Dude rocking out at the Farmer's Market

If you’ve been reading along so far, thanks a lot. This is part 4 of my lengthy report of our trip to San Diego, and it’s my favorite one. If you have been avoiding the other posts because they’re too long, maybe this one would be more interesting (it’s also a little shorter than the last one). It covers the day of the con where good feeling was at its peek, full of food and famous (to me) people.

Previous entries can be found here and here and here. Thanks again.

San Diego Redeemed

Saturday morning we went to the farmer’s market in Little Italy, luckily nearby out hotel. There wasn’t a lot of greens or vegetables, but let me tell you, California fruit is amazing. Comparing it to fruit you can get here (except from Eddy’s Fruit Farm, of course) is like comparing something to its imitation. I snacked on grapes for the rest of the day and Emily bought a 20 lbs. bag of oranges to take home with us.

Back at the Con, Emily had figured out her plan. She would buy the Bone single volume edition and have Jeff Smith draw a little Ted the Bug in there that she would base her tattoo off of. Heading back to the Cartoon Books booth, Smith was there as advertised and we bonded with our fellow Ohioan booth worker (CB is out of Columbus) who recognized our Huntington credit card.

Taken by friendly people we shared the line with

It was nice to meet Jeff Smith. As a pioneer in self publishing, as well as the author of a great comic book (its quality, some could argue, being related to it being self published), it’s hard to deny his impact on my work and outlook on comics. I’ve known about Bone for a very long time, going back to the days when all I read were X-Men comics. Anyway, Emily asked him to draw Ted and he asked “Are you sure? He’s not very hard? I mean, you could just use this picture (pointing to the image of Ted on the copywrite page).” This was the one professional we took a picture of (besides Rob Liefield, but that was for other reasons).

Saturday was relaxed, we hung around exploring the Exhibition Hall a bit before heading back to the hotel and meandering around the city. We went to a pet store where we talked with the owner about the advantages to adopting mixed breeds than buying “certified” puppies.

Panels

We headed back to the Convention Center after a little while because Seth was giving a talk and I wanted to meet Chris Bachalo. When we got to where Bachalo would be signing, it was a little insane, and I didn’t have anything for him to sign anyway, so we decided not to wait around. We made our way to where the panels would be and found Seth’s designated room. We were an hour early, and there was a panel already going on. I decided I wanted to check it out though because, well, it had to do with webcomics.

It turned out this was the Business of Webcomics panel featuring the polarizing Scott Kurtz. Emily needed to remind me not to get upset as Kurtz and the other webcomic representatives talked about the necessity of merchandising and t shirts to a sustainably profitable webcomics business model (I’ve been instilled with a Wattersonian dogma that rejects passing in your work for an assured buck, regardless of how sure a thing it is). While there’s a lot that I disagree on with Scott Kurtz in terms of outlook and philosophy, I was able to appreciate a lot of what he was talking about. At the base of it, he is a strong supporter of creator rights and seemed to have a genuine interest in helping other aspiring cartoonists to succeed, even if he himself is too far past that point to feel too much empathy (he described it as a difference of professional “problems” one encounters and needs to solve in their life). It was interesting to hear them talk about the different levels of acceptance directed at webcomics by various kinds of professionals in the world. Whether or not I’m enough of a business man to make a successful go at self publishing I’ll find out, but I am genuinely interested in this kind of discussion. I don’t know if one needs to be as mercenary or fascinated with money as Kurtz appeared to be, but one thing he has that seems to be key is the drive to make good comics and put everything you have into that.

As the room cleared, I tried to give cards to as many people as I could, but a lot didn’t want to be handed anything (I did get one “Thanks!” which felt nice). Emily and I moved up to the front row and waited for Seth to start. Being a Drawn & Quarterly event, Tom Devlin showed up and somebody else who turned out to be Chris Oliverios, the two of them sitting a couple seats down the row from us.

We really had the best seats in the house. We were directly in front of the podium, so that it seemed the Seth was looking at us the entire time. I can’t say if he was or not, but it felt nice either way. Seth gave a slide talk, but the slides had nothing to do with what he was talking about, at least not directly. In a format that was distinctly Comics, he read 12 separate anecdotal narratives while showing slides of his sketchbook material to distract us from paying attention to him. It was up to us to put it all together, he told us, and being one of the key elements of comics that I love so much, this audience mental-participation excited me and brought my respect for Seth up a level or two. The stories he told were bits and pieces of his life, touching on the rise of the graphic novel, the nature of the comics medium and changing his name.

One of my favorite of the twelve stories was one that he didn’t tell (this doesn’t surprise me at all, actually, as my favorite form of story telling is indirect suggestion). He described a portion of this talk that he had to remove because it bored everyone in the audience, but as he passed over the contents of the omitted section, my brain was ignited and I really wanted to hear more of his thoughts on the subject. Basically, he was describing how he saw comics as less a combination of literature and film as it was of poetry and graphic design. Just thinking about that now makes my forehead start to sweat a little bit, as these are very close to thoughts I’ve had on the subject before. You know when someone says something that finally makes clear all these bits and pieces that have been floating around in your head for some time? It was one of those moments. I had been lukewarm on Seth’s work before but his talk really made me reevaluate everything I had thought about him. He has a lot of really good ideas.

This section might sound a little bit like Seth’s writing in 40 Cartoon Books of Interest. I’m not sure if it does, but if so, it’s not intentional. It’s just that’s the most recent example of art criticism I’ve read and things rub off on me sometimes (it’s funny though, it’s hard for me to hear Seth’s voice when I read his writing. Sometimes I can, but not always).

In a lot of ways, it was about being who you are, regardless of the opinions of others. The talk was pretty moving and stimulating, and was a really nice cap to our experience at the Con. Except it wasn’t over yet. The talk was going to be our last activity at the Con, as we were both pretty burned out by that point. As we were leaving, I knew I would regret it forever if I didn’t give my card to Chris Staros, so we made our way back into the Exhibition Hall and Emily went ahead as I made my way over to the Top Shelf booth.

Celebrities

For the first time, Chris was not talking with someone else, so I just went up and introduced myself. He was really nice and accepted my card gratefully. I let him know it was a pleasure to meet him, and I went on my way. As I was heading out someone else passed by. It was the Beat. Heidi MacDonald, whose blog I read every damn day. If I hadn’t been on a roll, or if I hadn’t missed her panel on Thursday, I might not have turned around. Heidi was really nice and sociable and we had a nice chat, much more than I thought I was going to get, really.

I was feeling pretty excited and proud of myself when I found Emily again and I told her about it. “Did you give her your card?” “Um, no.” “KEVIN! Go back!” Feeling dumb, I went back and found her engaged in a conversation with people at the Top Shelf booth. I hung around the general area because I didn’t want to barge in on their conversation, and eventually I decided I better just go find Emily, who I felt bad I was making wait around.

The one bit of information I had picked up from reading about Heidi’s panel (“Indie Comics Marketing 101″) was that indie comic creators need to be Shameless and they need to be Aggressive when promoting themselves. So I turned around.

I caught up with her as she was leaving her conversation. I offered her my card and she said she had wondered if I had one. She approved of the design and the pronunciation guide. I wished her a pleasant Con and that was that.

We went back to the hotel where we ate our last meal from Just Burgers to celebrate a successful vacation.