NEW YORK – Attention fartknockers! Creator Mike Judge’s beloved slackers are back in BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD: The Complete Collection, coming to DVD February 14, 2017. When Beavis and Butt-Head first appeared on MTV more than a decade ago, critics dismissed them as brainless couch potatoes who did nothing but watch TV and make lewd jokes about bodily functions. Today we know they were ahead of their time. Beavis and Butt-Head’s unique idiocy profoundly changed television, movies, pop culture and the world.
Now, America’s favorite culture critics are back in this comprehensive new collection to tell us all exactly what sucks. Housing everything in one set for the first time ever, BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD: The Complete Collection includes all four volumes of the acclaimed television series—including the boys’ triumphant return in 2011—as well as the Special Collector’s Edition of the fan-favorite movie Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. In addition, the 12-DVD set boasts a wealth of bonus material including “Taint of Greatness: The Journey of Beavis and Butt-Head” Parts 1-3, VMA appearances, a Thanksgiving Special with Kurt Loder, the 1994-1996 Butt-Bowls, MTV 20th Anniversary Special, the original, un-cut “Frog Baseball,” a 2011 Comic-Con panel featuring Mike Judge and moderator Johnny Knoxville, promos, montages, and much, much more. BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD: The Complete Collection has a suggested retail price of $46.99.
DVD Release Date: 2/14/17
U.S. Rating: NR (TV series); PG-13 (feature film)
Running Time: 17 hours, 21 min
Format: Full Screen (TV series); Widescreen (feature film)
One of the nice perks of being a pro is that the companies send you complimentary copies when they publish your work. Recently, Marvel published another volume of Star Wars Legends that included some of my Star Wars work originally published by Dark Horse. Although no longer considered “canon,” they’re still in print which is cool by me and gives me an excuse to leaf through them and talk a little about the thinking behind them.
This particular volume is dubbed “The Clone Wars – Volume 1” and has work by several different creators in addition to myself and my artist and collaborator, Jan Duursema. Our editor, Randy Stradley, came up with a thought around the time Episode II came out – having started the Clone Wars at the end of Episode II, George Lucas was going to skip to the end of the Clone Wars at the start of Episode III. Randy proposed to Lucas Film Licensing that we do the Clone Wars in the comics since Uncle George wasn’t going to go there. This, of course, was a long time before there was any talk of doing an Animated Series of the Clone Wars.
Jan and I at the time were the regular team on Star Wars Republic but we left shortly to do a continuing series of oversized bimonthlies under the heading Star Wars: Jedi. Each issue would focus on a given Jedi from the films. We did four of them before going back to the monthly book. While we enjoyed the extra pages of the Jedi series, we liked weaving our storylines in and out with each other and the monthlies provided a better platform for doing that.
We focused a lot on the character of Quinlan Vos, who we had created for our first SW story. Quin was not your usual Jedi – he had been given amnesia, he had troubles with the Dark Side, and could be something of an anti-hero which we would explore even further with Cade Skywalker when we did Star Wars: Legacy. With Quin, we could explore some of the same territory that Anakin Skywalker covered without being tied to one outcome. Everyone knew Anakin fell to the dark side and became Darth Vader but Quin’s fate was undetermined.
I had fun with lots of little touches that show in this volume – I named a character after a good friend, I had prisoners being pressed into service on an impossible mission a la Suicide Squad, and I created a Jedi based on Sean Connery. We called him Shon Kon Ray and he lasted all of one page in Jedi: Shaak Ti before getting blowed up real good. The fans are a sharp bunch and spotted the Connery allusion and, strangely enough, I got a lot of mail and email and chatter lamenting his coming and going so quickly. There was a lot of potential in him, I’ll admit, but that underscored the reality of war, even one as unreal as the Clone Wars. Characters/people that you liked, even if meeting them only briefly, suddenly died.
That also underscores one of the questions and themes that ran through almost all of the stories that Jan and I did in this volume. Are the Jedi on the wrong side in this war? It’s a given that the Republic is corrupt. The Jedi themselves are meant to be peacekeepers and in the Clone wars they are dragooned into being generals. They are supposed to revere life above all and yet they send soldiers to their deaths. War being war, innocents suffer and there is a lot of destruction. In every story, someone who is a Jedi wonders what the Order is doing.
