor, (one Mr. Asano who edits Bleach and Shaman King amongst other top-of-the-charts releases). Marc has a lot of respect for editing and editors in general, and the idea of working with a creator to produce the most successful and strongest possible work. It’s the kind of idea that I can feel myself bristling at, as I type it out now, but hearing it come out of Marc’s mouth I totally believed it… I do have to say that will not be the sort of editorial guidance that every creator is looking for, particularly not in an industry where the idea of editorial mandate from DC and Marvel has become so reviled that it seems every other comics publisher’s editorial guidelines are a hands-off reaction against them.

I was having a hard time getting an idea of this ‘line’ at this point in our conversation, what it might look like, and I couldn’t tell if it was going to be akin to Tokyopop’s “hire’m all and let the market sort’em out” original content strategy, or something a little different. So I asked him flat out–name five books published in the last few years that you could see as part of this line. His response? “None.” Really, not one book? “Not really, I don’t see a lot of the work fitting our ideas. Maybe elements of Scott Pilgrim come closest to it, or Ed Brubaker’s Scene of the Crime or Sleeper. Stuff that’s really good, solid concept-stuff but with a twist to it, a hook.” I believe I mentioned that Scene of the Crime and Sleeper sold fairly poorly at the time, but I don’t remember what, if any, response came of it.

Said I: “I’ve talked to a number of creators working in the ogn or straight-to-collection format, and many of them have very similar concerns about the system of creating a graphic novel with little-or-no input for a year, and releasing these graphic novels to sometimes little or no feedback, and then going back to the drawing board. The idea of shorter serialization has been floated as a possible remedy…” Marc responded that things were still up in the air regarding format, but had heard and shared many of the same concerns. We talked a little bit more about various successes and failures but Marc was reluctant to name names, which I can appreciate…

“You know,” I said. “As soon as I post this you’re going to get flooded with submissions. Horrible people sending you their ideas for a sequel to Dragonball Z, all that shit.”

He knew it, but made it pretty clear he had no interest in submissions right now. “Maybe in a few years we’ll open it up to submissions,” said Marc. “But right now I just want to see already completed work. What you’ve done, what you’re capable of.” So if you’re sitting on the world’s best manuscript for a 3400 part serial about a new level of Super-Saiyan, can it. At least for a little while. But I do have to say that Marc seemed quite genuine about wanting to see published work and specifically mentioned webcomics, mini-comics and self-pub’d work as well as professionally published material…

It’s at this point in the conversation that my friend writer Ray Fawkes (Apocaplipstix, coming this summer from Oni Press) walked by the little concrete benches where we were seated and came and said hello. Ray has 4 projects in development with four different publishers at the moment, is incredibly talented, and above-all sounded like the exact sort of person who would be doing books that would fit with Marc’s idea for the Viz Original Content Line. I introduced them and mentioned something to this effect, and sure enough there was a warm exchange of business cards and a plan to talk further about an exchange of work… So if Marc wasn’t being genuine when he said he would happily look at published work, he was at least putting on a good face in front of my friend ;).

Sidebar: It’s worth noting that at the big Viz Panel the next day, this exact situation came up. Here, I’ll quote from “A Geek By Any Other Name”:

“Someone just asked about whether they’d be accepting any original series, and they answered that they weren’t really looking for anything, which is a little counter to what Brigid and other bloggers heard yesterday.”

I think that’s a pretty clever answer, actually, because Marc made that quite clear to me as well: They aren’t looking for anything in particular. They’re looking for talented people who’ve done great work–at this point in the game–and are probably looking to develop something with them as opposed to just accepting or rejecting a pitch. An important bit of semantics!

Now, you have to understand, all the while I’m having this conversation with Marc… I’m feeling pretty good about all of this actually, but this nagging phrase wouldn’t stop repeating itself in the back of my mind: “THE TOKYOPOP DEAL”. I fucking hate The Tokyopop deal, flat out. It’s awful and abusive of young creators, and while I haven’t gotten up and shouted I TOLD YOU SO at anyone two years later, the number of disenfranchised and angry Tokyopop creators has more-or-less done the work for me. I’m not particularly happy about being right of course; it is, at best, a pyrrhic victory.
“Marc,” I said. “Who owns it?” I was honestly not anticipating the response.

“The creators do. It’s going to be a standard book-industry type contract, although even there we’re doing a bit of tweaking. I believe in that, and we wanted a fair deal.”

