Heroes Con: Elsewhere On The Grid
Ah, convention season… when the wind-down from one show overlaps with the preparation for the next.
In case you missed our two-part report on last weekend’s Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC, Van Jensen provided ComicMix readers with a great summary of all the important happenings from the the convention, including some interesting thoughts on DC’s dilemma from the publisher’s rumor-plagued Executive Editor, Dan DiDio, as well as the unfortunate overshadowing of the sizeable small-press crowd.
There are some great roundups of the show to be found elsewhere on the ‘Tubes, too. Here are a few links to checkout if you want to read up on the show a bit more:
The Beat’s Heidi MacDonald has a great wrap-up of Heroes Con: Day Two, including a few more quotes related to all of the DiDio madness that has swept the industry press.
DiDio described DC’s audience as a “collector market” but defended DC’s use of character deaths and upheavals at the same time by saying these plot devices always new for some one.
Tom Spurgeon, who moderated about umpteen-million panels over the course of the three-day event (and that’s a conservative estimate), has posted a general report of the show broken down into 50 parts. The highlights include his visit to the Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find comic shop, in which he provides a nice tour of the local comics landmark.
… heroes was a much better store than I thought it would be. I’d seen photos, but they emphasized the impressive Spider-Man/Doctor Octopus ceiling sculpture, which did not prepare me for the assault of product the above photo might hint at. It was really, really well-stocked. Best of all, it seemed like they were doing a ton of regular business for a Thursday night. I thought it would be a good store, but it seemed like a model one to me in a lot of ways
Spurgeon goes on to report on several of the panels, including the "Covering Comics: Criticism, Reportage and Gossip" comics journalism panel:
… for me, the highlight of Covering Comics: Criticism, Reportage and Gossip seemed to be a growing schism between sites that feel they must work within the industry they cover and those that opt for a more traditional, maybe confrontational and maybe as a result removed from a lot of the discussion model.
I found this element of Spurgeon’s recap especially interesting, as it echoes my own thoughts about the comics journalism panel I participated in during New York Comic Con. A large part of that discussion also involved a debate between the editors of sites which offer a variety of "exclusive" content but do little to separate themselves from the industry they cover and editors of sites which are able to offer less access to publishers’ projects but a far more independent perspective. It’s a dilemma resident in nearly every type of trade journalism, but worth noting all the same.
Be sure to head over to The Comics Reporter for the rest of Spurgeon’s comprehensive report.
I find it interesting that the none of the responsibility for any of the DC chatter hasn't reached any of the 'higher-ups'Guess the view from under your desk is always a safe one.