In the Mace Windu story, Samuel L. Jackson. . .err, Mace Windu. . . rationalizes that the Jedi support the principles on which the Republic was formed and not what it’s become. But that is debatable and, in the Count Dooku issue, the Count challenges the notion. Dooku, of course, is a Sith and the Sith are playing both sides against one another in order to weaken and destroy the Jedi. The Republic ultimately votes to transform itself into an Empire and a Sith becomes the Emperor.
When you get right down to it, it’s all rather dark and I found the stories in this volume perhaps more suited for this age than the one in which it was written. I claim no foresight; it was simply a question I felt worth exploring. Can you be a hero if you fight for something that is wrong?
“I had a lovely brunch with Jesus Christ.
He said, “two words about inanity: fundamental Christianity,” yeah.
The food was very nice.
But then He had to go and die for my sins and stick my ass with the check.”
Just before 2016 died a fiery death, Unshaven Comics broke bread with ComicMix EIC Mike Gold and Living Legend John Ostrander. It wasn’t our first meal together, and assuredly it’s nowhere close to the last. We met for no better reason than to share a meal and a joyous time. Little did Mike know I was going to just go ahead and record the whole evening in my mind, and use it for this week’s article. I’m coy, don’t you know.
As with many interactions with Gold, barbecue was involved. We wound up at a north suburban Chicago joint with walls adorned in celebrity photos and the wafting aroma of wood-fired Q, as is often the case in the company of great and powerful comic book men.
What I love, perhaps more than anything else about these meals, is how quickly we nerd out. Barely a passing “Hello, how’s so and so” was muttered before the three Unshavens and the two greybeards (can I get away with that? I’ll try it) landed on the minutiae of our beloved pulp heroes and villains. Before we could even be seated we’d begun to ramble on about Supergirl, Suicide Squad, Arrow, Amanda Waller, Avengers: Infinity War, and the Smallville version of Martian Manhunter.
I bowed before the avatar.
He said, “the problem’s clear to me: you never got over Morrissey,” yeah.
I said “well, right you are!”
“It’s so much harder to be underfed than under-understood,” he said.
After we were seated, the conversation veered towards the political. Again, folks in-the-know of our trusted EIC wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. It’s likely not a surprise either, that nary a single point made was in favor of our soon-to-be Reality-Judge-In-Chief. We lamented on the state of the cabinet (“…akin to the Legion of Doom, but likely far more evil than the pulpy counterparts”). We chortled about the two party system (“…it doesn’t work, but then again, neither does anything else”). We commiserated on the power of social media (“…there’s no way in my day folks could assemble as fast”). In between bites of pulled pork, ribs, chicken, and brisket, John and Mike gave me the moment of the evening.
I’m not certain who originated the point, but someone on the Unshaven side of the table asked of our elders if they still had hope – that with enough spirited activism in place our country wouldn’t end up like the fire-pits of Apokolips. Mike and John each paused for a moment and delivered a Chicago-esque Siskel-Ebert take. I won’t tell you who said what (somethings are better left to be discovered), but Gold and Ostrander took different answers. Backed either by the eternal optimism stolen from the 60s that sparked their own original rebellious natures, or rebuked because of the sage wisdom of seeing the world rise and fall enough to believe that pessimism finally stole the day. It was sobering, prophetic, and amazing; and the moment fell as our last entrée plate was taken away.
I went to see KIP WINGER!
He said, “in my day we knew how to party; bands today, c’mon, not hardly.”
He had a back-up singer (doo doo doo doo).
He said, “the metal scene is a disgrace, but I ain’t got no dog in that race!”
When the moment passed, the conversation moved from the sobering to the cynical. The careers of Andy Dick, Rob Schneider, and David Spade were compared and picked over. And true to form, Mike Gold had a personal connection and a story about one of them — likely the other two as well, but by then the server was eyeing our booth for the still-unpaid-bill.
Unshaven picked up the tab (and was sure to extort our dinner guests for future favors, the true way of the comic book business), and the long Jewish Goodbyes began. Thirty minutes later, we parted ways, and the evening ended as brightly as it’d began.