Huh, how about that. We discussed it a little further, mentioning things like other-media adaptation rights and all that, and while we really only talked in generalities, it all sounded really reasonable. Maybe even… good. Marc relayed an anecdote about visiting a comics class at SVA the previous week, I think either he mentioned either Tom Hart or Matt Madden or Jessica Abel were teaching, and he was talking about this very line. The instructor sort of built up this menacing tone and said “And now we’ve got a hard question for you, Marc! WHO OWNS THE WORK!?” which I have to admit that’s kind of amazing, that ownership and contract discussions are a part of comics instruction now. But Marc said “oh, the creators.” and just sort of deflated the instructor’s bubble (it was funny, not dickish, at least when Marc told it). You have no idea how heartening it was to hear this, the idea that copyright (amongst many other rights) would reside with the creators of the work. Of course, no contract is perfect and each one is different and be sure to get a lawyer to read things over before you sign them, etc., but just hearing an affirmative and positive reaction to creator ownership coming from the spokesperson for a massive international corporation? Even one with Marc’s long history of publishing and working with comics creators (google him)? It’s fantastic.

Our conversation sort of drifted from that point as it seemed that I’d wrapped up everything I had to ask, and started mulling over my opinions of the prospects of this line. I can’t help but feel that the possibilities of a company as well-invested and an editor as well-intentioned as Viz and Marc both are could seriously shake up comics production, where the money becomes in line in both frequency and scale as Marvel and DC; where they could develop a very creatively supportive but still professional environment; where serialization and the possibility of easy access to the Japanese market (and work produced in a Japanese-fashion) could attract a whole new generation of manga-inspired creators.

Moreso than Vertigo’s announcement at the show that they were actively scouting out “original graphic novels” and, to my mind, trying to directly take projects away from Oni Press, Slave Labor, and Top Shelf, this feels like something that just isn’t being done in the industry right now, but when laid out as Marc Weidenbaum did for me, makes it seem essential… Possibly even as important to original comics content creation as manga was to the bookstores. It doesn’t take a genius to see that serialized original content with a strong narrative hook and enticing cliffhangers are part-and-parcel of the manga experience… perhaps with Weidenbaum’s affection for top-notch (and often very mature) television shows and evocations of Brubaker’s crime fiction, this line of books could be that mythical ‘stepping stone to adulthood’ that everyone wonders about for the aging manga demographic.

Or not. It’s pretty easy to look at what I’ve written here and see it as corporate-controlled comics, with nothing to offer the comics auteur. I can’t speak for Marc on this point but I do see validity to that point of view. There’s a reason that someone like Seth designs his books right down to hand-lettering the indicia and choosing the colour of the foil-stamping on the hardcover, you know? I don’t see that as what this line is about, and quite frankly there are lots of places to publish that sort of material that do it very well (Drawn & Quarterly, Fantagraphics, Pantheon, First Second, etc.). But a vision of the comics industry where compelling commercial comics don’t mean superheroes, half-assed movie pitches, or the occasional fluke from the majors (and let’s not forget that Y: The Last Man‘s commissioning editor was fired by Vertigo shortly after its launch…!)? At the very least, you can put me on that mailing list.

Anyhow, those are my impressions of the conversation I had with Viz’s new Vice President of Original Publishing. All of which are subject to the haze of memory and just having come off of a panel where I sat 15 feet from Stan Lee for an hour. Following our chat I walked Marc to a cab and resisted the urge to invite myself to his dinner with important people from Japan, which showed some tact on my part (though obviously less-so now that I blogged it). I ended up having a great dinner anyway (thank you, Dave & Raina), and didn’t see Marc for the rest of the weekend. Just goes to show you that it’s important to make time when you can, at these sorts of shows.

Thanks again for being so generous with your time Marc! I hope your inbox is not immediately flooded.

- Christopher

Kazu Kibuishi signs the movie contract for his graphic novel Amulet. The movie has been optioned by Will Smith’s production company. Kazu is pretty excited to meet him. :)

There’s 3 announcements in this picture, if you look carefully. The big one is the exceptionally good news that Stephen Robson of Fanfare/Ponent Mon has signed the contract to do the English-language adaptation of Jiro Taniguchi’s masterful graphic novel series “Faraway Neighborhood” (transliteration, it could be translated a number of ways). This is, from people in the know, the Taniguchi book. In the background you can see poster promoting two new works, including Disappearance Diary by Hideo Azuma and My Mommy, by Jean Regnaud and Emile Bravo. This is great news, more on this later.

