Tagged: Adriane Nash

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Mike Gold: What Goes Around…

gold-art-130911-150x110-6293448Having spent the past four days in Baltimore attending my favorite comics convention – the one that’s actually about comics – I had the opportunity to spend some serious conversation time with a lot of my friends. However, because the show is a four-hour-plus drive from La Casa Del Oro, the best conversation is with my daughter and ComicMix cohort Adriane Nash. Whereas much of her work is behind the scenes, Adriane is the one who kills here each year on April Fool’s Day and at least one of her hoaxes has graduated to the level of Urban Myth.

As her dad, this makes me very proud. But (sing along, folks), I digress.

After returning from Baltimore Monday night, while cuing TiVo for Ricky Gervais’ appearance on David Letterman, we had one of those “let’s tie-up everything we’ve been talking about” conversations. This one was about how, given time, them younger generations eventually discover the really great stuff that was done before they were born. Adriane started with Jack Kirby, which, of course, made me feel even older than my present dotage. Younger readers have to discover Kirby, the most influential creator in the history of American comics. And they do… with a little help from their friends.

There’s nothing wrong with that. When I was about half Adriane’s age, I interviewed disc jockey Bob Hale (WLS, NBC, and the guy who emceed the Iowa concert the day the music died). Bob said he didn’t despair for those kids who like crappy rock’n’roll because they eventually grow up and discover the Good Stuff. That was an important lesson (thanks, Bob!), one I’ve remembered for the past, ummm, well, 45 years. And so it is with comic books.

As it stands today, no less than three major comics publishers are reprinting various aspects of the canonical EC Comics. Will Eisner’s The Spirit stays out there on the racks, as well it should. Carl Barks – same thing. Because Jack Kirby’s output was so astonishingly massive, it seems there’s a new reprint of his stuff about every six weeks.

This is true with the classic newspaper strips (I define The Spirit as a comic book that was published in newspapers), these days largely through the efforts of the gifted and knowledgeable Dean Mullaney and our friends at IDW. Milton Caniff, Alex Raymond, Chester Gould, Al Capp… you can bust your back dragging out all those massive hardcover tomes of Terry and the Pirates, Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, and Li’l Abner, and that’s a small price to pay for the thrill of such discovery. And then you go over to Fantagraphics for Walt Kelly’s Pogo, Roy Crane’s Captain Easy, Charles Shultz’s Peanuts and Elzie Segar’s Popeye.

So… as you age you’ve got a responsibility to pass along the good stuff, to educate the young’uns to the great stuff that provided not only the foundation for our great medium, but the first half-dozen floors as well. I guarantee you that just about every talented artist and writer impressing the hell out of you today has devoured these folks and many others possessing equal gift: Alex Toth, Joe Kubert, Mort Meskin… the Internet doesn’t have enough bandwidth for me to list them all.

It is our responsibility, our duty to pass along the good self.

That’s how art works.

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY EVENING: Martin Pasko

 

Mike Gold: San Diego Be Damned!

Gold Art 130717Way back on August 26, 2010, Futurama gave us a look at the San Diego Comic-Con that will be held one thousand years later. Of course, everything about San Diego grew during the ensuing millennium – except for the San Diego Convention center. Oh, and the number of comics-related guests was reduced… to one.

Fittingly, that one was Sergio Aragones. I have no doubt that somebody will still be uncovering unpublished Aragones art in 3010.

More than a quarter of a million people pay to attend the annual SDCC. Yes, they have a registered trademark on the word “Comic-Con,” but since that term had been in common usage long before they applied for the mark, and is still being used by other shows across America, in my opinion this is theft. As a former promoter of a “Comicon” – the Chicago Comicon, from 1976 through 1985 – I will gladly testify on behalf of anybody who chooses to challenge this mark.

The show is supposed to be about comic books. It is a non-profit show, and it is a tax-deductible 501(c)(3) organization. Its mission statement is: “Comic-Con International: San Diego is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artforms, primarily through the presentation of conventions and events that celebrate the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.”

This is a boldfaced lie. SDCC – I refuse to call it Comic-Con – has very, very little to do with comics. “Related popular artforms,” maybe, but that’s so nondescript it could cover flip books and porn. SDCC is about Hollywood. It’s about movies and movie producers. It’s about television and cable television networks. It’s about DVDs and Blu-Rays and phony mass-produced Hollywood collectibles and aging former celebrities desperately and sadly trying to be remembered. It is barely about “the historic and ongoing contribution of comics to art and culture.”

