Date: Mon, 15 Jul 1996 09:57:11 -0700 To: [c--m--x] at [facteur.std.com] From: [c--ga--e] at [pilot.msu.edu] (Peter M. Coogan) Subject: Re: Historias del Con? >-Poster: [arthur v k] at [xs4all.nl] (| a | c | w |) >Hola! >Where are the San Diego Comic-Con war stories? The sweat-fisted tales of >sex, drugs and comics? Donde estan?! Did we forget to send a delegation? >Who won the Eisners? (Or the Harveys--I always mix them up.) Doesn't >anybody care anymore?! I'll have some salad, yes, with Russian Dressing. Anyway, I'll go ahead and give my con report. I spent the week before the con in Phoenix visiting my brother. The only comics related events of that week were visiting comics shops with him and his girlfriend and calling Todd McFarlane. Why call Todd McFarlane? Well you see, the Comics Arts Conference schedule changed radically during the previous week. At the Chicago Con Donna Barr cancelled out because of plane reservation problems, but luckily I ran into Jessica Abel at a party and she graciously agreed to help out. Unfortunately we didn't discuss the time of the conference, so she called to tell me her plane reservations were also a problem. We switched panels around on the schedule so that she could come in for the afternoon panel (which worked, even though it required Jessica to go to the airport and bluff her way on to the earlier plane, which she heroically and successfully did). Then the two scholars scheduled for the "Authorial Intent vs. Critical Reading" both cancelled out (due to work for one, and the death of his car and computer for the other), so we had to change that panel to a "What Makes for Good Comics" panel. Convieniently, I had brought _Critical Terms for Literary Study_ (Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin eds.) to prepare for the Authorial Intent panel and its chapters on Interpretation and Value/Evaluation proved a treasure trove for throught-provoking ideas about standards of evaluation (and I think we even came to some kind of conclusion about what makes for good comics--more later). But since I wasn't sure whether or not Jessica would be able to make it, I cast about for professionals who lived within a local call who might be going to the con (I convieniently had my database with me). Although I ended up not calling anyone from my database, my brother Dan had just taken a picture of Todd McFarlane for a magazine (Forbes?) and had his card. So I called on the vague memory of a panel from a con a few years ago in which McFarlane and Peter David argued over something, quite possibly the standards for evaluating comics, possibly not though. (Coincidentally, Peter David--who two years ago seemed to be frightened by the title of a paper, "Approaching Milligan's Meta-Comic Through Post-Structuralism and 'Literature.', in the Comics Arts Conference program when I tried to recruit him for it--wandered in to the conference for the Good Comics panel on his way back to his hotel room, although he didn't contribute, but he did seem to enjoy it). McFarlane wasn't going to San Diego until Thursday, so that idea was right out. You may wonder why I wanted McFarlane to come to the conference, well I want everyone to come and participate, and a professional is a professional, and you never know what will happen. I arrived in San Diego on Sunday (far too early by the way), thinking that the Expo started on Monday (it did, but only the set up part). I used this time to scout out the Gaslamp district (which contained several stores I knew nothing of), go grocery shopping, and finish preparing my various packets. This year I took Publisher Packets (containing a donation request, an introduction to Comic Art Studies, and a flyer for the library), and little card flyers (a dissertation abstract and an abstract of the last chapter of my dissertation, which was also a version of my remarks on Astro City for the confereence). I stayed at the Island Inn ($120/week, with a fridge and a microwave--I had intended to take the yellow page listings of the hotels in San Diego so that next year I could post a list of cheap residential hotels. Anyone in San Diego who wants to rip those pages out of their phone book, please send them to me at: 219 Lathrop St, Lansing MI 48912, but do it before I move to Boulder on August 13). I found that up on 5th, 6th, and 7th there were several cheap grocery and general stores. Go up 5th until you reach the Woolwoorth's (5th and Broadway). Across from Woolworth's is a 79 cent store. Go thru WW to 6th, and across the street is another cheap store (and there's a dollar store up the street on the next corner). The best general place is Super Jr's on 7th, which is also affiliated with the cheap store on the corner of 7th and Broadway. Incidentally, Super Jr's has 6-packs of Samuel Smith's for $8! But for a better deal on beer (but you need a fridge!) go to Cost Plus Imports down on 4th and J (roughly). They carry Samuel Adams (regualar, cherry wheat, and porter) and Pete's Wicked (just the summer brew) for $5. Super Jr's did have a tasty Chinese rice-based beer for $4, so it all depends on your taste in beer. There is a way to drink cheap at all the con parties, but I'm not saying it in public (you can email me privately or ask the many-named Glenn). Suffice it to say that I drank way more beer than I should have, but that no one got off as cheaply as me (speaking of which, I'm pretty sure I won the Cheap Bastard of the week award, had there been one. Next year I'll post Pete's Cheap Bastard Guide to the San Diego Comicon). Tuesday I passed out lots of flyers for the Comics Arts Conference, most of which effort was largely in vain. I know I was out til 2 am that night, probably with Glenn, but given that I was out that late every night, and because I threw away my lists of things to do as I updated