Asano-san and Mr. Lee talk about cross-continental collaboration, in advance of the new Shonen Jump series Ultimo!

Having a great time, wish you were here.

- Chris

Hello Folks! I’ll be at The New York Comic Con this weekend, because I haven’t missed one yet. Will I get to do a “LOCKDOWN!” post? Only time will tell. Anyhow, if you’re looking for me this weekend I’ll be all-over the “trade” programming for publishers/retailers/etc. Here’s where to find me:

Thursday, April 17th:

ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference 2008
1PM-5PM, Registration Required
Link

I’m going to be attending the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference again this year, though I won’t be on any panels I probably won’t be too difficult to find (“Who’s that guy asking all of the uncomfortable questions?”). It’s pricey to attend ($200) but if you’re involved in the business side of the industry, it’s likely worth the $$ for your professional development. I think it’s still possible to register on-site as well.

Friday, April 18th:

I’m actually not going to be on Age Appropriate Content for Kids and Teen Comics 12:00 PM-1:00 PM anymore, because of a scheduling conflict. I was just introducing that one anyway, the two librarians involved are the real draw. Instead, I’ll be at:

Buying and Shelving Graphic Novels For Kids in Bookstores & Comic Book Stores
12:00PM-1:00PM
Room 1E07
Should there be a kids comics section in your bookstore/comic bookstore? What should be in it? How should you market it?

This is actually a pretty fun subject, if your definition of fun is working out all the ways to encourage younger generations to read comics and graphic novels. I’m on the panel with some real heavy-hitters too, including Kristen McLean, Executive Director of The Association of Booksellers for Children, and Jessica Stockton, Events Coordinator for McNally Robinson Booksellers in NYC. I’ll likely learn as much info as I impart, but it should be pretty cool.

Emerging Trends in Manga Retailing
2:00 PM – 3:00 PM
Room 1E16
With 33 manga titles a week planned for 2008, it’s tougher than ever for retailers to manage their manga sections. Join this panel of retailers as they discuss what’s working, what’s not, and where they see the market going this year.

This is going to be a fun panel too, because all of us participating have very, very different ideas about stocking, display, etc. Much more for direct market retailers than anyone else, any retailer who’s ever asked me a manga question should probably come out to this one. That “33 manga titles a week” is just an average. We’ve already had weeks with 60+ new manga this year…

–

After that, I’ll likely be around the con floor or in the press room. If you need to get a hold of me, just e-mail, I should be checking pretty regularly.

See you in New York!

- Christopher

- I haven’t forgotten about the Casanova Reviews. The problem, aside from my schedule sort of falling apart, was that the text piece in the back of issue 7 is pretty intense, and has forced me to reconsider the last few issues of the first series. So, I’m gonna read the whole thing again, start-to-finish, and give it another go this week.

- Chris Mautner of the Panels and Pixels blog interviewed me a little while back for an article he was writing on yaoi for The Patriot News in Pennsylvania. You can find it online now, and it’s called “Brokeback Manga”. For better or worse, I seem to be the pre-eminent retail representative of yaoi in North America, or at least the only one willing to go on record to discuss it, and so I offer the surprising retail views that a) Yaoi is selling well, and b) it can’t stay out of the harsh, disapproving glare of the public forever. Chris is a great guy and I was happy to be a part of the article (which turned out great, actually), but my complete lack of interest in revisiting stupid yaoi controversy will see me avoiding follow-up on some of the more questionable assertions on the part of Yaoi fans in the article…

- Speaking of me, and Media, I don’t think I linked to it but Mangacast has a podcast of the first panel I was on at the New York Comic Con, “The buyers panel”. Apparently, I’m very funny in it, and there’s a bunch of great info in it anyway. Go check it out.

- I think I’m going to write about it more in a little while, but for the time being check out Brigid’s interview with Fanfare/Ponent-Mon publisher Stephen Robson at Mangablog.

- Aside from some review writing, I’m blissfully free of obligations for the next little while, so I should be able to keep the blog posts coming with some regularity. It’s pretty depressing to go a day or two without blogging, let alone a week or whatever. Oh, speaking of which, I’m about half-done a complete wrap-up of the New York Comic Con. Does anyone have any interest in seeing it at this point, or no?