All those people, along with the press, the guests, the celebrities, and the exhibitors, occupy a building built to safely house a fraction their number. How the fire department certifies them is beyond me. Sardines would feel crowded on that convention floor, and if you suffer a heart attack or a stroke while there you had better have filed a will.

It comes as no surprise that I do not go to SDCC any longer. It’s not just because the hotels and the restaurants massively jack up their prices during the show, it’s not because of the crowds, it’s not because of the lack of sufficient plumbing and it’s not even because the San Diego Comic Con has precious little to do with comic books.

It’s because the next time some clown slaps me in the face with his backpack, I am going to take said backpack and shove it up his ass while loudly singing the Super Chicken theme song.

Not that we won’t be well-represented at the convention. ComicMixers in attendance will include Michael Davis (who will hate me for writing this column), Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, Marty Pasko, Sara Raasch, and Emily S. Whitten. I’m not certain about Denny O’Neil and Bob Greenberger. The rest of us are staying put… although Martha Thomases will be travelling over 6,000 miles in order to stay put. That’s a neat trick.

So feel free to approach any of these folks – most of us don’t bite, unless you’re wearing a backpack – and tell ‘em what you like about ComicMix and what you don’t like and what you’d like to see. Ask about ComicMix Pro Services, but do your homework: click on that big ol’ button up there at the top of this page.

But there’s another reason I’m staying out east this week. Those of us staying behind in New York City?

We’re changing the locks!

THURSDAY MORNING: Dennis O’Neil

THURSDAY AFTERNOON: Martin Pasko

 

 

Marc Alan Fishman: The Real Samurnauts – From Fans to Friends to Family

Fishman Art 130615Forgive me folks. Today’s column is going to be a sappy, crappy, and sweeter than caramel drenched hot fudge balls dipped in rock candy. Consider this my spoiler alert: there’s absolutely no snark in today’s column. There’s only the happy tale of how a pair of acquaintances became so much more to me and to my Unshaven brethren.

The only thing truly standing in my way of bringing the noise and the funk to my half of every Samurnaut book were real life models. I make no bones about my abilities: I draw from life. A blank paper to me is less an invitation to showcase a spindly Spider-Man or healthy Hulk. I was trained to draw what I see, and sadly my mind is far too left brained to maintain an image well enough to reproduce from grey-matter to hand. But I digress.

When it came time to shoot The Samurnauts, I opted to reach out to those whose faces I wasn’t so acclimated to. That, and I honestly didn’t want my immediate family and friends traipsing around as superheroes. My call-to-action was met (largely) by members of a local(ish) comedy troupe I had opened for on a handful of occasions. Oh yeah. I should totally mention: for a hot minute I considered pursuing stand-up comedy. Don’t look it up on YouTube. Seriously. Don’t type “Marc Fishman Stand-Up.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you. OK? OK. Where was I?

Oh yes. Six members of “Big Dog Eat Child” were kind enough to lend their faces to The Samurnauts. With said Big Dogs I was granted a set of models built for emotion and staging. Putting a nerf gun into their capable hands and shouting “be heroic” showed their natural talent to contort and twist into brand new people. Amongst them, Erik Anderson and his wife Cherise (not of the troupe, but equally interested in helping out when our initial model had to cancel) stood out as being very much into becoming superheroes. After a fun afternoon of digital photography, Nerf wars, and prancing about… I made a last-minute offer to my new models. “If you are ever curious as to how this will turn out, feel free to look me up on Skype.”

It could not have been maybe a week or two later that my computer buzzed at me. Erik and Cherise, in the heart of the weekend (when most everyone is enjoying not having to make comic books), wanted to check in. And there they stayed glued to their screen watching me build a comic book from roughs to inks to colors to lettering. Over the course of the weeks that it took, they stayed up on Skype night after night watching the construction. Suddenly I was no longer making a comic alone in my basement… I was drawing for an audience. An audience willing to literally stay up with me until they couldn’t stay awake. As they would later tell me… I was better than HBO.

