Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.info From: [fuy 1] at [umbc.edu] (Francis A Uy) Subject: CON: Diamond Seminar report, day one Date: 20 Jun 1994 08:53:05 -0400 Here are my impressions of the Diamond Retailers Seminar. I attended the seminar wearing four hats: 1) my pass is from Labyrinth Books, an SF/gaming store, 2) I work at Geppi's Comics, two blocks away from the Convention Center, 3) I work at Mailboxes Etc, who was hired to help with the end of show shipping, and 4) I'm here on rac*, reporting back. -- 11th Annual Diamond Retailers Seminar, day one Saturday June 11 9-11 Opening Comments Dark Horse movie pre-screening Super Seminar Sale Vintage Disney Exhibition The Movie clips all look good. The promo editors can keep their jobs. The Shadow: looks solid, basically "Batman the Movie, in 1950". But Alec Baldwin is a much stronger presence than Michael Keaton (duh). Hell, Alec should have been Batman. Skeleton plot: Alec trained by the Golden Child, becomes a rich playboy. Shiwan Khan comes back to life, uses own power to cloud men's minds & terrorizes NYC with atom bomb. Best pick-up line: "Hey baby, want to see my beryllium sphere?" Time Cop: standard cyber-action flick. Some decent morph effects. JC VanDamme does his trademark splits, and his accent is decreasing. Skeleton plot: JCVD comes back in time to catch crooks from the future. Isn't this a TV show? The Mask: the promo was completely driven by Jim Carrey's face & massive animatronic effects -- it's like Roger Rabbit plus morphing. If the story is strong enough to keep up the laughs for 2 hours, it's a sure hit. The Disney Exhibit has a bunch of nice original art, way expensive. I run into George Zollinger, a lurker from Anime Images in Columbus OH. Various retailer stuff happens. [10:30-6 I go to work at Geppi's. Seminar attendees are here in force. I have to behave like a Secretary of State greeting foreign dignitaries. They decimate select back issue sections in preparation for the coming autograph sessions. ] [2:30 Conrad Stinnet (WaRP Marketing Director) & Richard Pini stop by, Richard signs everything Elfquest in sight. kewl. ] [4:00 The President of Archie comes in and yells at us for not carrying enough of his comics. Eep. ] 11-6 Workshops & Seminars, I missed 6:00 Dinner net.meeting: Jeff Mason, Patman Sun, Tom Carr (?), Derek Z-man, Chris Day. Jeff is coming to stay at my apartment. I hereby testify that Jeff Mason is mostly harmless, and safe to invite to your home. We all go in and sit together at dinner (and for most meals to come). The Baltimore Convention Center main hall has been divided into two equal parts, one for the Exhibit Room, the other for the Dining Room. Yes, that's one *big* dining room. 7:30 Greetings from Steve Geppi Steve plays his new AT&T commercial, twice. Magazine ads will follow. He's also being interviewed by CNN's Pinnacle show as an entrepreneur, and by ESPN as a new baseball owner. "We had to have the dinner in here to make sure my head would fit." Laughter, and a lot of nods. 8:00 Marvel/Fleer/ToyBiz presentation Matt Ragone, Direct Sales VP talks about Business, Business, Business. All sorts of sales analysis & marketing stuff. He makes a very slight apology for the implementation of Marvel Mart. Some quotes: "10% of consumers between 6 & 60 have bough a comic in the past 6 months." "There's lots of new product on the market that could hurt you. Don't disrupt your sales patterns by recommending untried comics, stick with the regular sellers at Marvel Comics." We were stunned when he actually came out and said that -- basically, 'we fear change, so should you.' I would have laughed out loud if I my jaw hadn't gone slack. Video for Alice Cooper's "Lost in America", on the coming Last Temptation. The lyrics were godawful. I hope Neil Gaiman didn't write them. 8:10 LONG video presentation of the Marvel Universe, in baseball motif. Force Works -- 'can we function as a team?' angst fest. Fantastic Four & Fantastic Force will be independent teams. SpiderMan -- The Clone will take over two of the 4 titles, leading to a dramatic conclusion in Amazing #400. I think it'd be really great if the clone started wearing huge claw gloves & goes insane... X-Men -- no changes, since it ain't broke. Heck, let's add some more! Disney -- new license, trying to blow Gladstone out of the water. TV shows -- expect tie-in's between Action Hour & Force Works. 8:30 Skip Dietz (Marketing Manager) & Scott Lobdell explain Generation X and the Phalanx Covenant x-over, and some other stuff. 8:50 Merchandising Thing vs Hulk and Spidey vs Venom bookends. Carnage, Wolverine and Xavier Institute wristwatches. Gambit and Wolverine statues, by Randy Bowen. All sorts of merchandising is on the way, under the Marvel Made logo. The Marvel retail chain is looming closer. 9:00 Fleer, I didn't listen very closely. Beavis & Butthead series 2 will contain a nasty scrath-n-sniff subset. Eyuhh. Time to try my luck at the autograph lines. Unfortunately the schedule wasn't available in advance, and since I want to get TPBs signed rather than single issues, I couldn't carry them all down here today. Heavy. Looks like I'm missing my chance on Understanding Comics & my leather Complete Frank Miller Batman. 