Mike turned to John. “You know, I was just reading a list of the worst movies of 2016, and Suicide Squad was in the top five!” John snickered immediately. “Yeah, well, it made 750 million bucks, so I don’t give a damn.”
Damn straight, John.
Tip of the hat to Harvey Danger’s “Meetings with Remarkable Men (Show Me A Hero)” for the lyrical inspiration this week. If Mike ever lets me program my own guest set on “Weird Sounds Inside the Gold Mind”, that will be how I kick it off.
Director Gavin O’Connor calls The Accountant a puzzle film because there are multiple dimensions to just about every character in this action drama. The film, out Tuesday from Warner Home Entertainment, is a largely satisfying character study with more than its necessary quota of gunfire and mayhem,
Christian Wolff (Ben Affleck) is on the Autism spectrum and through flashbacks, we learn that his parents were at a loss of how to deal with him, leading to their divorce. Their father (Robert C. Treveiler), a decorated Special Forces PSYOP Officer, is left to raise his sons as he saw fit, which meant extensive military and martial arts training around the world. As they grew up, though, the boys went their separate ways and Christian used his gifts to become a forensic accountant for the Underworld. Known only as the Accountant, he was a bane to law enforcement all over but none more so than Detective Raymond King (J.K. Simmons), who wants this man found before his retirement. He hands the assignment to Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who proves tenacious and doggedly methodical in her investigation.
Wolff takes on a new client, Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), CEO of Living Robotics who has been told by one of his staff, Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), that there may be financial irregularities. Quickly, Christian finds $61 million has been embezzled, probably by CFO Ed Chillton (Andy Umberger) who dies of a suspected insulin overdose. Christian is left dissatisfied that he is quickly dismissed but his life unravels when it’s clear he and Dana are targeted for death.
The movie kicks into a higher gear from that point on as Christian, unaccustomed to having personal attachments as an adult, finds himself yearning to find a way to connect with Dana, all the while continuing his investigation. We then have a cat and mouse game between Christian and the assassin (Jon Bernthal) and Christian and Medina. Throughout, we get the backstory slowly filled in and astute viewers can begin to connect various dots leading to some fun exchanges during the climax.
No one is entirely as they seem, which is one of the joys found in Bill Dubuque’s script. This applies to just about every character from art major turned accountant Dana to the assassin being more than a hired gun. As a result, this rises above your standard crime story or personal drama. The climax, set in Blackburn’s home, is overdone and overlong marring an otherwise very enjoyable film.
The high definition transfer and Dolby soundtrack are both excellent, making for a fine home viewing experience. The film can be found in 4K or your typical combo pack (Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD).
Unfortunately, we are given three perfunctory special features: Inside the Man (10:36), Behavioral Science (8:02), and The Accountant in Action (7:12) where the cast and crew extol their efforts. The middle piece is the most interesting as a doctor talks about how Affleck and others worked with people on the spectrum in order to hone their performances and do them justice.
So is my brain, at least as far as this column is concerned. Usually, when I am faced with no new ideas I travel the Internet, looking to see what other people in comics are talking about. Usually, this works.
Unfortunately, a lot of media doesn’t publish much new in the week between Christmas and New Year. Journalists write things in advance (this is why there are so many “Best of” features) so they can take time off to celebrate holidays with their families.
Instead, I found some sad lists and happy lists, but I didn’t find a lot of news.
I have, however, found a new comic series I love, not from the Internet, but from my friendly neighborhood comic book store. As you might remember, Constant Reader, I try to buy at least a few books with which I’m unfamiliar on Wednesdays, when I shop for my superhero fix. I try to challenge my assumptions about what I will and will not like. This means that I sometimes have to try something that doesn’t fit my preconceptions about what an entertaining book might be.
This was the case with A.D.: After Death. Although it is written and drawn by Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire, two creators whose work I’ve enjoyed, it didn’t look at all like something I would like. There was a lot of text, and the art, while beautiful, did not seem exactly action-packed. Still, the premise (there is no more death) sounded enough like one of my favorite books that I figured I could risk one issue.
The second issue just came out. I can’t wait for the third. If I tell you details of the story, I will miss the point. This is moody and sweet and cynical all at the same time. It goes very well with the gray, rainy winter’s day I’m having as I write this.