When the first issue of Samurnauts came hot off the press, Erik and Cherise were at the convention with bells on. Not happy enough to simply see a final copy of their issue, they were determined instead to see Unshaven Comics succeed. They grabbed a handful of business cards and took to the show floor to spread the word. A husband-wife guerrilla marketing team… doing the job we figured would not be gifted to us for many many years of convention-trenching. Oh how wrong we were.

Over the years (which I can’t even believe is how long we’ve been doing this…), Erik and Cherise have become less friends of Unshaven Comics, more family. Every convention, literally every convention we have attended since The Samurnauts was a thing, they have been in tow. We launched a Kickstarter to turn Erik into a cosplayer. And when it succeeded, soon our Blue Samurnaut was showing up in every costume-round up album across the mid-west. And this past weekend in Charlotte, North Carolina, both Erik and Cherise stood behind tables pitching our wares at Heroes Con in lieu of our own Kyle Gnepper (who was deservedly enjoying a vacation gifted to him by his non-comic-book-making day job). They did it without being asked. They did it because they love our book. They did it because they want to see us succeed.

There’s that gem of a lyric… “I get by with a little help from my friends…” And never before would I have found it to be so profound. Unshaven Comics is substantially lucky to have a plethora of amazing friends out there in the industry. We’d be remiss not to thank Mike Gold, Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, and the whole lot of ComicMix‘ers for the continuing success we’ve achieved in the five years we’ve seriously pursued our dream. Erik and Cherise engrained themselves into our studio and company without asking for anything more than the promise of continued hero-dom. A price we still feel guilty for today.

I know those of us who make comic books have many reasons to be cranky, snarky, angry, or bitter. But here I sit in awe of two people who Skype’d in with me once because they loved the idea of being heroes to the world… and ended up instead being mine.

SUNDAY: John Ostrander

MONDAY: Mindy Newell

 

Mike Gold: Heroes Con And The Big ComicMix Reveals!

Gold Art 130605Would you like to meet ComicMix writers and staffers Martha Thomases, Marc Alan Fishman, Robert Greenberger, Adriane Nash, Glenn Hauman, and me?

Why? Geez, get a life.

All seriousness aside, the Heroes Convention in Charlotte North Carolina is one of the few large conventions that is actually still about comics. As people who memorize my columns know all too well (when they’re not wandering about Times Square mumbling to themselves), I dislike those huge shows that call themselves comic book shows or, worse, comic cons yet are nothing more than mass media B-list star feeding frenzies. Not that those shows don’t have their place; they do. Just don’t call them comic book shows unless they are actually about comic books.

You know, like the Heroes Convention in Charlotte North Carolina… this very weekend, from Friday, June 7 through Sunday, June 9, at the Charlotte Convention Center, 501 S. College Street.

It’s also a damn good show, well-run by a seasoned staff under the direction of show founder and all-around swell guy Shelton Drum.

Here’s your reward for making it this far into my column: on Saturday at 1:30 pm in

Room 207CD, ComicMix is going to have a panel called “Your Comics Your Way.” We will be making several major (honest) announcements regarding this here ComicMix thing, including the first public reveal of our new ComicMixPro Services!

Wow!

Just go there. You’ll have a swell time. Seriously swell. Tell ‘em Groucho sent you. Maybe they’ll give you a DeSoto.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: The Big Booth 1105 Crossover

imagesIt was fated to happen. ComicMix is participating in our very first crossover.

This coming weekend – as in Friday, Saturday and Sunday – ComicMix will once again be appearing at the C2E2 comics and pop culture convention at Chicago’s McCormick Place, on the scenic downtown shore Lake Michigan near the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Natural History Museum, and that formerly beautiful football (and, next March, hockey) stadium Soldier (sic) Field – before that hideous flying saucer landed on top of it.

More prestigious still, we ComicMixers will be teaming up with our good buddies at Unshaven Comics. This means the “good” Marc Alan Fishman will be appearing at the same booth as the “evil” Marc Alan Fishman. And if they inadvertently touch… well, let’s just say people will stop bitching about Mrs. O’Leary’s improperly defamed cow.

Representing ComicMix: Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, either the good or the evil Marc Alan Fishman (I can never tell which one is which) and yours fairly truly. We will be making two – count ‘em two ­– major announcements at the show, each of which will be promptly detailed in this slice of the etherverse. I won’t tip our collective hand, but I will say this: the second of these announcements will reveal what “CMPS” stands for. I mean this in the acronymical sense, and not in any ethical sense. Certainly not.

