Another fun day here in beautiful scenic Rosemont. Once again, the Missus and her friend K ran around causing trouble whilst I geeked out in panels about the future of Daredevil and whatnot. K seems to be auditioning for the role of the main character in Jeffrey Brown’s next book (don’t you love altcomix inside jokes?), so that’s pretty cool.
Actually, I really do love the panels at these things–there’s something just shy of insane about a place where fans of a particular writer or artist can grill that artist in a totally freeform Q&A session for literally an hour and a half at a time. After my sources revealed to me that Marvel wasn’t going to be flooding the zone with Big Announcements To Counter DC’s Momentum or whatever, I was able to sit back and enjoy these things for the “only in comics, kids. only in comics” phenomena that they are. Today’s panels featured Brian Michael Bendis and Joe Quesada, and as usual I left feeling very optimistic about the future of mainstream comics after hearing these guys talk about them. Quesada seemed audibly grateful to have fielded at least as many questions about Peter Bagge and James Sturm’s Marvel work as he did about whether Power Pack would be returning any time soon. (He also VERY strongly denied Rich Johnston’s theory that Marvel started the rumors about all those big creators leaving Marvel: “Guys, think about that for a second–that would be like me starting a rumor that my wife was leaving me for another man.”) And Bendis displayed the same love of craft and joy in the work of writing that came through in the interview I did with him for A&F. I found that even mere discussion of his continued collaborations with artists Alex Maleev and Michale Gaydos got me jazzed up to go home and pore over the intricate, moody work those two artists have produced for him. (Also, after a question touched on autobio comics, he asked the eternal question, “Is that really how Joe Matt masturbates?” Good times.)
We capped off the evening with dinner with Craig Thompson, his lovely girlfriend, and her very cool cousins. It’s really a pleasure to be able to talk to the guy about his book–or anything, really–without the discussion devolving into the acrimonious free-for-all now in progress at the TCJ.com message board. It’s also a pleasure to see just how non-emo the guy is in person–again, an example of how personal knowledge of a creator can lead to an enhanced understanding of the work, not a watered-down willingness to take it apart.
The one big drawback to this show? Nearly every dealer sells almost exclusively crappy back issues. At San Diego, you can come home with more graphic novels than you can shake a stick at. Here, you’re lucky if you can find any, outside of Top Shelf’s prime-real-estate table. But what WizardWorld lacks in altcomix collections, it makes up for in the fact that I stood about one foot away from Sean Astin in the hotel bar last night.