them, I can't remember which party(s) I was at. I did end up at the Hyatt bar on the 40th floor enjoying DC Comics beer (speaking of which, thanks to the various DC people who bought me beer over the whole week. My question--where do all the Marvel people go in San Diego at night, and why aren't they buying me any beer? A corollary, why, if I have 1300 business cards do I have 14 from DC,all active, but only 4 from Marvel, and all from people who no longer work there? I think this gets to the heart of what's wrong with Marvel, but that's another matter entirely). Wednesday we had the conference, which was sparsely attended, but generally went well. Many people told me that they would be attending, but then ran in to me later and offered apologies and gave reasons for not coming. We're working on this and will have more on it in September. Both the morning panels (Continuity and Exhaustion, and Criticism in Action!) got off track, but were very enjoyable. Both drifted off topic, but for different reasons. The Continuity panel stayed mostly on the topic of continuity, but didn't get too much into exhaustion. The Criticism in Action panel on Astro City drifted off Astro City because Kurt basically agreed with our readings of his work and because we all wanted to listen to what he had to say about the retail situation (among other things). The afternoon panels were better attended. The Good Comics panel went well, with an agreement of some kind being reached that standards of criteria which could be profitably applied to comics included: R.C. Harvey's standard of the interdependence of words and pictures, making use of the medium's potential, and one other thing that I can't remember and can't find my notes on (we did tape the panel and I made sure to enumerate these points at the end, so look for it in transcript form in the future). Don Simpson's slide show on Bizarre Heroes as meta-text gave an overview of his cartooning career. Don stuck a little too close to his books and didn't get deeply enough into what problems he was solving in those stories or into the hypertext metaphor, which he posted on his web page earlier this year. He reperformed the slide show later at the con, and I was glad to see him venturing into this realm. I'd like to see more cartoonist with slide presentations about their work, the way they do it, and what it means. Wednesday Glenn Carnagey and Joe Chiapetti and I ate at Lee's Cafe (on 5th). Lee's is this cheap and dirty diner that's exactly what you think it is, except that since it's run by a Chinese family they have Chinese food in addition to the usual run of cheap American breakfast food. For instance, I had two eggs, toast, hashbrowns [and coffee--except I never have and I never will indulge in the vile brown liquid, so I just had water] for $139. Glenn got three eggs, meat (sausage I think), hashbrowns and coffee [Glenn + coffee + cigarettes = Glenn], and Joe had vegetarian fried rice. It can be a bit difficult asking for special things (like vegetarian fried rice; fried rice with egg, or chicken, or shrimp is easy to ask for) that arent' quite on the menu because the mother's English isn't so good, but the daughter's is, and it all works out in the end. Our bill: $6, which Glenn picked up. We could have gone to the cleaner and slightly more expensive (the 2 egg deal costs about $2.10) Sun Cafe, but I couldn't remember where it was (I think it's on Market between 4th and 5th) and we were hungry. Wednesday night at the closing party I sat down at a table with Robert Myer, President of Big Picture Distributing, and this strange woman, and a few other people. This woman (whose name eludes me) is a cake decorator in San Deigo and she goes to the Hyatt during conventions just to meet people. Well somehow she claimed to be able to talk to and get information from anyone. So I said, thinking that I'd call her bluff and she'd fold, "So you can just walk up to Lou Banks [of Dark Horse] and he'll just tell you anything you want to know?!" Lou happened to be standing talking to Alex Ross about 45 feet away and so was in my direct sight. I just picked him as a handy person. She replied, "Sure. The guy in the green shirt?" That was Alex, so I said, "Yeah, Alex Ross, go ahead." She asked us if he was married, we replied that she was cheating, so she went over. When she returned she didn't know anything about him. The rest of the week went pretty well. I only ended up with 2 1/2" of business cards, a bit low for me, but there seemed to be fewer exhibitors. I talked to some of the people working the con and they claimed that both exibitors and attendance were up. My misimpressioin came from the better organization this year. They moved the Art Show and the Registration area up stairs so that there was more space on the floor and consequently only once was there any sort of crush of people. On the other hand, the programming book was riddled with errors and several people, myself included, were not on programming as we usually are. On the good side, I met Joann Siegel (Jerry Siegel's widow) and her daughter, who were on a panel honoring Jerry Siegel. His grand children were there too. I'm going to follow up with some correspondence concerning my dissertation. The Friends of Lulu party on Thursday was good and ended up at the end of the evenging splitting into a Hyatt and a Doubletree party, based primarily on where people were staying. At the Doubletree I ran into Mike De Leon, who used to self-publish Legally Blind Comics but is now working for Amaze Ink. Glenn has a good story about finding someone wandering around in the grass strip on Harbor Drive at 2:30 or so who had no idea where he was, but Glenn will have to tell that one. Friday had no good parties, except for the Eisner Awards party, which like all public parties