And because I really really really dislike gray, rainy winter gloom, I would like to share this from my fellow Buckeye, Tony Isabella. He made a list of things that made him happy last month, and the last one was this: “DC and Marvel Comics. They don’t always get it right, but they keep trying and there’s no denying the big hearts of the people who work at those companies.”
We forget that, sometimes.
Decades ago, at an American Booksellers Association convention, I saw Frank Capra interviewed. Someone asked him what was the worst movie he had ever seen. He said (this is not an exact quote), “I never see bad movies. No one sets out to make a bad movie. When I’m watching something that doesn’t work, I try to see the film they wanted to make.”
We sometimes forget that this is true of comics, too. There are lots of comics I don’t like. There are lots of creators trying to tell stories that don’t interest me, or that have a worldview with which I disagree. And that’s fine. No one can make me enjoy something against my will.
What is not fine is to ascribe evil motives to people whose work I don’t like. I need to remember that they are trying to do the best they can to entertain and, maybe, if they’re lucky, illuminate their readers.
All right now, settle down. Here it is, already the new year and we haven’t even started yet. Started what? That’s just about the kind of question I’d expect from you, mister smarty pants!
We can begin with a gripe, follow with a premature digression and then maybe segue into a topic. Ready for the gripe? Here goes: Geez, a lot of stuff sucks!
But let me tell you about my early days in the writing dodge. When I was groping through the universe, certain of very little, a person or persons whose identity I’ve forgotten told me that clarity was of high importance. Or maybe even crucial. I believed him/her/them and conducted my professional life accordingly, and it seemed to me that the perpetrators of the novels and comic books and films and plays and short stories I was absorbing mostly did the same. (Poems? Maybe not so much. That Ezra Pound can be pretty rough going.) Murkiness was, by and large, not considered a virtue.
But murkiness – lack of clarity – comes in diverse forms. There’s plain old bad sentences and bad plotting and bad acting and unfocused photography and bad editing and inconsistency and showing off at the audience’s expense – for example, sticking in obscure allusions or foreign phrases. And let’s not forget the obvious, bad printing. We’ll end our incomplete catalogue with this: not giving the audience what it needs to understand the action.
Let’s glance, sideways, at some items that really scorch my grits.
Credits, titles and production info – words on the screen – that use white or light colored lettering against white or light background.
Credits and so forth that don’t remain visible long enough to be read.
Actors who mumble lines
Credits shrunk so small, usually to accommodate some kind of advertising, that they can’t be read.
Credits that don’t stop running until the show’s a quarter over. Okay, maybe that one’s more mine than yours. I want the damn things shown and then I want to forget about them instead of perching on the edge of my seat waiting to find out who directed the thing
The assumption on the part of the creative folk that everyone in the audience knows the backstory and the characters as well as they do and so that info doesn’t need to be established on later appearances. (A novelist friend once said that every important element of a novel should be established three times in three different contexts. Sound advice. I wish I followed it.) This is especially pertinent these days when here’s a lot of long-form drama happening on television. And by the way: the sins I’ve just mentioned aren’t are seldom committed by the creators of these shows, though maybe they could work on the credits a bit.)
Okay, does that end the griping? Not likely. But it does end the griping for now. Stay braced for further bitchery in the future. We can assume there will be some.
It’s true that 2016 was kind of a dumpster fire, but thought we’d think really (really, really) hard about it & come up with the best things of 2016. And after like an hour, we realized that there were some great moments.
Like we started high school at OCSA, went to Hawaii, got into Club 33, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened at Universal Studios, we were extras in Hairspray, saw Hedwig, Book of Mormon, Beautiful & Newsies, had some great times with our friends, got to interview some of our favorite writers & actors, went to a bunch of cons, and took in some amazing memes, TV, comics, books, & movies. Things were really good when they weren’t bad and we’re grateful.
So this week, we give you the best of last year….and look ahead to more good stuff in 2017.
It’s a New Year, a new me, and another 361 days of geekdom to look forward to! I started off this New Year by cruising the Internet and catching up on some geek updates and what caught my eye was the convention news. Usually, December/January is slow for cons, so I was shocked to find multiple stories that really caught my attention.
