Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc
From: [d--i] at [netcom.com] (Dani Zweig)
Subject: SDCC Tidbits
Date: Mon, 23 Aug 1993 17:18:50 GMT

Soulsearchers and Company #2 is excellent.  I'm having more fun with this
title than practically anything else I'm reading.  (And this time you can
make out the names on the logo.)  Oddly enough, the editorial described
sales of the first issue (I assume that means solicitations) as excellent.
Could this have been written before the fact?

A Distant Soil #5 is done, but wasn't yet for sale.

The dealers were a disappointment this year.  In particular, it was very
hard to find indies.  There were relatively fewer dealers, and a much
larger proportion than usual played it 'safe'.  Mind, the definition of
'safe' has changed again:  The largest number did *not* have tables full
of hot current comics.  (Some did, of course, frequently at a discount.)
What many did was to high-grade their stores and bring in only comics
with high guide values (eg, decent-condition gold and silver age).  This
made the Con a good place for high-end collectors, but less so for the
likes of me.  (These people have no appreciation for Art!  I was unable
to find the Inferior Five issues I was missing.)  Ah well, I picked
up a *lot* of sf/f paperbacks.

Panels were highly uneven.  I attended part of a panel on being a writer
in a medium where the artist has become king, but it kept getting side-
tracked into war stories about what artists did to this or that writer.
(One of the best of these was from Marv Wolfman, who'd written an
intricately plotted scene placed on Paradise Island, in the midst of
DC Challenge.  Apparently the artist didn't feel like drawing it, so
he put in a two-page explosion, instead.)  Perhaps the best point was
made by Gerber:  People were talking about how much less story there
is in comics today, and he noted that this is true across all media.
The people who are buying comic-long fight scenes are also watching
movie-long chase scenes, etc.

I'd have liked to attend the DC panel, but they announced that the
first 500 people would get platinum editions of somethingorother,
so the lineup began six hours early.  What the announcement *didn't*
say, was that only those 500 people would be allowed in.  Anyone
here know what they said at the talk?

I asked about Blue Lily #3, and was told that it would be out as soon
as the artist finished *drawing* it.

The Bierbaums say that sales on Legionnaires are also weak.  Sigh...
They also say that they've been trying to write the title to bring in
the younger readers -- and particularly girls -- but that the editor
wants them to make it more mainstreamish, and they probably will.

They also said something interesting about the letter column in LSH.
Different editors have different policies.  One told them that the
column was strictly a marketing tool, and that they had to print only
positive letters.  Another (no names were given) told them to print what 
they wanted, as long as the column began with a positive letter and
ended with one.  LSH, btw, gets about three or four times as many
letters as Sandman, which is itself considered to get relatively many.

The trivia contest was the standard walkover for the Dark Ink Irregulars.
Funniest question was to recite any one verse from the Calvin and Hobbes
G.R.O.S.S. rhyme.  

-----
Dani Zweig
[d--i] at [netcom.com]

   God helpe the man so wrapt in Errours endless traine  -- Edmund Spenser