at the con, was fairly lame. Someone needs to put one on. Same with Sunday, although I tried and failed. Maybe next year. Saturday I went to Tijuana with Glenn Carnagey and some Chicago people in Glenn's car. Glenn vehemently did not want to take his rental car into Mexico, for fairly obvious reasons, and because you're supposed to have Mexican insurance to drive in Mexico (buy it at the border). As we pull up I see a sign marked "U-turn to USA" but ignored it because I figured Glenn knew where he needed to go park. Unfortunately it didn't quite work out that way, although no one realized it until the Mexican border guard waived us in and we were suddenly in Mexico with no way of turning back with out waiting in a 3 hour line. So we drove around a bit, up a small mountain, turned around and found a place to park in Tijuana. There we saw a sign for Gothic Comics, but couldn't find the store (we think it closed). We all had a drink (well Josh and I had one because we were drinking beer, everyone else had two because that's the only way you can get margaritas in Tijuana). Because Glenn and Kurt (from Chicago Comics) had been there last year, we found this really cool Day of the Dead shop. I bought a little skeleton pin and a little skeleton reading a book. They had a lot of cool death items: ferris wheel of death--a ferris wheel full of skeletons; a hell diorama with mermaids above and devils below; this 3' tall pregnant female devil holding a phallic tail. They also had this "nunstitute" statue along with several "ladies of the night" figurines. All looked like Crumb girls. The nunstitute had her habit skirt pulled down and was offering her bosom. There was a statue of a skeleton in a child's rocking chair too. It's a pretty tough shop to find--it's way back in a courtyard mall, but it's worth finding if you can. On our way to the restaurant we saw a very drunk American woman getting arrested. About 15 cops were standing around, with 6 or so trying to squeeze her into the back of the police car. She just wasn't going in though. Once they got her in she started kicking the window and they opened the door to stop her and she squeezed out. At this point they pulled the guy she was with out and bent him over the back of the car to handcuff him, although I'm not sure why. He was having no fun at all and I'm sure he wished he had left her at the border. We got out of the country just fine. Back in San Diego we went to the Fantagraphics/CBLDF party. Just like last year it was in the covered driving range. And just like last year it didn't get going until about midnight (we arrived at about 10:30). What happens is that Dark Horse and Kitchen Sink and Motown, etc, all have little company parties and then people drift over when they're done. From what I heard, those little parties were slow this year, although that's second hand since I didn't go to any (although I had an invite, courtesy of Jeff Mason, to the Kitchen Sink party, which I didn't know about until the next day). The party was yer usual San Diego Saturday night party. I spent a good chunk of it talking to Andre (that's about all he goes by), who edits Brazil's largest fan magazine. I had introduced him around on Wednesday night to publishers whose work he's intereested in translating and republishing (Kitchen Sink, Fantagraphics, Stray Bullets, Bone, etc.) using my powers for good. At the end of the night Glenn and I tried to find the small presser's beach party, but it was 3:00 and no one seemed to be around. On Sunday I tried to get a "not cool enough for Graphitti" party going at the Baja Brewerey Company. The manager made up the first set up flyers for me and I distrbuted about 120 of them. Unfortunately I wasnt' there when it was supposed to start at 6 because Glenn and I went to the airport to drop off my luggage and to get glenn a new plane ticket and it took a way long time becuause United has an arcane policy about replacing tickets (get electronic tickets if you can). By the time we got there at 7:30 there was big table of people who were just finishing up. Later Glenn and I tried to get into the Graphitti party, but we didnt' try hard. My plane was at 11:00 pm so another party didn't matter too much. I'm going to try to get a real version of that Sunday party going next year. At the airport I ran into Michael Lovitz, who does copyright law. He had a copy of _Superheroes_ a prose anthology of short stories, with stories by Dwight Deckar, Denny O'Neil and several SF authors whose names I recognized but can't remmeber. The Deckar story featured a German immigrant who was granted Captain Marvel like powers, but with an identity of Captain Swastika. Well, given the times (WWII) he couldn't go around with that identity, and since he couldn't change the costume as it was automatic, he had to give up the superhero identity. I may try to find a copy of this book as it looked interesting. Well that's about it for my con report. I slept most of Monday and Tuesday. Next year I'm going to fly out Monday and fly back Monday (you need to register for a whole week to get the residential inn rate, or so I believe anyway) and not take the red eye. And next year they're building a Ralph's (big grocery store) right there on 3rd and Island (or thereabouts) so groceries will be even cheaper and more esily available. No real debauchery, but I'm not sure if we can have real debauchery any more. pete -- Pete Coogan 5th Annual Comic Arts Conference July 3 in San Diego http://ezinfo.ucs.indiana.edu/~fchary/cac.html or http://nickel.ucs.indiana.edu/~fchary/cac.html http://nickel.ucs.indiana.edu/~fchary/cac.html [c--ga--e] at [pilot.msu.edu] _________________________________________________________________ To leave this mailing list, send mail to [m--r--o] at [world.std.com] with the message UNSUBSCRIBE COMIX