Some were positive, like diversity and inclusive Universal Fan Con getting fully funded. It looks awesome and needed and you should check it out. I’m a backer and I’ll see you there in April 2018. Others were sad, like the complete collapse of con company Geek Expos after they unsold their Marvelous New Year’s Eve Con with Stan Lee. It was a cool concept, but ultimately poorly promoted in a city that just couldn’t support it. And then I saw this next piece of news, which just pissed me off.
Phoenix Comic Con announced a new way for fans to apply for the volunteer army that works their convention each year. They want them to pay a yearly fee of $20 for the chance to apply. Amongst other things, I am not really sure that they understand the meaning of the word “volunteer.” It’s not a refundable fee either. This is going straight into the con’s pockets. PCC stated that they are doing this to ensure that volunteers do not just take the badge and not complete their volunteer shifts.
Here are the flaws with that plan. People bailing on their volunteer hours is still going to happen, even with paying. A $20 weekend pass isn’t as good as a free one, but it’s still cheaper than the full $55 price. But wait, they say. They will ban volunteers who do exactly that! But what was stopping you from doing that before??? If you want more reliable staff at your con, then hire people like ReedPop does. Or overbook your volunteer staffers so you have plenty of people. See who shows up for volunteer training and who doesn’t and keep records. Use the new popular tap system so many conventions are using so that you can deactivate badges from wayward volunteers, or only give them a badge for the day they are working. Do anything but forcing them to pay for the ability to apply to volunteer with no guarantee of getting the spot.
A good chunk of volunteers are people who don’t have the disposable income for tickets or for fees. I know this first-hand, as at one point I was one of them. I volunteered and I had a great time, meeting people and hanging out. So much so that I kept volunteering at that con, just for the experience. Volunteering is great and I highly recommend that everyone try volunteering at least once for the experience.
The thing that keeps making the story worse is that the convention is now getting into public fights. The con director and a former volunteer/vendor have been duking it out in comments. It’s a petty he said/she said fight. It became such a big comment war that Bleeding Cool even published an article about what happened in their comment section. What happened to the unwritten rule to not read the comments?
Volunteers are usually a convention’s biggest and most dedicated fans. Treating your fans with respect shouldn’t be a stretch for a business. It’s true, some people wrongly try to game the system. Those people should be banned, with no question. But don’t use the few bad apples as an excuse to abuse the rest. Cherish your fans or they will eventually abandon you.
Let me be the last to wish you a happy new year. Actually you – and my Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind audience – are the first people upon whom I’m bestowing these tidings. I’m writing this on Boxing Day because I’m leaving town for a week. I think I’m going to Chicago, where I shall reflexively ask Barry Crain for Sonic Disruptors pages.
While in the Windy City, I will be meeting up with my ol’ pal and fellow ComicMix columnist John Ostrander, another expatriated Chicagoan. He will be in town along with Mary Mitchell to visit (or annoy, as the case may be) a gaggle of his relatives. We will be doing at least two things together, the first of which is having a profoundly fabulous dinner with also-fellow ComicMix columnist Marc Alan Fishman and the Unshaven Comics crew, and as many wives and children as possible that can tolerate a couple hours of seriously immature behavior.
The other reason John and I are getting together is that a couple months ago we started work on what may very well be the most important comics project of our lives… or, at least, mine. We’re working with a woman who is most certainly one of the most important people I’ve ever met, and I’ve met a lot of important people.
That’s why I’m in comics. The important people usually aren’t (but that’s changing), and variety is the spice of life. But this project combines the two; in fact, it combines just about all my Sybilistic professional personalities – comics, politics, media, and youth social services. Maybe it’ll be my one last parting shot; if so, it’ll be the one of which I’d be proudest.
As Eric Idle famously wrote and sang, “Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke, it’s true / You’ll see it’s all a show / Keep ’em laughing as you go / Just remember that the last laugh is on you!” Truer words were never sung, particularly from a cross on a movie set in Tunisia.
No, I’m not going to tell you what this one is all about. Not yet. Once everything is nailed down, contracts are signed, and moral non-disclosure agreements are no longer necessary, you bet I’ll babble on. I’ll bet John will, too. And others.