10-12 Autograph Sessions Exhibit Room BLEAH! Easily the most poorly run autograph session I've ever been to. Aren't we retailers, the infrastructure of your success? Aren't we human beings? No, we are cattle, herded slowly to the trough. Moo. Two rows of 10 creators, each row is single file in an amusement park style queue. It took me a full hour to get from the door opening to my first signiature, plus showing up 1/2 hour early for the pre-line. >From the table, Chris Claremont calls out "Prudence and Caution will skip straight from #1 to #21, we'll fill the rest in later." We laugh. Eventually I reached the front. Scott McCloud: He isn't doing much new right now, just touring for Understanding Comics. Destroy! has been translated to German. Scott Lobdell: "Destroy set the standard for the rest of us to follow ;-) " He signs another Generation X ashcan and hands it to me. I ask him, hesitantly & politely, Scott, how much control do you have? He immediately gets my drift. "I work well with Bob Harras. Bob and I think very similarly. Sometimes I come up with wild new ideas, and he rejects them at first, but I'll bring it back a year or two later, and it's almost always okay." For example, the Phalanx Covenant, a group of mutant-haters who become Sentinels, is actaully a 2 year old concept. I say that's interesting, because I know a lot of people give Bob flak. Scott's volley: "Bob has fired some of the top names in the industry, and they're bitter. If I stay on the X-books long enough, some day he'll fire me, and then I'll be 'blah blah blah Bob sucks' too." Colleen Doran: Colleen is happy to see my copy of Immigrant Song. She looks much better than the Cerebus photo. Jo Duffy: not much to say about Nestrobber right now, because she's got jobs with a whole bunch of titles at different companies, I forget which. Brinke Stevens is next on the line. Colleen and Jo have politely avoided looking in this direction. I marvel at the twisted genius of putting a cheese-queen adjacent to a pair of competent female creators. She gives me a signed photo. Joy. Len Wein likes my Suicide Squid shirt, says he'll write SS's sidekick Squid Kid into something next year. Chris Claremont: I met Chris once before, near the end of his run on the X-Men. I asked him 'What was it like working with Jim Shooter?' He shot me down with "He's tall. Next?" It would be ironic, but I decide not to ask again. As I'm arriving, Chris is reading the Gen X ashcan. I ask about it -- What do you think of that? Several emotions fly across his face, he starts to reply at least twice but cuts himself off. "It's good. Actually I wish it wasn't as good as it is. It's going to succeed, and that success will destroy his work & take it away from him. The better Generation X does, the more that Marvel and the editors and the shareholders will want a piece of it. Sooner or later he'll realize that work-for-hire will get him nowhere." I relate Scott's comments on this possibility. Chris changes colors. I'm worried that he's about to morph into a T1000 and skewer me. Enourmous X-Men-esque angst balloons are easily visible above his head. Then he gets up, walks down the line and talks to Scott for a few seconds. Eep! He's quite calm when he gets back. "Scott put a lot of work into these characters, but they aren't his, and he can't control them." Chris goes on with a rant about creator's rights, sounding very much like Dave Sim. "Your heart will go out of it as the editors come in." He brings up Jack Kirby's New Gods as an example. "You can tell right when he lost control of it by the quality of the story. The first few (was it 5? I forget) issues were detailed back story for a long epic, then BAM, pointless fight scenes." I skip past Jim Shooter towards Berni Wrightson. As I'm going, Chris calls out one more time. "We should all heed the words of George Santayana." I nod sagely, planning to look it up later, when Jim's assistant asks for me. Chris says "Those who do not remember the past..." Of course. Berni Wrigtson. I tell him 'You look a lot younger than I expected.' He thanks me profusely, but it's true, he looks late 20's. "I started doing comics at 19." He hands me a Captain Sternn. What's up next now that it's done? He grins wickedly and says "Batman/Aliens!" No way, I gape. "It'll be completely wild!" Lastly, Jim Lee. He's really short, and totally surrounded by overweight retailers with multiple copies of WildCATs in their hands & dollar signs in their eyes. I walk on by. I contemplate entering the second line, which contains the entire Legend crew. Considering my elapsed time on the first, I figure I can reach them sometime around quarter to one, if they stay. Gotta love it. Instead I sneak to the end of the row & slip my Hard Boiled TPB up to Geoff Darrow & Frank Miller. They do a quick Nixon & Marv sketch. The Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot is coming soon, in Geoff Darrow time. I'd call it early next year. By the time I get to the exhibit room, they're already calling out the 'about to close' warnings. Joy. DC's setup is imposing, like a section of Stonehenge done in steel framework with big screen video. cyber. The booths below are covered with b/w ashcans for the summer's books. I feel strangely apathetic, and skip them. I rush around the rest of the room for 15 minutes, catching minimal detail. Dave Sim wins the "friendliest booth" award -- 3 big comfy sofas, and a coffee table with the new issue of Cerebus. Most of the self-publishers crew will sprawl out here at some point in the Seminar. At midnight all the agents come and force us out. Saturday is over. [end of part 1 of 4.] -- -F