* It’s been a looooooooooooong time coming, but today Marvel.com posted my interview with Paul Pope about his contribution to the company’s upcoming “indie/altcomix creators do the Marvel Universe” anthology series Strange Tales. Even if you’re not interested in the book, Paul talks about some of his childhood favorites, which is a treat.
Best of all, this interview is just the first in a loooooooooooooong series. When all is said and done, I expect to have interviews up with everyone involved in Strange Tales. As you can imagine this has been no small undertaking, and many thanks to Ryan Penagos, Aubrey Sitterson, Jody LeHeup, Ben Morse, Arune Singh, John Cerilli, and all of the creators for helping to make it happen.
* Heidi MacDonald’s San Diego Comic-Con report contains the most detailed and useful chronicle of the show’s possible security/traffic-management overreach and missteps this year that I’ve seen. For the most part, overreach and missteps are what it sounds like, as opposed to, say, the thoroughgoing lack of planning and dearth of informed staffers that made the first New York Comic Con such a mess. Fortunately, a lot of the problems Heidi describes seem like they could be solved by beefing up requirements for pro and press passes and subsequently really making them mean something in terms of access. Providing guest lists for the panels to the security guards would obviously help, too.
After her rundown of the security issue, Heidi moves on to the Great Hollywood Douchebag Invasion. I complained about this a bit last year myself. It’s not the Hollywood component of the show per se, it’s the (in the immortal words of Tool) smiley gladhands with hidden agendas who go with it that irk. Nothing infuriates the part of me that got beat up in fourth grade for liking G.I. Joe than seeing these moneyed jackasses descend upon my beloved Nerd Nation.
But then Heidi segues to a complaint about the big swanky exclusive Hollywood parties, which she laments that comics people can’t even get into. Here’s the thing: If they’re so full of douchebags, why would comics people want to get into them anyway? Who cares if they’re not inviting Darwyn Cooke?After all, it’s not like Spike TV took over the altcomix beach party and threw Kim Thompson out by the scruff of his neck. Before the Hollywood Invasion, these giant glitzy shindigs didn’t exist, and they’re not ruining anything that did. If comics people want to party so badly, they should throw their own parties. Yeah, they probably won’t be as lavish as the studio soirees, but comics isn’t as big as the motion picture industry, so why would they be that big? I don’t see why comics folks should feel entitled to hang with the Hollywood types just because the Hollywood types have an overactive sense of entitlement. Two wrongs don’t make a right and all that. And in my old age, discovering that other people nearby are having a more fabulous time than I am has ceased to rankle. I’d rather sit around a dinner table and talk to my friends than stand around amid hundreds of people I don’t know and shout to them. (I see Tom Spurgeon had many of these same thoughts.)
* Here’s another thing: I love the Con as a cultural phenomenon and therefore I love giant reports on the Con as a cultural phenomenon, whether as a reader or a writer. I am an all-purpose nerd, and Comic-Con is my Disney World. I think that for many media outlets, combining comics with general geekery is logical and desirable–I pushed for it at Wizard, for example. But here in the Comics Internet, we have the ability to generate giant reports solely on the comics news and comics releases and the overall comics presence at the con–and we should! I think it’d be very useful for more of the comics press to generate big after-action reports that didn’t have a single mention of stormtroopers or cosplayers or Twilight or Iron Man 2 or long lines or the party scene or what the flight was like or anything but interesting comics stuff. Next time I go to a big show I’ll try giving that a shot. If we want the comics component of Comic-Con to get more attention, we might as well be the ones who start paying it!
* Did everyone know there’s a giant new John Porcellino book coming out this fall and just didn’t tell me? It’s called Map of My Heart, it comes out from Drawn & Quarterly in October, and I guess it collects strips about his divorce. He’s touring to support it, too.
* My friends in the comics industry and I already meet for lunch in Bryant Park once a week or so (when it isn’t grotesquely humid at least), so I think we’ll have to make a point of checking out this roundtable discussion featuring David Mazzucchelli, Chip Kidd, Joe Quesada, Heidi MacDonald, and Danny Fingeroth at the Bryant Park Reading Room on Wednesday August 19th.
* Also from Heer: Following up on Frank Santoro’s obituary for alternative comics in the Direct Market–part lament, part “good riddance”–Heer notes the small-c catholic comics education that both superhero fans and altcomix adherents stand to lose if the bridge really is over.
* My pal Ceri B. comes to praise Brian Wood’s Local and bury Brian Wood’s Demo.
* Now That’s What I Call Torture Porn: Rick Trembles’ Motion Picture Purgatory tackles Graphic Sexual Horror, a documentary about an extreme, horror- and serial-killer-influenced S&M porn site shut down by the Feds under the dubious contention that porn funds terrorists, or something.
* Slate’s Josh Levin lists 144 potential routes to an American apocalypse, from bang to whimper and beyond. (Via CRwM.)
* Heebie-jeebies here we come: Cracked lists 7 Terrifying Giant Versions of Disgusting Critters, from worms to crabs to spiders. All creepy, and all too real!
* This truly is one of the funniest shirts I’ve ever seen.
HELLO MY NAME IS TWILIGHT AND I AM A DRACULA
I just like writing it!
I sense a YTMND coming on…
Thanks for the tip on the Bryant Park panel. I work just around the corner from there (in the same building as the Marvel offices, in fact), so I should be able to check that out.