So 2017 promises to be another very interesting year. Yeah, I know, 2016 was very interesting but really, really ugly. If you feel you deserve a better 2017, you merely are part of a horde of approximately 7,361,250,000 Earthlings.
It’s a shame that the “famous Chinese curse” may you live in interesting times is apocryphal. For the record, the phrase “may you live in an interesting age” was first uttered by Frederic R. Coudert in 1939 at the Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science. He attributed it to his friend Sir Austen Chamberlain, brother of the infamous British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, who claimed to have heard it from Chinese diplomats a few years earlier. However, Sir Austen didn’t speak Chinese and never went to China, so it is likely his sense of truthiness was as on-target as Sir Neville’s “there will be peace in our time…” uttered right after he gave the Sudetenland to Adolf Hitler a year before the start of World War II.
The “interesting times” version cannot be traced back further than the late 1940s and was brought to the attention of most by Robert Kennedy in 1966, in a speech the Senator made in Cape Town South Africa. Bobby said, “There is a Chinese curse which says ‘May he live in interesting times.’ Like it or not we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also more open to the creative energy of men than any other time in history.” Of course, the Chinese curse quote was total bullshit, but we do not know if Bobby Kennedy knew that.
Nonetheless, the sentiment is accurate. May we live in interesting times can be quite a curse.
It is up to us to make certain it is not.
Happy New Year. Try not to fret too much. It scares the horses.
David Gerrold, the writer best known for his script for the Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”, for creating the Sleestak race on the TV series Land of the Lost, and for his novelette “The Martian Child”, which won both Hugo and Nebula awards and was adapted into a 2007 film, contributes a guest column about the trainwreck that was Marvelous Nerd Year’s Eve. For more, read the coverage at The Beat.
I was an invited guest at the “Marvelous Nerd Year’s Eve” Comic-Con held in Dallas over New Year’s weekend.
Apparently, it was a disaster of biblical proportions. Not just dogs and cats living together, but suing each other for palimony and custody of the kittens.
The convention organizers over-promised, under-budgeted, over-extended, under-performed, and committed what I consider acts of “criminal incompetence.”
Why do I use the adjective “criminal?”
Because people were hurt. Not just by the incompetence, but by the deliberate incompetence.
Many of the guests — not necessarily the A-listers — depend on the sales of autographs and photographs as part of their income between gigs. They are not all millionaires. Many actors and celebrities, especially those from TV shows of yore, have some income from royalties and residuals, but often depend on convention appearances to give them a little bit of a cushion — or even cover the mortgage.
So when a convention signs a contract, makes a commitment — such as, “We guarantee that you will make $5000 in autograph and photo sales, or we will make up the difference” and then fails to provide enough attendees to make those sales and then fails to cover the guarantee as well — that’s criminal incompetence.
Even worse, the company formed to put on the convention is dissolving itself, so there will be no one to sue.
Most of the other guests had their air fare covered and meals covered by a per diem. So at least their basic travel expenses were covered.
I drove.
After four days of promises, I had nothing but four days of promises. My travel expenses were never covered.
Based on their promises, I had expected $2500 and travel expenses as the bare minimum, and I budgeted for that.
Instead, I’m out my travel expenses. Nearly $800.
Did I sell enough books and tribbles and scripts to make it worthwhile? No.
Because first, they didn’t have a dealer’s table for me, and the woman who was supposed to arrange it was more interested in talking about how busy she was than in actually making arrangements for the table. Not a bad person, but not really focused on the job.
When I finally did get a sales table, it wasn’t in the dealer’s room, it was in a second room that was carefully hidden from most of the convention membership. I did not sell enough to cover my expenses.
I am particularly angry at the CFO of the convention who lied to my face, three times — that he had a check for me for my travel expenses (I’d already turned in my receipts) — when he already knew damn well that the convention was so far in the hole that the hotel was about to lock all of the guests out of their rooms because the convention couldn’t cover the lodging bills.
Any other convention, I would have made enough to justify the effort. Instead, I have a hole in my budget that is going to create a problem for the next month or two. I had planned to spend the money on paying for the kids’ wedding pictures. Now I have to generate that cash somewhere else. (January book sale starts momentarily.)