We’ll be at booth 1105 in case you didn’t read the headline, and you should because the editor-in-chief spends a lot of time obsessing over them. We eagerly await the opportunity to meet you. Unless you’re rude or insulting; then, we eagerly await the opportunity to let out our pent-up convention aggression. In my case, well, I’ve been going to comic book conventions for 45 years now. But I also used to be among the crowd that founded and ran the amazingly perfect Chicago Comicon, so I know this won’t be an issue.

Truth be told, I like Chicago conventions that are actually held within the city limits. There’s a bunch of reasons for this: the fans are amazingly friendly, the food is unbelievable, the city is everything great that New York City says it is but isn’t and can never be, and – most important – the Fire Marshal, for some odd reason, actually enforces the fire laws at massive conglomerations of humans and paper goods.

Holy Odin’s Eyehole, I’m gotta get it from insecure New Yorkers, aren’t I? Well, as you read this I’m already in Chicago (meetings, meetings, meetings; all at amazing restaurants) so I can only respond in person on the convention floor. Please re-read the sentence above about rude or insulting people and my 45 years of pent-up convention aggression.

We’re gonna have us a swell time. And to take tongue out of cheek for a rare moment, I hope you-all can share those swell times with us.

I hope to see you this weekend.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: Me MoCCA Mike

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Well, it’s convention season once again. This statement doesn’t mean as much as it used to, when there actually was a convention “season.” Now it pretty much runs from the beginning of spring (Glenn was at WonderCon and will be posting his pictures sometime before next year’s show) and ends the following March at San Francisco’s MegaCon… give or take.

My schedule includes Chicago’s C2E2 next week, maybe Heroes in Charlotte in June, San Diego in hell, Baltimore in August and New York in October, held each year at the only spot in all Manhattan that is inaccessible to humanity. For me, it started last week at one of my favorites, New York’s Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art, a.k.a. MoCCA Fest.

Being in our back yard, ComicMix was well represented: Vinnie Bartilucci, Glenn Hauman, Adriane Nash, and Mike and Kai Raub. Traditionally, Martha Thomases is in attendance but this year the she was in Japan at the time and the commute would have been a bitch.

I enjoy MoCCA because there it covers the widest spectrum of self-published, small-published, and web-published “independent” comics. If your thrills are limited to capes and masks from the Big Two, this event would either bore you… or transform you, opening your eyes to all sorts of really interesting stuff people do with our coveted medium. So if you’re into comics, it’s certainly worth a try.

If you could bottle the enthusiasm in the room, you’d have enough energy to replace Chernobyl. By and large, these people aren’t getting rich, although some make a living and others would like to eventually. They’re there out of their love for the comics art medium and to employ our unique storytelling concepts to communicate their stories. Each time I’m there, and I think I’ve been to eight or nine of their shows, I come away renewed and rejuvenated. So up yours, Ras Al Ghul.

Despite the quantity of behatted hipsters, this isn’t necessarily a young person’s show. Fantagraphics, perhaps the leading bookstore publisher of these sorts of efforts, was well-represented, as was Abrams and other staid outfits. While trying not to be overly creepy in my contacts with the younger folk, I also hung out with fellow geriatrics including Craig Yoe, Denis Kitchen, J.J. Sedelmaier, and Paul Levitz.

It comes as absolutely no surprise that of all the shows I attend, MoCCA routinely attracts more women per capita. Well, having made that statement I might have just put the kibosh on that, so let me say there isn’t as much semi-naked cosplay as I see at capes shows. I suspect that this is because the show is all about your desire to express yourself and tell your own story and not so much about who was the Avenger villain who crossed over into Amazing Spider-Man #214. (No, no; don’t Google that – I pulled it out of my ass.)

A high-point was when Vinnie, Glenn, Adriane, Mike, Kai and I semi-inadvertently all wound up at the Popeye’s Fried Chicken across from the venue. There was a point when ComicMix had actually taken over the joint. I’m glad to say that we didn’t spontaneously burst out in rousing song – MoCCA isn’t a science-fiction convention.

As it turns out, this column is sort of a crossover. My friend and fellow columnist Denny O’Neil was also there, and he will be waxing poetic about his MoCCA experience tomorrow, same-Bat-Time, same-Bat-Channel.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: The Lenticular Corridor

Gold Art 130403Well, this is fun.

