So when I talked to Jen DeGuzman at Wondercon on Friday, I came away guiltily feeling as if I’d singlehandedly depressed the poor woman to tears (I have the anti-charm equation, what can I say?). It came as a relief to me, in a purely selfish way, to read her thoughts on the convention as a whole, then:
I ventured out of the SLG booth at WonderCon, and within minutes I was wishing I was somewhere else. I got The Magic Bottle by Camille Rose Garcia, which is awesome, (and from which my icon comes), but after that everything just started depressing me. Outside one of the toy booths, a woman sat on a chair–I guess to make sure no one ripped stuff off. She was wearing black pointy-heeled pumps with wide ankle straps and a very short pink skirt that was riding up in an unflattering way. Did her employers ask her to dress like a street walker? She looked miserable, and why not? Comic book geeks were shuffling by her, or rudely bumping into her without saying “Excuse me,” and where she sat, she was just about gut-level.
I think what depressed me is the separation I feel from comics and graphic novels as storytelling and art when I’m in convention crowds. Sometimes it is not like that. Sometimes I’m gratified that we’re getting these comics into people’s hands. And there are those moments, when more girls pick up Wonderland or GloomCookie, or I say, “Oh, no, they can look at it all they want! We don’t believe in putting comics in plastic bags around here!” when a father warns his kids not to touch copies of The Super-Scary Monster Show too much, and the kids open the book and grin at the art, and one declares, “I want to be a cartoonist when grow up!”
Yeah, that’s good. But out on the floor, when you’re gone past the Oni booth and the Top Shelf booth and the Image and the Last Gasp booth, and you’re caught between a bunch of toy booths and looking for some glimmer of individual creativity, then it feels very bleak. That’s why I wanted to get back to the booth so much, back to some place where there was some meaning for me.
Now I feel bad for making a self-conscious joke about the line of people waiting to pick up Countdown badges at the DC booth.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:18 am
“and looking for some glimmer of individual creativity”
That’s why you go to shows like MOCCA or SPX and avoid the huge superhero/toy fests.
March 7th, 2007 at 10:26 am
How about this? At SDCC ’05, a kid wanted to buy a copy of a Spider-Man novel I wrote, but the *father* was the one making noises about buying a BOOK instead of it being a comic! I had to say, “Hey, it’s not a bad thing that he wants to read, y’know.” The dad responded along the lines of “Yeah, I guess.”
Kinda depressing that a parent has to be guilted into encouraging his children to read, y’know?
March 7th, 2007 at 10:54 am
To sroman: that father’s attitude is something I’ve fought against throughout my career as a librarian. Reading is reading is reading, whether one is reading a comic, the New York Times newspaper, the back of a cereal box, the National Enquirer, or a honking big fat novel such as War and Peace. I’ve sat next to people in airplanes and had them tell me they hate to read even as they pulled out the latest issue of Time from their briefcase. I had to point out that reading a magazine is reading. Too many people equate “reading” with prose books – usually fiction. It’s not a new attitude. And I’m still fighting it. Go figure.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:51 pm
That’s why you go to shows like MOCCA or SPX and avoid the huge superhero/toy fests.
Well, yeah, but I don’t really have a choice about it, you know? It’s my job to be there, so I can’t exactly avoid it. I like to be in one of the few booths that offers something different, so at least there’s that advantage. I enjoy APE the most, and the artist’s alley at WonderCon wasn’t bad. We don’t get out to SPX and MOCCA much, since we’re out here in San Jose.
Thank you for stopping to say hello, Graeme! I think before you got there, the boys and Oni and I were trading stories, so I just forgot to turn off my cynical “I work in the comic industry” face when I talked to you!