So yes, “criminal incompetence.” People were hurt. Not just me — but every celebrity guest (over 40 of them) and every vendor (at least as many) who invested his or her weekend on the promises of this criminally incompetent group of people.
I’ve had nearly a half century of convention experience. Most of the cons I’ve attended, whether professional or fan run, have been managed well enough that fans and guests were taken care of. I have never been caught up in a disaster as big as this one. (Which is why I didn’t recognize my personal alarm bells when they went off.)
I would hope that the individuals responsible for this particular train wreck have enough class and courage to issue a public apology — but more than that, I hope they get out of the convention business, because, based on the evidence, they are a danger to the well-being of everyone who trusts them.
The other bad news coming out of that cluster-fuck in Dallas is that after a celebrity gets burned by one convention, he or she is a lot less likely to say yes to the next few conventions who invite.
So both the celebrity and the fans are deprived. The fans lose the chance to meet the star, the celeb loses the possibility of income.
Therefore: Seven lessons that a certain con-committee should have learned ahead of time.
1) First, don’t call it a Comic-Con if it’s not about comics and comic artists. Call it Okla-Con or Dallas-Con or something that identifies it for the specific region.
2) Don’t over-promise. You only need one or two big name celebs. And maybe three B-listers. Then, as you get more pre-attending memberships, enough that you know you can afford more celebs, you can add more. Being able to announce that you’ve just added another special guest builds momentum.
But don’t start by promising 40 with the expectation that the fans will come flocking. They won’t. Because fans have a loyalty to existing conventions. They’re not going to come to a new convention, just because you promised it’ll be great. They’re skeptical and they’re already saving their pennies for the cons they attended last year.
3) If you don’t have enough money up front to pay your bills, cancel the con. Be honest with everyone. That’s a lot better than the disaster of bankruptcy and embarrassment.
4) Be honest with your guests. If you know you can’t afford them, tell them so before they get on the airplane. Have enough class to treat them like people, not commodities to be marketed.
5) And for those who drove — COVER THEIR FUCKING TRAVEL EXPENSES, send them a check ahead of time — or tell them not to come before they waste their time.
6) MOST IMPORTANT — get people on your committee who have been part of successful conventions and listen to what they have to tell you. They will be your best asset.
7) Train your volunteers to do something more than suck up oxygen. Most volunteers are happy to be on staff. Most are eager to help. Most are competent enough to get the job done. But don’t hand out those “volunteer” T-shirts to people who couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel.
BONUS HINT — most of your celebs view cons as a specific kind of job. Sit, be pleasant, sign autographs, pose for photos — and be paid for each autograph and photo. Make sure they have opportunities.
Most of your dealers are there to make money too. Set up the fucking dealer’s room so that fans are exposed to as many dealers as possible. Set up the dealer’s room so that dealers are exposed to as many fans as possible. You’re not doing anyone a favor putting dealers in a place where there is no traffic. Those dealers won’t come back.
SECOND BONUS HINT — If you bring in writers and artists, they are likely to be overlooked as the fans rush to meet the A-list actors. You need to find ways to bring them to the attention of the great majority of fans, so they don’t end up sitting alone at a table or speaking to an empty room with only three attendees. (Despite all the creebing about Creation Con, they are set up to make sure that writers and other behind-the-scenes people are speaking to a full house. And they pay their bills.)
THIRD BONUS HINT — Don’t lie to anyone. Tell the truth to your guests. Keep your promises. Especially the ones that are on your signed contracts. And if you can’t keep your promises, be honest about where you fucked up. Take responsibility like a grownup.
(If the Con Chair will send me a cashier’s check for my travel expenses, I will delete this post. Otherwise, you are all invited to google the various news reports about who else got stiffed in Dallas.)
NEW YORK – Attention fartknockers! Creator Mike Judge’s beloved slackers are back in BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD: The Complete Collection, coming to DVD February 14, 2017. When Beavis and Butt-Head first appeared on MTV more than a decade ago, critics dismissed them as brainless couch potatoes who did nothing but watch TV and make lewd jokes about bodily functions. Today we know they were ahead of their time. Beavis and Butt-Head’s unique idiocy profoundly changed television, movies, pop culture and the world.