Thanks,

- Christopher

Saturday afternoon! I missed the Stephen King panel because I didn’t write it on my little piece of paper that tells me when I have to do things and be places. I really need to keep that piece of paper updated. Sorry to Doug who was totally gonna sneak me in, maybe next time! Also, I ended up missing Stephen Colbert, and… anyone else who was famous actually. Nathalie was so disappointed in me when I got back, wanting to “touch someone who touched him” and… yeah. But here’s the thing, lots of people don’t read this blog, they just skim it to see what I’m talking about this week. So I’m gonna fake’m out by bolding the important words and including James Lucas Jones’ Colbert photo from the Oni blog.

Stephen Colbert is awesome!

Heh, but seriously. Following my little chill-out in the blue room, my day was pretty-much done… or so I thought. I went up to meet my dinner-date, Jana Morishima from Diamond Book Distributors, and she said that dinner was pushed back and we were gonna go see a panel instead. I hadn’t really attended any panels I wasn’t on (heh… that sounds really self-important actually, sorry) and I wanted to hang out with Jana a little bit, so off we went. So let’s talk a little bit about the panel.

Chris Recaps The “Who Reads Graphic Novels” Panel.

Featuring: Marc Weidenbaum, VP Magazines and Editor in Chief of Shonen Jump and Shojo Beat; John Cunningham, Vice President of Marketing, DC; Chris Staros, Publisher, Top Shelf Comics; Mark Siegel, Editorial Director, First Second Books. Moderated by Jon Davis from Bookazine.

The panel started off with the participants introducing themselves, and being familiar (if not friends) with everyone except for DC’s Cunningham, I kind of found him off-putting. I’m aware that I bring my own biases to these panels, and being friends with almost everyone on the panel puts me in a wierd position to comment on the other guy, but yeah, his whole demeanor seemed a little… entitled… I guess. But we’ll get to that, you can see if maybe I’m just a jerk. So, in roughly chronological order:

Weidenbaum commented that the readership of Shonen Jump in North America identified as 30% female, and that most of the fan-art was also from females. In answer to the question posed by the title of the panel, his response was that “Artists read graphic novels.”

Staros agreed by saying that at many conventions (and Top Shelf attends more than 20 per year), a lot of the time artists are reading graphic novels, as the other artists and publishers at the show buy from them all the time, making up for sometimes poor overall sales.

Siegel asserted that “the person who thinks that they’ll never read a graphic novel [is] a good test for the worth of one.” That’s a pretty amazing philsophy, it seems to be working out for them too. That said, I wonder if it’s a smarter move to go where the books are selling or aren’t. At any rate, Siegel sort of segued into this great, inspirational bit about graphic novels: “A critical mass of graphic novels has been reached… these are books that will go on forever.” I think I agree, I think there are just too many great, great books in print for the medium to ever disappear. Which gives us a hell of a lot of ground to revitalise the industry…

Cunningham had a positve look at the year’s Bookscan numbers; he threw out a bunch of figures that I had a bit of trouble following (my bad), but I think he said that graphic novels were the second best selling category last year behind general fiction, and it may have sold more than non fiction? Did anyone get down his numbers, because… no one else has mentioned that. Anyway, that’s kind of insane if that’s the case.

Cunnigham’s assertion was that the industry needed to follow DC’s lead in being general, try to publish material for general audiences and don’t aim for demographics. Sort of that line that “we publish books for readers, not demographics” and the thinking behind the phrase “all-ages”. Let’s say that we have a difference opinion there. I think it’s possible, even healthy and intelligent, to create books for demographics. Like “children”. The idea that something can’t be for kids, or women, or whomever, and that it has to be potentially for every audience, is the prime obsticle facing… well, graphic novels. Make something for kids and make it good enough that everyone else will come to it. Anyway, I guess we disagree.

Back to Siegel, who told the audience that before American Born Chinese‘s multiple award nominations the best-selling books in First Second’s line were actually… Sardine and Sardine 2, which I found really surprising. I like the books, but at the same time they seem very not American? I dunno. I’m glad that they’ve found such success, but I can’t help but think that the dearth of available material for that age group in graphic novel format helps a lot…

Marc Siegel then unveiled his theory of the graphic novel “Perfect Storm” which followed out of his critical mass idea. The idea that multiple ‘storms’ all sort of got together and hit at the same time, that gave graphic novels a boost greater than the sum of their parts. For Marc, those perfect storms were the Media and the increased attention it gave to graphic novels, the Creators and quality of material, and the Publishers stepping up to the plate. Totally makes sense to me.

Cunnigham piped in to say that he thinks there’s a fourth “storm”, that culture in general has become more visual. He also credited the “Nerd Diaspora,” the people who grew up on this material now coming into positions of power in determining what gets covered and how. The people who love the material are now controlling the perception of the material.