As I type these words – 20 hours prior to posting – ComicMix is in the following situation. Glenn Hauman is about to board a plane taking him from WonderCon to San Francisco to Newark, New Jersey. We should see him sometime late next year. Martha Thomases and Arthur Tebbel are wandering around Japan hoping the whole North Korea is-gonna-nuke-us thing is a joke. Bob Greenberger is somewhere vaguely north of the White House staring at boxes and wondering how he got so old so fast. Adriane Nash is floating around North Haven Connecticut holding a candle. Vinnie Bartilucci is in Who Heaven studying the 50th anniversary show read-through photos pixel by pixel. Marc Alan Fishman is trying to come up with a way to spend more time with his son Bennett without having to go to Japan. Some of the above are planning on this weekend’s MoCCA Arts Fest.

That leaves me here at ComicMix Central. Always a dangerous thing.

And then my iMac started acting up.

Oy.

I’ve had more than 29 years of experience with all things Macintosh, so I should be able to fix things while Wizardboy Hauman is on the Left Coast. And, while I’m at it, I should be able to shoot down flying monkeys with my psionic death rays.

Turns out that psionic death rays thing might have been easier to pull off. I’ve spent 24 hour doing PRAM zaps and SMC resets, swapping cables, connecting and disconnecting USB cables (2.0 and 3.0), connecting and disconnecting USB devices, fussing with Bluetooth and WiFi, blowing off sundry start-up apps and rebooting like a cobbler on meth. And I still get five copies of the “You’ve got a USB device that’s draining too much power, asshole” error messages cascading across my screen on the average of every 20 seconds.

OK. Every once in a while computers, cars, and human beings break down and I’m way, way past my due. When Adriane isn’t wandering around New Haven county, we’ve got a zillion machines here including iPads and iBooks and iBalls. Unfortunately, Adriane is wandering around New Haven county with some of the above equipment, so I can’t boot my machine as a target disk.

Which means, in English, that I can’t do squat until I’ve fixed it. I’ve got to post Michael Davis’s Tuesday afternoon column (this wouldn’t have been a problem if I got the column on time, as opposed to just past midnight Monday morning; Michael’s got an excuse and it’ll probably be next week’s column) and I’ve got to write and post my column and do all kinds of other important stuff. I can do a lot of this on my iPad and I have, but in order to edit art and post properly, I need that iMac.

And then, literally 55 minutes before Michael’s column is to go up, I find it. Well, maybe not “it” but something that, if disabled, seems to cure about 90% of the problem. That’ll do… and maybe that other 10% will disappear when I reboot.

Or maybe the iMac will go Nagasaki on me: that’s how computers, cars and human beings tell us they want to be replaced.

But at least I’ve got a column out of it.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

FRIDAY: Martha Thomases

 

Mike Gold: Must We, TV?

Gold Art 130102I was a little slow when it came to adopting television as a part of my lifestyle. I only cared about cartoons as a small child, and no wonder: teevee was mostly local and cheaply produced and all those public domain Fleischer and Warner Bros. cartoons were a delight. They still are. I didn’t get sucked into the mainstream until pre-adolescence.

When that happened, TV Guide was my bible. A digest-sized magazine that contained detailed descriptions of every local and network show to be aired in the following week, I, like my peers, pretty much planned our lives around the boob tube. The annual Fall Preview issue was a genuine event.

When it comes to broadcast entertainment today, TV Guide has become less than irrelevant – it’s useless. Cable has brought us so many channels if the magazine stuck to its original concept it would take a half hour to read the next 30 minutes of descriptions. The printed grid tells us nothing we can’t get from our cable grid. And the vaunted Fall Preview issue presumes the “new fall season” is unique. It is not. With the exponential growth of choice, “new seasons” come with each new season.

more important. I take the recommendations of my friends quite seriously – daughter Adriane is a constant source of advice, and I take heed at the recommendations of Martha Thomases and the other ComicMix crew (Martha makes one such nod this Friday; I’d link to it but it’s not Friday yet).

But if my jaded, tube-weary brainpan is capable of generating any excitement similar to that of the old new fall season, it happens right now, in January. Some of my favorites return this month: Justified, Community, Young Justice, Bill Maher. There are a number of promising-sounding shows such as Ripper Street, and before long we’ll have Louie, Hell On Wheels and Doctor Who back.

