The cool kids are already at NYCC, you know. Chris Butcher talked about his experiences at Day 0:
Aside from the drinking, the after-event social was a good place to mix and mingle with folks from every facet of the comics industry. I met book distributors, buyers, publishers, literary agents, aspiring creators, even a few direct market retailers… My panel-appearance let me converse with my comics-betters freely, and it was amazing to pick up so many divergent viewpoints on the industry that we have, let alone the future of it. I have to say it left me really excited about the medium AND the industry, and I’ve never had a clearer, better sense that this is going to be an industry that will very soon exist as more than a 500 page monthly catalogue. I have no doubt that Diamond will continue to be a huge industry mover-and-shaker, but it looks like we’ll make it out of PREVIEWS and into the real world sooner than later…
Heidi does the same, and with photos:
We didn’t have a huge takeaway from today. There was no “Ah ha!” moment of triumph, but rather the kind of security and quiet confidence that comes from knowing that graphic novels are here to stay. It was fun to chat about best selling authors doing comics with big time agents, and cool to see generations and genres cross as Steady Beat’s Rivkah chatted with Cancer Vixen’s Marisa Acocella Marcheto…
In our coverage on this conference last year we noted that “For years, the mood in comics was ‘we can’t’. The mood at NYCC is ‘How can we?’”
The mood in 2007 left “we can’t” so far behind, your head was spinning. It was all about growing — with comics for kids and women, with fiction, with non fiction, with American Genre Comics backlist, and on and on. The secret word is “Yay!”
Meanwhile, ICv2 reported on their findings that gave everyone such good feelings:
Pop culture trend tracker ICv2 released its latest size estimates for the comic and graphic novel markets at the ICv2 Graphic Novel Conference at New York Comic Con on Thursday, and revealed that graphic novels now outsell the traditional comic periodical format… According to the ICv2 White Paper presented at the Conference, graphic novel sales through retail stores in the U.S. and Canada were around $330 million at retail last year, compared to $310 million in sales of comic periodicals. This is the first time since the origination of the comics medium that book format comics have outsold traditional comic books. The $640 million total also represents the highest sales for the comic and graphic novel market since the early 90s.
I’m sure there’ll be much more commentary and analysis of those numbers soon.