Cunningham then also let us know that in 2006, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen sold more than in the previous 4 years combined, illustrating that the market is not only still growing, but that the depths of our backlist are a great deal more valuable than perhaps we think they are.

Staros, who was pretty quiet on the panel as a whole, credited librarians as being largely responsible for his company’s growth, specifically the librarians who were working to stock more teen, and even adult sections in their libraries. He actually described them as “The Borg of Librarians” which is such a wonderfully nerdy reference. Essentially that Librarians are really connected through websites and list servs and things, and once one of them likes something or knows something, that information is rapidly disseminated. Points for Staros! The downside is that every once in a while a little CrossGen gets in the system and… it’s like uploading that virus in ID4… Wait, I crossed my nerd references. Whoops!

Weidenbaum made a really interesting note about the readership on his books, in reference to who doesn’t read graphic novels. Weidenbaum feels that the Shonen Jump audience does have some cross-over with other sorts of comics reading, but he doesn’t think that Shoujo Beat readers read any graphic novels other than manga, that a large part of the audience for that magazine wouldn’t have been participating in the medium at all in 2000.

Cunningham made a pitch for bookstore retailers in particular to devote more shelf space to graphic novels, which is interesting. I honestly don’t think there’s a wider audience for about 75% of what DC publishes (in book format) than the direct market, and I don’t know what stocking The Flash in every store would do for Mr. Cunnigham. He did say something I agreed with, about the problem with stocking graphic novels with a more mass-market appeal. For example, should the upcoming Minx line of girl-oriented young readers graphic novels be racked with the rest of the DC/Vertigo output, or in the young adult section where they might more naturally find their intended audience? The next big huirdle for graphic novels isn’t going to be whether they get stocked (or in what quanitites), but in positioning. Mark my words…

Weidenbaum also made a case for the importance of backlist, noting that for a long time most graphic novel publishers simply didn’t think it was important. They learned that lesson from the book industry, along with the other staples like “memoirs are good and sell well” and “women read more than men”. Took us long enough.

Cunningham more-or-less ended the panel by saying that the books, on average, are better now than they were 15 years ago. I’m still not sure I agree with this, but it was a really positive note to go out on.

That covers more or less everything in the panel, I think? I hope that someone was recording it, there was a lot of interesting… nuance… to the conversation that I can’t really communicate here. Still, I hope you enjoyed the recap!

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So following the panel (and some last-minute running around) I went for a very nice dinner with Jana and Kurt Hassler from Yen Press, fresh from Yen’s fall line annoucement. It was a very interesting dinner, with Jana recently having moved from Scholastic to Diamond and Kurt’s considerable experience in book buying and defacto distribution. Plus my own perspective. We had a couple of very good discussions, I think, and I’m really excited to see how Yen Press is going to perform in the next couple of years… they have a lot lined up. Anyway, then after dinner? Drinks! After drinks? Precious, precious sleep.  Heidi was talking on the blogging panel about how exhausted she is after a day of conventioneering, and I felt it at the end of every day. Sure, I called over to Rocketship to see if their party was still going on (it wasn’t; they simply partied too hard and blew out like a candle… in the wind…), but in my heart I knew I wanted the warm embrace of my bed.

Shit, I’m getting old. At least I’m hitting my stride…!

Sunday… I’m gonna be honest here, I just really wanted to sleep. So… I did. I spent the day sleeping until I wasn’t tired anymore, then ambled over to the convention to chat and catch-up with friends and just chill. Afterwards my lovely husband and I joined up with Randy and James from Oni and Gina Gagliano from First Second for a truly wonderful dinner. Served family-style in just…. just stupid proportions. Seriously, head to Carmine’s for a crapload of delicious food if you’re ever in the city. We all tried to talk about something other than comic books, in deference to my husband whom I love, and we almost succeeded for a little while. Luckily Gina reads real books and so we could have excellent conversations about books, which is almost not comics. Almost.

Monday we had lunch and visited Macy’s and I freaked out about deadlines and flew back to Toronto and all’s well that ended well. I’ll be surprised if I’m not back for the 2008 show, I really did have a good time and warmer weather for the projected April 2008 date for the show would be welcome.

Thanks for reading!

- Christopher

There are more thoughts on the show coming… eventually… but since I was dropping in to check my e-mail anyway I thought it’d be worth posting. It was a pretty good show, with far fewer logistical problems than last year, and a very bright future ahead of it. I’m coming back next year.

- Christopher Butcher