None of these (save Bill Maher) are what we used to think of as full-length series. We get maybe a dozen episodes of each annually. Even though each episode is played many times, teevee-watching isn’t quite the passive experience it once was.

All of this cable stuff already is being eclipsed by streaming media: Netflix and others have competitive original content, Apple has a box for sending stuff from a great many services (including, of course, its own) to the teevees in your house, and Intel is going to be rolling out an interesting new media box on a market-by-market basis starting soon. The larger cable companies have apps that allow you to pick up their service at home on your smartphones and tablets, and content suppliers such as HBO and the various networks allow you to steam their material to these same devices.

We’re probably just a heartbeat away from fulfilling the prediction made back in 1967 in the brilliant social satire, The President’s Analyst. Pretty soon we’ll just have a chip installed in our heads, and the fees will be debited to our bank accounts.

We don’t need drugs, alcohol or virtual reality. We have television.

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: Little Ole New York Comic Con

ComicMix associate editor Adriane Nash and I knew we were in for it when, on Thursday morning last, there were nine other people waiting for the same commuter train who clearly were headed not to work but to the New York Comic Con. Trains run every half-hour, and ours is but one of a great, great many such stations. Do the math.

In total… one hundred thousand people. Some of whom bathed.

Sure, San Diegoans might smirk at a mere 100,000, but there are major differences between the two shows. First, it only took NYCC six years to reach the 100,000 mark. Second, the Javits Center is smaller and much more out of the way than the San Diego Convention Center. Third, the NYCC has a lot more to do with comic books than the SDCC. Actually, the SDCC barely has anything to do with comic books, despite its title and its not-for-profit mission statement. And finally, NYCC has more European artists and writers while SDCC has more Asian. Of course, this is neither better nor worse, but it is an interesting difference.

For me, there’s another important difference: I don’t have to fly from sea to shining sea to get there.

I’ll gleefully admit six years ago NYCC really, truly and totally sucked. I said so right here in this space. It was the worst planned, worst programmed, worst run major show I’d ever been to, and I started going to New York conventions back in 1968 (I cosplayed Swee’pea). It improved, slowly, and achieved adequacy in its third or fourth year.

This time around the show was very well run – although I agree with Emily’s comments about their panel programming decisions being less than knowledgeable. They should endeavor to overcome this problem.

My biggest complaint – they’re called “issues” now, aren’t they? – was rectified mid-way through the show. They had the exits blocked off, forcing the mass of humanity through narrow corridors back to the small entrance way, making it dangerously difficult to leave, particularly for those who were mobility-challenged. This policy was enforced by a part-time minimum wage crew and, while I sympathize with their difficult job, there was no reason for them to lie to us – they weren’t upholding fire laws; quite the contrary – and there was no reason to act like Cartman without his truncheon. On Thursday and Friday some acted as though it was their job to put the oink in “rent-a-pig,” but on Saturday the rules were changed and you could actually exit through some of the doors marked “exit.”

The New York Comic Con was totally and completely sold out well before the show started. While there was some confusion about the changes in registration procedures (particularly for pros, but we’re an easily confused lot), most of us who followed the rules received our badges in the mail several weeks before the show and therefore were saved from the agony of lines long enough to cause a riot at LaGuardia Airport. I don’t know how you legitimately limit the audience size and 100,000 people can barely fix into the venue; there’s some construction going on at the Javits right now so I hope they procure more floor space next year.

Personally, I had a great time. Sure, most of it was work (ComicMix had nine people there, a third focused on cosplay coverage for our Facebook and Twitter feeds) and because of the nature of my work I spent most of my time in and about Artists’ Alley, the only room that routinely had sufficient oxygen. But I saw a lot of friends – a lot – and, when all is said and done, we could take whatever energy we had left and wade into the bowels of Manhattan, which is always an entertaining and unusual experience.

A rough estimate reveals the New York Comic Con contributed over a quarter billion dollars to the local economy. We’re not just legitimate. We’re big business.

 (Our columnist would like to thank Ed Sullivan for the loan of the head.)

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

Mike Gold: The Baltimore Fun

I like comic book conventions, although I’ve been pretty hard on them lately. These days most conventions have little to do with comic books. They have a lot to do with pop culture and celebrities and movies and autographs and promotion, but over the past decade or two comic books have become the ugly stepchildren within their own temples.

Except for a handful. Mid-Ohio Con has been consumed by the dreaded Wizard ogre; that one used to be a favorite. HeroesCon in North Carolina is high on my list of the exceptional; I wish I could get there each year. There are plenty of great small shows, usually held in hotels and attracting people from about a 200 mile radius, if the weather is agreeable. And, as I’ve incessantly proselytized to the annoyance of thousands, my absolute favorite: the Baltimore Comic-Con.

First and foremost, the Baltimore Comic-Con is about comic books. The panels are about comic books. The exhibitors are about comic books. The awards ceremony is about comic books. In short, it is a comic book convention.

Second, it’s only two days: Saturday and Sunday. The burnout rate is low and people tend not to leave as early on Sundays. You can get as much done in those two days as you can elsewhere in three… or four. Third, the staff is well-trained, efficient, and so damn polite if you’re from New York your skin just might peel off in strips.

I’m happy to say I’ve got a hell of a lot of friends who go there. It’s one of the few shows Timothy Truman attends. Mark and Carol Wheatley both put me up and put up with me year after year; my daughter and ComicMix comrade Adriane Nash gets to stay in Mark’s breathtaking library and studio. Marc Hempel joins us at the Insight Studios booth. Great folks like Gene Ha, Brian Bolland, Amy Chu, Andrew Pepoy, Denis Kitchen, Jack C. Harris, Walter and Louise Simonson, Joe Rubenstein, Larry Hama, Matt Wagner, John K. Snyder III … we don’t have the bandwidth to name a tenth of the people I hang out with at the show. Even the (fairly) recently liberated Paul Levitz showed up as a freelancer.

Better still, the ambiance of the Baltimore Comic-Con allows me to make new friends, something that’s almost impossible to do at the largest shows like San Diego, New York, and Chicago. This year I was exceptionally lucky, spending memorable time with Phil LaMarr and Ross Richie.

ComicMix was there in full-force: Vinnie Bartilucci, Glenn Hauman, the aforementioned Adriane Nash, Emily S. Whitten, and the non-alphabetical Marc Alan Fishman – who was there with the rest of the Unshaven Comics crew, Matt Wright, and Kyle Gnepper, where they managed to sell out of their excellent indy comic, Samurnauts.

Probably the highlight of the Baltimore show each year is the Harvey Awards dinner, and this year was no exception. Phil LaMarr served as master of ceremonies, keeping the three and one-half hour show moving while keeping the audience in stiches, Ross Richie delivered an inspiring keynote address, and as usual Paul McSpadden did his usual amazing job coordinating the whole event.

The Hero Initiative honored Joe Kubert with its Humanitarian of the Year award – a decision made before Joe’s passing last month – and Dr. Kevin Brogan delivered a moving tribute to the late cartoonist and educator. As it turns out, Joe left us one more graphic novel. Their annual Lifetime Achievement Award went to John Romita Jr., in a presentation made by the team of Stan Lee and John Romita Sr.

I particularly enjoyed seeing Marc, Kyle and Matt there for the first time – being sequestered in that room with most of the above-mentioned folks as well as with Stan Lee, John Romita Sr. and Jr., Mark Waid and so many others seemed like a heady experience for our pals, who, I think it’s safe to say, were in fanboy heaven. Pretty damn cool. I’m proud to say our own Glenn Hauman helped in the IT end of things, and ComicMix joined Insight Studios, DC Entertainment, Boom!, Comixology, Richmond Comix and Games, ComicWow!, Painted Visions, Bloop, Captain Blue Hen, Cards Comics and Collectibles, and Geppi’s Entertainment Museum as sponsors.

And I managed to sign up a new columnist for this site. I mentioned the name above somewhere (good hunting), and this person will start out as soon as we iron out scheduling issues and the usual start-up stuff. I’m very excited about this, and you will be too when you read this person’s stuff.

We also went apeshit covering the cosplay scene. Adriane posted about 100,000 pictures on our ComicMix Facebook page, all to the obvious enjoyment of the masses. We’ll be expanding our cosplay coverage considerably, while at the same time polishing our alliteration.

On behalf of the whole ComicMix crew, I want to deeply thank Marc Nathan and Brad Tree for once again putting on the best show in comics, and to thank my dearest of friends Mark and Carol Wheatley for being our personal sponsors. We-all had a great time!

THURSDAY: Dennis O’Neil

 

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